You Mustn't Give Your Heart To A Wild Thing

For fathers day nineteen ninety three my brother and I had given our Dad a present that boldly proclaimed him ‘Worlds #1 Dad’. It was a mock Oscar statue painted an obscenely gawdy and cheap looking gold colour, and made from thin moulded plastic prone to shatter at the softest of touches.
It had taken three weeks of pocket money to save the £3.99 it had cost, and three whole hours for Jake to convince our mother that we were okay to go to the small shop at the corner of our road, alone. I had held on to the statue almost as tight as Jake had held onto my hand and my father had smiled just as wide when he received it as Jake and I had when we’d first spotted it on the shelf.

When Alice was born Jake had vowed to father her as our Dad had us, if only to get his own faux-statue, and when I watched him speak of his daughter; his sentences disjointed to the point of being almost incomprehensible and his elaborate hand gestures expressing everything he couldn’t find the words for, I didn’t doubt for a second that he wouldn’t be able to carry on the illusive title we’d given Harry Palmer all those years ago. Alice would one day announce that he was the ‘best Dad in the world’; just as boldly as we had a dozen or so years ago, and on receiving such news his lips would twitch into the biggest smile to ever cross them and the grin of his beautiful daughter would be just as broad. Of this much I was certain.

Alice was overwhelming in one hundred and one different ways, and it seemed that my brother had spent the best part of the last year and a half, utterly and undeniably overwhelmed.

“Ye’ve never ‘eard a laugh like it Vee” He marvelled. His dark eyes shining brightly with amusement, barely focusing on the spaghetti he was twirling around and around on his fork, its prongs scratching and scraping against the plate. “’s what... a year and a half almost, an’ she laughs like a fuckin’ sailor, proper chuckle, ‘s fuckin’ unstoppable when gets goin’”

I had been doing well; nodding at all the appropriate moments, adding a ‘yeah’ here and a ‘really?’ there. I’d even managed to add my own anecdote when he’d began to describe her first day of nursery, my own story of what I remembered of my first day at ‘Tiny Tots’ at the age of three. Leaving Jake at the gates of his school and bawling my eyes out when Mum also left me a few doors down with nothing but a lingering kiss in the palm of my hand that she swore I’d feel for the hours we were separated, if I simply held it to my cheek and thought of her. But no matter how hard I tried, how nice it was to reminisce or how much Jake twirled and twisted his wrist around whilst playing with his Bolognaise, I could only think of one thing, and each time I let my eyes wander from their fixed point on my plate they could only see one thing too.

The crossed i and the dotted t.

”’e wanted t’ tattoo ye name, ‘e were practicing on me firs’”

I jumped a little as a foot collided painfully with my shin and I looked up, startled, to see Sam staring at me from across the table; her right eyebrow raised and her lips pursed to form a small ‘o’. It was the face she pulled before questioning both me and my thoughts and it was a face that told me I wasn’t do as well at being the attentive sister as I’d thought.

“Y’aright Vee?”A sideways glance at my brother confirmed it indefinitely. His fork was placed next to his knife and his plate was a few small tomato stains and an odd speck of onion short of pristine.

“Ye inhale ye food still I see?” I laughed awkwardly, my eyes flicking between Jake and Sam rapidly; neither of them spoke a word and neither un-furrowed their brow. “I guess ‘s still the whole ‘if ye don’t eat fast, ye don’t eat at all’ thing we had goin’ at home with Bill, he was a fat fu...”

“He asked if you had plans for the evening” Sam interrupted, cutting my embarrassed bumbling short but doing nothing for the scarlet shade of my warm cheeks. I looked between the pair of them again but still nothing had changed. Two pairs of lips were curled into quizzical smirks and two pairs of eyes; one blue and one brown, were still trained intently on me and more importantly, the uneasy moves I was making.

“’m gonna hang out with you stupid” I smiled small, resting my fork against the side of my plate and reaching for my water. I could feel my hands trembling ever so slightly and as I wrapped my fingers tight around the cold glass, my suspicions of such nerves were confirmed and magnified for all to see. The surface of the water was rippling and shuddering before our eyes. Very Jurassic Park. “What the hell else would I be doin’ on ye first night in...”

“I were sayin’ that I were tired” Jake replied, leaning back for a moment in his chair before deciding what everyone had; or did, three seconds after doing such a thing, as the short metal back caught his shoulder blades and his spine bent in a way that wasn’t entirely safe.

