NINE | LEARN TO BE LONELY

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Cora was wrong. Rasmus hadn't been mean for his entire life, just most of it.

Which, of course, directly corresponded to the first time his dad hit him.

Had that moment come when he was older, everything might have played out a lot differently. But he was just six at the time, much too young to understand any of it.

It started with a mistake. He didn't mean to do it; he was just playing with his action figures. He was running around with his Buzz Lightyear after dinner, pretending that he was flying alongside him, when he cut a corner too close and bumped into his mom's credenza. Her favorite flower vase went toppling to the floor and shattered.

It didn't take his dad storming into the room, red-faced with anger, for Rasmus to know that he was in trouble—he'd figured that out from the moment he saw the mess of broken glass on their hardwood floor. But he didn't know what that stuff Dad had been drinking was or that sometimes it made people behave differently than they would otherwise.

And afterward, as he ran and shut himself in his bedroom, he still didn't grasp that what just happened wasn't normal, that it wasn't something all parents did to punish their kids. That part wouldn't dawn on him until much later, and by that point, he had a much bigger problem: he wouldn't be the only child Dad could take his anger out on anymore.

He crawled under his blankets that night with a face covered in sticky tears and a stinging, ugly red mark on his cheek. Mom never came to check on him.

It was the first time he ever went to bed without one of his parents tucking him in.

Rasmus had planned to sleep in on their day off, the day before they started previews, but his phone started ringing at 8:30. And it was Ava. Sitting up, he rubbed his sleepy eyes with one hand and answered the phone with the other.

"I'm sorry," she immediately said once he picked up. "I know it's early."

He had to cover his mouth to conceal a yawn. "It's okay. What's up?"

"Do you, um..." his sister was quiet for a second. "Do you know how to make an omelet?"

He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but it wasn't that. His brain tried to piece together what was going on. "Is Mom not home?"

"No, she went to breakfast with her friends. You know how she is."

Rasmus did, in fact, know how she was. Lorraine was a housewife and a socialite who had nothing better to do than go drink mimosas and gossip on a Monday morning.

But they technically had two parents, though he'd stopped thinking of them as such a while ago. They'd started feeling less like parents and more like two adults that he just happened to live with. He treaded forward carefully, trying to get to the bottom of why neither of them felt like taking care of his sister today.

"...And Dad didn't make anything before he went to work?"

He heard her quiet sigh from the other end of the line. "No, I think he's probably a little hungover. He made some bacon and scarfed it all down in thirty seconds without talking to me."

Rasmus tensed; someone obviously wasn't hungover unless they'd been drunk the night before. "Did he do anyth–"

"No, Raz," Ava stopped him. "You know I would have told you."

"I know, I just–"

"I know," she echoed. "You just worry about me. But I'm fine, seriously. I just need to know how to make some freaking breakfast."

He plopped back against his pillows. "Okay, I'll teach you. Here's what you do..."

Cora was up bright and early on Monday morning, humming softly to herself as she made a bagel and coffee. She wasn't usually this chipper and energized, but she was looking forward to a change of scenery and to seeing her parents before her first day of shows even though it meant driving two-and-a-half hours each way. She'd shoved everything she needed into a tote bag before she wearily tumbled into bed the night prior, so once she filled up her water bottle for the journey she was ready to go.

The elevator came to a stop a few floors down from hers, and to her great dismay, the person who stepped on was Rasmus. He was looking at his phone, but he glanced up from it long enough to see who he was with and give her a, "'Morning, sunshine."

But he couldn't have said it any more dully, and as he did, she couldn't help but notice that he looked a little bit stressed. Or maybe he was just tired; it wouldn't exactly have been far-fetched. Even so, she was curious enough that she acted against her better judgment and snuck a glance at his phone.

Cora frowned slightly. "Amtrak? Are you going somewhere?"

That was a stupid question—what did trains do besides take you places? She tried again. "Are you going home?"

He was glaring at her. "Is it any of your business?"

"Well, I..." she started, then faltered. Am I really about to do this? It might be miserable. But if he accepted, it would be a good exercise in learning how to put up with him. And she had to learn how to put up with him if she wanted to look back on this time in her life with any fond memories whatsoever, so she held up her keys. "I'm going to Rothbury today, so..."

His eyebrows furrowed. "You have a car?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

Rasmus was looking at her like she'd grown a second head. He spoke to her slowly, as if talking to a child. "We live in Manhattan. Where there's public transportation and gas costs five dollars."

Irked that he was acting like she wouldn't know any of that already, she crossed her arms. "No, I didn't sell my car when I moved here—call me stupid all you want. I don't care. But are you trying to get a free ride or not?"

