She rolled her eyes. “Funny. That’s not what I meant.”
Okay, I guess it was time to tell her. Alison and Ava left the room, giving us privacy for this conversation. “She qualified after my brother died.”
I watched her face slowly drop. She was sitting beside me in seconds. “Your brother?”
I nodded. “Isaac had Acute Myeloid Leukaemia, we found out when he was six. He needed stem cell and bone marrow transplants but neither me, Elle or Carly were a match and the hospital couldn’t find one in time. He died within months of being diagnosed. I was fifteen and a wreck after.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. I can think about him and talk about him and not have it tear my insides apart now.”
Her eyes darkened and I knew she understood just what I meant. “Will you tell me about him?”
“What do you want to know?”
“What was he like?”
“He was my shadow. I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without him wanting to follow me. As annoying as he could be we were close and I would’ve done anything for him. I was his hero, apparently. He was obsessed with the army.” I gulped, gripping the dog tags around my neck. Remembering still fucking hurt.
Tegan squeezed my hand. “I lost count of the amount of times I stood on one of those little plastic soldiers. He wanted dog tags, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him the British army didn’t wear them. I bought him these ones,” I said, releasing them from my grip. “I found some nice ones, men’s ones as the kid ones were just toys and he deserved the best. They cost a fortune; pretty much all of the money I’d saved from my paper route, but it was worth it to see how happy he was. In the end, when he knew there was nothing that could…” I closed my eyes. “When my little brother knew he was going to die he gave them back to me and said he didn’t want them to be buried underground, he wanted me to wear them. I’ve not taken them off since.”
Tears rolled freely down her cheeks. “I’m sorry, Kai,” she said and buried her head in the crook of my neck.
“Shh, it’s okay. Everything’s going to be alright,” I whispered in her ear as I rubbed her back. After she calmed down I decided it was time to test the water. “How’re you doing now? It’s okay to admit you’re struggling.”
She closed her eyes and the pain etched on her face kicked me in the gut and took me right back to when Isaac first died. “I can’t…” she whispered. “I just want to talk to him, even just for a second. He can’t just be…gone.”
I squeezed her trembling hand. “You can still talk to him, whenever you want to.”
“It’s not the same. I can’t have a conversation with him. I can’t hear his voice,” she replied so quietly I barely heard her. It wasn’t the same, not at all, but it was all we got when someone died.
“You can’t hear him but you know your dad, so you’ll know what he’d say in reply.” She looked at me like I was crazy. “Okay, say you went to him and asked for advice because you’ve fallen hopelessly in love with your best friend,” I said, pointing to myself, making her roll those pretty green eyes. “What would he say?”
“He’d tell me I need to get help for my delusional friend.” She giggled. It was probably my favourite sound in the world. Fuck, I had it bad. When was she going to ditch overbearing prick?
Tegan diverted the conversation well away from her dad. I knew I couldn’t push too much so I followed her lead, which was getting breakfast to hopefully help her hangover.
After we ate, I made a call to my mum and she, of course, told me to bring her over ASAP. I imagined half of her was wanting to help Tegan and the other half was wanting to check out the girl that had me all caught up and acting like a huge pussy.
When I walked through the front door, my parents and sisters were waiting in the entrance hall. Carly and Elle had converted the double garage into their cupcake business base so they were often around, Mum worked from home and Dad was hanging back because we had stocktake at work and, like me, he didn’t want to be anywhere near it. Everyone was always home, even though us kids had moved out, and my mum loved it.
They stood there and stared at her with idiotic smiles. Subtle they were not. Glaring at each one of them, I introduced everyone and Mum took Tegan into her office just off the side of the house.
“So,” Carly said as we sat in the lounge and waited, “that’s Tegan, hey?” Here we fucking go. “She’s very pretty.”
Pretty didn’t even begin to cover it.
“She is,” Elle agreed. “Though you usually go for tall blondes.”
I didn’t want to tell her that for five years my type was ‘breathing’ so I shrugged. “Don’t really have a type, Elle.”
Dad laughed completely out of the blue. The what the fuck expression was plastered across each of his kid’s faces.
“What?” Carly asked.
Dad looked at me with the smuggest smile I’d ever seen. “You’ve gone and fallen in love with her.”
Fuck sake. I had.