Sam and I’s set of table and chairs were not made with comfort in mind. This was not only fact, but served as the perfect excuse for the endless TV dinners we gorged on whilst lazing about on the couch, and as the reason we couldn’t join the new craze of grown up dinner parties sweeping LA and holding our ‘hip and cool’ friends hostage. Alex and I’s fine dining had gone as far as Thai take out eaten from the cartons and enjoyed in my bed, whilst Sam and Danny had reached such refined and dizzying heights as sharing a pizza and a six pack on the balcony.

Jake drug himself upright and first tilted his head to the left, and then to the right. “An’ ‘m pretty sure tha’s just put any movement completely outta the question tonight, well more so than jus’ the fact ‘m ‘angin’”

“Ye a wuss” I teased from behind my glass.

“’m jet lagged” He countered instantly with a pout.

“Nae such thing ye big wussy”

He chuckled softly as I took a small sip of water, letting it bulge my cheeks for a second before slipping gently down my throat. “’m all for explorin’ tomorrow, but my bodies all outta whack tonight love, I could sleep f’ eternity righ’ now”

“Shouldn’t ye be used to all of this no sleeping malarkey?” I asked, eyebrow crooked “Or d’ye leave all the heavy stuff to Chelle?”

I’d expected the roll of his eyes and I’d anticipated the flip of the bird,

“Shouldn’ ye av plans with that boy ye got whipped?” But I’d not expected that.

I could feel my mouth gawping open and my eyes widening to inconceivable proportions, I felt my throat become dry and my stomach flutter with butterflies the size and weight of elephants.

“How did...’ow did ye know about...”

The sly smirk creeping from the corners of his mouth told me everything I needed to know and I heard the ’I didn’t’ before he’d even managed to form the shape of the ‘I’ with his slightly parted lips. My brother knew all the tricks I did, and then some. I’d learnt from the best, I’d learnt how to get everything I wanted from the only person I knew to truly have it all.

I was more than a little hesitant to disclose anything to my brother on account of who his best friend was and who Alex wasn’t but denying anything from here on out appeared futile. Unbeknownst to me I’d thrown myself in front of the firing line, the least I could do was wave the white flag and keep my fingers crossed.

“His names Alex” I stated simply, “We’ve just started datin’ this past month, and he’s not whipped, not even a little bit, not even...”

“He’s totally whipped” Sam chortled, kicking back from the table just in time to avoid the swift kick I’d intended for her shin, her chair scraping loudly against the parquet floor. “And this one isn’t a whole lot better. Enough to make you vom bro, I’m serious. Even my impression of the way they look at each other will have your spaghetti hurtling back up your throat and across the table before you’ve got time to even...”

“’s more than enough” I all but screamed as I felt the intense burning of my cheeks. “You! That’s enough. And you, ye don’t need to know any o’ this shit, ye don’t...”

“Ye my sister, I wanna know ‘ow ye doin’”

“Who you’re doing” Sam piped up, ignoring the daggers from my eyes as she tucked her chair underneath the table.

I was fuming and nervous in equal parts. My fists had scrunched into tense, tight balls, but my hands had also slapped limp, palm down into my lap. I couldn’t decide on one emotion over another anymore than I could decide who to blame for either, or, or both.

Neither Jake nor Sam had done anything wrong, but I couldn’t pinpoint anything right either.

My lips had parted to admit such things, and I had even taken a deep breath in, with the intention of letting the words tumble from my mouth when I exhaled. But the instant I drug my eyes from my lap; the second I stupidly let them focus on something other than my own hands, any benefit of the doubt was forced from my mind and any subtle apology slipped quickly from the tip of my tongue, and was gulped loudly back down my throat to reside with the waning butterflies in my stomach.

I climbed to my feet without a word and dumped my half emptied plate on the kitchen side, refusing to meet either of their stares and blocking every hushed word they uttered from my ears. A few ‘Sorrys’ jostled their way through; and I gathered quickly that neither of them had meant to upset me, but I could only see one thing, only think one thought.

The dotted t and crossed i had been replaced by the dotted i and crossed t of the postcard I’d found; pushed through the gap beneath my door, that morning. And my thoughts of Oliver squinting and sweating as he tattooed my name onto my brothers skin, had been replaced by that of Alex smirking and chuckling as he scribed his dorky love note across the back of the photograph of Arnold Schwarzenegger posing in front of the Hollywood Hills.

”If weekends were sandwiches, this one would be the one every ‘brown bag’ kid would try and swap at lunch. You’re the PB to my Jelly Verity, no one likes just Jelly sandwiches. “

Alex wasn’t Oliver, but Alex was Alex.

“He’s probably worth meetin’” I said.