As he pulled into the parking lot beneath his dad's apartment building, Tristan tried to school his features into a mask of apathy, but he was sure Sophie could see right through it. With a heavy sigh, he turned off the car and leaned back in his seat. "Okay, I'll roll the windows down and leave the car unlocked for you. I shouldn't be too long."

Sophie's lower lip jutted out in a pout. "Aw. I can't come with you?"

Tristan shook his head, his jaw clenching. "No, you can't come with me. My brother might be there."

“So?”

“So he’s a dickhead and I don’t want him around you.”

“I can deal with dickheads. I’ll fight him for you.”

Tristan let out a humourless laugh. "I know you're tough, but I'm not, remember? I can't deal with you being involved in any of this. I don't want you to be. I just want to go get my stuff and I want you to be here waiting for me when I get back, okay?"

Sophie studied him for a long moment, her expression thoughtful. "Hm. Okay, but if anyone hurts you..."

“Nobody’s going to hurt me.”

"Physically or emotionally," Sophie said, her eyes narrowing.

Tristan fixed her with a stern look, his patience wearing thin. "Just stay here."

With a dramatic sigh, Sophie settled back into her seat, her arms crossed over her chest. "Fine. But if you're not back in twenty minutes, I'm coming in after you."

Taking a deep breath, Tristan steeled himself for whatever lay ahead as he stepped out of the car. With each step towards the elevators, he felt a growing sense of doubt, wondering if it was even worth putting himself through this ordeal just to collect a bunch of replaceable stuff. The temptation to turn tail and run back to the car was strong, but he forced himself to keep moving forward, not wanting to wuss out in front of Sophie.

When he reached the floor of his dad's apartment, Tristan had to pause, bracing himself against the wall as a wave of dread washed over him. Every fibre of his being screamed at him to turn back, to escape before he got trapped in this place forever.

But that was dumb. He’d get in, grab his stuff, and get out. He wasn’t in danger. Nobody had ever hurt him and he wasn’t afraid that they would. He just needed to do this. 

With a final surge of determination, Tristan made his way to the door and slid his key into the lock. Despite his dad’s weekend deadline, he was still surprised when it turned easily.

As he stepped inside, Tristan was greeted by the sight of his brother, Markus, glaring at him from the couch. "Just letting yourself in, are you? You don't live here anymore, Tristan."

The sound of his full name made Tristan bristle more than the accusatory words. Bee had always called him Trist, her special nickname for him, and the rest of the family had adopted it. After days of hearing nothing else, the sound of his proper name felt harsh and ugly. They’d taken even that from him.

"Just here to get my stuff," Tristan mumbled, making a beeline for his bedroom, Markus following close behind.

"Dad and me always wondered why you were so dramatic. Guess now we know," Markus sneered, his voice dripping with disdain.

Tristan's room looked like it had been ransacked by an overzealous cop, desperate to find contraband after one too many instances of police brutality. Even his prized marker set and coloured pencils, some of the few things he owned that held any real value, had been dumped unceremoniously on the floor.

With an unimpressed glance at his brother, Tristan quipped, "Wow, you really were desperate to find more gay porn. You know the internet's full of that stuff, right?"

Markus wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Gross. Guess you'd know all about that."

Tristan merely shrugged, not rising to the bait. He had more important things to focus on, like figuring out what to take with him. Spotting his school backpack amidst the chaos, he grabbed it and started cramming essentials into it. He knew he couldn't carry everything, and he'd be damned if he made a second trip back to this hellhole.

As Tristan began stuffing clothes into the bag, Markus, ever the watchful critic, piped up from his perch on the bed. "Hey, those aren't all yours. Dad paid for some of them."

Without looking up or pausing in his task, Tristan asked, "What exactly is dad going to do with my old clothes?"

"That's not the point. They don't belong to you," Markus insisted, his tone petulant.

“I don’t care,” Tristan announced in an almost sing-song voice, his voice laced with exasperation. "I can't believe you grew up to be such a lame bully. Does it make you happy?" He shook his head, a sad smile playing on his lips. "No, I can tell it doesn't. This won't change anything, you know. Dad's never going to love you. He's just going to make you hate yourself a little more each day."

Markus's face twisted into an ugly sneer. "Well, unlike you, I don't spend all my time thinking about loving other men."

"Uh huh," Tristan replied, not even bothering to dignify that with a proper response as he carefully repacked his pencils.

Tristan had initially been sceptical of Sophie's earlier musings about resilience being a bad thing. A part of him had always believed he should be tougher, more manly, and he'd hated himself for never measuring up to those impossible standards.

