a/n: hey guys! stewy is my favourite side character for succession and i wanted to expand on what little we see of him. it's just a little one-shot i wrote before the third season, with all the hype around it. age wise, i don't think the definitive ages of each character are given in the show so i kept the oc roughly 2 years younger than kendall at most even without it being stated. i'm basing it more off a rough guess of how old characters are meant to be/taking the actors' ages for this.

anyway, my first one-shot, taking a rough stab at how stewy could sometimes be nice (he did have a gf in the show and has shown kindness to kendall so it does exist in him)... and named for the song 'truth' by alexander. all the best! - zed.

warnings: lots of cursing/vulgarity, references to drugs/drug abuse/addiction, crushes (is that a warning? idk), general anxiety, insecurity. general succession themes but i wanted to list them nonetheless.

truth

The narrow paths between the red-bricked buildings of Harvard were coated in slick rotting leaves that stuck to the soles of our shoes. We trudged along behind a tour that Frank had kindly offered to take with me. Dad was preoccupied with stock figures. At least, that was what Frank had told me. I suspected that Dad was not all that interested in exploring the criss-cross paths of the campus while Kendall finished his morning classes.

I had feigned disappointment that Dad would not join, when truthfully I had been relieved. Frank and I had found a tradition in raiding gift-shops of each town we visited, filling baskets with trinkets and stickers and postcards and gaudy little figurines. Frank would not scoff and huff at the guide, either, for dropping in little details that dragged out the tour that bit longer.

Instead, Frank flipped through pamphlets and politely nodded along and not once cursed aloud, demanding that Kendall cut his classes for our benefit and balking at the suggestion that the professor might reprimand him for it, like I had suggested to my father at the hotel only an hour beforehand when he had brought it up.

"I pay their fucking salaries, Violet," Dad had spat. "If I ask them to take a shit on the goddamn floor and eat it, they'll do it. And you know what else they'll do? They'll fucking thank me each time they swallow."

x

The café was warm, its windows misted in condensation. I pressed a gloved fingertip against the glass and painted a face, with a rounded smile and two dots for eyes. Frank sipped at his coffee. Bored with the face, I twirled a spoon through cream and marshmallows.

The bell tinkled. Cold air billowed into the café. Kendall rushed into the café, cheeks stained in red splotches. He spotted us and hurried between tables cramped together, contorting himself around forgotten chairs, rounding umbrellas left abandoned on the carpeted floor. He carried a messenger-bag, its strap slung haphazardly around his chest. I thought Roman would take pleasure in catching Kendall in the sweater that he wore then. It was fuzzed with stray tufts of lint and lined in garish strips of yellow, red, orange and green.

"Sorry. Got outta class a little late," Ken said.

Kendall sat in the seat across from mine. I caught a whiff of cigarette smoke clinging stubbornly to the folds of his sweater. His eyes flashed away from mine. He peeled off his messenger-bag and dropped it onto the floor. It slumped inward on itself; no books, no notepads.

I clasped the mug of hot-chocolate between my hands and studied the faint pinkish stain beneath his eyes as well as the pallor of his skin once the warmth of the café wrapped itself around him. He seemed skittish, jumpy. Then again, that was Kendall and always had been; fidgeting with napkins, tearing them into minute shreds, moving askew cutlery into alignment, incapable of simply letting his hands rest in his lap. It was more noticeable after time apart.

"Oh, not to worry. Violet and I were quite happy on that tour," Frank said. "Got some great stuff at the gift-shop. Whole lot of history around this place. Would you like something to drink, Ken? Hot-chocolate, maybe?"

"Sure. Sounds good. Thanks, Frank."

Pushing out his chair, Frank stood and fished his wallet from his pocket. He sidled between the other tables, joining a long queue. I focused on Kendall. He had begun his fourth semester in this place. Dad had said that his grades were good, which likely meant that his grades were better than good. I leaned back in my seat and rested my hands on my stomach, fingers laced together, eyes flitting about his face for the slightest hint of what he felt about his dorm, his classes, this whole other world without me and our family in it. I envied him then. I envied him so much that it stuck in my throat and tightened it.

"Something came up, huh?" he said.

I straightened, meeting his eyes. "What?"

"Dad was supposed to take this tour around campus with you," Kendall said. "Flaked at the last minute, so Frank stepped in. Am I getting hot?"

I smiled. "I remember one time that Mom told me the cruellest thing that a person could do is make a child a promise that they couldn't keep."

"Mom said that? Seriously?"

"Seriously. Whatever. It doesn't matter. I mean, like Dad was ever going to come in the first place."

"Oh, yeah? So why'd you ask him?"

For once, he was not ripping apart the napkins or pushing around the sachet bowls. He was watching me like I had watched him. I felt my shoulders loosen and fall. I looked to the spot on the window where I had drawn a smiley-face. It had blurred, ever so slightly, so that the corners of its mouth drooped.

I left Kendall unanswered, but I suspected that he understood all the same. I had asked because a small, secret part of me had hoped that Dad might want to wander the campus with me, dawdle in the gift-shop, chatting about the things that preoccupied him. It was silly. He would never have come. But I had wanted it, and it seemed less silly because Kendall looked at me like he knew what it was like to want it, too.

He said, "How about I bring you on a different kind of tour later? The Kendall Roy tour of Cambridge?"

I scoffed. "Yeah, right."

"I'm serious. You're telling me you have plans?"

"What makes you think I don't?"

Kendall rolled his eyes, flopping back against his chair. "Okay. And do these 'plans' involve ordering from room service and sitting alone in your room while Dad talks to his people in the next room? Please. It'll be fun. I pinkie-promise you. Cross my heart and hope to die."

Huffing, I crossed my arms and glanced at the counter. Frank was placing three fresh, steaming mugs of hot-chocolate on a tray. The marshmallows were sinking beneath a swirled cloud of clotted cream. He had bought some croissants, too, with small containers of jam and chocolate spread beside them. It was thoughtful. He lifted the tray and turned, making his way toward us. I dragged my eyes back to Kendall. He cocked his head, one eyebrow raised in challenge. He held out his little finger.

"I thought you didn't want your little sister tagging along with you anymore, Ken," I said.

His smile faltered. "I told you I never meant any of that. Come on. I'm trying to do something nice here. Going once, going twice –…"

We looped pinkies, shook twice and pulled apart.

x

The rain had petered off into a faint mist. Both of us wore snug coats; his was a mustard yellow and mine was maroon. He kept his messenger-bag slung around his chest, its leather glittering in droplets. He had wrapped his scarf around me and I ignored the clotted odour of cigarettes, because it had been considerate of him, in the nipping cold weather. Besides, it would have caused an argument and I never wanted that with Kendall.

