You and Sunrise

Waking up is bittersweet.

I’m warm under covers, but not for long. I’m in the afterglow of a nice dream, but I know that it will be forgotten as soon as my feet hit the cool floor. I know I’ll wander down the hallway to the kitchen to see Bill if he’s up, but I know he’ll probably just snap at me like usual and I sigh.

I absently watch the specks of dust that are highlighted by the sun’s rays, and my mind wanders back to yesterday and the day before. Christmas with our mom and Gordon really was nice. And later in the day, the get-together our grandparents held was awesome too – it had been awhile since Bill and I had seen some of our cousins, and it’s always good to spend time with them when we can. We had spent the night at our mom’s house, and the next day Gordon and I had a great time messing around with some of the instruments in his music room. Then, we had all gone out to lunch before Bill and I had to head back to Hamburg.

It was a really good visit, save for a couple of things – of course they had to do with Bill. I won’t dwell on that, though… I refuse to.

Instead, I sigh once again and pull myself out of bed, my pleasant dream forgotten just as I predicted it would be. I yawn as I shuffle out of my room and down the hall to the kitchen, where Bill is sitting at the kitchen table staring into his steaming coffee.

“Morning,” I tell him. He grunts in response.

I look at him for a moment more, maybe expecting him to say something else, maybe not. His hair is all disheveled, and his face is clean of makeup. I’m not shocked at how dark the circles under his eyes are – they’ve been that way for several weeks now – but that doesn’t mean that I’m not unsettled by the look. It doesn’t simply mean that he isn’t getting enough sleep; it means that he’s not getting much sleep at all.

At any rate, he doesn’t say any more to me, so I turn from him and go about getting a cup of coffee. I find at least some comfort in the fact that there’s still coffee left in the coffee maker – the other day, he didn’t even bother to put an extra scoop of coffee grounds in the machine for me.

The black liquid swirls into the cup as I pour it in, and I suddenly find myself wondering how much sugar Bill put in his coffee today. If he’s in a good mood, he tends to put a lot in, but if he’s in a bad mood, he doesn’t put much in at all. I think he drops it off to torture himself a little, but he always insists that he just doesn’t want sugar and that’s all. I get the small carton of half and half from the fridge and pour a little into the coffee, then put in one less teaspoon of sugar than I usually would. Then, I halfheartedly put some bread in to toast and then come over to sit across from my twin.

“How are you feeling?” I ask him, stirring my coffee.

“Fine.”

I don’t know why I would have expected anything different.

“Well that’s good…” I sort of mumble, and then I don’t really know what else to say.

It’s been happening too often for my comfort. I’ll say something, then he’ll say something, and then I have no idea how to keep the conversation going, how to simply get him to talk to me. Sometimes I wonder if it is my fault, if I’ve somehow hurt his feelings so badly that he won’t even talk to me about it. But then I think of all of the times in the past where I’ve hurt his feelings and decide that no, it’s not possible. If it were my fault and I had done something, he’d surely let me know, and most likely in a very loud way… right?

I sigh inwardly and decide to try a different angle.

“So I met a girl at Trotzdem the other day,” I tell him, then take a sip of my coffee.

“Hmm,” he says. The sound says pretty clearly that he’s not interested, but I pretend I can’t tell.

“She’s quite nice, actually. She doesn’t know who we are, so she doesn’t give me any trouble or act weird… She smiles a lot and she’s easy to talk to. She’s sort of plain. But she’s pretty in a… calm, easy… honest way.”

I pause as Bill looks up at me from staring into his coffee. His expression is only just short of a glare, and it conveys pretty clearly that he’s not at all interested in what I’m telling him. In fact, it’s more than just disinterest – he’d rather that I just shut up.

But I ignore his expression and give him a little smile, then continue.

“To tell you the truth, I didn’t really meet her the other day. I met her a little while back when we were here in… November? Or it might have been the beginning of December, I don’t know. I met her at Trotzdem once then, but she was the one that approached me. I thought she was a fan, but she had no clue who I was, so we just talked for a little while until she had to leave. But anyway, she’s in a band too! She’s Icelandic, so that’s pretty cool. I sort of like her accent.”

Bill doesn’t say anything. He just sighs and sips his coffee, crinkles his nose, and then picks up his spoon to stir the liquid. My mind wanders back to the sugar thing, and I guess that he didn’t put much in.

