A PINK SERIES > prologue, part 2 previous, next
The Universe has tuned in at the perfect time.
The apartment is cramped and perched on the corner of the building. It's so close to the traffic stop outside that light dances through the window. The lights are bright enough to cast a sickly glow about the room. It cycles through crimson, emerald and gold. Each is as bad as the next. The menacing glow of red is no better or worse than the yellow light seeping across the skin like jaundice.
If he weren’t so used to them, they’d be a nuisance, but Edgar Duffy isn’t one to dwell on things he can’t change. He doesn’t dwell much of anything, actually. As boys go, he’s nothing special. He’s not the most handsome, nor tall, nor smart. But he's handsome enough, tall enough, smart enough.
He was enough, but never too much.
As of eighteen seconds ago, it was his birthday. So far, being nineteen doesn’t feel much different than being eighteen.
For a moment there, he thought it might. He thought things might be different, for once. His hopes had been too high to think a birthday with his brother could go any other way. Couldn’t they go one year without lapsing into their pattern of clenched jaws and grit teeth?
As brothers go, Edgar and Ivan Duffy aren’t the type you write home about. They’re more the type you write about in passive-aggressive posts on social media. They're the type to give thoughtless gifts to each other, bought last minute at the corner store. Takeout from the place he hates is paired with a cheap bottle of wine, and a store-bought cake.
If Ivan paid more attention to his brother, he might have a clue about what Edgar likes. The gesture is impersonal and empty. Neither of them have fooled themselves into thinking it’s anything but.
They made attempts at talking, all feeble and failed. Edgar and Ivan found that they had little more to bond over these days than schoolwork.
It's obvious that neither of them want to live together.
Edgar stares ahead at the half-full takeout box on the table, heavy brow set into a furrow. All these empty gestures are the sort of thing he’s learned not to dwell on. Instead, he's taught himself to accept this as one of the innumerable things in his life he cannot change. They were fixed and factual things he had to accept.
That, or let it destroy him.
Like bad birthdays, filled with lazy attempts at siblinghood. That, and compulsory, celebratory dinners with Ivan. After nineteen years, it’s finally sunk in – some things don’t want to change.
His lips purse into a line, and at long last the words sitting on Edgar's tongue for the last hour spill out:
“You should go.”
