What It Looks Like

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

Eli firmly believed that whole ‘how you were raised’ stuff was a load of crap. And the reason for that was Jenny. Sitting on the wall by the shopping centre entrance and watching his sister carelessly swinging her gleaming Audi into a too-narrow space, Eli idly wondered—as he had often—how they’d turned out so different.

They looked like peas in a pod. Similar height, same slender build, same waviness to their hair—although Jenny’s was nearly black like Dad’s, and Eli’s a sandy blond like Mum’s. They even had the same ears and jaw. But while Eli was all baggy T-shirts and heavy jeans, hunched shoulders and hiding behind sunglasses whenever the weather was warm enough to allow it, Jenny was…

“Eli!”

Well. Jenny.

“Hey, Jen.”

She flung her arms around his neck in a stranglehold, and her handbag hit him in the back. Because this was where Eli and Jenny had nothing in common—Jenny was all about looking good, and Eli…wasn’t.

It had been that way growing up, and it hadn’t changed now they were adults. Jenny had always preened. She was only a year younger than Eli, but Eli could remember her caterwauling even at five when Mum hadn’t done her hair exactly the way Jenny wanted it. She’d been getting in rows with Dad about make-up and heels when she was just twelve. And she’d nearly given him a coronary when she was fifteen, marched into the kitchen, slammed a pregnancy test kit down, and announced that Mum and Dad were going to be grandparents. God, that had been a bad Christmas. Eli had been tempted, for the next eight months, to ask his grandmother if he could live with her. He’d have taken the smell of cat piss and church incense over the toxic atmosphere in the house any day.

“How’s my favey bro?”

“Favey?”

“Favourite, idiot.”

“I’m your only.”

She snorted and kissed his cheek. “Same diff.”

Still, despite their differences, Eli didn’t much mind Jenny. She was self-centred and vain, yes, but she was also…nice. She loved him. She’d never really had a problem with him—oh, she didn’t understand him, but she also hadn’t had a problem with him. She hadn’t questioned every last thing about him the way Mum and Dad had.

“How’s the folks?” she asked, tucking her arm into his and leading him towards the shops. Christmas shopping, Eli’s least favourite thing.

“Mad at me again.”

“Why, what’d you do?”

“Who says I did anything?”

“Um, they’re mad at you? Ergo, you did something!”

Eli rolled his eyes and complained at her judgement; Jenny laughed at him, and demanded to know what he’d done. It had been that way growing up, too. Eli had been the—not problem child, exactly, he hadn’t been a bad kid, not like Rob must have been for his parents—but the difficult one. The complicated one. Jenny was easy, Jenny was just a tart swanning her way through school and boys.

Secretly, given as how Jenny was twenty and had a four-year-old daughter, Eli suspected it was that Jenny was just smarter than he was, and kept her complicated-ness away from Mum and Dad.

“Rob came over last night,” he admitted finally.

Jenny groaned.

“What? I’m allowed to have my boyfriend over!”

“When your boyfriend gives Dad a heart attack, you might want to rethink that,” Jenny said snottily.

Eli rolled his eyes as they wandered into Mum’s favourite shop for their usual Christmas present, an expensive angora jumper in some sickly pastel colour. Despite Mum being even harder than Dad work-wise—he was a chief inspector and sat in an office making strategic decisions; Mum was head of forensics and had been shot by a drug dealer at a crime scene when Eli was six years old—she was dead mumsy at home. Jumpers, nice necklaces, and chocolate were the automatic gifts for Mum.

Dad was harder though, and Eli said as much as they found a pink jumper in Mum’s size and took it to the counter.

“Dump your boyfriend, that’ll make his Christmas and next birthday,” Jenny said, then pursed her lips. “God, is Dad fifty next birthday?”

“Forty-nine,” Eli corrected. “And I’m not dumping my boyfriend because Dad doesn’t like him.”

