Mess You Made

36.

Malibu.

Since we were children, it was routine for Sierra and Rafe to walk down their block to our house in the morning so we would walk to school together in elementary. School was only a few blocks away from our house. It was habitual, those walks.

When Rafe ran away once, when him and Cris were eleven—  he'd shown up to school the day before with a black eye so severe he couldn't see through his left eye — and then the next morning, he didn't walk down the street towards our house.

Didn't see him at all that day.

There was a palpable worry to us. When he didn't walk through any of his classes, when Cristian said he didn't see him at recess, when I waited for thirty minutes sat outside the school building because we always walked home together. I refused to walk without him. Cristian ended up having to drag me away.

So me and my brother, we went to papai. Where it concerned Rafe— whenever we were scared for him, we'd go to our papai because there was only one person who cared about him as much as we did, and it was him. It was summer. Stifling heat that stuck to your skin. The car shop was busy enough that day that papai was making good money and under any other circumstances, he would've never closed the shop when it was so busy.

He sent new customers home. Closed the shop. Piled us into the back of the car — he tried dropping us off home but me and Cristian refused to leave the car. We clung to the backseats, begged him. Papai was a strong man, but weak for his children. So we stayed there.

I remember constantly looking over at Cristian sat in the backseat next to me. He looked a sickly shade of pale, wearing red basketball shorts that were torn at the hem because him and Rafe always ended up wrestling on the outdoor courts when one of them would lose, and he was so scared. So scared.

And we were a small family but Rafe was always, undoubtedly a significant part of us.

For forever.

For as far back as my mind could stretch.

There's a jigsaw of us, and our family's all these muddled pieces and Rafe is a piece that's as worn in as the rest of us, there along with every summer since I was born, every birthday, and every time I even look at him, I feel a nostalgia you only feel for someone you've known for so long.

I watched their brotherhood my whole life. Him and Cristian shared their clothes ever since they started to cling to one another when they were in a playgroup at three years old. Then, along the way he became one of my papai's favourites and then we all never went back. My home is his home. He knows how to work the oven, does the dishes whenever they'd pile up, leaves his beer bottles everywhere like Cris. I watched him and Cristian grow up on basketball. Summers were comprised of me and Si watching them both on the courts.

He was meant to be this cruel boy, but I would tease him about the way he always picked up the daffodils by the maple tree— how he always picked them up on our walks to school too for no reason, hold them in his hand, twist them and crush the stem before tossing them.

He didn't belong to that man that would only ever brutalise his body. To us, he never belonged to his father. Not when he was little, and not now. Rafe was ours from the moment him and Cris became inseperable, and the moment my papai loved him. He was ours. He was ours when the whole town would cast him out. He was ours even if he was entirely alone elsewhere — so that's why we were piled into a car, scouring streets for him late at night.