BADABING
Santi baby, we did it 
Emilio… well, for lack of better word, yapped about a whole lot of nothing. He had been an early bird, he hadn’t been…? He seemed to be finishing thoughts that he forgot to express out loud, nothing that he said made sense. At those comments Santiago said nothing at first taking a moment to think. He would rather have observed Emiliano than offended him, because a part of him did fear that there was something missing. He hoped there was, so he could forgive him, something relating to his age, or another vanity of his. But his patience was thin enough, and Emiliano was bound to break it soon.
When the brother and sister spoke of drinks, Emiliano’s smile faltered, as though beside his cheeks were little stars that dimmed without the shine of his pearly teeth. He appeared to be heating, like the atoms in his limbs and torso were relaying back and forth, stressed by their lack of a topic to switch to switch to or distraction to provoke. It seemed almost evident that whatever he hid was sufficiently incriminating, on a level that is moral of now legal. Sympathy advised Santiago to go easier on his once brother, but his emotions were demanding an explanation. “You have your drink,” he said with a relaxed, seemingly effortless charm. “Worry about you.”
The man tried overcompensating, rambling on and on about beverages, but Santiago quickly stopped him.
Emiliano tried to begin an explanation for his disappearance, but it all sounded like a terrible excuse. He took awfully long pauses, each break of silence equally as long as the details he chose to admit. And as thoughtful as he sounded, his speech was not sincere. His return was only proving to be a disappointment, letting his siblings down again.
“Not our burden?” Santiago scoffed, looking away because he could not stand the sight of Emiliano. “You think you’ve gotten old- have you even noticed the way we’ve changed?” Looking down at himself, the man gestured at his own silhouette, which was far from the version of himself that Emiliano had deserted so many years ago. On his ears, he now wore earrings, though they were true to his heart in their cross-shape. His hair was styled differently, more commercial, and it looked like it would be smooth or perhaps wet from a distance but to the touch it felt gelled and commercial. His clothes were loud and vibrant, and he had never liked vibrant colors. But Emiliano was blind to all of it, as if he had never known his siblings at all, or worse, he had forgotten them.
It was offensive, but beyond that neglectful. With Sunny, and his brothers families, he often found solace in knowing that he seriously mattered to them. All of his life, the paparazzi criticized, his friends used him, and at the worst point in his career he was humiliated for the world to see, but his family did not leave him. They were blood and law, it was not possible. So how come Emilio did?
The thought of it crossed his mind, the way he left them thinking the worst, the way that they eventually did. He remembered breaking down in front of the police, grasping at threads so that the case would not grow cold, he remembered his hands shaking when he held the phone to talk to Wyatt on the other side of the glass, calling just to hear his voicemail. Had those calls even gone through?
To even imply that whatever he did was out of respect for them conveyed simply that he knew nothing at all. Santiago fought the irritated, dry-throated feeling that was beginning to dominate him. Tears culminated in the bottom of his eyes so he gritted his teeth so that his voice would not break. “We thought you were dead.”
He figured that his words in that moment would not be strong, so he instead swept up the red mesh of his shirt to show the tattoos on his ribcage, two sets of angel wings, and one initial for each. Emiliano and Mattias. God, he had no idea how much Emiliano knew about what had happened to Mattias, but he decided that he could not tell it now, then he would surely cry.
He just tugged down the bottom hem of his shirt, and lowered his head, hands crossed together in front of him. “Sunny has them too.”
Each question became increasingly difficult to ask, mouth-drying to answer. Emiliano cursed, throwing his glass to the ground, shattering it into a champagne pool, little shards of the glass standing in it as their rounded rims beamed. Santiago and their sister were startled, and Santiago figured this was going to be another one of his dramatic moments that he had no choice but to mediate. Instead of listening to his apologies, he thought about how to handle the situation.
Quickly, his brother dropped down, and went to grab the pieces with his hands.
Like a worried parent, Santiago dived down to the ground to bat his hands away, worry plaguing his expression. He swatted his younger brothers shaky fingers back like they were two boys in their parents house, panicking about how to hide the fact that they broke a vase. In that moment, Emiliano did not look at Santiago, not his eyes, but eventually he did remove his hands from the mess on the floor, and raised them to where his injuries bled directly downward.
By now, his palms were torn in small cuts, drops of blood beginning to gush from different slits.
Numbly, his brother stood, and Santiago felt no other choice but to blindly follow him, rising quickly to follow behind his footsteps. He reached the trash can, dropped the shards, and then turned around.
“Seven years,” the man began to mumble, and betting on his best chances, Santiago tried to snap him out of his spell. He placed his hands firmly on the man’s shoulders and interrupted the end of his last few words.
“What do you mean seven years?” He demanded. “What happened to you?”
And the question was repeated, but he needed an answer. Their family deserved to know.