“Oh, thank God, I won’t have the cash by February for a big five-oh,” Jenny grumbled, then rolled her eyes. “I’m just saying it would be good timing. It won’t be as special if you dump him in March.”

“I’m not dumping him at all!” Eli said hotly.

Jenny pulled a face. “Thanks,” she added to the shop assistant, taking the bag and steering Eli out by the arm.

“I’m serious,” Eli said coolly. “Dad can shove it. Rob’s not a—”

“Rob’s a criminal,” Jenny said firmly. “And that—”

“Oh come on, Jen, you know better than to look at things like that. Being a criminal just means…it just means you broke the law, it doesn’t make you bad.”

“Bad people break the law.”

“Rob’s not bad…”

“He’s been to prison, Eli!”

“Yeah, for—”

“For?”

Eli stopped, and bit his lip. In truth…in truth, he didn’t actually know. He could guess—both parents in the police gave you a pretty decent grasp of what got people sent to prison and for how long, and he knew Rob had long been what Mum would call a petty offender. Eli privately suspected he’d burgled one-too-many houses, or been caught for the twentieth time with a spliff.

But he didn’t know. He’d only found out because Rob admitted to having developed an affinity for weight-lifting ‘inside’ and Eli had asked what he meant by that. Three years in prison, from when Rob was twenty. He’d only been out six months when Eli had met him, so it was about a year now.

“Whatever it was can’t have been that bad, he only got three years.”

“Got, or served?”

“Got,” Eli said firmly. “I know that much.”

“That’s still three years in prison, Eli—I mean, can’t you see why Dad’s worried?”

“He’s not worried, he’s being a dick.”

“He’s worried,” Jenny insisted, and squeezed Eli’s arm as they wandered into an odds-and-ends, sort-of-joke-shop construction that had been slung up in the space left by the independent bakery closing down. “And can’t you see why?”

Eli swallowed. “Rob’s not like Greg,” he said eventually.

Jenny snorted at the name of her on-again, off-again boyfriend. Currently off, after he’d punched her in the stomach at finding out she was pregnant. Dad had hit the roof. “Rob probably knows Greg. Seriously, ask him. They probably shoot pool together.”

“Rob’s not like that,” Eli insisted. “For f**k’s sake, Jenny, don’t you think I’d know?”

“After six months with him? No,” she said flatly. “He’s still reeling you in.”

“You’re being paranoid and ridiculous.”

“Am I? Come on, Eli, where’s your evidence? Where’s your proof he’s such a nice guy, eh? He’s aggressive, we’ve both seen the way he starts for Dad, and one day—look, Eli, that’s all we’re worried about. That one day he’s gonna turn that on you.”

Eli swallowed. He had proof, but he couldn’t offer it. He couldn’t exactly explain their s*x life to Jenny, could he? The way Rob was so accepting of what Eli wanted, even though he didn’t get it. The way Rob was accepting of Eli, even when Eli was way outside of Rob’s experience zone. The way Rob was turned on by Eli taking control—the way that Eli could dominate Rob, could cuff him and make him crawl on the floor, could collar him and order him around, could tie him down and f**k him with fingers and toys until Rob shattered—

He couldn’t explain any of that to Jenny, vanilla Jenny, who’d gone into fits of giggles when there’d been an off-screen blowjob on Game of Thrones and called it kinky. She’d be horrified if she knew what Rob and Eli did, and the way round they did it.

Rob had called Eli a switch once. Eli just knew he liked to f**k and be f****d, and when he did the f*****g, it was all about control. And he knew, with just as much certainty, Rob seriously got off on that.

How was that guy going to turn abusive? When it was Eli handcuffing him to the bedframe and beating him with a belt when he got out of line?

“Can we just accept,” Eli said quietly, “that I’m not stupid?”

Jenny’s face tightened; her hand dropped to her swollen stomach, pushing insistently at the confines of her dress.

“You don’t have to be stupid,” she said quietly.

Eli winced, held up a T-shirt with a rude slogan, and tried to change the subject. “How about this for Uncle Harry?”