-I-

When I drifted off to sleep last night, Jona wasn't asleep yet. He gave me the willies, staring at the ceiling, supine and stock-still, almost unblinking. When I woke up this morning, the other half of my bed was cold and deserted. It was six a.m. now, and it was Thanksgiving.

I entered the kitchen twenty minutes later to agitated voices and the smell of fried eggs, Panama coffee, and something sweeter than cinnamon.

"-roll it like that. Wow. A pâtissier is really on a different level."

"Oh, come on, stop it with the compliment!" Juliana giggled. "You're just a great teacher."

"My mother was a great teacher too, but it took me three attempts to get it looked decent enough," Jona said. "She was so meticulous, she would whack my hand with chopsticks every time I messed up with the cooking."

"Sounds opposite to my mother. She loves to experiment and most of the experiment would end up in the dustbin."

"Morning, Jona," I called out.

"Hey. Morning." He gave me a fleeting smile, then continued doing whatever he was doing.

They had been busy. The kitchen counter was full of food containers, jars filled with vibrant-colored condiments, and all the flotsam and jetsam of the kitchen.

"Happy Thanksgiving, Luuk." Juliana smiled while plating the egg rolls.

"You too." I hummed to her and kissed Jona's cheek. His hair brushed my nose. "I don't ask you to come here to cook, sweetheart."

"Juliana is the only person who cooks in this house. Might as well help her." Underlying his minty breath was cigarette smoke.

"You really don't have to, Jona." Juliana patted his hand. "There was barely anyone in the house usually. I didn't have to cook every day."

"It's fine. It'll be too much for you today. I'm glad to get to cook again, too." His smile was sincere, but it barely reached his eyes.

He was in a bad mood since his first day here, and too polite to tell me his mind. But it looked like Juliana and the egg rolls and the baked beans and the French toast could still make him smile when I couldn't.

Tsk.

So I let him prepare breakfast as I read the newspaper on the open veranda, a habit I adhered to keep abreast of news without having to strain my eyes the first thing in the morning looking into web screens. As I was reading an article: Californian professor who's an expert on drug trafficking and organized the crime was charged by the U.S. with laundering money from Brazil, skimming more than $250,000 for himself, Jona called out my name.

"Yes?" I rested my elbows on the table with the newspaper still in hand. The paper slapped my forearm when the cold gust blew. The paper said it was five degrees colder this year.

Jona's amber eyes shone under the sun as he stepped into the veranda. His gaze swept over the empty beach a hundred yards away before he glanced at me for a second then looked at the white cup in his hand. He put it on the round glass table. "Un... I've never really brewed coffee, I don't drink coffee. But I hope it's up to your taste." The breeze blew the ambrosian, nutty scent into my nose. "Though I doubt brewing beans this expensive could go wrong in any way." He smiled fleetingly.

Weak vapor clouded the surface of the coffee like groundfog hovering above graveyards in vampire movies as I brought the dark liquid toward my lips.

"Bitter."

"Is... that a bad thing? You want me to rebrew it?"

"No. It's perfect. You have good hands." I rubbed the back of his hand with my thumb. "I wonder what else you can use this hand for."

He blushed redder than my shirt.

Intriguing. I wonder what's on his mind.

"I'll bring breakfast here in a bit," he said.

He turned, so I gripped his arm. "You don't have to serve me. I'll do it myself when I want to eat."

"Just... let me do something for you. I won't be comfortable staying here without earning my keep."

Tsk. I folded the newspaper and lay it on the table. Then I pulled him into a chair. "Jona." I paused, trying to look for a question to ask among hundreds of questions I kept within the flabs of my brain. I stared at his refined face. His foul mood didn't have the power to curtail his exotic charm. He was more than I deserved, and I planned to keep him for good... for life. "Am I forcing you into this? Spending Thanksgiving Day with me? If so, just tell me. We can go back to Stanford right away, baby."

The receding color on his cheeks flared again. "I repeatedly told you I don't celebrate Thanksgiving."

So I did force him.

"OK. Let's go back to Stanford after breakfast."

