Free The Only Brother by Caias Ward Page A

my phone today, I guess.’
    ‘You still have my number on your phone, Andrew?’
    ‘Yeah.’ I tried not to make eye contact. ‘Just never took it off.’
    ‘Oh, OK,’ Caroline said, her voice dropping.
    Think quick…
    ‘And I thought I might, you know, want to call you again. Maybe see how you were doing.’
    ‘I’m good. Just another year of school and then uni.’
    ‘Yeah. The A Levels and then figuring out where to go…’
    And then it was quiet. She didn’t say anything, I didn’t say anything. And in the back of my mind, Trevor and Sara were both screaming at me to do
something
.
    ‘We should have kept on seeing each other,’ I said. She nodded in agreement, even before I’d finished talking.
    ‘Why didn’t we?’ she said.
    I thought about this for a moment. We had been so worried about what other people thought, and I had been going nuts dealing with my family, and I was just an idiot, and…
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Don’t care though. It’s the past.’
    ‘Yeah,’ she said, smiling. ‘You still… I mean, you want to go out? I mean, sometime?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    She sat on the bed. So did I. We talked. Beer was really getting to me, but I remember some of the stuff that happened – the good, and the bad. Mostly, it was just getting to know each other, talking and seeing that we had stuff in common, like art and music. She was with Hayden’s crowd because everyone was nice to her, but it bothered her that they weren’t nice to me. Hayden also fancied her, even though he had a girlfriend, and that was causing all sorts of problems. I told her I didn’t give a damn what Hayden thought any more. And she was a great kisser, just like I remembered.
    That was the good.
    The bad was Hayden finding out about the party and finding out that I was upstairs.The bad was also Hayden finding the two of us wearing just enough clothing to spare the modesty of one person.
    Like I said, I don’t remember much. I woke up the next morning next to Caroline. She assured me it hadn’t been anything other than us in the same bed sleeping. I was glad about that, because I wasn’t in a rush, and neither was she. My head hurt like hell, so the next hour was Caroline rubbing my temples and talking with me about lots of different things. We wandered downstairs to find most of the house trashed beyond recognition. This was a sign of a good party at Trevor’s, for whom success was based on how many people were passed out, and how many days it took him to clean up. At least Trevor had the sense to drag most of the drunks unable to get home into the house from the yard, neatly lining them up in the bar room downstairs.
    ‘So yeah, like, Hayden heard about the party,’ Trevor said between forkfuls of eggs, ‘and someone must have told him they saw you here, heading upstairs.’ He nodded atCaroline. ‘He brought a few of his mates with him, and he didn’t take it well finding you two in bed together. When I got upstairs, he had already got some good shots in on you.’
    That explained why my stomach hurt so much. I looked under my shirt, seeing the ugly purple bruise along my ribs. Caroline gasped while Trevor shrugged it off.
    ‘But you got the better of him, Andrew.’
    ‘I did?’
    ‘Yeah,’ Trevor laughed. ‘Boot right in the marbles…’
    Trevor then mimed the fight, including the part where I punted Hayden down the stairs while I was yelling ‘I don’t give a damn what you think!’ over and over again. I kept my head low, trying not to be too embarrassed when Trevor described how I vomited all over Hayden just as he tried to hit me with a lamp. Caroline smiled, remembering it and everything else all too well.
    ‘Anyway,’ Trevor continued after a last boot into the imaginary Hayden on the floor, ‘my cousins’ friends and a few others took him out back and, like, worked him over after they ripped his pants off. Then we handed him back to his mates, like, and said if they called the cops