The Crooked Street

47

When Frost got home to his house on Russian Hill after dark, he walked inside to the briny aroma of shellfish and the thump of Twenty One Pilots singing “Stressed Out” on his speakers. That could only mean one thing.

Duane.

He found his brother in the kitchen. Duane still wore his white chef’s coat, with his long black hair tied up in a ridiculous man bun. Below the coat, he wore khakis and Crocs. The patio door was open, letting warm air into the downstairs. The city’s spring heat wave continued with no end in sight. Shack sat on the counter, supervising the cooking process and getting the occasional nibble of crab as Duane made a stir-fry.

His brother’s shoulders bobbed to the song. The volume was loud enough that Duane didn’t even notice Frost until he was standing next to him. He acted as if it were no big deal to be here in Frost’s house, and any other time, it wouldn’t be. Duane pointed at a blender half-filled with thick orange slush.

“Carrot juice?” he asked.

“Are you kidding?” Frost replied. He went to retrieve a beer.

After he opened a bottle of Sierra Nevada, Frost examined the damage to his brother’s face. The rainbow colors around Duane’s eyes had begun to fade, but he still wore a bandage over most of his nose.

“What did you do to yourself?” Frost asked. “Walk into a door?”

Duane shot him a sideways glance. “Something like that.”

“You should be more careful.”

“Uh-huh. You look like you’ve seen better days, too.”

“I have definitely seen better days,” Frost agreed.

He sat on a stool at the kitchen island as Duane worked. They didn’t say anything for a while. Shack hopped over to the island and climbed onto Frost’s shoulder. A chunk of crab in an Asian marinade flew off the grill, and Frost ate it before Shack could grab it for himself. It was delicious, because everything Duane cooked was delicious.

The music shifted from Twenty One Pilots to Tove Lo.

“So did Mom call you?” Frost asked finally.

“Yup. You?”

“Oh yeah.”

“She fights much better than we do,” Duane said.

“She sure does.”

Duane finished off the stir-fry and scooped the crab and noodles into bowls. “You hungry?”

“Not really,” Frost said.

His brother shrugged. “Yeah, me neither.”

Duane covered the bowls with plastic wrap and stored them in the refrigerator. He found a tulip dish in one of the cabinets and made up a bowl for Shack. Then the two brothers took their drinks and headed out to the patio. The cool fog hadn’t overtaken the heat of the day, and they sat around the table in the darkness, both of them sweating. Duane sipped carrot juice. Frost played with the bottle of beer between his fingers. Shack wandered out to the patio and sprawled on the table between them.

Ten minutes later, Duane said, “So you and me, we’re pretty different.”

“That we are,” Frost said.

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know. Did Mom drop you on your head or something?”

“Weird, I was going to ask you that,” Duane said.

They both chuckled. The ice broke a little between them, which it was bound to do in the heat.

“You know, I try hard not to be a bad person,” Frost said, “but I guess sometimes I fall short.”

“Why on earth would you say that?” Duane asked him. “You are the best person I know.”

“I hit you. I hit my brother.”

“Well, I hit you, too. Don’t forget that. You may be better at it, but I got in the first punch.”

“I should have taken it and walked away,” Frost said. “After all, you were right. I broke the two of you up. I never, ever meant to do that, but I guess I did. And I am really sorry, Duane.”

His brother looked away at the city below them. His lips were pinched with unhappiness, which was a rare thing for Duane. His brother was almost always happy. It was something Frost envied about him. And yet maybe he was content because, on most days, Duane lacked a capacity for self-reflection. He lived every second as it happened to him, whereas Frost spent every second thinking about the next one. They both lived in traps of their own making.

“You didn’t break us up,” his brother replied. “People change. Tabby changed. That’s not your fault.”

“No, I was in the middle. Just like you said.”

“I’m trying to give you an out, bro. Work with me here.”

Frost smiled. “Okay.”

“I went to see her,” Duane went on. “Not to get her back. I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Actually, I told her she was right. I was pretending, just like her. Things weren’t working between us. I wasn’t putting her first. My life is in the kitchen, period. Sooner or later, if we’d stayed together, I would have screwed it up.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Oh, sure I do, and you know it, too. I probably would have banged another sous chef.”

“Not Raymonde, I hope,” Frost said.

“No. I think I’m safe with him.” Duane paused and then added, “She admitted it to me, you know.”

“Admitted what?”

