Leading You Home

Sixth

When I get to the house, I find Lou in the upstairs bathroom trying to piece Bradley back together. I hear them bickering the minute I walk through the door.

"Do not touch me with that."

"Stop being a girl! Do you want it to get infected?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. What was that? Did you just ask me to punch you in the face?"

Walking up the stairs slowly, I hope to slip past the brothers unnoticed. As soon as I reach the top however, both of their eyes are staring directly at me.

"Er....hey," I mutter awkwardly.

Lou looks back at Bradley, who is sitting on the closed toilet with his beat up hand resting on the sink next to him. "Maybe you'll let her help you." Before anyone can respond, he's tossing the rag he was using to clean Bradley's wounds in the sink and is leaving the bathroom. "I'm out."

Bradley and I make eye contact. We sit in a moment of awkwardness for longer than I consider comfortable. With Lou gone and the huge fight that went down between Bradley and Kyle (not to mention Carrie's recluse reaction to it), I don't know how to act. Do I pretend nothing happened? Or do I come straight out and ask what the hell happened?

This is silly. There's no reason for things to be awkward between me and Bradley. We're living in a same house for crying out loud. It's time to dispose of any awkwardness and get on with it.

Making my decision, I walk into the bathroom dawdlingly. Bradley watches me. "Don't listen to him. Lou's full of shit."

"Screw you, Brad!" We hear from down the hall.

"It's okay. My Dad was pretty informative about how to patch up a wound when I was growing up," I tell him obligingly. "I used to ride my bike around the neighborhood a lot when I was little, so I have a lot scars from falling."

Bradley nods curtly, looking at me uncertainty.

I point to a long white line on my ankle. "When I ankle got catch in the chain." A pale batch on my knee. "When my front tire swerved into a pothole and I flew off the front of my bike."

"Okay, doc. Patch me up," he says, pursing his lips and giving me full access of his hand. Which I see is worse than I expected.

"Did you hit something other than Kyle's face?" I ask, staring down at his injured hand implausibly. His knuckles are already badly bruised with many cuts and gashes surrounded by dry blood.

Bradley looks away. "Maybe."

I shake my head and reach for the rubbing alcohol. Then, I take his wrist and let his hand lay over the sink. Just before squeezing the bottle of rubbing alcohol over his cuts, I announce, "This may sting a bit....."

As the liquid soaks his open wounds, Bradley looks away to cringe and doesn't make a sound. My first experience with rubbing alcohol was when I was six and tripped on the jagged sidewalk. I fell so hard I had gravel and dirt caked into my palms and a huge hole in my left knee. My Dad placed me on kitchen counter and poured the rubbing alcohol all over my wounds without a warning of the pain it would cause. Since the wounds were so bad and I was so young, the pain was pretty overwhelming.

Snickering, I reach under the sink for a clean rag. "Typical guy," I observe, using the rag to clean the dry blood from his hand, careful to avoid any wounds so the rubbing alcohol can continue to do its work. "Always trying to hide the pain."

Bradley snorts. "Please..."

"It's true," I continue. "Every guy does it. That's what messed you up tonight, right? You saw Carrie with Kyle, old feelings came up and you couldn't hide it."