DAMAGED

COURT

The whole front of my shirt was damp with tears. I didn't mind. I was more patient with tears that I had not caused. I would get looks. I was used to getting looks from disapproving to disbelief my entire life was built on them. I deserved them most of the time. She was trouble. She was all of the directions I wasn't going in my life now or ever again but I didn't move. I didn't plan to. This grief of hers was so much bigger than my own hang-ups that had gotten me here, the version of myself I was fixing and repairing. There was no concern that she would wake up, her body soaked with alcohol and too much sun. I closed my eyes and rested my chin on her hair, she smelled of pina colada. I would associate keen paralyzing sadness now with the smell of coconut rum.

"Is she okay?" I blinked my eyes open to find Harper's face much closer than I had anticipated. I glanced down but she hadn't moved. I nodded sleepily; aware that behind Harper was the three faces of her band mates. Everett was not too much further down the aisle with a small woman peeking around him, owl eyes and long brown curls. Maggie. Everyone shifted back a step, everyone looking back and forth between Kat and myself. No one seemed to be able to say anything. Harper just leaned down and swept the choppy blonde layers of hair away from Kat's eyes but Kat didn't flinch or move.

"Thank you. Even if you are in it and in it deep, thank you. She has to stop drinking so damn much." She pulled her hand back and went towards the front, dropping down behind Everett and Maggie. Their heads a tri color nest of muted conversation. I looked for my brother behind them but I didn't see him. I moved a half-centimeter to pull my phone out of my pocket. I was about to hit send on a message when he popped in through the door with Joe trailing behind. Two pairs of eyes landed on me, one set widened and the other closed with a headshake. Joe joined the row behind Harper, leaning forward to add his silvering head to the others. Casey walked straight to me with a look that should have prompted me to push Kat off my lap and run. I held still and waited for the other shoe to drop.

"Did you know that my girl was fucking someone else?" I looked awkwardly off to the side. "Thanks for the heads up ASSHOLE! You could have said something before I found her screwing the drummer of her band by the goddamn bouncy houses." I could feel my eyes go round in surprise. I blurted the first thing that came to mind, "Were there kids in them?" He couldn't burn me with his glare but I could safely presume he was trying. "What? It's a completely reasonable question. Also, she was in a full on relationship with Maggie up until a few weeks ago. Sorry." Now his jaw looked like it had come unhinged. He sat down with a heavy sigh. "Really? Maggie digs girls?" I returned his earlier look of disbelief. We both laugh; Tara was already on her way to forgotten. I thanked the universe for the same reason Everett had thanked god, no more having to sit through Ribbons and Razorblades albums.

"Should I even ask?" He looked over the seat to indicate Kat, whose sleep face remained poised for battle. "Is there a point in asking?" He looked hard at me and sat down, stretching his legs across the seat. Our mannerisms and our ways of holding ourselves a carbon copy of the other, we could have been twins.

"There's no point but fuck it, what happened?" He sounds tired and he will only get more exhausted with another six months on the road. I run my fingers through her hair without worry of getting caught in the dark.

"She's sad man, the sad that infects your bones and your brain. She's a sad drunk girl in mourning; twenty years of missing something I doubt she actually remembers having. By the look of her when she came in I would say she's pretty pissed about having it all taken away. I bored her to sleep with descriptions of mom and dad." I always surprised myself with the observations that stuck; everything else was a blur between songs. He laughed.

"Dad's probably still complaining about continuity errors in the episode of CSI he watched and mom's asleep with her nail polishes spread out all over the coffee table." I laughed. We knew both knew each other and the people who made us so well.