"It's too late. It won't look good to the family if you suddenly go back now."

I shook my head. "Doesn't matter. We've stayed here for two days."

"I said it's fine. Don't be selfish. You should know who to prioritize. And it would be extremely rude for me to suddenly leave." He yanked his hand as he stood. "I can see now that you have so many things, so many people to be thankful for. I can't take that away from you. Just be thankful that I'm here too, regardless if I celebrate the day or not."

"Why? At least tell me why. You've been acting strange since yesterday. What can I do for you to enjoy being here with me? Or at least enjoy the day with my family? I love you, Jona. Let me at least bring a smile to your face. You haven't been smiling for two days."

His lips twitched into a painful smile. "Thank you for trying to be considerate. But there's nothing you can do about it. God forbid."

-II-

Jona laughed at something Juliana said while he was serving the multicolored almond salad. At least he could laugh talking to her.

Tsk.

Milada entered the dining room and sat next to me, accidentally nudging my arm. The water I was drinking spilled over my shirt. She chuckled as she patted my chest with the purple napkin. "Sorry, Brother."

I snatched it and dabbed my wet groin.

"Brother," she whined, "I ruined July's pan this afternoon cooking the cranberry sauce. She actually asked me to repay for the pan. And it costs 200 bucks! The hell. Can you believe it?"

Juliana shot her an eyebrow as she refilled my goblet and filled the others.

"Language, Mil. It's a given to pay the price when you fucked up. Jesus. Go and help her. Why are you sitting here?"

"She threw me out of the kitchen after I ruined her ridiculously expensive pan." Milada leaned over and hugged my arm into her chest. "Let me spend time with my favorite brother instead. You've been away for so long."

I kissed her forehead before I flicked it. "What do you want? I'm not giving you money for the pan. Clean up your own shit."

"Language, meanie." She rubbed her forehead. "I don't need your money. I need your blessings." She puckered her glistening lips.

"For what? That washed-out rag of a Slovakian brat?" I pulled her lower lip. The glitters stuck on my fingers. I rubbed it on her yellow sundress, and she pinched my arm. "What's so good about him? Where did you even meet him? What does he even look like? What's his name? How old is he? What's he studying?"

"So many questions! I don't have my phone with me now. Will show you after dinner. I met him at school. He's an exchange student. Luukey, come on. He's very sweet! I want to invite him for Christmas. He will be alone in America without his family. You're not that cruel, right? Right?" Her face puckered. Her eyes gleamed in crocodile tears.

I laughed. "You can't even handle a pan without burning it. How can you handle a relationship? That's a crock of shit."

"You can't even handle people without being a jerk! But you're handling a relationship too!" She pushed my arm. "Tell me again how you fell in love with a jerk like him, Jona? He forced you into this, didn't he?"

Jona blushed. "He has his... bad days, but he's not always a jerk." His voice nearly blended with the clicking of plates around the table.

"Ugh. He's not always so bad. But when he's bad, he's the worst."

"Don't talk to me like that when you're trying to earn my blessing." I pinched her glimmered cheek.

She muttered a sorry, but she continued, "I mean, I asked Dad and Mom and Alex, and all of them asked me to ask for your consent. What's the rationale? Every time I want something, ask Luuk, ask Luuk. Jeez. I swear sometimes they thought I'm your kid instead." Then she called out, "You sure I'm not Key's child, Dad? Maybe he screwed a poor girl when he was sixteen and you guys adopted me or something. I mean, it's not that I hate the fact that I got his good genes, I do look like him, but why would I ask for his permission when you are my dad?"

"You watch too many soap operas," Dad said as he helped Juliana put the roasted turkey in the middle of the table.

The saltiness and spices filled the whole dining room. Every year, Dad would be the one who roasted the turkey using his grandmother's recipe.

"You ask for his permission 'cause you pestered him too much as a baby. He was the one who raised you. You refused to leave his side as a brat," Alex chimed in as he uncorked the white wine.

