Page 116 of Silver Sweet

Specifically, our parents’ porn tapes.

They were illegally filmed having sex decades ago. They’d been in their early twenties, and the guy who filmed them went to jail. But the internet is forever.

I’ve been fortunate enough to never catch a glimpse of it. Charlie said he stumbled on a thumbnail once. And Eliot, to this day, will tell everyone who listens that he’s never set eyes on five seconds of the footage.

That would have been true up until last summer.

I still remember him striding casually to the pool, hands in his pockets, like nothing was wrong. “Time to leave, brother,” he whispered to me. I just barely detected the fury in his eyes. Subtle, enflamed shards of ire.

The car ride home, he told me he’d given them zero reaction as the porn played. He’d grabbed his glass of wine and taken a calm sip, acted like Bloomberg was playing, then went outside to find me.

The only thing keeping Eliot calm was knowing he had to get me out of there. He didn’t want me to see or hearour parents having sex.

There is no amount of therapy that’d erase the damage for me. I’ve thanked him a billion times. For Eliot—his brain is a fortress. Whatever tries to plague him, he will battle away with purpose and rage.

So it’s not shocking that the Hamptons is surfacing volatile emotions in my brother. It’s not shocking a Rochester is attached to those same feelings.

Eliot lets go of the unraveling comforter thread. “The bastard wouldn’t shut up about me watching their porn tapes. He probably wanted me to hit him, and if it weren’tthisplay, if itweren’t my entire career on the line, I would’ve had him on the floor.”

“So what can we do now?” I ask. “Track him down?”

“Nothing.” Eliot stares hard at a gold-framed oil painting on his wall; an identical one is hung in my bedroom. It’s calledDestructionand depicts the sack of an ancient Romanesque city, a civilization up in flames. “I retaliate, and I’ll be fired, Tom. Volatility has been my whole life. When things go right, I figure out how to blow them up and not in the good way.”

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” I tell him.

We share a heavy look. I think it’s the first time in our lives we’re both together in this position, trying desperately not to be the caustic forces that’ll topple our ambitions.

My phone buzzes on the comforter, and I flip over the screen to see a text.

PHOENIX WOLFGANG

Let’s reschedule. We don’t need to work this morning when you’re hungover.

My stomach roils. “He thinks I’m hungover.”

“Tell him you’re radiant. Full of life. All truths.”

“Indeed.” I comb a hand through my bedhead hair. “I mean, does he not know who I am? I can defeat a hangover.”

“Precisely. Remind him.” Eliot leans into my shoulder, but he’s not reading the text. It’s just habit. So I read Phoenix’s exact message out loud, and then he grins, “Didn’t you say he was a raging dick? Because that sounded on the verge of sweet.”

“He is still a dick. This one text provesnothing.”

“I should meet him to verify,” Eliot tells me. “Invite him.”

“Now you sound likeAudrey.” I type on my phone.

“Our intelligent little sister. She makes valid points.”

“Like what? Wanting to skinny dip in a freezing cold ocean in Italy and getting her clothes stolen?”

“And we wouldn’t have done the same?”

He’s not wrong. Eliot and I have skinny dipped plenty of times, but I’d like to believe we’re aware of our surroundings and wouldn’t fall for a prank. I finish typing and hit send.

TOM CARRAWAY

I want to work on this song. I’m fine. Please. You can even come to my place.