SLOW BURN

a letter to a step brother

I remember the first time I met you. the sky was grey; the rain threatened, but refused to pour. Your eyes were dark. They've lightened over the years. My mother's hand was on my back, nudging me forward. She ushered me inside, claiming it was soon to rain. It never did.

You looked nothing like your older brother. He was tall, broad, thick. You were a skinny little shrimp, still laughably pathetic. But it wasn't just that. Your brother laughed. He gave me chocolate and lent me markers and showed me his iguana (it would die in two months time, but that's beside the point). Your brother had a smile. You barely had a face. Leaning over the reptile's cage, harshly illuminated by a ring of light from a tall lamp, he explained to me what he fed it and where he'd gotten it. He asked if I wanted to hold it. You looked up from the shadows of the basement, just a step outside the iguana's pool of light. I declined.

You looked a little bit like your sister. I'll give you that. It's the dark, greasy hair, maybe, or the abnormally narrow shoulders. She was always your father's favorite -- you've always said it's because she looks like your mother. You're such a liar. Your sister had your father's jew nose until she got that joke of a nose job, but you come into my room sometimes and ask me if you look mediterranean, as if you forget your mother was Italian.

We had spaghetti and meatballs. You were in that phase of yours where you didn't just smell your food before you ate it, but you smelt each individual bite of your food as if it would be different from the last. It was right after your phase where you listened to that Billy Joel song on repeat, and right before you took up the goddamn cello. I got some sauce on the cotton placemat, and then some more. You were sitting across from me. You saw me as I slid my plate over the mess I'd made. You crossed your arms, but kept silent. But silence from you has never been a surprise.

I knew then we'd never get along. I was a smart kid. First your brother was out of the house, then your sister, and then you were off at school in Georgia. But you came home pretty often. I was in my awkward phase now, just a little younger than the age I'd first met you at. I wore bandanas pulled over my head, two different colored shoes, and boys' track pants. I ignored you frequently. Once I had a friend over -- it was a humid summer day, and you were home from Georgia, but it probably didn't feel like it -- and you came in in your briefs and stole six slices of our eight-slice pizza pie and left. She never came back over.

I guess I started warming up to you in France, though you wouldn't do the same for a while. Paris at Christmas is cold and wet and dreary. The Eiffel Tower on Christ Day. Now, that's just poor planning. We spent hours upon hours waiting in line. I couldn't feel my knees, and I think your brother almost fainted. Were our parents expecting us not to get the flu? The three of us shared a room, which was dreadful enough when the only things coming out of your bodies at night were snores and farts. The puking made everything so much worse. Your brother got over it in a couple of days, a triumphant grin on his face as if his superior immune system were cause for celebration, and kicked us out of the room for most of the day while he and our parents quarantined us. We took turns puking, watching CNN's top stories from the year because the hotel television remotes were made by shitheads, and listening to Dave Matthews' Band. I've always hated them. You've always loved them.

You didn't come away with us last year. It was a relief, almost; more room for me in the backseat. You wouldn't be there to rest your feet on my lap or change the radio station or steal the Diet Dr. Pepper I stowed in the trunk. Your brother and sister drove up two days later. It was New Years' Eve, and they thought there was no better way to spend it than getting high on the upstairs balcony while our parents watched Pretty in Pink in the basement. Your siblings asked me to join. "You're going to smoke in high school. Might as well do it with us for the first time, so you don't embarrass yourself." That was your sister's reasoning. To be honest, I think they just wanted to see me fake getting high, since you never feel it the first time. I knew better.

But I did feel something else. I felt like I was missing out. It was weird, because it was one of the first times your siblings had ever treated me like an adult. I was finally one of them, but I still felt excluded from something bigger. It was you. You were missing. I have alternative memories, ones where you're the one lighting me up, not your siblings. Ones that aren't real. You would laugh at me when I couldn't work the lighter, you'd roll your eyes when I coughed up smoke. Dreams so vivid they became some sort of reality for me.

I began to call you whenever I got high, whenever I was drunk. It was half an outlet to who you I was cool and had a social life, half just an excuse to talk to you. You've still got that voicemail I left you from Dylan Bitensky's party saved for blackmail purposes. I told you I was the type of person to call everyone they knew when they were drunk. I'm such a liar.I only ever called you.

Our love is a slow burn, I suppose. What's it been, ten, eleven years? You only live downtown, you know. I can take the Six train from Seventy-Seventh Street to the Brooklyn Bridge stop and be at your apartment in twenty minutes' time. You're in a weird spot, right by all the court houses but around the corner from the heart of Chinatown. I've been to your place once, when my mother and I came down to help move you in. When we left, she asked me if I thought your roommate was attractive. I hadn't noticed, but I said yes anyway.

Our parents are fighting. Your father's been sleeping in your old room for a few weeks now. It still smells like you, if you can get past the smell of me that's somehow made a home in there. I walked in on our parents screaming at each other in the kitchen the other day. I think my mother might make your father move out. They'll probably get a divorce. I'm scared for them. For me. For us.

I was going to call you last night. Had your number dialed, and everything. But I let the phone drop. I realized I only had one thing to say to you, and I couldn't do it. If I told you I missed you, you would pretend not to know what I was talking about.