#buckleys

I scratched the Jeep, Buck had blurted, almost twenty years ago now from the top of the stairs before Maddie had even taken her key out the door. She’d looked at him that same way, eyebrows drawing together, face scrunching into a scowl as the words registered. She’d said, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me, and stomped back outside to take a look at the damage. She’d left her keys in the door.

Buck’s pretty sure she’ll have a different answer this time, but the words still stick in his throat. It feels like it did when she told him about Daniel, when everything in his life could be divided neatly down the line of before-I-knew, and after. He’s drawn a second line in his head without even realising it, but which side of it things are sitting on, he’s still figuring out. He’d taken Maddie’s Jeep to impress Andrew, was the thing, who had blue eyes and shaggy blonde hair and was always quick to smile, quicker, even, than Buck, though of course he’d only been Evan back then. C’mon, Ev, he’d pleaded, wide-eyed, glinting with mischief. He’d wound the windows all the way down as they drove, laughing, the sound carrying from the car and turning Hershey into something else entirely, something that clung at Buck’s heart and made him want to stay. At least, until two years later, when Andrew had gotten into Cornell and left Buck there, in Hershey, taking all the good things about it with him.

Should Buck have known, even then?

Maddie’s still looking at him. Buck wriggles his hand out from under hers and sets his wine on the coffee table. After a moment, she puts hers down too.

“I’m,” Buck says, and the word that should come after sticks in his throat. “Something—happened. I, um, I did something.”

“Oh-kay,” Maddie says slowly, drawing the word out like it’s two: Oh… kay. She brings her other leg up so she’s cross-legged on the couch. “Is it something bad? I don’t need to hide a body for you, do I?”

“What?” Buck laughs, a quick exhale through his nose. It’s enough to ease some of the tension in his shoulders and break Maddie’s face into a small smile. “No, nothing like that. Though I—I’m concerned that’s where your mind went first.”

She shrugs. “Chim and I’ve been marathoning Criminal Minds.”

“Ah.” He rubs at his mouth. “No, um. It’s not, like, a big deal, I guess. I mean—it is, but not—like that.”

“Okay.” She looks at him.

Buck had stayed at the top of the stairs until Maddie had come back inside. She’d taken a deep breath, slid her keys from the door, shut it behind herself and locked it. I’m really mad at you, she’d said, her voice level. And then she’d looked up at him, and sighed—maybe at the way he was clutching his hands round his shoulders. Maybe at the fact he hadn’t moved an inch since she got home. Maddie sighed a lot when she was here. At their parents, when they couldn’t go a single Sunday dinner without arguing. At Buck, when he spilled bright blue nail polish all over the carpet in her room. At Doug, over the phone, when she didn’t know Buck was listening.

She’d walked up the stairs and sat next to him on the landing. Their shoulders bumped together. But I’m really glad you told me, she’d said, then grabbed his head and scuffed her knuckles through his hair. You’re paying for the repairs, stupid. Which had been a lie, anyway.

Buck takes a breath. He lets it out all at once. Maddie’s looking at him steadily. “Tommy kissed me,” he says. “I kissed him back. We’re going on a date on Saturday and I. I think I like guys.” He swallows. “That’s, um, it.”

“Evan,” Maddie says, and then nothing else because she’s in his arms, hugging him. His hands come up to her shoulder blades, the wings of them beneath her sweatshirt, and he’s been bigger and taller than his older sister since his growth spurt when he was fourteen but right now it’s like that doesn’t even matter. She holds him like she won’t let go and that tiny knot of tension, that ugly scrunching of doubt that had been nestled in his chest—it releases. Of course, it seems to say. Of course it’s okay. Like Buck had been an idiot to ever think otherwise. Which—he’s often an idiot. Maddie loves him anyway.

“I’m sorry,” she says thickly, sounding suspiciously snotty where her face is pressed against Buck’s neck. “I don’t really know the right thing to say. I love you, Evan, I’m—so proud of you.”

Buck gives his own sniffle. “That works,” he manages to say, and then Maddie is pulling back, wiping at her eyes and under her nose. There’s a damp patch on the shoulder of Buck’s shirt, that she seems to use as a target when she socks him. “Ow. What was that for?”

“You’re an idiot!” She throws her hands into the air. “You were pulling—fucking—pigtails!” Each word is punctuated by another punch. There’s no weight behind them, and after the third Maddie sits back, takes a deep breath.

“Is this where you tell me that being mean to a boy isn’t the way to tell him I like him?”

“Seems like I don’t have to.” She presses her lips together, like she’s trying to still be mad, but it hardly lasts a second until her face splits into a smile. “Evan,” she says. “Oh my God. Okay.”

She leans over to scoop up their glasses of wine and presses Buck’s into his waiting hand, and they could be fifteen and twenty-three again, shoulder-to-shoulder on the landing of their house in Hershey. Twenty-seven and thirty-five, drinking wine on Abby’s couch. Twenty-nine and thirty-seven, sifting through a baby box of memories, stood just over the line between before and after. Although maybe Buck was wrong. Maybe there is no line—no clean way to divide a life that will always be messy, because that’s what life is, isn’t it?

Windows rolled down—nail polish on the carpet—a kiss you didn’t even know you wanted, until you did.