“But um… She was there again the other day – Wednesday, I think – in Germany for the holidays, visiting her brother, and we talked for a pretty long time. Then, I gave her a ride to her brother’s house because apparently, she walked, and it was really cold out. You should have seen her face when she saw the R8,” I tell him, laughing a little at the memory. “It was great.”

“Have you slept with her yet?”

His question is blunt, and accompanied by an almost devious stare; for a moment after that, I just stare back, sort of shocked.

It’s not really the question he asked. It’s… what he meant when he asked the question. It’s how his tone was when he said the words. It’s his attitude that I can absolutely feel radiating off of him as I stare at him. It’s the way there’s something spiteful in his eyes as he stares back.

“No,” I say. “I…”

“Well when are you going to? If you’ve already seen her twice…It seems like you’re getting a little rusty, hm?”

“Stop it. You’re being an ass,” I tell him, giving him a halfhearted glare.

“Well it’s true,” he says, shrugs, and then takes a sip of his coffee. “That sort of thing is just so easy for you, isn’t it? You could have had her by now… unless she’s ‘something special?’” He says the last part in an especially mocking way, and I catch myself before I roll my eyes.

“Look, she’s nice. Maybe I just want a friend for a change. Isn’t this what you always used to suggest I do?”

Bill rolls his eyes. “I don’t care what you do. You’ve always done exactly what you want to anyway. When did anything I say to you ever influence your actions?”

I scoff. “Always! You know that you could say a word, and I’d stop anything and everything for you.”

“Well what if I did and you missed it?”

“I didn’t miss anything. You never wanted to change what I did – not really.”

He throws his head back and laughs. “You missed a whole fucking lot, Tom. I just missed it too – that’s the real damn problem here.”

I stare at him as he stares at me, and again, I don’t know what to say. He’s being royally irritating this morning, and I briefly wonder whether it’s an indication of how the rest of the day will go. There’s something in his eyes though – something quietly desperate that makes me want to pull him into a hug and tell him everything will turn out alright. Years ago, that made it better, but I’m not so sure it would today.

“Bill, I… did I really? It’s… If I did, I’m so sorry, I…”

He looks away, his lips drawn into a thin, small line – he makes this expression when he wants to say something, but at the same time knows he shouldn’t. I have no idea why he’s using it with me – it’s another one of the things that’s been happening lately. It sort of terrifies me.

“No, you’re… It’s me. It’s all me, Tom, don’t...” He stares into his coffee, his face now almost completely blank. It doesn’t deceive me, though – it’s the mask he puts on for our mother when he’s more torn up about something than he wants to let on. “Just don’t.”

So I don’t. But I want to.

I bite my tongue and watch as he idly tilts his coffee cup, observing the movements of its contents.

“You know, I…” The words freeze in my throat when he looks up at me. I can’t exactly say what it is that makes me stop speaking, but I think it’s something in his eyes. I don’t really know, though, because now his look has shifted to something even I can’t read.

I clear my throat, determined to continue. “I’m here, okay? You can say anything to me.”

“I know,” he says quietly.

“Do you?” I murmur, holding his gaze when he turns to look at me. He nods slowly, like he’s only halfway sure.

We stay frozen in our seats for another few seconds before he breaks eye contact and I inwardly sigh. It was too tense of a moment between us – of course, we’ve fought before, and had maybe an awkward moment or two, but this was different. I hadn’t known what was on his mind, and I hadn’t known what to say, and I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was like he was a stranger – but maybe just one of our cousins that I don’t see very often. It has me down, but at the same time really sort of jumpy for reasons I can’t explain.

I don’t think too much about his chastising me about my sex life – he’s brought it up several times before in our more irrational arguments – but the look in his eyes wasn’t one born out of simply being a nuisance. On anyone else, I’d be unsure that I had seen anything of the sort, but on him, I’m certain that I wasn’t imagining anything. It had been a quiet, subtle look full of “please understand me,” and I feel terrible because I couldn’t. I didn’t, don’t, know what’s going on with him, and it’s slowly driving me insane.

Just don’t.

I still want to, but I do what he asked me to. I don’t – or at least, I try not to. Although the request was sort of unclear, I know what he meant. Don’t feel guilty, but don’t ask about it either. Don’t try to get into it, and don’t try to keep this conversation alive. Drop it.

So I do. I sigh and rise from my seat, then go to the counter to get my nearly forgotten toast. We’re both silent as I take one of the few knives still in the silverware drawer out and spread butter over the toast.