"She didn't care about me at all, this kid," Mom told Jona. She sat down and gestured him to sit opposite her. "I don't know what went wrong." She chuckled. "I've always wanted a daughter, but I only got to give birth to her. She refused to leave Luuk's side. He raised her like his own child. She slept with him until she was two. It stopped only after Luuk went to Stanford for his degree. But we had to see a child's therapist because she would throw a tantrum every night."

"Don't tell Jona humiliating things like that!" She flinched when I patted her head, chuckling.

"But that's cute." Jona smiled beside me, still as subtle and superficial as this morning. "I wouldn't sleep without my twin when I was a kid too."

"Twin?" Something resurfaced from my brain. I perfectly remembered he told me in Kamauira that he was the only child.

Jona looked shocked at himself. Then he harrumphed and nodded.

Why did he lie?

"That's cool! To have a twin. If only I had one." Milada sighed.

"You don't have one, and I'm almost two decades into menopause, so let's learn to be thankful for the other two siblings you have. Leave the dishes alone, honey." Mom beckoned to Juliana to sit down.

She bound her red hair before sitting next to Alex.

"You don't drink?" Jona asked me as he touched his wine goblet.

"No. I'm a teetotaler," I said.

"Let's say grace." Mom offered her slim hand to Jona across the table.

I leaned forward. "He-"

Jona squeezed my lap as he smiled at my mother. Then he took her hand and offered his hand to me.

It wretched at my heart that he did it for me, for being polite to my family even when he wasn't having fun celebrating Thanksgiving. Milada was somehow right. It seemed like I was forcing him into what I wanted. I kissed his palm and took his small, cold hand.

Stolen story; please report.

My father said his grace. Thanking the Lord for His blessings, that against all odds, all of us had managed to celebrate Thanksgiving together every year despite all the hardships we had to go through as a family.

"I'm a bad cook, but I trust my palate. This tastes better than last year." Mom sucked on the spoon she used to taste the cranberry sauce.

"It is. Jona is the one who cooked it, Elena." Juliana smiled.

"I would ask you the recipe if I could handle the kitchen." Mom laughed, and Jona ended up telling her when she still asked.

With a sense of foreboding, I watched Juliana drink water instead of her favorite white wine. I glanced at Alex when he laughed out loud from Dom's story about their recent arms deal with Germany. He was in a ridiculously good mood. I honestly thought he would evict Jona from the house two days ago, or at least threaten to kill him, but he didn't.

"When are you going back to Rotterdam, Dad? Can I follow?" Milada asked with a mouth full of turkey, pulling my attention away.

"In two days." Dad scrubbed the sauce on his beard with the napkin.

"I thought you'll stay until after Christmas?" I asked.

I wasn't as close to my dad as I was close to Alex, but it still pained me when I saw how hard he worked at seventy. Granted, he was still as healthy as a horse. But I knew what was his drive to still working doggedly. Guilt.

"No can do, Son. We're organizing the defense exhibition this year."

"Yep, need to coax the Germans to start investing in our arms," Alex added.

"Que tipo de armas?" [What kind of arms?] Jona whispered to me. "Weapons?"

"Sim." [Yes.] I chewed the savory turkey meat.

"Você constrói as armas?" [You build weapons?] he repeated after a two-second pause.

I glanced at him. His mouth opened slightly, not as big as his eyes though. I shoved a cranberry between his lips and kissed them. He flinched and peeked around the table. He blushed at every small thing. My touch, my endearments, even my voice. After a month of being with him, I realized that he was not a sexual person.

"Não me cole com eles. Eu sou um antropólogo. Mas, sim. Nós somos negociantes de armas e empreiteiros de defesa." [Don't lump me with them. I'm an anthropologist. But, yes. We're arms dealers and defense contractors.]

He harrumphed. "Você me disse que era uma empresa de segurança. Eu estava imaginando um centro de combate... como o que eu fui ontem." [You told me it was a security company. I imagined a combat center... like the one I went to yesterday.]

"That too, yes. The main arms-producing company is in Rotterdam. The one Alex manages is the subsidiary, the defense firm you went to yesterday. It was the first company my father built fifty years ago before he moved back to the Netherlands."

He said a small "Ah".

