The Trade We Made

BayBeBlue 14 stories

Story Notes

Summary

My name is Bhodi. I'm nineteen, and I'm socially awkward in almost every possible way. I wasn't good at reading people. I wasn't good at recognizing sarcasm. I laughed when others cried and asked questions I shouldn't at the worst possible times. People saw me as strange. And I was. But I was also drowning in grief. I lost my entire family four months ago. I was the sole survivor of the car crash that killed them. Then I saw my dead brother's face on another man's body. But he wasn't Clayton. He didn't laugh like him or talk like him. He didn't know me the way Clayton had. He was a stranger wearing the face of someone I loved. How are you supposed to cope with that staring back at you? I'll tell you how. You don't. You spiral. You panic. You drink and chew your nails down to the quick until they bleed. Then you lock yourself in the garage and hope you never see him again. At least, that's what I tried to do. But the stranger wearing my brother's face wasn't willing to look away once he realized I had a problem. Probably a side effect of being a firefighter. They were wired that way. They couldn't help themselves, even off the clock. I just didn't want to be saved. Jayco didn't seem to care about that part. He kept coming back, even when I made it clear I didn't want him there. Letting him help felt too much like replacing Clayton, and I wasn't willing to do that. But Jayco never asked to take my brother's place. He only asked me to see him for who he was. Somewhere between chess games, putting out fires, and the trades Jayco kept making whenever I slipped into self-destruct mode, he became something I thought I'd lost for good. Family. He wasn't Clayton. He was Jayco. And somehow, he became my brother anyway.