“Come on, bro. Don’t be dense. Tabby’s in love with you.”

Frost opened his mouth to say something, but what was there to say? He shrugged and drank his beer.

“She told me she came to see you,” Duane continued. “She said she told you how she felt and that you all but admitted that you were in love with her, too. Except you made it clear that you were never going to do anything about it, no matter how you felt. Because of me.”

Frost stared back at his brother. “She’s right about that.”

Duane shook his head. “Well, that is pretty damn stupid.”

“Maybe, but that doesn’t change anything.”

“Come on, Frost. Given that you’re in love with her and she’s in love with you, that makes absolutely no sense. I want you to be happy, too. Do I need to spell it out for you? I hereby free you from screwing up your life in the name of fraternal loyalty. I state now, for the record, with Shack as a witness, that I will hold no grudge if my brother chooses to date my ex-fiancée.”

“That sounds like the carrot juice talking,” Frost said.

“I’m serious,” Duane replied.

“You? You’re never serious.”

“Well, at this one moment of my life, I am,” his brother said. He leaned across the table next to Shack, and he and the cat both studied Frost with the same intense stare. “So are you going to go talk to her, or what?”

The windows in Tabby’s apartment were open, and so was the door, but there was still no air moving on the stifling night. She lived in a fourth-floor studio on Fillmore not far from the painted ladies of Alamo Square. A seafood restaurant occupied the street level, making the building smell like bouillabaisse.

Frost stood in the apartment doorway, watching her and not saying a word. Her back was to him. She had music on as she chopped vegetables for a cool salad on a hot evening. She wore white nylon shorts and a pink tank top that clung to her skin in the humid apartment.

“You really shouldn’t leave your door open,” Frost said after a while. “Anyone could walk in.”

Tabby turned around in shock at the sound of his voice. She almost dropped the knife in her hand. He could see emotions passing across her face like fast-moving clouds. Anger. Hope. Desire. Frustration. Fear.

“Frost.” Her voice was cool. “What are you doing here?”

“I needed to see you.”

Tabby pushed away the preparations of her salad. She wiped her hands on a towel and walked out of the kitchen. “Why? I thought you’d said everything you needed to say already. You didn’t want me in your life.”

“That’s not what I said at all.”

“Well, that’s what I heard.”

Frost felt tongue-tied. He didn’t know how to make it right between them. He put down Shack’s carrier on the floor and opened the door. The cat wandered out into the strange place to explore. When he spotted Tabby, he padded to her immediately.

“Shack wanted to see you, too,” Frost said.

Tabby picked up Shack and softly kissed his head, and then she put him down and let him rummage through her apartment. Frost hadn’t moved. Her white sofa sat between them like a barrier they couldn’t cross.

“So what do you want, Frost?” she asked.

“I want to stop hiding what I feel for you.”

“You told me we couldn’t be together. Now or ever.”

“I know I did. But I can’t live with that.”

Tabby stared down at the floor. Her hair fell across her face. “What about Duane?”

“He said if I’m in love with you, then I’m an idiot to let you go.”

“Really? He said that?”

“He did.”

She walked up to the back of the sofa. “And do you? Love me?”

He came to the other side of the sofa, until only the soft cushions separated them. “Tabby, you know I do.”

“Are you sure? Maybe I’m not who you think I am.”

“I don’t care.”

“I hurt Duane. I don’t want to hurt you, too. That’s the last thing I would ever want to do.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

She leaned forward over the edge of the sofa. He reached out and grabbed her by the waist and lifted her up and over until there was no barrier between them, and he set her on the floor directly in front of him. She wrapped her arms around his chest and held on and wouldn’t let go. Her skin was hot; so was his. Her face was wet. She pressed herself so tightly against him that their two bodies were like one. Her lips were next to his cheek, and she leaned up and kissed the lobe of his ear and whispered no louder than a breath, “I was hoping you’d come back.”

He ran his fingers through her hair, separating the strands, feeling her do the same to him. With the back of his hand, he lifted her chin. Her lips were full and ready. Her eyes were a maze of emotions, but he only focused on the want he saw there. What came next, what was coming down the road didn’t matter. For that one moment of his life, there was nothing but joy in the sticky, still air of the apartment and in the dampness of their skin.

Frost finally did what he’d dreamed about doing for months.

He pulled her face to him.

He kissed her without any guilt at all and felt her kiss him back.