No one’s home when I get there, though, so I plug the tree in, put the kettle on for tea. Vaughn might’ve had some last minute Christmas shopping to do, or maybe he went to pick up some takeout for us to have for dinner tonight.

I go into my room, into my tiny closet and get the iPad. It’s wrapped in red paper with silver ribbon. I look at it, trying to picture the look on his face when he opens it, then I decide to bring it out and put it under the tree. We won’t open presents until Christmas Day, of course, but it’ll be fun for him to try to guess what it is. There’s no way he’s going to know.

I make myself a cup of tea and then putter around a little, wondering where the hell my tardy ass brother is. I check my phone, but he hasn’t called or texted. I try calling him but again, it goes to voicemail.

An anxious feeling begins to gnaw at me, but I ignore it, telling myself that I’m getting worked up for no reason, that Vee will be home at any moment, that it’s silly to worry. I have plenty of things to do while I’m waiting for his ass anyway. I take a shower, and telling myself that by the time I get out he’ll be home. When that turns out to be false, I start ferociously tidying the living room. I actually say out loud before starting, “Vaughn will walk through the door by the time I’m done.”

Except we still don’t have a ton of stuff, so cleaning doesn’t take that long.

I do this for the next several hours, finding meaningless tasks to engage in, trying to convince myself at the end of each one, my brother will be home, or will have called, or texted. Or something. Anything. Where the hell is he? Where the hell is he, the inconsiderate bastard? He should have at least phoned. 

Finally, the phone rings.

I snatch it up, but it’s not Vaughn, it’s Max.

“Hi,” I say, trying to keep the worry out of my voice.

“Essie.” Max’s voice sounds off, like he’s choking on something. The voice on the other end of the line almost doesn’t sound like him. God, straight away I know something’s wrong. I grip the phone tightly.

“Max, what is it? Is Vee with you?”

“Oh, Jesus.” He exhales harshly, the sound rattling through the receiver. My stomach clenches, twisting painfully. “Essie? Essie, I don’t…Fuck, I’m no good at this shit.”

“What, Max? C’mon, you’re freaking me out. You’re scaring me.”

The line is silent for a painful second. In that second, I know my entire life is over. I know, with a sinking sense of fatality, that if I hear what Max is about to say, nothing will be the same again. My brother’s best friend pulls in a deep, ragged breath and says the words I’m terrified to hear. “He was in an accident, Essie. His truck was totaled.”

The room pitches sideways. “Oh god. Is he…is he badly hurt?” Somehow, some part of my brain is still clinging to the hope that Vaughn’s alive. That he has multiple bone fractures. That maybe he’s paralyzed. That would be terrible, but we could deal with it. He could stay home. I would work. I would take care of us, the same way he took care of me. Max’s next words crush every last remaining scrap of hope I might have, though.

“He…he suffered major internal injuries, Essie. He died on the scene. I’m so, so sorry.”

The whole world seems to stop, like it gets sucked inward, and all that’s left is me, nothing else, no one else, just myself and this horrible pain that has started, that is raging through my entire body. Except I can’t quite feel it, it’s muted somehow, but it will come on full force if I move. So I won’t move. I will just stand here forever, the phone pressed against my ear, Max saying my name.

“Essie? Essie? Are you still there, Essie?”

I am, Max, but I can’t move. Can’t speak. If I do, that will make everything you’ve just said true. And that can’t happen.

“I’m coming over, Essie. I’ll be right over.” He hangs up. I’m still standing there, phone against my ear, when he gets there, half an hour later.

FOUR

AIDAN

Well, look at that. It’s eleven-thirty and I’m loading my board onto the Jeep, seconds from heading to the beach. The plane Alex arranged for me to be on took off an hour ago. I could be wrong about the time, though. I gave the ticket that arrived this morning—express post, like my fuckhead brother’s never heard of email confirmation—to my friend Brewster. His rolling papers weren’t quite cutting it, and that motherfucking ticket was just the right thickness for blunt building.

If me missing the flight means Alex is going to make the pilgrimage down here in order to drag me back to Chicago, well…I’d like to see that. It’ll be entertaining as fuck, I’m sure. No way am I spending Christmas in that barren winter wasteland my brother likes to call home. No, today I’m visiting Celeste, the short blonde with the perky tits I hooked up with last weekend. We’re planning on celebrating Christmas a little early. Our festivities will involve a full three-hour sixty-nine session, and I’m sure there’ll be some reverse cowgirl to finish off the session. Celeste has a mirrored wall in her bedroom and likes to watch herself getting fucked.

My dick’s already hard as I’m driving over to her place, thinking about fucking her, thinking about how badly my tongue’s gonna ache from three hours of eating pussy, when my cell phone starts to go off.

It’s bound to be Alex, realizing that I’m not on that motherfucking plane.

“Ohhhh. Yeah. Fuck you, man.” I hit the reject button. The phone rings again less than a second later. Again, I hit the big red icon, cutting him off. “Eat a big bag of dicks, man.”

 I should just get a new number is what I should do. The third time when it starts to ring, I actually fumble the damn thing in my haste to make it shut the hell up. I get a good look at the screen, and I realize it’s not my brother, after all. The A at the beginning of the caller ID isn’t for Alex like I assumed it was. It’s for Arturo. Arturo Mendel, our family lawyer for the past thirty years. He’s been around longer than I’ve been alive. Seeing his name light up my cellphone’s screen is a little strange. Strange enough that I’m compelled to answer the phone.

“Hey, Art. What’s up?”

“Aidan? Aidan, I can barely—are you there?” A wave of static blasts down the phone, and then Arturo’s broken speech again. “—driving? Can—terrible. Sorry, I—” His words are scrambled, but there’s a tension in his tone that I can hear plainly down the distorted line. My father’s probably taking steps to cut me out of the will and good ol’ Art wants me to call home and make nice. When we were kids, Alex and I used to call the old guy Art the Fart. He’s one of those people who seem like they’ve been old forever and ever. He looks a little like a Jewish E.T. now.

Anyways. Nothing like a call from the family lawyer to make you lose your erection. It was Arturo, actually, who walked in on me in the pool house when I was fifteen and losing my virginity. The man certainly has a knack for these sorts of things. Boner killer extraordinaire. If he got a hard on himself, he’d likely have a heart attack, keel over and die. Also, Alex has always been his favorite, though I’m sure he’d deny it if you were to ask.

I sigh. “I didn’t hear a word of what you just said, man. Did Alex recruit you to convince me to come home? Let me just save us all some time, okay? It’s not gonna happen. The sun’s out. It’s eighty-three degrees today. I’m just coming off the beach, and I’m heading over to this girl’s house. I’m going to screw her brains out. You have taken a vow of celibacy, but trust me when I tell you that fucking in eighty-degree weather, no matter how sweaty your balls get, is far better than being stuck in Chicago in the dead of winter.”