So, I tucked the ends of the scarf between the folds of my coat and said nothing about the scent of smoke. I followed him through unfamiliar streets. He brought me along a street lined in tall trees, shorn of their leaves, branches swaying and bucking in front of red-brick houses. I looked up at the fire-escapes on the sides of buildings and thought of damp nights in New York, sitting on metal steps just like those with Roman and Shiv. I saw churches, museums, though we passed them all in favour of walking alongside the river.

"Do you like it here?" I asked him.

"Sure. I guess so."

I eyed him. "Really? No homesickness at all?"

"You know I only moved state, right? Not like I moved to a whole other country."

"Are you eating right?"

He laughed. "I'm eating right."

"Are you happy?"

"Yeah. I'm happy."

The river churned and roiled beside us. Kendall paused and leaned against the railings, pulling us to a halt. I fiddled with the fluffed lining of my pockets, squinting against the pale, watery light to look up at him. He smiled, like he knew that I studied him.

It was not the kind of smile that meant anything. It was automatic, as if strings at either corner of his mouth were pulled for a fraction of a second simply to placate me. It was the smile that he gave each time that our mother told us she missed us; the same smile that he showed to our father each time that he mentioned skipping some parent-teacher meeting or talked about a boarding school someplace. He was lying.

"Okay," I said. "Good. Great."

"Yeah," he said. "Right."

x

The arcade was small and cramped. The machines shrieked and whirled in a collage of flashing colours. It was the most fun that I had had in months, playing air-hockey, shooting at pixelated figures bobbing about on a small screen, throwing soft balls into holes to earn enough tickets for a plush toy on a shelf. I chose a bear. It wore a handkerchief around its neck that said HAVARD and I tucked it underneath my arm when we left, though its fur was still touched by the rain which dripped from awnings overhead.

x

Afterward, we stepped into this pizza joint a couple of blocks from the arcade. Like the café, its windows were fogged and a cold rush of air followed us inside. There were booths which looked out onto those same streets where we had walked moments beforehand. He ordered for us both and brought soft drinks in cans to the table for us.

I felt windswept and fuzzy. There were hot yellow rods buzzing, spewing their light across us, which harshened his pallor and brought out some purplish stain underneath his eyes that warned of sleepless nights. I wanted to ask him about it. I gulped at my drink and looked out at the pale shapes passing by the window, hurrying beneath yawning umbrellas.

He asked, "So, how was the Kendall Roy Tour of Cambridge?"

I smiled at him. "Pretty great, actually. You should really think about quitting college and taking it up fulltime."

"I'll keep it in mind as a back-up if I flunk out."

"Yeah, right, like you'd ever flunk out."

Kendall shifted around, leaning against the window and stretching his legs out across the length of his seat. He grew like a weed, taller and taller. The condensation of the window seemed not to bother him, even though it likely bled through his shirt. He shrugged his shoulders, his eyes frosted and fixated upon the salt shakers on the table across from ours.

"It's hard, you know." His throat bobbed. "This whole college thing, I mean."

"No way. Harvard is hard?"

He rolled his eyes. "I know. I get it."

Silence fell between us. It was interrupted only by the brief rattling of the door, opening and closing each time that a new customer came to collect their pizza, battling to peel off their slick hats or hoods long enough to pay for their order. Otherwise, it was just us, sealed away in the warmth of this booth. I kept my hands between my legs, picking at lint along the lining of my jeans, unsure of what should be said. Kendall was still staring off into some blurred space ahead of him, and I was sure that even if I sat up and moved beside him, I would never find what it was that he was looking at.

"It was always going to be hard," I said quietly. "But you're smart, Ken. You did well last semester."

"Do you ever feel like everybody understands something you don't?"

"With the syllabus or something?"

"No. No, more like…Like, say someone is telling this joke, right? One of those long jokes, with lots of set-up. Everybody is just hooked, you know? They want to know how it ends. And you're listening, you're following along, just like they are. And the joke goes on and on until finally the punchline comes and you – you just don't get it, but everybody else does. They're all laughing. And you're just not getting the punchline. And you think maybe it's you."

"What part?"

Finally, he looked at me. He seemed startled, as if he had not realised that I would even question him. "What?"

"What part is you, exactly? You mean that you're the only one not getting the punchline, or you're the punchline?"

There was a faint, far-away call for our order. His lips twitched. It was another nothing smile. He pushed himself off his seat and stood, pulling out his own wallet. He had gotten pepperoni, a neutral order that we would both like, but once he brought it to the table, I found myself nibbling only barely at the slice that I had taken for myself. He ate very little, too.

The door clattered. Instead of heading for the counter, this figure yanked off a black beanie and glanced around, his eyes narrowing at us – at me.

It was Stewy Hosseini, best friend to Kendall, brought along on family vacations to Monaco and Greece, hauled to family reunions, too, all because Kendall wanted him around. I felt a familiar burning at the tips of my ears; a flush rose along my neck, suddenly much too aware of how I sat, slumped forward, so that I straightened and smoothed the creases of my shirt.

Here was the simple truth: I had a crush on him.

I admired his acid tongue. I liked that insults rolled off him so easily, never once cutting and burrowing beneath his skin like they did mine. I found something handsome in his dark features, in dark hair and darker eyes. I pretended not to like him, though. It was some impulse within me, something which spurned me to scoff at him, to feign disinterest in whatever he said. Each time that he had swum toward me in a Greek pool, his skin tanned within the first few days, I had ignored him, or tried to ignore him.

Yet he was always smirking, always finding something funny about it, so that I felt myself burning up with embarrassment, stumbling and stuttering over my words. It never helped that Roman teased me and Shiv poked at me beneath the table anytime that I was around Stewy. It never helped that I was shy and had to force myself to pull this cool-girl act around him, which was so phony that I was sure he could feel it.

"Thanks for waiting up for me, Ken," Stewy said. "Violet, what an unexpected surprise. Radiant as ever."

"Bite me."

"What a tempting offer. You sure look greasy enough."

The blush worsened, catching hold, turning me a warm pink beneath the cold lights of the restaurant. He smiled, flopping back against his seat like he had won some unseen game of chess between us. I wished, more than ever, that I could be more like Roman, who handled insults with much more ease, like a shuttlecock swatted back and forth in our badminton lessons. I snatched a napkin from the table and quickly wiped at my lips.

Stewy reached out for a slice of pizza, biting off its tip.

"Pepperoni, huh? Couldn't jazz it up a little? Did you pick, Violet? Couldn't take more than one topping, huh?"

"You should chew slowly," I grumbled. "You might choke and die. Wouldn't want that, would we?"

To mock me all the more, he stuck out his tongue to show the waded-up bite. He swallowed it, once again showing a hint of a grin that I had recoiled from him. "Oh, you should write that one down. You can use it on your fourth husband. You know, the one you have before finally losing your youthful looks and spending the rest of your days bitter and spiteful. Oh, wait – already there."