As I scanned the table, my brother was whispering something into his wife's ear. A blush sprouted behind her freckles. Just when I was about to ask Dom to pass me the snowflake potatoes, Juliana peeked at me and smiled.

The foreboding rose into my throat again.

Alex stared at me longer than necessary before he talked. "There's something I wanna tell you. Juliana and I have been waiting for you to come back from Brazil. And considering it's Thanksgiving today..."

A small part of me already knew what he wanted to say. Juliana loves Vinologist Chenin Blanc, but she didn't drink tonight. I was building a wall to lean on in my head. "What is it, Alex?"

He looked at Mom and Dad for a while and said, "Juliana is four months pregnant."

All eyeballs glided toward me.

The flavorful turkey I was chewing tasted like banal rubber in a matter of milliseconds. My throat became hollower as I tried to swallow the meat.

Validity is harder to digest than supposition.

With a trembling hand, I reached my napkin and pushed the meat out of my mouth with my tongue. Jona rubbed my hand as if he understood what was in my heart.

Alex had told me that I would always be his baby brother. That he would never replace me with anyone, even with his own child. The child in me was thrashing in my chest from jealousy, forcing me to curse at him, to run from the dining room and lock myself inside my room, like I did million of times before.

But I stood, not knowing what to do or what to say.

Juliana stammered as she approached me. "Luuk, I'm... sorry. We didn't--"

I raised a finger, and she shut her mouth. Bile rose into my throat from her apology. I made a pregnant woman apologize to me for being pregnant.

This was one of the many moments that made me realize how disgusting I was as a human being.

Alex stood too. "Luuk--"

"Alex." I shook my head.

Juliana's tears rolled down her face. But she didn't look away; she looked straight into my eyes. The dignified look that reminded me of my own mother. Respect actually thrived in my chest amid the childish debacle I was trying to fight off.

No matter how much I hated to admit it, Juliana was a genuinely good person. Even when I ruined her first dance because I had a panic attack on her wedding night, she never kept a chip on her shoulder. Even when her husband had to sleep in my room on their wedding night because of my regression, she never brought up the topic. She had known about my issues before she married Alex, but she soldiered on, she persevered.

I used to find it selfish for Alex to love someone else when he told me he would only love me and that he would marry no one.

But being with Jona made me feel for my brother. Loving Jona didn't make me love Alex any lesser. It just meant that I had a bigger heart to cherish someone else and still love Alex the same. He is my brother. It must have been what was in his mind too.

So I tried something I had never done before. I approached Juliana and touched her frail arm. She was small, barely five feet. She flinched when I rubbed her arm, but she didn't step back or look away.

"Congratulations. I hope the baby looks like you and not like my menacing brother, Juliana." I smiled.

Her trembling red lips widened from a gasp. Then she did something she had never done before too. She hugged me and cried into my chest.

And I cringed inward while patting her back.

-III-

All the tears and burden were washed down the drain when I showered that night. I had never thought that acceptance would be this liberating. The look on my brother's face when I accepted his wife was worth more than heaven itself.

Wearing the pajama pants and covering my back with a blue towel, I walked into the closet to find Jona putting the watch I gave him in the village onto the glass dresser. His damp hair covered his left eye. There was something innate about him having longer hair. It suited him like my mother's designer suit fitted me.

"Hey, anjo, what are you doing there?"

"Un... I'm returning the watch. Thanks for lending it to me back then." He looked away when he noticed me. It was the first time he saw my exposed body.

"It's yours, baby. I gave it to you."

"You lent it to me and asked me to buy one myself once we come back to America, remember?" He smiled, still looking at his feet.

I shrugged and fastened it around his wrist once again. "Take it. It's yours."

He opened his mouth to argue like the polite Japanese he was, so I pushed my tongue between his lips and kissed him.

"Let's get some shuteye. It's a long day today." I picked a white t-shirt while throwing the towel into the rattan laundry basket.

"O que é isso?" [What's this?] Jona touched the scar several inches above my navel. "Ah, sorry. Não queria perguntar em voz alta." [I didn't mean to ask that out loud.]

