Sincerely

Leeon

Can I get a round of applause please?

Cause I guarantee that at this point, I was made to fuck everything up.

And I do an amazing job at it.

The only reason why I'm here in the first place is because Mom needed a reason to keep Dad under her thumb. A second child that she's "for sure" is his? What a perfect reason to make our family more dysfunctional than it already was.

A deadbeat dad who only cares about money and a mom who doesn't know how to keep her legs closed. Wonderful!

Jesus Christ Leeon, come on.

They're not so bad, they're really not.

It never bothered my brother and I that we had different dad's. We don't even know who Lewis's real dad is (which is not only depressing, but also impressive), and even if we did, he would probably want nothing to do with Lewis or Mom anyways.

But the way Lewis's shoulders would fall whenever Dad talked about how Lewis is nothing like him. Or the way Dad treated Lewis like he was a stranger in his own home. I still remember Lewis's cries through the walls in the middle of the night after another one of Dad's rants.

Lewis is quiet, he keeps to himself and you can never tell when he's upset. Which is how he's nothing like Dad and I, cause we can't bite our tongues for the life of us. The amount of arguments I've had with Dad over the shit he's said to Lewis is way more than I can count. And even though Lewis would say that it's fine over and over, his words could lie all they wanted to but his glossy eyes couldn't.

It's not Lewis's fault that he got here because Mom wanted to get back at Dad for whatever stupid fucking reason. It's not his fault that because of Mom's pitiful pettiness and Dad's stubbornness and inability to take any kind of responsibility, he grew up being hated on and looked at like one big mistake.

And if he isn't angry about it, then I'm angry about it for him.

I'm glad he moved out, I'm glad he's trying to find himself and not look in the mirror and only see a mistake.

And I wish he never had to come back into this house ever again.

But I had to be the one to text him and tell him that Dad was coming back a day earlier than we thought.

I had to be the one to tell him that we were having dinner this Friday evening.

I had to be the one to break the news and tell him that we all have to be under roof, sitting at the same dinner table once again.

But I also have to tell him that I can't be there for him the entire time, because I have a knock-off homecoming to go to.

But I haven't gotten to that part yet. It's been three days and I still haven't gotten to that part yet.

I haven't told him or Mom or Dad that I'm going to homecoming with Cin. That I'll be skipping the dinner that Mom has been planning out for the four of us to come back together again, just to be with my best friend.

But here we are, sitting at our dinner table. In deafening silence.

It's just one dinner. I can be fine for one single dinner.

And instead of words being exchanged, we hear forks and knives clinking against glass plates, and sometimes an awkward throat being cleared like someone wants to start a conversation, but they never say anything.

I can only stare at my steak and peas for so long before it starts to make my stomach turn and my tongue feel sour. Every time I look up from the table, I see Lewis's eyes dart at me, then look away.