"Sounds like you're describing your mother, Stew."

He whistled. "Wow. Hitting below the belt already."

"Probably not a lot to hit."

"I'm sorry. Hold on. Was that a small dick joke? Really? Because rest assured, I will take out my dick in this restaurant –…"

Stewy made to stand, but Kendall swiftly pushed him back into his seat, his laughter barely smothered.

"Look, Vi," he said, "I was meant to meet up with Stewy anyway. I figured we could eat some pizza and just –…I mean, can we just spend some time together, eat and talk to each other a little – without insulting each other?"

"You sound like my Dad right before a family get-together," Stewy retorted.

"Can we?"

"Yes," I answered. "Yes, Ken. We can."

"Good." Kendall tore apart some crust, plopping a chunk into his mouth. He nudged Stewy. "So, is it happening or not?"

"What?"

"Oh, come on – the party, dude. That kid Kevin, or whatever?"

Stewy put his arm on the back of the seat he shared with Kendall, angling himself to look at him. "Oh, yeah. I don't know, man."

"Bullshit. You always know."

Stewy stalled, then said, "Fine. Fine. Yeah, I think it's happening."

"Great. Awesome. We should totally go."

I glanced between them. "A party?"

"Just this kid we know," Kendall said. "Nothing major. What, you wanna come?"

Even though he tried to hide it, Stewy seemed more than a little surprised that Kendall had asked. Stewy scratched at his stubble, soon to form a full-fledged beard, turning his head to stare at Kendall, who ignored him. I almost wondered if this was a bluff, because Kendall had invited me to parties in New York, knowing that I hated parties and felt adrift in large crowds, knowing too that we had fought because he did not want to invite me before. Connor had been right that time he told us that we fought over stuff that barely made sense.

But here, it was different. I would be left alone in the suite, watching bland television, listening to Dad shout at frazzled interns in the next room. I had come all this way for Kendall. I had missed him so much that I would have done anything to draw out that time between us in Cambridge.

"Sure," I said.

"All right. I'm gonna hit the little boys' room."

"Great. Thank you for that enlightening factoid about your bowel movements," Stewy drawled.

Kendall grabbed his coat, tossing me his scarf again. He pushed at Stewy, who relented and slid out of the booth. Kendall moved around him, heading toward a thin, dimly-lit hall with the words TOILETS etched on the wall in bubble letters. Stewy kept his eyes on Kendall, until his head swivelled toward me instead and I prickled beneath each blink, hyper-aware of myself and the squeak of the padding on the seat beneath me.

I clutched the scarf for something to do with my hands. It was rare that I was ever fully alone with Stewy. I found myself doing it again; pretending not to care that he was there at all and that he looked at me, that it was only us at this table, at this small booth, so close that his knees sometimes brushed mine, a clandestine touch. He smiled, suddenly, and shook his head.

"Something funny, Hosseini?" I asked.

His tone was flat, blunt. "Could we maybe, you know, talk to each other like real human beings tonight?"

"What?"

"I'm just saying." He smoothed back his hair with one hand while the other waved about empathetically with each word. "Like, rather than snarking at each other, we talk. The snarking is fun, don't get me wrong. I could go all night. But maybe it might be just as fun if we actually talk."

The cadence of that little word – talk – coming from his lips left me with a momentary flare of anxiety, because nothing came to me, nothing that could possibly be interesting enough to hold his attention, which was all that I wanted then. I remembered sitting in a kitchen with my mother one night, in a muggy, damp slice of England.

It had been in the countryside, near a farm, and there had been cows in the field that ran beside the house. Their eyes had shone pearl-white against the lights in the kitchen, and I might have called it quaint, which was the word that my family used for anything unfamiliar and less rich and vaguely frightening.

My mother had had a crack at me, a sniping little jab. I had tried to conjure something wittier to snap right back at her like Roman did, but nothing had come. She had smiled at me with her teacup cradled between her hands, and the cows' eyes glinting behind her, winking at my dry mouth and its lack of sound.

"Good God, darling," my mother had said, "we should be glad you at least turned out rather pretty."

I wanted charm and wit. I wanted the boldness of Roman and the blasé ease of Shiv. Even Kendall could hold his own, but I was pitifully shy. I shrivelled. I worried. I stumbled and flubbed. It was worse in front of Stewy because I found him handsome, funny, wonderfully carefree, so that no small-talk suggestion bubbled to the surface for me and I thought, for the hundredth time, of how miserable it was to have a crush.

It was wanting him to find me sharp and clever; all good things, things that kept him hooked even though I was not sure that love was an eternal thing anyway, for what it was worth, because it seemed only to last as long as it took for the ink to dry on a marriage certificate before the documents for divorce were signed with the same damned pen. Then there were affairs and love-children and alimony payments to think about. I suspected that the only part people really enjoyed was this part – the crush itself, the back-and-forth, the wanting and the being-wanted.

Love, or at least a crush, seemed to be what Kendall talked about: a joke with so many parts, wanting to know how it ends, but never quite grasping the point of it all once it finished. It was not getting the punchline. It was being the punchline.

"You know," Stewy said, "my sister and I used to play this game. It has some rules. Nothing super intense or anything, not like signing over your firstborn child to me if I win, because there is no winning. Just a game of hypotheticals. First rule is that the answer stays between us, no matter how stupid or benign the question. Second rule is you gotta tell the truth."

"How would you know if I was telling the truth or not?"

"I trust you," he said, "and you can trust me."

"Trust you," I repeated. "A-huh."

Stewy fixed me with his eyes; warm eyes, black and round like inkwells. "You and Kendall have the same problem. You realise that, right?"

"What problem would that be?"

"You think everyone is out to get you or something. Like, someone shows a modicum of basic human decency toward you, and you have this fucking weird-ass Spidey-sense that goes off like a fucking alarm in your head and makes you think they're after something. You lock up. You freeze. Let me tell you about our first time at a college party where this guy starts talking to Ken, right, and he's giving him some advice on what professors are hard on grading and what professors will chew you up and spit you – and Ken is standing there like a lemur about to full-on shit itself."

I tried not to laugh but it slipped out through a smile.

"I'm totally serious." But Stewy was grinning, too. "Round eyes, clenched sphincter, the whole nine yards. And all this other guy was doing was being nice to Ken. Helping him out, letting me know how to survive his first year at Harvard. He didn't want a damn thing and when he finally leaves, Ken looks at me with those lemur-eyes, all like, 'dude, what just happened?' So, I get that you and Ken don't understand the milk of human kindness, that you never tasted it or maybe you're lactose intolerant, but it's just a fucking game, Violet. Humour me, would you?"