Something hollow rumbled inside my chest.

"Well, if you don't ask that out loud, how would you get the answer." I flicked the bedside lamp on. "Venha, eu vou lhe mostrar." [Come. I'll show you.]

The air conditioner in the bedroom soothed my somehow inflamed chest.

"Sit, sweetie." I pulled him onto the tatami bed and kneeled on the cold marble. Fingering the five inches scar on the left side of my navel, I said, "This scar is from kidney surgery."

"You had a kidney transplant...?"

"The opposite. I was the... donor." My saliva tasted bitter from the word donor.

"You're an organ donor?" He scrutinized me in an it-is-impossible-for-you-to-be-so-noble-to-donate-your-kidney look.

"Not really. But I have one kidney now." I breathed deeply. "I was a victim of human trafficking, Jona."

His hand jerked forward as his face scrunched into an indescribable horror. He clenched my arms in a vise-like clutch, trembling. "Luuk! Não digas isso com cara séria!" [Don't say that with a straight face!]

I ran my fingers through his hair. It soothed my palpitations. It wasn't hard telling him that. He was like a sponge; he absorbed all the pain away.

"What face should I make, querido? It happened the year you were born. Yes, it fucked up with my life in every way. But it was in the past. I couldn't change it. I can just... try to relate to it."

"I... Do you feel fine? Are you dyi..." He shook his head. "No, that's stupid. You're healthy." His smile looked painful as he buried his face into my chest, hugging me around my neck so tight, I almost coughed from the pressure.

"We are all dying, Jona. The only reason we are born into this world is to prepare for death." I rubbed his back. "But if that means to ask if I'm healthy, then yes. Medically, I'm perfectly healthy even with one kidney. Though mentally, I admit I'm a bit hypochondriac. I don't drink alcohol and any cohort of sugary foods. Need to take care of the only one I have."

"Oh, Luuk. Why... I'm sorry it happened to you." His golden eyes gleamed.

I kissed his wet eye and licked the tears on my lips. "And now that I'm showing you my scars, you should see all of them. There's no reason to keep anything from you."

"All?" His voice croaked.

Shifting on my spot, I sat on the floor with my back facing him.

He gasped.

The same dragon Alex has coils on every inch of my back. The tattoo gives me strength, but it isn't something I am proud of. But the day it was completed, I felt the satisfaction I had never felt before. Like a canary flying for the first time after it has been released from its cage.

"Olhe mais perto, Jona. Toque-o." [Look closer, Jona. Touch it.]

"Minha nossa." [Goodness gracious.] His voice broke when he traced one of the oval scars along my spine. "O que te fizeram?" [What did they do to you?]

Barely an inch of my back is free from scars. I had covered them up with the tattoo as soon as I turned eighteen. Now when I look at myself in the mirror, all I can see is the work of art. Colors. Not my scars.

"I'm sure you don't want the details. But those gay Belarusian bastards did a lot of things. Against all odds, the only thing they didn't do was... raped me." I flinched remembering the sensation of their touch. Shivers flared under my skin. "Perhaps they planned to sell me as a sex slave. I was the best looking boy at the time. God knows."

I rubbed my eyes from the memory, trying to push the images away.

"You were ten." He pulled my shoulder weakly. "Luuk. I'm sorry. I can't imagine how much it hurt to leave a scar this many."

"It didn't hurt that much, to be honest. I couldn't even remember half of the pain." I faced him and pulled my pants down with a finger, enough to expose my pubic hair.

Jona looked away, with a face as red as his eyes.

I touched his chin. "I want you to know every story my scars have to tell."

He peeked at me before his gaze traced my pubis. Then he broke into tears and pulled my hand away from my pants. His tears drenched my shoulder. "They... They drugged you."

I cross-legged on the bed and pulled him into my chest.

