As Much as You {completed}

Ezra: 28.

                Ezra watched Carmen get out of a car he didn’t recognise, a Mercedes he’d never seen before. He then frowned, shocked and confused, when he saw his brother was the one getting out of the driver’s side of the car. He balled his fists up as he kicked the door to the large workshop where he kept his quad, before walking over to the car.

                “What are you doing here?” He demanded, looking right at his older brother. They were almost the same size, and Ezra’s nose was almost touching Adam’s.

                “Dad?”

                “It’s alright, Meagan,” Adam replied, glancing at his daughter from the corner of his eye. He smiled softly at her, before looking at Ezra again. He took a step back to give them some space. “It’s nice to see you, too, Ezra.”

                “What are you doing here?” Ezra repeated. “Why’re you at my house.”

                “Well, our house, but technically, its mom and dad’s house.” Adam replied, locking the driver’s side door. Adam sighed. “Ezra, if you wouldn’t mind getting out of the way, I need to tend to Carmen.”       
          
                “What do you mean?” Ezra asked immediately. He glanced around at Carmen, but she had her back turned, talking to Meagan. He pushed away from Adam and went around to Carmen. “What’s wrong—” he cut himself off when he looked at Carmen’s face, and put his hand up to brush away the blood, not paying attention to how rough he was being.

                “Ow!” Carmen moaned, immediately putting her fingers up to her swollen lip. “Ezra, be careful!”

                “What happened?”

                “Nothing,” Carmen muttered, picking up her handbag from the floor and putting it on her shoulder. “Just forget about it.”

                “I can’t forget about it.” 

                “Yes, you can!” Carmen replied, grabbing Meagan’s hand. She started up the drive towards the house, seeing Harrison run down to her. Kevin stood at the door, inspected his wife’s lip and then instructed her to go inside so he could deal with it, wanting to know every detail of the accident and whether anyone had hit her anywhere else or had pressed against her.

                Ezra turned to his brother again. he resisted talking to him, because he was still mad at him – and had been for five years – but to find out what was wrong with Carmen, Adam is the only one that could tell him that right now. “What happened?”

                “She came to pick us up from the station in Plymouth. She’s really famous, Ezra. If you watched her films, or watched her on the news, or in the papers, then you’d understand that people care about her and want to meet her.”

                “And hit her?”

                “No!” Adam replied. “They went to hug her, they recognised her, I don’t know, they accidently hit her. must have been over excited or something.”

                “Oh.”     

                Adam picked up the last of his bags and made his way up to the house. “Is anyone home?”

                “Family wise, no. But why’re you here?”

                “Don’t you wanna see me?” Adam joked, although he knew, deep down, that Ezra didn’t really want to see him at all.

                “Well everyone just seems to be taking a sudden interest in coming down here and disturbing my life. It’s hard to cope with so many people here at once. I like a quiet home and people are coming in, dropping all of these bombs and bringing kids,” Ezra wrinkled his nose as he finished his rant.

                “Well I didn’t come back for you. Mom wants to spend some time with Meagan.”

                “Is that the girl that called you dad, a minute ago?”

                “Yes.” Adam stopped walking. “She’s my daughter, and if you paid any attention to my life, you’d know that, Ezra. But you don’t care about me. You’re selfish, hating me because I stood by Carmen instead of you. Get over it, stop being so pathetic.”

                Ezra seemed slightly taken back, but he clenched his jaw. “Whatever,” he replied, stalking off into the house first. Harrison was sat on the tiled floor of the kitchen with Meagan – Ezra wasn’t surprised to see that they were friends. Carmen and Adam probably spent a lot of time together, after all, they both stayed in London.

                “Harrison, where’s your mommy?”

                “With daddy, upstairs. They’re in the bathroom.”

                Before Ezra could reply, Adam burst into the house, frowning. He stormed into the living room and then called for Meagan to join him. Meagan stood up, pulling on Harrison’s hand, evidently, leaving Ezra alone.

                Ezra was only alone for a brief few minutes, before Carmen came down with peas against her lip. Ezra chuckled when he saw the sight of her. On the table next to him was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich – something Ezra literally just felt like making. 

                Carmen looked up. “It’s not funny.”

                “It is, a little bit.”

                “It’s not,” she argued, chucking the peas at Ezra. She was about to sit down when she spotted the sandwich, suddenly feeling hungry. “Are you going to eat it?”

                “What?” Ezra asked.

                “That sandwich. Are you going to eat the sandwich?”

                “Oh, that…” Ezra looked down at the plate and then pushed it towards Carmen. “No, I don’t like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”

                “That’s a…” Carmen’s breath caught in her throat. “That’s a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”

                “Yes. Why?”

                “Why did you make this?” Carmen asked. She didn’t take a bit of the sandwich, now her heart was pounding. Had Ezra actually remember? He’d subconsciously decided to make a PBJ sandwich, but did he remember why?  

                “I don’t know, Carmen. Are you going to eat it or not?”

                “I need you to tell me why you made this,” Carmen replied, putting her hand on her hip.

                “I heard Harrison talking about the sandwich to that other kid. He wanted one. I was going to make another one and give them to them, but then you showed up so I thought it would be nice to give you one. It was just a thought, considering you got hit in the face today.”

                “So you didn’t remember this?”

                “I’m not going to remember anything, I never am, Carmen!” Ezra shouted, suddenly bursting out. It was like the word remember was a ticking bomb for Ezra, and he blew up every time. “Get it out of your head. Stop thinking of all of these things that mean nothing to me! I don’t care about the things I can’t remember.”

                “I’m sorry,” Carmen tried to fight back tears. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

                “Upset me?” Ezra cried out. “No, what’s upsetting me is you coming back here and ruining my life all over again!” He let out a frustrated groan and then stormed out of the house – leaving Carmen alone. That didn’t matter though, because he was the one feeling very alone.