It was a game. A childish, innocuous game. So I did a childish thing that I had already done with Kendall that day: I held out my pinkie-finger to him, a test in itself to judge if he would mock and break his word. Instead, he linked his with mine and we shook. My hand tingled at his touch, red-hot like I had touched a warming iron to test its intensity. He slumped back against his seat, his fingertips tapping against the table as he mulled over a question for me.

"Okay. Super easy one. If you could meet anybody in the world – anybody, dead or alive, rich or poor, famous or infamous, who would it be?"

The question lingered between us. It was something like another test for us. For him, it was knowing if I had believed him and trusted him enough to answer. For me, it was that simple matter of trust, too, but also to tell him the truth and know he would not repeat it or make fun of it.

Both of us balanced in a strange place of non-hatred; neither friends nor enemies, simply the sister of his best friend, the best friend of her brother, symbolising a word that had not been made for it or at least could not quite come close to what it felt like. There were so many languages out that at least one probably contained those syllables strung together for what it was, for what we were. I thought of those languages, and it led me to an answer.

"This girl I knew. Well, sort of knew. Her name was Anna," I said. "Eighth grade, I was studying French. Private lessons. The tutor had connections though, let me join in this pen-pal system that her school was organising. All you had to do was write a letter describing yourself, put in a picture, make it look nice. I put stickers and glued glitter to the envelope. I told nobody about it. Not even Kendall."

The door opened and closed. A customer picked up his order, bustling right back out into the cold.

"A couple of weeks later," I continued, "I got a letter back from this girl living in Strasbourg. She told me about her siblings, her parents. She liked horse-riding. She hated her weekly swimming lessons. She was a redhead, like Shiv. We kept writing for weeks and then it tapered off, sometime. I don't remember why. I think the lessons finished. Anyway, if I could meet anybody – well, it'd be her."

"Over anybody in the whole world? Why this pen-pal?"

"I guess I felt like she was writing back to me because she wanted to," I told him. "Like, you know how sometimes people want to be friends with you because they know you have money? Not everybody. But some people – they just like having a friend with a pool. It was nice, for a while. Having a friend that liked you enough to send stickers and magazine articles that they thought would interest you. It was like a little secret. And I just wonder how it would be if we met for real. Would she still like me?"

Stewy nodded.

"And I think –…" I trailed off, almost fully cutting myself off until I found some grain of confidence to continue. "I think I was the happiest that I had been for a while then, waiting for her letters. Knowing that one was coming, that she had taken the time to write to me. I don't know. I liked having a pen-pal. I wish it hadn't ended. I loved it."

There was a distant clatter of a door. Kendall emerged into the hall. Only then did it occur to me how long he had been in there. The clouds had grown purple, outside. It would rain again, soon. I finally loosened the scarf from my lap and laced it around my throat, all the while aware that Stewy seemed distracted. It was hard not to notice, because I so often stole glances at him, pretending to read a sign behind him or gazing at some other customer before my eyes would dart ever so quickly at his face.

He had, quietly, drawn back against his seat and looked at Kendall, who strode to the table and held out his arms.

"Are we ready?"

"Yeah," Stewy said slowly. "Yeah, Ken. We're ready."

Kendall hardly even waited for us to scoot out from the booth and right ourselves. He took the bear from me, stuffed it into his bag. Then he stepped out into the street. The bell clattered and rang behind him. I watched him through the fogged glass. He tilted his head back, washing his skin in the neon pallor of flashing street-signs overhead, turning purple, blue, green.

Stewy roughly tugged his beanie over his head, his eyes undoubtedly fixated on Kendall with each movement that he made. He said nothing about the answer that I had given him. It seemed forgotten, left behind in that booth as we followed Kendall out into the street.

For those last few seconds, though, as I had watched Kendall through the window, I had thought of a smiley-face melting on a pane of clouded glass.

x

There was a drunk on the train. He sat at the other end of the carriage, slumped against his seat. He mumbled to himself. I was a little bit frightened of him, but it seemed that no-one else paid him much mind. Kendall chose to stand, gripping the handle overhead and staring blankly at a map of stops of the city, the whole city reduced to a couple of overlapping lines and dots.

Stewy sat beside me. His hands dangled between his knees. He seemed lost in his own thoughts, again, lulled into some distant, far-away place by the gentle sway and turn of the train. Occasionally, his dark eyes would flit to Kendall, then to the drunk nearby.

"How many more stops?" Kendall asked.

Stewy roused himself. "Huh? Oh. Three."

Kendall shook out his arms, loosening his grip on the handle. He rocked idly back and forth, then pulled out his wallet. I watched him take a couple of dollars out, scrunched in his hand. I was not sure how much it was, but he approached the drunk. Stewy called out to Kendall, who waved him off. He spoke with the drunk. I could not hear them over the roar of the train swaying like it did.

But Stewy inched forward on his seat, watching as Kendall offered that cash and then shook off the gratitude, waving it away like he had done to Stewy. He returned to us, throwing himself onto the seat beside me. He was warm. He smiled goofily at me, nudging my shoulder as if to spread that good humour into me, too.

It was kind of him, what he had done, and I smiled at him, if only because there was some bubbling desire within me not to question him. Instead, I wanted to show him that I was not a killjoy, that I would not damper his mood by asking about this new pep to him, which had not been there that morning. I wanted him to know that I might not be Roman, but I was still fun, still worth bringing along, still worth…

So I listened to his sudden bout of babbling about the city and its trains and this time that he had gotten lost and I ignored the hard stoniness that showed itself in Stewy, watching my brother like he was watching a stranger, all until our stop was announced with a tinny chime followed by a feminine rollcall of the current and upcoming stops through the speakers.

The platform greeted us with a gust of blustering wind that lapped at our coats and brought shivers along our napes. Night had fully fallen. Above ground, we passed houses with windows smouldering warm-orange or plunged in darkness. Others stood with curtains drawn.

I dreamt of cracking open their walls like my childhood dollhouses, peering inside at those details unknown to me; the wallpaper, furniture, frames filled with family photographs. But Kendall hurried us forward. Stewy walked with his hands in his pockets, beanie pulled low. He seemed less interested in the stories that Kendall told, moving from one to another with little glue in-between. I caught little threads of what he meant.

Otherwise, I rounded puddles and the strangers who passed us, hunched beneath their umbrellas, on their way to other parties, other lives, perhaps more mundane, perhaps more wild.

And then we were there: the Townhouse, Kendall called it, so that I understood it had a capital even though it looked like all the other houses alongside it. It was nothing thrilling, nothing like the lavish parties that Gatsby held, nothing like the luxurious Buckley parties that Kendall had described to me before either.

