Heat

Home truths and lip biting

THE Tweed Shire covers an area of 1303 square kilometres and has a population of 89,000 which probably swells by another 10,000-20,000 at least during holiday times. It’s Christmas eve, summer holidays, so I reckon the population is heading for it’s peak. Tweed City would have thousands of visitors every day at this time of year. Yeah I know it’s not London but still –it’s not a population of a hundred or anything, we don’t all know each other in the Tweed. And let’s face it I haven’t lived here for a decade and neither has my brother and yet I have still been “seen” “canoodling” with Tom.  The region is a caldera, an extinct volcano – well I thought it was extinct until I got back to my place and Scott started to go Vesuvius. 

Not only did this person just happened to see us “cosying up to each other”out of the hundreds and hundreds of people in the shopping centre today but they had my brother’s phone number and managed to ring and stir Scott up even before I could get home.  And I still have to tell him his father is dying the slow death – saying the long goodbye.

The “person” (read interfering bastard) has worked my brother up into such a state, that there is no reasoning with him. I didn’t need this and neither did he. I feel like crap now and he’s going to feel like it later.

My feet didn’t even hit the ground and Scott dragged me out into the backyard to give me a piece of his mind.

“What the hell are you doing – you’ve known him a day and you have your tongue in his mouth in a fucking shopping centre,” Scott growls at me as he virtually frog marches me down to the swimming pool area at the back of my house.

“Scott, it’s not......” I start but he’s not letting me get a word in edgewise. I’ve seen him like this many times before, there will be no reasoning with him.

“Don’t fucking deny it Megan. You were seen with your hands all over each other,” his eyes are flashing.

“What if someone recognised him, took a photo of you two and put it on the net.

“How could you be so stupid – Stuart will have to go into damage control because you couldn’t keep your hands off a bloke you don’t even know,” he hisses his hands flailing. My family are hand talkers at the best of time but when we’re upset we turn into windmills. Any minute now Scott is going to take off he’s gesticulating so much.

I don’t know what to do – how to calm him down enough. I feel useless, helpless for the second time today. And I’m seriously going to kill the person who did this to my little brother.  I’m so shell-shocked I can’t think straight, I can’t think who this malicious human being would be.  I’m not crying but all I want to do is run away and hide and paint. I can’t do this and yet I have to don’t I? I have to tough this out. My little brother needs to know.

I go to put my hand on his arm but he jerks away.

“My best friend Megan, you had to take my best friend,” he says his eyes boring into me again. I try not to get angry. I bite my lip and try not to think of my best friend growing up – my only friend – Tracey. Scott seduced her because he could and because he wanted to experiment. Then he came out as gay and broke her heart. She never spoke to me again. I’d forgiven him, he was confused, I knew that. And I’d forgotten it as much as I could because I love him.

“Is this some sort of sick revenge?”

He obviously hadn’t though.

“Have you slept with him? Is that what you were doing? Is that where you’ve been?”

 I look up and see Tom and Stuart in the kitchen having a similar but less animated discussion. Stuart looks angry too but then Tom puts a hand on his shoulder and says something and Stuart’s expression changes on a dime from anger to total shock. I’m thinking my brother is almost the last person in the universe to know about dad now. I  don’t blame Tom for telling him, Stuart has to know because ultimately Scott is his problem.