The connection experiment

I cannot believe what he did again.

Alan pulled up with his friends at home and I could barely sleep. I had just put my head on the pillow after my shift at the bar when I heard the front door slam downstairs.

Then another one, then laughing, then screaming.

I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling.

Sunday. 6:41 a.m.

Following the ticking sound of the clock for every second, I can’t fall asleep.

I had been in bed for maybe forty minutes. Only forty.

I sighed and pushed myself out of bed, walked to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror.

Bad idea.

My eyes were red, my hair was a mess and I looked like I hadn’t slept in days.

“Unbelievable.”

I splashed some cold water on my face and stood there for a few seconds, hoping it would somehow make me feel like a functioning human being.

It didn’t.

“Kez!”

I closed my eyes.

“Bring us some beers! Better be quick!”

Alan’s drunken voice travelled all the way upstairs.

I stared at the ceiling.

You might be wondering who Alan is.

Right…

He is not my boyfriend. Not at all. He’s my brother.

The big one.

But not that big.

He’s twenty-six. I’m twenty-three. Three years between us.

If we think about responsibilities, maturity and accountability, unfortunately for me, the age difference doesn’t seem to apply.

“Kez!”

“Yeah, I’m coming!”

I wasn’t.

I walked downstairs in my oversized T-shirt and sweatpants and found the usual disaster waiting for me.

Alan was sitting on the couch with a beer in his hand.

Tyler was standing beside the television, arguing about something nobody cared about.

And Nick was already looking at me.

“Yeah, man, Kez! Come here! With the beers!” Nick yelled.

The biggest pig of the group.

I knew these three very well.

Unfortunately.

Once a week, they came home like this. Usually Friday or Saturday night, but sometimes both if apparently they had decided sleep was optional.

They were always drunk when I saw them and always loud, always depending on someone else to clean up after them. And most of the time, that someone was me.

Nick was particularly a pain in my life.

He’d liked me for years. Or at least he thought he did.

He’d made it very clear that he’d like us to be a bit more than friends. To that, I had made it very clear that I would rather swallow a handful of broken glass.

He didn’t seem to understand the message.

“Where are the beers?” he asked.

“In the fridge.”

He stared at me.

“Well?”

I stared back.

“Are your legs broken?”

Tyler laughed.

Alan shook his head.

“Just bring them, Kez.”

I walked toward the kitchen.

I could feel Nick watching me.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said without turning around.

“Think about what?”

“Whatever you’re thinking.”

“I wasn’t thinking anything.”

“That’s the first intelligent thing you’ve said tonight.”

Tyler laughed again.

Nick muttered something under his breath.

I turned around.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Good.”

I opened the refrigerator and grabbed three beers.

Then I thought about it.

I grabbed a fourth.

Not because I was nice.

Because I wanted them to shut up.

I put the beers on the coffee table.

“There.”

Nick picked one up.

“See? That wasn’t so hard.”

I looked at him.

“Neither is getting your own beer.”

He smiled.

I didn’t.

He knew better than to touch me.

At least I hoped he did.

I’d been training with Mateo for years.

Boxing had started after Mom left, when I was angry enough to punch through a wall if I could have afforded to repair it afterward.

Mateo had taught me how to fight. More importantly, he’d taught me when not to.

I wasn’t a professional fighter. I wasn’t going to pretend I could beat up ten guys at once. But I could defend myself.

And Nick knew it.

Thankfully, Alan also knew it.

My brother wasn’t particularly protective of me. But he’d made one thing very clear to Nick a long time ago.

Keep your hands to yourself.

I appreciated that much.

“Are you going back upstairs?” Alan asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

I stared at him.

“Because I worked until five this morning.”

He blinked.

“Oh.”

“Yes. Oh.”

“I forgot.”

“Clearly.”

I started walking toward the stairs.

“Kez.”

I stopped.

“What?”

“Sorry.”

I looked at him.

For a second, he actually looked guilty.

It was rare enough that I almost smiled.

“Just keep it down.”

“I will.”

I went upstairs.

I closed my bedroom door and locked it.

Then I stood there for a moment.

The house was still noisy downstairs, but at least it was muffled.

I walked over to my bed and looked at the clock.

6:58.

I had been awake for over an hour.

My body was begging me to sleep.

My brain, however, had other plans.

I looked at my desk.

There were two manuscripts waiting for me.

One was due tomorrow. The other one was supposed to be finished by Wednesday, but the editor had already emailed me twice asking if I could move it forward.

I was good at this.

That was probably the one thing in my life I could say without feeling like I was lying.

Books made sense to me.

People didn’t.

Give me three hundred pages and I could tell you exactly where the story stopped working.

I could spot a bad sentence from across the room.

I could tell when a character was acting completely out of character.

I didn’t have a degree in literature.

I didn’t even finish university.

But I had taken a proofreading course, started doing small freelance jobs and somehow ended up working regularly with a small publishing company.

I used a different surname professionally.

It kept my work separate from everything else. I liked it that way.

Nobody at the publishing company needed to know about Alan, my mom, the bar or my complicated life.

Or how much I had dropped out of school because there were bills to pay.

Three years ago, Mom had left us.

She told us we had become a burden.

Just like that.

She packed her things and walked away.

I was twenty and Alan was twenty-three, and somehow, between the two of us, I was the one who ended up becoming the adult.

Funny how that works.

And since then, I had worked.

A lot.

Proofreading during the week. The bar Friday and Saturday nights.

And whenever I had free time, I helped Mateo at his garage.

Once or twice a week, depending on how much work I had.

He’d been our neighbor for years.

He was the one who taught me how to change a tire.

Then an oil change, brakes, and basically anything else he could throw at me.

He had a small boxing club attached to the garage too.

That’s where I learned how to defend myself.

Mateo never treated me like someone who needed saving.

He taught me how to save myself.

I think that’s why I loved him.

Not in the weird way.

Stop having these disgusting little thoughts about me.

He was just the closest thing I had to a father figure.

He never asked for anything in return. He just showed up.

I climbed into bed and pulled the blanket over myself and finally closed my eyes.

My phone buzzed.

I tried to ignore it.

It buzzed again.

I groaned and reached for it.

An email from the publishing company.

URGENT — Revision Request

I stared at the screen.

“You’re kidding me.”

I opened the email.

The author had decided to rewrite half the manuscript.

Of course.

On Sunday.

I dropped the phone beside me and stared at the ceiling.

My life was a joke.

A very badly written one.

And somehow, I was still proofreading it.

I closed my eyes again.

Downstairs, I heard Nick laugh. Then Alan shouted something, followed by the sound of something crashing.

I pulled the pillow over my head.

“Please,” I whispered.

Just give me one hour.

One hour where nobody needs me.

Where I don’t have to fix anything.

Where my life belongs to me.