The doorbell cried its shrill tune and the doors parted into panting hot hallways, filled with bodies, stuffed with the sound of chatter and a low vibrating beat and distant clinking glasses. Beer was passed to us by hands unseen in the dimness, because the lights were low and reddish in tone, casting all faces in this hideous, mutated glow. We found ourselves jostled, swimming almost, bumping against the rocks of little cliques standing together, huddled in corners, so that we struggled for land.

"Kevin!"

Kendall had called out to a willowy boy with a crop of slanted, gelled blond hair, who grabbed the outstretched hand held out to him and hauled Kendall into a hug. Both were forced to shout at one another across that pulsating beat rumbling in the frame of the house itself, as if the roof might soon shed its shingles and collapse inward beneath the strain. I heard faint words: awesome, totally, remember…

Kevin leaned closer and that last word had meant something more because he finally noticed Stewy. Kendall wrapped his arm around Stewy and pulled him into a half-hug. Stewy lightly smacked Kendall on the chest twice, angling himself to get a little more space.

"Oh, yeah," Kevin said. "Hosseini. Yeah, right, I remember now. We met at that birthday party for Ashley last year. You were the guy who called me a – what was it again? Cunt-faced cunt-bag or whatever?"

Stewy scrunched his face. His expression smoothed as he snapped his fingers. "Oh, yeah. I remember now too. How've you been? Still as much of a cunt-bag as ever?"

"Come on, guys. Forget it. Water under the bridge, right?" Kendall called out to Kevin. He distracted him, pushing off of Stewy and grabbing onto Kevin like he was a lifeline, shifting him toward me. "Look, this is my sister, Violet. Wants to check out the party scene around here."

Kevin swallowed me in a similar hug, grinding bones, sour breath seeping in a breathy roll along my neck. He was friendly, more so than I had anticipated. He brought me along with him, into the kitchen. I hoped that Kendall was not far behind. I passed a sea of unfamiliar faces and it brought this odd tightness to my throat all over again.

So often I wished to be that person who swept into rooms, kissing cheeks and hugging and teasing and smiling. At formal parties that my father held, or dull gatherings in England that my mother hosted to spite my father for holding those formal parties, I shrank behind Kendall or even behind my eldest brother Connor. I shuffled Shiv and Roman in front of like miniature human barriers, shoved off on guests, so that I could spare myself an awkward bumbling conversation.

There was no-one to push onto Kevin and so I skirted around the island countertops of his kitchen, smiling weakly, looking out for flashes of Kendall and Stewy. Finally, Kevin unlatched himself from me and I breathed more easily, even in the hot muggy air of this house, with so many floors, and hallways sprouting off at every corner. Kendall had branched off himself, I found.

But there was Stewy, right behind me, disinterested in the crowd that milled around him. I could not quite ignore them like he could, though, and felt it swelling up within me: an unnamed anxiety, churning and frothing. I felt too surrounded. I was drowning.

Stewy asked, "You wanna sit outside instead?"

It was perhaps the most relief that I ever felt, breathed out in a simple: "God, yes."

x

There were steps leading into the front of the Townhouse, cool and damp with fallen rain, soaking through my jeans at the thighs. We had taken the steps at the bottom, because there were already three girls at the top step, huddled together, swapping a cigarette between them.

The pavement shone like scales alongside a dark, glittering street cluttered with cars. The houses were identical and knitted together by their red-brick spines, fashioned with iron ribcage fences at the front that blocked off their lower basements. There was an earthy, muggy scent in the air. Stewy yanked off his beanie, even though little droplets of rain fell from the black-coloured gutters of the townhouses, peppering his shoulders. I thought about the game that we had played.

I asked him, "Who would you have chosen, if you could pick one person to meet?"

It brought a faint smile to his lips, one that fell away soon afterward. "I would totally meet JFK and ask if he and Marilyn really boned," he said. "I mean, they had to, right? Poor Jackie."

The strangeness of this whole night was what let me laugh at him. Other times, I tried not to laugh too hard at what he said, because I wanted, like always, to seem so effortlessly disinterested, so that he might never suspect a crush. But the night was wet, and foreign, and the streets unknown to me. He and Kendall were all that I recognised. These other people seemed like characters in a play, shrouded in the dimmer stage lights, so that my eyes were drawn to those in mid-soliloquy, in the centre.

It allowed me to feel open, far more open than I ever had. What did it matter if these girls overhead little snippets of what we said? They did not know me. They read from their own script, behind, and here we were, out front. There was the click of the door behind us; another group of four trotted down the steps and stood at the iron fence in front, plucking their cigarettes from their pockets, spreading whispering puffs of white upward toward orange-toned streetlights.

"I thought we were supposed to tell the truth here, Stewy."

"Yeah." White slipped out from his lips, too, though he was not smoking. It came from a tired sigh blown into brittle air. "Yeah. I would meet my grandmother. Again, that is. I saw her once in a while growing up but then when she died, it kind of occurred to me that I knew nothing about her. Nothing important, anyway. I know she had it rough. Like, rough, you know? Grandfather was a total dick, to her, to my Dad, to just about everybody he ever fucking met. So she had it rough. I figure we could just talk."

His shoe scuffed at a pebble. It skittered along the steps and landed with a plop in a puddle, somewhere off this odd stage that had been built around us.

"Just like how you suddenly wanted us to talk like normal people," I said, half-smiling. "I mean, do you have these deep conversations with Kendall?"

"Yeah, actually."

Stewy sat one step higher and I shifted around to look at him fully. "Wait, really?"

"Yeah. At our little sleepovers, we braid each other's hair and we giggle about the cutest boys and –…"

"Oh, knock it off."

"We talk, all right? Maybe not super deep all the time, because Ken doesn't know how to fucking talk, just like you don't know how to talk. I told you, Ken is like a fucking lemur about to take a massive fucking dump right in front of you."

Slowly, I shuffled back to look out at the street. In the orange glow, a bicyclist rode past; the spokes of their bicycle clicked and clicked. The house had a muffled sound to it, though some music snuck out from windows left ajar. It was a wonder that cops had not been called. I chewed on the words that Stewy had said and found them sour, swallowed bitterly.

It was not that it surprised me to hear Kendall confided in Stewy. It was that he had once confided in me. Sometimes, he still did. Only there had been some point in our childhood when I had looked at Kendall like the sole person in the world who understood me and I understood him, but now we seemed blind to one another. Then there had been that night, weeks before he had left college, and things had been left hanging between us.

"So, Kendall was totally right," Stewy piped up. He cocked his head at me. "You're jealous."

I startled. "What?"

"You're so jealous that Ken and I are friends. Best friends. I keep a lock of his hair in the locket that I wear and never take off, not even in the shower, and he wears a vial of my blood every day that he keeps on a necklace. Tattoos of each other's name on our ass cheeks. Gave up my kidney for the guy and would do it again kind of friends. It eats you up. Wow. I get it now. This is why you have always been so weird with me."

