"And? Do you think it would change if I didn't have them?"
"Yes."
"That was quick."
"I think you'd be an actual bastard without your family," he said, and I jerked back in surprise. "Because they're the only reason you keep hanging onto the few good things about yourself. Without that support, you'd be just another good-looking, charming, abrasive bastard who thinks he can do whatever he wants, even if it means stepping all over people. Right now, though? You barely keep on the right side of that line, and sometimes I think you flirt with the idea of stepping over it."
I snorted harshly. “That's bold coming from someone who's carried a chip on his shoulder from pretty much the day I knew him. All you've ever done is demand that the world and other people treat you a certain way, and then get pissed off and stomp around when that doesn't happen. Don't get me wrong, it's impressive that you're only this much of a bastard considering how absolutely shit your parents were, but the rest of the world isn't going to live up to your standards, and you're always going to be a cranky, bitter prick until you realize it and let go."
Anger rolled off both of us, and I hated him for immediately taking what should have been a good time and ruining it with his attitude. It occurred to me that I had almost let myself believe there might be some sort of peace between us. It might have only come from the fact that we had been sleeping together, but it wassomething. Except now, all I could feel was his dislike for me.
And the greatest bitch of all? That he had touched on all my sorest spots, even if he didn't realize the picture he was creating. People were always going to have a problem with me. Not just any problem, but a fundamental one, connected to the very foundation of who I was as a person. That the very things that made me so endearing and charming in the beginning would be things that eventually got twisted and used against me. That my sense of pleasure and joy would eventually be seen as a source of irresponsibility, and my laid-back attitude toward problemswould be seen as not caring. That, when it came right down to it, I would always be seen as an uncaring asshole.
Who was to blame for that? Well...me. I might have initially been inclined to be that way, but I had chosen to continue. I was the one who adopted the attitude of not caring all that much. I was the one who made sure people didn't pry too deeply into my head and find out what really lay under it all. That, when it came down to it, I was supposed to be seen as what had once been called a playboy, a fuckboy, a player, any of those things, and encouraged no further probing into who I was as a person.
I hated him for it.
After all, where would I be without my family? Without a mother who loved her son even with his failings? Without a twin, who knew there was more to me than just the surface, but was unable to draw those depths from me without compromising herself, something both of us abhorred. Without brothers who loved us because we had loved and supported them through everything, but perhaps I had never helped equip them with the tools that allowed them to confront another person on their failings.
Damn him...damn him to hell and back.
I jerked when I felt a hand wrap around mine, and I snapped my head down to find big eyes staring up at me. Anger, which had been so hot and ready to flare at everything in the way a nuclear explosion would envy for its devastation, melted away as Micah grinned up at me. "Youhaveto see this!"
"I...okay," I said, suddenly feeling the hot air inside me dissipate without so much as a sound.
It turned out to be a display that focused on seaweed and plants that grew underwater, as well as the ecosystem. The swaying of the thick leaves was strangely hypnotic as Micah poked at things on the screen, clearly having figured out how to make the words on the screen shift to add more context for thecurious. He babbled away, and I still couldn't help but glance over my shoulder and see that Moira had dragged Jace off to see something else.
"Are you guys okay?" Micah asked after an explanation about one of the crustaceans that was allowed to roam the tank.
"What?" I snapped back to the conversation, guilt creeping in when I realized I’d missed the explanation before his question.
"You and Jace."
"Oh. Well...that's hard to answer, dude."
He frowned thoughtfully, staring down at the display. "I...get this."
"What's that?" I wondered, knowing his brain was going somewhere random and willing to try to keep up with it if it meant showing interest.
"The Mantis Shrimp," he said, leaning forward and poking his finger against the glass to point out a creature that was like a shrimp but far larger than any I'd had on a plate. Its eyes were bulbous and bobbed with the water current, its chunky fists resting casually before it. "They don't...keep it with other animals because it's always attacking them. Like, did you know it can punch hard enough that it makes light happen because it's just that fast?"
"I did not," I affirmed, wondering what kind of force and speed something would need for that.
"Well, it does. And it does it because that's what it does."
"Okay. Hey, uh, Micah? You're doing that thing where you sound weirdly adult, just so you know."
"Okay. But...it does that because it has to. But I don't get why you and Jace fight like you do."
Now I understood where he was going with the conversation. The shrimp made more sense. It was an animal doing animal things because it was an animal. But humans were different. Humans could have many reasons why they did what they did,and they didn't always make sense, not even to the human doing it. But in his mind, there had to be a reason for everything, and maybe that was true, but it didn't always make sense.
"People are...messy," I said after a moment. "We've got instincts. We're not much different than animals in a lot of ways. But we're also...harder to get."
"You mean like Mom?” he asked, leaning forward to peer at the shrimp as it continued to wave its fists lazily.
"Well...what's hard about your mom?" I asked carefully, knowing full well it was a trap, without him probably meaning it to be. All too often, kids asked one thing, and you, as an adult, answered, not realizing they meant something else, but you just gave them way more information than they had before. Which presented a whole new set of questions and answers.
"Like why she didn't tell me that Jace is my dad."