"I was mostly there to wait for my... surgery. They cuffed me to a bunk bed in a rundown flat for eighty-eight days and I was shot up with heroin almost every day. They didn't want any resistance from us. It took me five years to fully fight the addiction and the thoughts of it. I am glad I was a kid and couldn't get my hands on drugs under Alex's supervision. There was this Pakistani kid under my bed. He died from heroin OD. And they left him to rot for three days. I didn't even know his name." The ball in my throat burst and a tear slipped from my eye remembering how the kid thrashed around every day in his night terrors. "Even when I couldn't understand him, I knew he was asking for his mother in his sleep."

Jona whimpered. Somehow, I knew there was more to his tears than my story. He had been having a hard time these few days. He wasn't happy. So I let him cry in my arms.

A minute or so later, he rubbed his face and said a small sorry. "Did they get caught?"

"My father told Alex, act in haste, repent at leisure. No. They weren't caught. Alex killed every last one of them."

"What? He's an officer?"

I chuckled weakly and rubbed his wet face with my palm. "No police could find me back then."

Jona stared at me.

"Alex and my dad deal weapons legally. We are not criminals. We do honest business. But when you venture into a crime-interconnected trade, there's a fine line between what's wrong and what's right, and you have to tread carefully and know what's legal and what's not.

"I wanted them dead, but I hated it when Alex ventured into the illegal side of it. He said to fight devils, sometimes you have to become the Death God. He was right. God will not change the condition of people if they don't change themselves. So he took matters into his hands. It took him and Dom two years to eradicate the whole syndicate." I sighed. "Alex became overly protective 'cause he felt... immense guilt. Still is. He has been mollycoddling me since then. Well, I was kidnapped by a seventy-five-year-old woman that one second he looked away."

"I'm so sorry you had to go through all that."

"It's fine, sweetie. It was years ago. I prayed every night back then for Alex to come and save me. And one day, God heard my prayers. I'm fine now."

He rubbed his nose. "That's why you regressed in front of him. He saved you."

I nodded.

We lay down on the bed and I pulled him into my arms. The scent of honey and chamomile on his hair was rhapsodic. Having him in my arms gave a satisfaction I couldn't describe. The feeling you have when you take a shower after a vigorous exercise, or when you squirm under your blanket after twenty hours of marking dreary boilerplates.

"The moment I saw my brother raided the place, it became the safest moment of my life. Doesn't mean I wasn't scared shitless when I stepped out of that flat. You know, I didn't step out of my house for two years. I had the courage only when I fully comprehend Portuguese and Russian, the languages the syndicate used.

"And then one day, I heard some old lady speak in French in the park, and I had a panic attack. That was when I knew I'm afraid of people I can't understand."

Jona's breath trembled against my chest. We stayed silent for minutes. The contact was equilibrium. He took in my anxiety, and I absorbed his solace.

"Queres dizer-me o que se passa contigo hoje, querido?" [You want to tell me what's wrong with you today, baby?]

He buried his head on my chest. "Hoje é o aniversário da morte da minha mãe." [Today is my mother's death anniversary.]

Every space in my chest constricted. "Jesus. I'm sorry, Jona. Why didn't you tell me this morning?"

He peeked at me as he adjusted his head under my arm. "You have so many things to thank God for. I didn't want to ruin your Thanksgiving."

I shook my head. "It won't ruin my day. You should learn how to be more selfish. You're too humble, it makes me look like the devil."

He plopped onto one arm and traced the scar on my face. "I ruined your face."

"What?"

He smiled. The first genuine smile in days. "Nothing. It's okay, Luuk. As you said, it happened years ago. I've learned to deal with it." He paused and looked into my chest. "Almost. Hmm. You're right. We are born just to die. It's only a matter of how and when." He clenched his eyes shut.

"You wanna tell me about your mother?" I rubbed his tattoo, prickly from gooseflesh. I had been wanting to ask him about his tattoo for a few weeks now; who was Junko? I wanted to ask him about his twin; why he lied about it, and about why he held a grudge against God. There were so many things I didn't understand about him.

But I let it go. Not today.

"No. Not today," he said as if reading my mind. He nudged me and lay on my shoulder. His hand snaked around my waist.

I hugged him. "Go to sleep. Tomorrow will be a better day."

He hummed.

"I love you, baby."

He hummed and hugged me tighter.