"Screw you." The girls stood from the steps behind us. I felt the props of a stage slowly being dismantled. "I've never been weird with you."

"Oh, please. From day fucking one, you've been weird with me."

"You're such a liar." I paused, then added, "Did Kendall really say that?"

"Yup. He said that it was kinda hard for you because you and Ken were, like, super close as kids and all. Then along comes his shiny, new best friend, and it's like Sindy and Barbie. I'm Barbie, by the way. You are so Sindy."

"I'm not Sindy, asshole. And by the way, I do know how to talk. I've talked to you before. I'm talking to you right now."

Stewy hummed, a sceptical hum rolling from his throat. "I don't think so, actually. No. You say stuff to me, sure, but you never talk. So I thought, how would I ever get Violet Roy to talk to me like a normal fucking person? And – eureka! All I had to do was fucking ask you to do it. Like, straight-up just ask. Even if it means playing a game."

Biting mean, the most that I had ever resembled my father, I snapped, "And why do you even care so much if I talk to you anyway?"

"Hm? Oh. Because I like you. Like-like you, the way kids on a playground say it."

The simplicity of his words, in a tone so light and direct, made me turn around again. Something had dropped; fallen from my throat, tinkled further down, clacking against each organ until it became lost somewhere. All this time, having a crush on him, wanting to hear him say that, needing it – and I wondered what his angle was. It was the truth. I wondered what he wanted, and if Kendall had put him up to something.

The alarms were blaring, in my head. I locked up. I froze.

"Oh, here we go," he said. "Spidey-senses tingling again? What now? I must have some sort of scheme, right? After your inheritance? Nope. I wipe my ass with hundred dollar bills and plug my ass with a big fucking diamond. What else? Oh, making fun of you somehow, by pretending to like you? Nope. Kendall would try to beat my ass but the guy has fucking noodle arms and couldn't even break open a piñata last time he tried at a party. So embarrassing. Had to break it open for him while he was still wearing the sash and pretend he did it. You can't ever tell him that, by the way. It'd break his fucking heart."

I let out a laugh. "I promise."

"Is it that hard for you to trust me? Really, Violet? That fucking implausible that I might like you? I know you don't believe it."

I swallowed, treading carefully forward. "Did my lemur eyes give me away?"

For once, it was me making him laugh. I found I quite liked it that way. I wanted it to happen again, to speak in that gentle timbre, showing an easiness that I never felt. I was exposed nerves; I was like that pit left behind once a tooth had come loose and left the gums, a little crater, touched and responding with a sharp sting, warning the tongue: keep away.

"All right. We'll break it down some more. You can look at it like all these financial scenarios Ken and I learn about, day in and day out, which really just boil down to advantages and disadvantages. Invest or don't invest. Pretty simple, really. If I tell you that I like you, you might tell me you feel the same way. Great. Advantage. Could be a beautiful thing between us. Or it could be disastrous. Maybe you don't like me and I just opened my heart up like a fucking moron. Disadvantage. Kendall could be super pissed at me for breaking whatever bro-code exists around liking your best friend's sister. Disadvantage. But maybe not. Maybe it'll be the best thing that ever happens to us. I figured I'd roll the dice. I'd invest."

Stewy was doing what he always did: speaking bluntly, looking right into my eyes, never wavering. Sometimes, I hated it. I wanted him to show darting eyes that told me he was lying. I wanted it to be clear, written on the wall for us both to read. But he had this penchant for never flinching, never breaking first. I trusted him; dubiously, tentatively, tenderly. It cut like a wound, that trust. It stung and it burned. I touched it. I felt the sting. Keep away. I touched again.

"Then you should know I like you too."

There it went, out into the orange-coloured world around us; bold words, words nothing like me. If he had told me in New York, I might have scoffed, walked away, spent hours agonising over it later. Yet this was not my home. It was the stage that I had imagined in my mind. It was an alien world in which these things spoken between us would have no consequence. If he was teasing, mocking, then the pain of it would stay here on this street and I would leave it behind. But I wanted it to be real. I wanted to think that he could like me. I wanted to invest.

"Good," he said. "Great. So here's another one for you: if you could be anybody else, who would you be?"

That was perhaps the most reassuring thing he could have done, then; change subject and let me breathe a little, find some wiggle-room and settle into the knowledge of what he had admitted. I hated to be cornered. He understood that. Perhaps it was the reason he had asked if I had wanted to come outside, either to tell me what he wanted in private or because he had seen that I was struggling against the waves of strangers. Had he been watching me just as closely? Had he been noting freckles, moles, dimples, pallor and mood like I had done for him? Maybe. Maybe not.

For another time that night, I told the truth: "You."

"Okay, so you're fucking with me."

"No, I'm completely serious. What? You don't trust me now?"

I lifted myself onto the seat beside him.

"Wow," he whistled. "Sitting beside me. This is getting kinda hot. Do we need a chaperone? Our shoulders might touch and I gotta warn you, I'm a shoulder-virgin –…"

"Shut up."

"And she's ordering me around now like I'm her whipping boy. Even hotter."

The blush was bleeding through, no matter how silly it all was. It was his openness that embarrassed me, his ability to blurt out whatever he liked without care of how it sounded. I envied it. I hated it. I wished I could do it. I was daring myself, reminding myself that it was Cambridge, this strange land where no-one would recognise me. I could talk. I could do what he asked and trust.

"All right, if you're not fucking with me, then you can tell me why you'd choose me," he said.

"Because of that first time you came with us to Greece and Dad forgot who you were."

"You wanna be the guy your Dad forgot?"

"No." I snorted, shaking my head. "No, I just - He totally forgot Kendall brought you. You came with us on our jet. And at the villa, that first night we had dinner, Dad turns around and asks, 'who the fuck is this?' and you told him you were the pool-boy and you had missed lunch, so you were joining us for some grilled meat and hoped he didn't mind."

"So what?"

"So, it was – it was funny. Dad just sat there while you scooped up some moussaka. Nobody does that with my Dad. It was so funny that the rest of us didn't know what to do. It was – well, you were confident. It didn't bother you. But it would have bothered me, though, if it was me with your family and your father just forgot me."

Stewy scoffed. "My Dad forgets his kids' names all the time. Some days I'm Stewy, some days I'm Harry, some days I'm his latest fucking intern. And someday I'm convinced he's gonna come right out with it and say the name of his illegitimate love child. I know there has to be one. Guys spreads his seed –…"

"Stewy." I dared nudge his thigh with mine. "Come on. Your turn. Who would you be?"

"Kevin."

I burst out laughing, shaking my head. "Oh, right. Now you're the one fucking with me."

"I'm not. Seriously. I'd love to know what it's like to be such a cunt-faced cunt-bag every second of the day."

"I don't think you need to change to know what that's like."

