Threefold

1| departed

"It sucks that you're not coming, Cam."

Ian weakly moves the meaningless chess piece to a position that he is mindful will be taken away. He then sips his Corona, shunning the taste as if he does not enjoy it. He enjoyed them when we partied on weekends and celebrated insignificant events, but now, he dislikes them? Funny.

I'm not much of a social guy, though when I am, I attempt to be as curt as possible. "I know." I say ill-minded.

Imbibing the beer, I take a long, hard glimpse at the sunset. In approximately one hour, I will witness my twin brother walk out of my life. He claims it is not of choice, but I disagree. There are always choices. Endless choices. He just can't stand another moment of hiding. He yearns to fulfill his "prophecy" of becoming a somebody.

"Your turn." Ian remarks faintly.

We're playing chess on the rooftop of our apartment building. It is a Friday night in Naples, Florida, and we're pretending to accept facts that we both internally disagree on. He wants to leave and I want to stay.

I glance at the traffic below and the hoards of busy people doing whatever they're doing, because I'm angry. I'm furious with my brother. He is straining every single chunk of sanity in me and at this very moment, I want so badly to punch him square in the face.

"Are we gonna finish this or not?"

My attention jolts to Ian. His eyes are low and indolent. We're falling apart and it has never happened so quickly.

"Yeah," I retort.

"Why are we even playing chess?"

I swallow more of the tasty Corona, "Because it was our favorite game. It took our minds off things that deterred us."

"Yeah," he scoffs belligerently, "when we were like ten." Ian shakes his head, continuously peering askance at me and sipping his drink. "I hate to tell you, but we're twenty-four now, Cam. And we've done nothing, but run from our mistakes."

"You mean your mistakes."

Ian's aggressive demeanor deteriorates in a split second and his face goes absolutely blank. He thrusts the bottle onto the ground while contentiously standing on his two feet. The bottle smacks the concrete pavement and shatters every which way. I'm not as surprised as I possibly could have been three weeks ago.

In other words, my reaction is unbothered. Ian disturbingly tugs the neck of his three-toned tie-dye sweater. Ugly sweater.

"Why are you doing this!?" He shouts, wildly gliding his fingers through his short, curly auburn hair.

"Doing what, Ian? What exactly am I doing?"

He paces back and forth, distressing, "You're wasting your life, dude. We need to move on. Mistakes happen. All that's left to do is move on."

"Well, I see why it's so easy for you, because all I ever did was take the blame. Every fucking thing you did, I was there for the blame, Ian. Everyone worshipped the ground you were on and pissed on mine, because when you fucked up, I fucked up. But no one ever saw when you did wrong. All they saw was Cameron doing wrong." I toss my empty bottle over the ledge and hear a few screams from dramatic women. "So when I had the opportunity to leave, I did. And you followed. You dragged yourself here and I let you. Now you want to tell me to stop hiding and to go with you? Get the fuck out of here with that. You wanna go? Go! I can't stop you from making more mistakes, only this time, I'm not gonna be there for the blame!"

Tears accumulate in his eyes as the words I spoke trek into my own conscience. Shit. I didn't exactly mean that. It was all out of anger. Ian storms away, leaving me to drown in the words I have said.