Chapter 38

“Are you sure you don’t want any of these?” Brooke was carefully sifting through the trash bag full of broken glass, plastic, and wood.

Into his pillow, Henry groaned in the affirmative. All those shattered memories would bring him now was pain.

“All right,” his sister responded skeptically before she left the room, trash in hand.

He wasn’t sure how long she was gone, but he realized she was back when she spoke to him from next to his nightstand.

“Oh what’s this song, I kinda like it,” she said, picking up his phone. He heard her gently sigh. “Henry’s Playlist?” Brooke’s fingers gently raked through his hair. “Oh, little brother.”

He knew it was juvenile. She’d made him a playlist, to “update your musical taste.” It was 36 tracks — all songs that came out before 2000 mashed up with electronic dance music. Or something. He wasn’t really sure what it was all called. He liked it, though. Or maybe he didn’t. But it reminded him of her, and that was good enough. Or maybe bad enough. That distinction didn’t matter to him anymore, either.

The bed depressed as his sister sat down next to him. She’d been here most of the afternoon and through the evening. Made him eat something. Fed Da Vinci. Spent a half hour on her hands and knees with a Dustbuster, doing her best to suck up all the broken shards left in the carpet.

Those fucking photo frames held double the bad memories — the photos they contained, and the damage they’d eventually done just by continuing to exist. Well, they had, anyway. He should’ve smashed them, or at least gotten rid of them, a long time ago. Even if he knew damn well it wasn’t the photos’ fault.

Last night kept replaying on a loop in his head. He wished he could pause it and jump in — and say all the things he wished he’d said but had been too ... afraid? Stupid? Confused? He really had been ready to move on, to finally start this new phase of his life.

But when the moment came — one about as on-the-fucking-nose as you can get — he’d frozen up. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t just helped Cameron smash all the photos she wanted. He so desperately wanted to be the Henry she saw in him. And yet, he just ... did what he always did.

Fucking nothing. Just stood there like a little fucking kid hoping someone would take care of it all for you.

“I know,” Brooke told him as if he’d said something, accompanied by another sympathetic sigh. “You feel like talking about it yet?”

Henry turned to her. He was sure his eyes were still red. They still felt swollen, anyway, even if the tears had finally run out. She didn’t look at him with pity, like he thought she might, or even with disgust, as he would’ve at the sight of himself.

His sister looked at him like he’d been hurt — and needed help.

“I couldn’t give her what she needed,” he mumbled, monotone. “Again.”

The hers were different, but there was one common denominator.

Me.

He knew she’d needed a distraction, needed some escape. That was how she was. She hadn’t been trying to get off on his inner turmoil. It wasn’t about him. Not this time. He knew that, in his mind.

But in his heart...

I was so afraid it was happening again. And that ... that she’d...

Then he’d made it happen anyway.

And when she’d finally said... those words ... to him on her way out the door...

Maybe she finally saw who I really am.

That thought just wouldn’t budge from his brain. Unmovable since the moment she’d left.

He could almost feel that bottomless pit inside himself gloating, neglected for far too long.

Warm tears started up again.

Brooke leaned down and brushed his matted hair aside so she could kiss his forehead. “Are you sure it’s over?” she said quietly. “You two—”

“Yeah,” he muttered, wiping away the new streaks on his cheeks. “Even if she didn’t want it to be, I’m...” He took a breath and met her eyes. “I can’t do that again. I can’t go through this again, Brooke.” He tried to sound determined, but he couldn’t even convince himself.

His scratchy eyes pleaded with his sister.

“Is that why you’ve got Henry’s Playlist on a loop?” The corner of her mouth twitched up as she continued running her fingers through his hair.

Henry’s cheeks flushed and he did as good of a shrug as he could manage, letting a faint smile tug at the corner of his own mouth. “I’m...” he searched for the word, but Brooke supplied it for him.

“Com-pli-ca-ted,” she said, smiling a little wider.

He snorted, and felt another tear form where he thought the well had run dry.

Brooke patted him again, then motioned for him to scoot over. Reluctantly, he did, giving his sister room to pull her legs up and stretch out on the bed next to him. Resting against the wall, she commandeered a pillow for her back.

Another track started on the playlist.

“You know, little brother, things seem so simple in the abstract. Especially before you’ve gone through the ringer. There’s a right and there’s a wrong, and there’s a smart and there’s a stupid.

“And then ... there’s love.”

She turned to him now with a wry, tired grin. He gave her a wan smile back and sat up next to her.

Brooke took a deep breath, looking up at nothing in particular.

“Doug cheated on me.”

Henry’s mouth dropped slowly, and he took his sister’s hand. She turned to him, still with that faint smile on her face.

“Oh, it was a long, long time ago,” she said, using her other hand to wave off Henry’s concern. He’d never heard anything about this before — he’d had no idea there’d ever been anything but smooth sailing in Brooke’s marriage. In Brooke’s life.

She continued. “It was before we even got married, when we were dating. You know, he ... he made a ... a massive, huge mistake and ... and it hurt. Of course it did.” The tone in his sister’s voice said it still hurt.

Henry gave her half a hug, and she patted him on the back. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he said quietly as they separated.

Brooke’s smile seemed almost embarrassed. “I didn’t want you to think your indestructible big sister did something... stupid.” She shrugged, her cheeks a little bit blushed and her eyes a little bit moist.

Henry felt his own face melt a little, and he squeezed her hand. “You know that’s stupid, right?” he said, a smirk pulling at his lips.

She smiled more broadly and squeezed his hand back. “I just ... didn’t do what I would’ve told you to do. And I was ... ashamed of that.”

He furrowed his brow. “But you didn’t tell me to leave Mal. Not once. Not in so many words, anyway.”

“Because by that point, I’d been through it,” Brooke responded, nodding slowly. “Well, not what you went through. But...” She looked back up at the ceiling with another sigh. “I could’ve cut bait when he told me. And he did tell me. I could’ve spent the rest of my life feeling perfectly justified about that. Everybody would’ve told me I was perfectly right to do it.”

She turned to her brother again.

“But I didn’t. It came down to whether we still loved each other. And ... we did.” She shrugged, letting a smile show again. “We were still the same people. And maybe that made it even stupider. My friends thought so, for sure. And they had a point. The man who hurt me to my very core — he was still the same man, too.”

Henry was still trying to get over the shock. He’d never imagined goofy-dad Doug doing something like that to his sister — and couldn’t have imagined his sister would’ve ever forgiven it.

“Why did you forgive him?” Henry said softly, then followed up immediately. “How did you forgive him?”

“You know, people love to talk in absolutes,” she said with a thoughtful look. “‘Oh, I’d never do this or that. Oh, I’d never stay with someone who cheated on me. Don’t you have any self-respect?’” She shrugged again. “I didn’t forgive him.

“But I still loved him, and he still loved me. So, we worked through it. We wanted to make it work, even when there was every excuse not to — for the both of us.” She held up a hand. “Which makes it sound like we did something noble or something — we didn’t. We did something stupid.”

Henry started to protest, but Brooke kept going.