"Oh, fuck you. Thanks. Yeah, okay. If I'm such a cunt-bag, why do you have such a fucking crush on me?"

It was blazing-hot, the blush that swamped my cheeks. "Whatever."

"Yeah, whatever. And I guess I should say Kendall never said anything about you being jealous or whatever. That was my own theory. Sure, Ken hinted at it, but the guy is more tight-lipped sometimes than a nun that took a vow of silence."

Silence swelled between us for a second before I promptly smacked his arm. "You jackass! I believed you. Why would –…"

"Because you would never admit it otherwise. Look, Ken's loyal. Is that a trait for lemurs? I don't know. Maybe he's a weird golden-retriever-lemur hybrid, totally un-fucking-known to man. It's true though, isn't it? You were jealous."

"So what?"

"So it's funny. I told you – I'm Barbie, you're Sindy. Sindy's not a bad doll, you know. She's just not…" He motioned to his face and body. "…Barbie, you know?"

"Jackass," I said again. I hesitated, then added, "He told me he didn't want his little sister tagging behind him anymore."

"When?"

"Couple of weeks ago. Big fight we had. Stupid fight. I hardly ever fight with Kendall either. It's usually Roman or Shiv – but Kendall? Never. He wanted to go out. Some kind of party. But we had plans and he was flaking on me for some new kids he'd just met and so I said, fine, let me come with you. And he just said it was embarrassing, having to bring his sister. He was like, 'can't you just chill out for once?' He felt bad about it later, because he knows I can be – and I know he felt bad. I know he did. It's the only reason he let me come with you guys tonight."

Stewy watched me, his eyes flicking between mine. Then, he huffed a laugh and said, "Oh, that is such bullshit."

"What?"

"The only reason? Fuck off." He huffed a laugh. "Do you Roy kids enjoy pouring salt in your own wounds? Is there some sort of masochist gene running through your family? Because you guys whine about the stupidest shit."

"Excuse me?"

Stewy held his arms out. "Ken grew up. He flew the coop. Made friends. Did you think he was gonna stay at home forever? You know what he's doing out here? He's tasting freedom. Guy can do what he likes. And so can you."

"I know that."

"Then what's your problem?"

"Because he used to tell me we would do it together," I said. "Grow up, fly the coop. It was stupid. It was something kids play, like this 'what-if' game I'm playing with you. I played it with him, too. Kendall would work with Dad, but we'd live together in some cool apartment in the city. It was stupid. And maybe I believed it a little bit more because it helped each time stuff sucked at home."

"Yeah," he said. "That's why my sister and I played it, too. Isn't that embarrassing? Having all the shit we have and still trying to dream up something better."

Drizzle came. It was a soft mist, at first, that blossomed into a heavier stream. It peppered the street. The iron fences turned slick and sparkly. Stewy slapped his beanie onto my head, and so I took it from him with that thump-thump-thump of my heart of holding something that belonged to him and pulling it down over my hair, which already curled at its ends from the rain. I liked the sound of that rain slipping along the gutters, plopping against the wet ground, swelling in puddles.

"I want him to be happy," I said quietly. "I asked him this morning. I said, are you happy?"

"What did he say?"

"He told me that he was. But I'm not sure I believe him. I think what I meant was –…" Again, it felt too personal. It choked me, this thought of opening up to him even more than I already had, and I wondered what was wrong with me that I felt so afraid all the time, so trapped and unsure. "I think I should have asked if he was unhappy."

One stray droplet shivered from the webbed trees bristling in front of the houses and spotted my cheek. I wiped at it, then glanced at him.

I said, "You would tell me, right? If there was something wrong, right? I mean – if he was unhappy – you'd tell me?"

The rain was heavy. It soaked the street, the steps. "Yeah," he answered finally. "I would."

"Would you tell me if you were unhappy too?"

His lips twitched. He turned his head to look at me, still with that half-there smile. "No," he said. "Never."

How strange it all was, to know that he liked me, that I liked him, yet neither of us spoke much more about it. It had been a daydream of mine to hear him say something like that, and it still felt like a daydream whipped up in boredom, because something was unreal about it. He was sitting right beside me. His knee bumped mine, now and then, as if to remind me that it was happening, but I looked about the street as if we were still on that stage.

Soon, the house would be broken apart, showing itself to be composed of different rolling stands painted in parts; one panel showing a childish rounded door, another decorated with windows to surround that door, and so on, until the steps were wheeled out and us actors could recite our lines in front of a silent audience. The show was almost finished; the play would end, soon enough.

"What happens now?" I asked him.

I could not bring myself to finish it: with us.

"Easy," he said "We'll find Kendall. We'll leave. Walk a little, get the train. Walk some more. Might get some more junk food to clog our arteries. Walk you to your hotel, where we'll part ways. You could always check out those weird commercials that run at three in the morning and marvel at the sheer immoral cesspool that is modern capitalism while lying on sheets that cost more than what most people make in a year. Ken and I will head to mine because I don't trust Drunk-Ken not to choke on his own vomit while sleeping."

"And then?"

His half-there smile grew a little more. "Then nothing. We might see each other. Maybe your Dad will invite me to Greece for some moussaka. Maybe we'll bump into each other at the country club. Maybe we won't ever see each other again. Not sure."

White fuzzing droplets clung to the beanie that I wore. He reached out to wipe them away. It was a casual touch for casual words, but I saw in his eyes that it was not fully what he had meant, and that he was simply chasing off that fear of mine again; a fear that he had called Spidey-sense, shown through lemur eyes, wide and circled in an air of constant fright. I thought: he could be different, he could mean what he says. I want him to mean what he says. He means what he says. I had to repeat it, like that, or I found myself recoiling into a shell, sinking into its curled shape and hiding myself from him. It helped that he was not talking in certainties, not pushing anything.

Behind us, the door clicked.

"Stewy, dude. You came here with Kendall, right?"

It was not Kevin. It was some other kid, because he looked like a kid, with a jawline much too soft and clean. The artificial yellow light of the hallway behind him haloed his outline, blurred his face, so that the fear seeping from him was palpable. It shone on his skin in a greyed sheen, showed itself in the anxious scrunch of his hands on the doorframe and the dawning realisation that there was no loud chatter rolling from the house. It was only the melody that remained, which itself had been turned down until it seemed as if the party had ended. Stewy stood. I stood, too, prompted by this sudden burst of movement from him.

Stewy asked only one thing: "Where is he?"

x

It was in one of the bathrooms on the third floor of the Townhouse that Kendall was leaning out from the window, scooting onto the windowsill. He had lifted the window open, slithered out between the gap onto that wet slice of stone, snickering brazenly at the people who stood dumbly in the hall. Kevin was there. He told Kendall to knock it off. I heard it, from the staircase, upward on each creaking step until I spotted Kendall through the silhouettes all around.