He was warily eyeing the keys in her hands as the elevator door pinged open, but she needed her answer now.

"Do me a favor," he said simply.

"What?"

Rasmus was already stepping past her and out the door. "Drive fast."

Getting out of Manhattan was always a nightmare. Cora stared ahead at the immeasurable distance of standstill traffic ahead of them, already regretting that she'd let Rasmus tag along.

He hadn't done anything too terrible yet besides try to prop his feet up on the dashboard, but he had known better than to protest when she swatted him down. Now, they were just sitting in uncomfortable quietude, which was almost as bad as arguing.

"Do you, um, like music," she offered awkwardly.

"Do I like music?" he repeated as if making sure he'd heard her correctly.

"You know what I meant," she huffed. "Do you like listening to music in the car? Or do we just want to sit here in silence for the next two hours?"

"I didn't know the word silent was in your vocabulary," he mused.

"I do not talk that much!"

"Oh yeah? Let's see which of us can be quiet longer, then. Starting now."

Cora glowered at him but was unable to speak. He, meanwhile, just leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes like he was going to take a nap.

You did this to yourself, the voice in the back of her head reminded her. She didn't even know why he would want to go home today. Though she knew next to nothing about his family, she frankly thought that Rothbury would make him think too much about Natasha.

Then again, he deserved to remember what he did.

The quiet game wouldn't have been so terrible if she was able to drive the speed limit for more than thirty seconds at once, but when they came to a stop for what felt like the hundredth time, Cora stamped her foot—the one that wasn't on the brake—in frustration.

"Fine, you win," she surrendered. "But this game isn't fair when you have the option to just zone out and I don't."

"Excuses," he chided.

"It's not an excuse! It's valid!"

But of course, her exasperation only seemed to make Rasmus more amused. "I have another challenge for you," he proposed.

She didn't bother holding back the sigh that seeped out from her lungs. "And what might that possibly be?"

"Let's try to get all the way to Rothbury without you yelling at me."

He felt like a stranger on his own front porch.

God, he forgot how obnoxious this whole neighborhood was. Why did everyone need three garage doors or a front gate when the neighborhood itself was already gated? He didn't feel like showing Cora this suffocating place where he grew up, so he'd made her drop him off by the front entrance to the subdivision.

He rang the doorbell. His mom, who he could see moving through the semi-opaque curtains on the windows, took her time answering. And when she finally did, she didn't look happy. She just clicked her tongue in disapproval and told him, "About time you came to see us."

"Charming as always, Mother."

"Don't be like that, Rasmus," she chastised him while stepping aside to let him in. "It's the least you can do after running off like that to be a damn entertainer. You would have made a great lawyer, you know that? Now come have some tea with your mom and catch up."

With the way she talked about it, you would have thought he spontaneously ran off one day to be a male stripper, which would have been a slightly different discussion. But there was no use in pointing that out to her. This conversation had followed the same script for his entire life—it wasn't going to magically change now.

And as he looked at her now, his own facial features and defensive posture mirrored in hers as they stood in the living room that he'd suffered a lot of heartbreak in, Rasmus felt pretty emotionless.

"You know just as well as I do that I didn't come here for you," he said bluntly.

Unsurprised, she said, "Your sister's in her room."

He turned his back to her and went straight for the stairs.

Ava's room was right across from his old one, and for some odd reason, the latter door was the one he was compelled to open first. It used to open as silently as a falling feather—something he'd used to his advantage many times whilst sneaking in and out at night—but now the hinges squeaked and creaked as if being woken up from years of slumber.

He slipped inside, carefully shutting the door behind him. Everything looked exactly as it was the last time he was here, which was exactly as it was the time before that. He was still surprised that his parents hadn't cleaned out all of his stuff to make way for all the expensive shit they bought and then didn't use, but they hadn't. He reckoned they wanted to keep a sort of shrine to the young version of him that they could mold much more easily, to the son they wished they had instead of the one they got.

He walked over to the closet, curious if they ever considered using it for holiday decorations or whatever other junk they only wanted to think about once a year. But when he opened it, all he could notice was that on the floor sat a plastic bin of his old toys. He picked Buzz Lightyear up off the top, turning it over in his hands and scowling.

Part of him wanted to take the toy with him; part of him wanted to break it to pieces. But it was just a piece of plastic. He tossed it back in the bin and left the room to lightly rap on Ava's door.

"Come in," she called out flatly, surely thinking that their mom had come knocking.

When he cracked the door and peered inside, what he saw made him smile a little bit but pricked his heart with sadness at the same time. She had her pillow fort set up and was tucked inside with a book, a silhouette in a cave of blankets. The two of them used to put it up all the time when she was a little kid, but as she got older, she tended to only do it when she was upset and wanted a safe place to curl up and hide.