“We should probably get going,” I say, turning to look at him and then taking a bite of my toast.

When he gives me a questioning look, I just speak through my toast. “Band practice, remember? We’re jamming today.”

“Oh,” he says, realization on his face, and the word comes out as a whisper. “Right, I remember.”

“Yeah.” Then I basically just look at him, wonder what he thinks about when he stares off into space like he is now.

After another few seconds, he snaps out of it, muttering, “Yeah, should get going,” and rising to put his empty coffee cup in the sink. I just watch him as he walks back out of the kitchen toward his room, seemingly still deep in thought.

Then I sink into my own daze, mechanically eating my toast as I wonder how long it’ll be before whatever is bothering him goes away.



“So, Tom’s got a girlfriend!”

I wish I could say I’m joking, but those are the first words out of Bill’s mouth when we get to the studio.

“What?”

“You’re kidding.”

“You creep,” I say, fully aware that Bill is being deliberately obnoxious – this morning’s serious almost-conversation is long gone, and after all of the silence on the car ride over here, I should have expected him to say something snarky and irritating.

“It’s the truth though!” he counters, and I know there’s probably some outrageous expression of bewilderment on my face.

“It’s absolutely not the truth; why would you say it’s the truth?”

“Because it is? Or because it’s going to be, perhaps?”

“You’re such an asshole,” I tell him, irritated and not quite sure how to play this off. As far as I know, Georg and Gustav don’t know the extent to which Bill isn’t himself lately. Maybe they’ve caught onto it a little bit – I don’t know – but the way I see it, they don’t need to know that he’s alienated even me. The reason for that is partly that I don’t think Bill wants anyone to know about whatever he’s going through (but he knows he can’t hide his emotions from me), and partly because I’m ashamed that this time I can’t help him.

Bill just shoots me an almost gleeful look as he shucks off his coat and heads in the direction of the vocal recording booth. I inwardly glare at him as he leaves.

“Well, are you going to tell us what he’s talking about, Tom?” Georg says, a smirk on his face, and I can’t tell if it makes me more irritated or if the normalness of it is somehow reassuring.

I sigh. “I met a girl at the bar the other day, and he’s just blowing it all out of proportion. That’s pretty much all there is to it.”

“Not just a fling?” Gustav asks, seemingly innocently, and I recognize a certain sneakiness about his expression that never fails to make me just a tad nervous. Sometimes he’s too knowing.

“No. I mean, you know. She was really nice, and we just talked for a long time. She’s Icelandic and she’s in a band too… In fact, the first time I met her, she was in Germany for a small tour they were doing. That was back in December, and now she’s back to be with her brother over the holidays.”

“What band?” Georg asks.

“Sigur Rós, I think. Something like that,” I tell him.

“It sounds really familiar…” he says.

“Does it?” I’m sort of surprised. He nods, thinking.

“What’s her name?” Gustav says.

“Lára… oh man. Sivar… Sævar? Sævardóttir?”

There’s a low whistle from Georg, and Gustav’s eyebrows rise a little. “Good luck with that,” the latter says.

“Yeah,” I agree. I have to wonder how in the world I’d go about introducing her to people if I don’t know how to pronounce her name.

“So what’s she look like?” Georg asks then, and I nearly groan.

“She’s… I don’t know. Blonde? She’s alright looking, but she’s not really my type.”

“In other words, she doesn’t have big enough breasts.”

“Shit, Georg…” I say, not really sure how to respond – partly because it makes me seem like a horrible person, and partly because it’s true.

“You said you had a guitar part right, lover boy?” Bill’s voice cuts into our conversation as he enters back into the room we’re in, and even with the use of the atrocious nickname, I’m grateful. There’s the distinct feeling that he’s deliberately saving me from their (mostly Georg’s) interrogation.

“Yeah! Right, it’s like… E minor, then C… then G, and then D with an F in the bass…”

“Hold your horses, let’s at least get stuff set up first!” Georg protests, and I jump at the opportunity to tease him.

“Well maybe you should hurry it up, hobbit! I haven’t got all day!” Anything to keep him and Gustav distracted from our previous conversation; I really just don’t want to talk about it.

“Fuck you, Tom.”

“When and where, sweetheart?” I ask, and for a second, I think about how relaxing picking on him is – and how disturbing that is in itself.

And then, I think I hear Bill sigh and call us children before he stalks back into the other room. I wonder what’s so bad about that.