He pretended to lean backward to startle them all, send them jolting forward to grab uselessly at his jeans and tug him back inside. He found it all so funny. He kicked them off, loosened his hold on the window and then started again – leaning back, letting them panic, catching himself before he could fall.

Stewy cut through these strangers. He shoved Kevin aside and pushed into this small, cramped little bathroom and gripped onto Kendall. He was not so uncertain about it, like the other hovering hands. He yanked Kendall back into the bathroom, where he slid to the ground with this wide, dazed smile.

Stewy crouched beside him and shook him. "Are you out of your fucking mind, man?"

"Oh my God, relax. It was a joke. Lay off."

"A fucking joke? You scared the living shit out of me, dude. Look at your fucking sister."

"What?"

"Your sister, jackass."

Kendall seemed to remember, then, that I was even in the house with him at all. His fuzzed eyes followed Stewy, as if Ken had to read his lips to understand him, before he looked blindly around himself and found me in the doorway. It was hot, churning pain within my stomach because of so many things hitting me at once: he could have fallen and he could have died, here, in this place where nobody even cared about him except for me and stewy, and he would have always been that rich kid who fell out a window… and his pupils are too wide… and he might have taken something and what would dad have done if we had let kendall die –…

It made my eyes water. What good did that do? Nothing. It had been so sudden, so unlike Kendall to do something stupid, so plainly stupid.

"Violet," Kendall echoed. "Oh. Shit. Yeah, look – I was just screwing around. One too many."

Stewy looked away. It occurred to me again, more clearly and crisply than ever: kendall has taken something.

"Yeah," I said. "Sure."

Stewy helped him to stand. The bathroom was cold, bitterly so. He had opened the window, deflated the party in doing so and now stood, strangely small and pale, stumbling out through the hall and downstairs. It was like he had forgotten where he was, and what had been happening all day and all night around him, so that he looked around himself and realised this was not his home and he was being watched, a stranger treading foreign land, until he found the door and pushed out into the street.

He had left his coat and messenger-bag behind, but his wallet was still in his pocket. Stewy checked. It seemed a habit on his part, something he had done without thinking and I thought, again: kendall has taken something and it isn't the first time.

"We're gonna walk, Violet," Stewy called to me. "Get some fresh air."

get the train. walk some more, maybe get some junk food…

x

The train rocketed this way and that. Kendall had taken a seat a few rows away, stretching out his legs as if he wanted to fill all the space that he could. Beneath the harsh, white-yellow lights, he looked gaunt and miserable. I watched him between the bursts of darkness and light and felt that some divine understanding had been shown to me. I debated telling my father for all of two minutes. It would not help anything. It would not help Kendall. That was what I cared about.

Stewy sat beside me, until he stood and peeled off his coat and went to speak with Kendall. He let Kendall take his coat. Kendall mumbled, shrugged, allowed the coat to be placed around his shoulders. He would not look at me for a long time.

Stewy returned. We sat in this weird silence, punctured only by those breathy announcements of each stop. I wanted us to whizz right past our own and be taken to another strange place where we could talk, all three of us, and I could understand Kendall, like I used to understand him. I still understood him, in some small way, but I had watched Stewy speak with him and felt that he could reach him more than I could.

For once, there was no underlying biting jealousy in admitting that to myself. It was relief. It was knowing that Stewy was watching out for him and always had been, right from the start. So I looked up at Stewy and it was not about the jealousy and the crush and all those other things.

And I thought he had known from that moment in the restaurant when Kendall had come out of the bathrooms. He had known that Kendall had taken something and he had stuck around anyway. He had stayed all night to make sure Kendall was all right, that he was getting home safely, when he could have simply walked away.

Because he cared about him as much as I did.

"Thanks, Stewy." I searched his face. "Is he unhappy?"

"No," he replied. "He's just a Roy."

Despite myself, I smiled and gently nudged his arm with mine, scoffing at him. He slumped in his seat, crossing his arms. I sank lower, too. There was a hesitancy in me; that fear rolled itself along my arms and legs and all around until there was no part left untouched, before I finally did it. I rested my head against his shoulder.

On his end, there was no grand surprise, no reaction, because he understood that it would only embarrass me and make me think too hard about what I had done. He simply sat, entirely comfortable, without bringing it up.

In the reflection of the glass across from us, we blended together between each flash of light, as if melting into one another.

x

The hotel lobby was quiet. There was only the click-clack of a keyboard and the hushed, murmuring voices of receptionists. Stewy waited out on the street while Kendall had come into the hotel with me. He would not tread near the elevators or stairs, for fear that our father might spot him, dishevelled like he was. He hugged me. It was a tight, fond hug that we held onto for a few seconds too long. And he said: "I'll call you tomorrow, all right?"

And I wanted to say: are you okay? can i help you, ken? can we just sit and talk about this? is this a once-off? is it the party phase of college or something more? did you mean to pull that stunt with the window? were you really trying to fall or was it really just a joke to you?

And I said: "Sure, great. Yeah. Thanks for the tour, Ken. It was really special."

x

The suite was as muffled as the lobby. Interns were still wide-eyed and discussing stock figures, though the city around them was sleeping. I was not sure where my father or Frank were. I walked right past, into the bedroom meant for me. I slid into bed and grasped the remote-control, flicking mindlessly through those three-in-the-morning channels, settling on a commercial about jewellery. The gems spun on velvet stands and fat red numbers flashed all around. It was greed incarnated in cheap plated bracelets and gaudy rings. The sheets bunched and smoothed; they were rich and luxurious.

Only then did I realise that I was still wearing the beanie Stewy had let me borrow.

xxxxxxxxx

The envelope came a couple of weeks later. It was coated in stickers in the shape of stars and swirls and ice-creams and lollypops. It was addressed to me on its front, surrounded by a wobbling circle of glitter. I brought it into my bedroom, away from the prying eyes of Roman and Shiv. I cut open its seal and another ash-pile of glitter appeared. The paper was a lilac shade. It was from Stewy. He had begun his paragraph with simple things: how many siblings he had, what his parents were like, his hobbies, most of which I already knew. He could have called me, he could have waited until we next saw each other. But he had remembered the first truthful answer that I had ever given him in that booth and run with it.

It was funny, too, to me. He had snuck in a Polaroid of himself and Kendall. It was a blurry candid. In it, he was wearing the beanie that I had borrowed and which was still in my bedroom, that I intended to give back, but liked to hold onto if only for a little bit longer. He asked about my family, my hobbies, all stuff that he clearly knew already, too. He told me that he had found an article in a magazine that he thought I might like. It was an article, ripped clean from National Geographic, all about lemurs. It was stupid. It made my heart swell. He finished it with one little line: Write back soon, Sindy.

xxxxxxxxx