He crossed the floor as quietly as he could to poke his head inside the fort. Her face was buried in a book called The Cruel Prince, her hair a couple of inches longer than it had been the last time he saw her in person.

"Mind if I sit?"

The book plopped to the floor. "Rasmus!"

As he knelt down to sit across from her, she flung her arms around his shoulders. A wave of calm rolled over him as he returned the hug, enclosing her much smaller frame. He was always at his most relaxed when he was with her and could know for certain that she was okay. No one was going to lay a finger on her so long as he was there.

She pulled back, looking at him with confused eyes a little bluer than his own. "Why are you—oh my God, you got that worried over my freaking phone call? I'm fine. And I know how to make an omelette now."

He cracked a smile, not wanting to make it any more obvious than it was that he got panicked when she was upset. "That's good."

Now that the surprise of seeing him there was fading away, she tucked her feet to her side and started giving him one of her lectures. "You gotta stop with this whole hero complex thing—I don't need you to come rescue me every time I'm having a bad day."

"I do not have a hero complex," he complained, ruffling her hair. "I have a brother complex. Happy to see you, too."

She smoothed her hair back into place but softly smiled. "I never said I wasn't happy about it."

Ava reached to pass him a pillow that he could prop behind him, then sat back to look at him. To examine the subtle ways he'd changed since they last saw each other. Now that her book was discarded to the side, he realized that she was wearing one of his old high school tee shirts that he'd left behind.

"So," she said. "Tomorrow's the big day, huh?"

"Tomorrow's the big day."

She was studying his face, and though she could read him better than most people his own age could, it never bothered him too much to be under her gaze. Most of the time, it was a relief to hear that someone else on this planet understood what he was thinking.

"Did you actually come here just because you needed to sit in the fort, too?"

"Maybe a little bit."

After a lovely lunch and afternoon of catching up with her parents, Cora was back in the spot where she'd dropped Rasmus off. It was 4:30 on the dot, the time they'd agreed on, so she'd give him a solid five minutes of leeway for tardiness before she started being seriously annoyed. Just a moment after she had the thought, he opened the passenger door and slid into the seat.

Cordially, she asked him, "Did you do whatever you needed to do?" It felt like a slightly safer way of phrasing it than to ask if he had a good time.

He nodded. "You?"

"Yeah."

They were mostly quiet for the ride back to New York City, tuckered out from a productive day and resting their voices for tomorrow. Now that she no longer had the distraction of her parents' company, Cora was getting extremely nervous for their first show. A knot formed in her stomach like her lunch wanted to come back up, but she forced herself to focus on the lights of the other cars and eventually those of the city, twinkling like stars as the sun began to sink below the horizon. The only sound that filled the space between them was the feeble drift of air from the car's air vents.

But when they'd made it all the way back to the parking garage and she pulled into a space, Cora couldn't help herself any longer. Before Rasmus could take his seat belt off, she turned to him and asked, "Are you ready for tomorrow?"

He settled back into his seat. "Are you?"

"You're avoiding the question."

"I'm not avoiding anything," he contested, but with a surprising amount of gentleness compared to usual. "I don't know if it's occurred to you yet, but we're kind of a team now."

She had a hard time reading his expression in the dim light. "...So?"

"So I'm not really ready unless you are."

"Oh," Cora breathed, the air catching in her throat.

She hadn't thought about that, but he had a point—neither of them could do their jobs well if the other person wasn't prepared to do the same thing.

Her eyes fell to her lap; she swallowed. "Am I the only one who's a little bit terrified?" she asked timidly.

She fully expected that he would say yes; that he might laugh, even. And yet, with her eyes still glued to her lap, she heard his voice quietly say, "No."

Another twist in her insides. She lifted her eyes back up to him. "I guess that makes me feel a little bit better."

They both fell silent, and yet neither one of them moved their hand to their seat belt clip. The only sound in the car was the faint one of their shallow breaths, not fast but not slow, either. Cora was looking at his face. It was strange to her that it somehow looked completely different to her here than it did onstage when he was in character, completely invulnerable to the harshness of reality. She spent so much time as Isla looking at his eyes, the shape of his nose and his lips, that she had involuntarily committed them to memory. She even knew what it felt like to kiss him every which way. But right now, she felt like she was looking at an entirely different person. He was looking right back at her.

Rasmus' voice was perhaps the lowest she'd ever heard it, a whisper. "We're gonna be fine."

It was as if he was trying to convince himself of the fact more than her, but she quietly repeated it back. "We're gonna be fine."

A flush of warmth

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