Played: Manhattan Ruthless - 1

I tug at the collar of my shirt. It’s stifling, sitting here in this room while we’re pretending everything is still … normal. When nothing will ever feel normal again. I glance around the room at my four brothers, wishing I could read their minds. Surely they all feel this too. It can’t only be me who feels as though it’s all kinds of fucking wrong to be doing this without her.

Elijah and Nathan stare at the fireworks through the window, watching the rest of the world celebrate when we’re stuck here, in this mausoleum to her memory. Even Maddox, a party animal who can keep up with any one of us despite being the youngest, is staring at his drink like he has no idea what to do with it.

Unable to bear the suffocating tension a second longer, I speak up. “Does anyone else feel like it’s weird that it’s just us?”

“We could put the TV on. Watch the ball drop,” Elijah suggests.

Drake shakes his head emphatically and reminds us all how she used to hate watching the ball drop because, as she claimed, the time was off by a few seconds.

Fuck, she used to get so animated when one of us tried to reason with her about it. “Remember how she’d always insist on using Great-Grandad’s old Navy diving watch to determine when it was midnight instead?”

Nathan frowns. “Where the hell is that thing?”

With his eyes full of unshed tears, Maddox takes the watch out of his pocket. He holds it up, and the polished metal glints in the lamplight. It’s got to be eighty years old, and it still keeps perfect time. I can almost feel the flat, polished silver of the watch’s edge, worn smooth from years of use. She would rub the pad of her thumb over it absentmindedly while she regaled us with stories from her childhood in Valencia.

“Jesus, it feels so weird without her here.” I gulp down my Scotch and jump to my feet, needing to be anywhere else. “Like this house has no fucking soul anymore. Let’s get the fuck out of here and go somewhere.”

Drake gives me an eye roll. “Like where, jerkwad?”

Anywhere that doesn’t feel like the walls are closing in and suffocating me. It feels like the house grieves for her too. This house she worked so hard to make a home for us all, and without her in it … Well, it doesn’t feel like home at all. Not anymore. “I dunno. A club or something. A place where there’s life.”

Maddox glares at me. “And what about me, dickface?”

Fuck, he’s right. Sometimes I forget he’s only sixteen. He looks and acts much older than his years.

“Nobody is going anywhere,” Dad snaps, effectively shutting all of us down in an instant. “So quit your whining and drink your Scotch.”

Guilt overwhelms me. I can’t imagine how tough this has been on him. Or how it must feel to lose the love of your life like that. I mean, I know how much it hurts to lose someone that you thought would …

I swallow down the tidal wave of shame and sadness that surges up from my chest. That’s a completely different situation, and I won’t sully Mom’s memory by even thinking about comparing what he and I had to what my parents shared. My mom and dad truly adored each other.

“Sorry, Pop.” I drop back down onto the couch and go on staring out the window, trying to put a lid on all the unwelcome feelings swirling around inside of me.

Dad chugs down the rest of his drink like he’s trying to drown out his own feelings. He’s always been someone I’ve looked up to. A good father. Tough but fair. As the fourth son of five, I felt a need to stand out from my brothers somehow, and from a young age, I decided that would be to learn to push Pop’s buttons better than any of my brothers. Fortunately, I’m also able to sweet-talk him around again easier than they can. He’s my idol though, and to see him like this, broken and defeated, tears a chunk out of my heart.

“I have a piece of advice for all you boys,” he announces. “You live by this, and I promise that you’ll never know a day’s heartache in your life.”

I bite my tongue so I don’t tell him that I could have done with that advice five years ago.

It’s Elijah who speaks. Elijah who’s clearly trying to hold us all together while our dad falls apart. “And what’s that, Dad?”

Pop takes a few seconds before he replies, and we all stare at him expectantly. Waiting for the piece of advice that’s going to revolutionize our lives. He won’t cry in front of us—he rarely has, apart from the day she died and her funeral, but his eyes are wet with tears.

He clears his throat and says, “Never fall in love.”

I bite my tongue harder. Yeah, definitely could have used that advice five years ago, Pop. I down my own Scotch, and it burns the back of my throat. Or perhaps that’s the shame again. Sneaking up on me when I least expect it.

I’ll take his advice. Four words I can get behind. He’s given us boys a lot of good counsel over the years, but I’ve never agreed with him more.