But seeing Markus now, it all clicked into place. His brother was the perfect example of what Sophie had been talking about. Raised in the same emotionally abusive household, Markus was now eighteen and perfectly capable of striking out on his own, yet he showed no signs of leaving. He'd always been better than Tristan at shrugging off their dad's cruelty, at soldiering on despite the misery. But where had that gotten him? Stuck in a toxic situation, doing nothing to change it because he thought he could tough it out. In that moment, Tristan realised just how right Sophie had been. He was so fucking glad he wasn't more resilient.

Before Tristan left, he made sure to dig his birth certificate out of the manila folder where their dad kept all their important documents. Markus, of course, was on his ass the whole time, insisting that Tristan's own goddamn identification documents were technically their father's property. In the past, Tristan would have been wary of his brother, knowing that their dad was likely to take Markus's side and make his life hell. But now, without that looming fear, his brother's words were nothing more than empty bluster.

With everything worth taking stuffed into his backpack, Tristan walked out of the apartment, not even sparing a glance for his brother. Maybe someday Markus would grow up and become a better person, but Tristan wasn't going to hold his breath. He no longer cared. His only desire was to cut his father and brother out of his life like a cancerous growth, to leave the toxic remnants of his past behind and start fresh.

Tristan had thought he'd brushed off his brother's words like the buzzing of an annoying fly, but as he walked away from his dad's apartment, putting more and more distance between himself and the toxic environment he'd just escaped, the full weight of the situation began to sink in. The emotions he'd been holding back, the ones he'd tried so hard to ignore, started to bubble up inside him, growing stronger and more insistent with each step. By the time he reached the car, he was biting down hard on the inside of his cheek, the sharp pain a desperate attempt to maintain his composure.

He dumped his stuff in the back seat, got into the car, and then just sat there, gripping the steering wheel as he focused on his breathing, trying to steady the rapid pounding of his heart. He could feel Sophie's eyes on him, her gaze heavy with concern, and he wished he could just pretend everything was fine, but he knew he wasn't safe to drive, not like this.

The uncomfortable silence that filled the car seemed to stretch on for an eternity, though it was probably only a couple of minutes before Sophie spoke up, her voice soft and gentle. "Hey, why don't we go for a walk and see if we can find somewhere to get lunch? With all these apartment buildings, there's got to be something nearby."

It occurred to Tristan that she was likely handling him in exactly the way she'd learned to handle her mentally ill mother when she was having some kind of an episode, but hey, whatever worked. He nodded, his voice barely above a whisper as he murmured, "Yeah, okay."

As they walked, Tristan felt some of the tension drain from his body, the simple act of moving helping to clear his head. But he was still hyper-aware of every detail—the set of his jaw, the way his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, the rigid set of his shoulders. He didn't want Sophie to see how much he was struggling, even though he knew it was written all over his face.

They found a cafe just down the road, and Tristan handed Sophie his card without even glancing at the menu. He couldn't have cared less what he ate or how much it cost. He just needed a moment to himself, to try and regain some semblance of control over his emotions.

Sophie came back to the table a few minutes later, a smile playing on her lips. "You'll never guess what just happened. The cashier took one look at us and said, 'Girl, he is way too old for you.' I had to tell her you were my cousin. She was super apologetic about it, but I just think it's hilarious. And hey, it's good advice for anyone who actually needs it!"

“We’re not really cousins,” Tristan pointed out. “Alice’s adopted brother is my biological uncle, which makes us… I even don’t know. Approximately nothing. Though I guess the important part is that we are not and will never be dating.”

Sophie waved a hand dismissively. "Listen, you're going to have to get used to fudging the truth a little. The real story is way too complicated and confusing. From now on, we're all cousins and Alice is our aunt. Nice and simple."

"Easy for you to say," Tristan said. "Alice really is your aunt."

"Maybe, but does it really matter? We're all Alice's kids now, which basically makes us siblings. It's one big, happy, dysfunctional family. Sometimes you just need a simple label so you don't have to spill your entire life story to some random stranger so she doesn’t call child protective services on you.”

This would have been the perfect moment to tell her that they had another easy way to assuage such concerns, to admit that he was gay, but the words lodged in his throat, refusing to be spoken. When Markus had been taking jabs at his sexuality earlier, it had felt so juvenile, like the whole thing was too childish to really get under his skin, and yet something held him back from coming out. Trying to examine the feeling brought on a rapid cascade of emotions: shame, hot and bitter, followed by anger and resentment that he had been left feeling this way about his own sexuality when he truly believed there was nothing wrong with it. Or at least, he thought he believed that.

"Yeah, that's true," Tristan murmured, his gaze drifting away, pretending to be engrossed in the progress being made on preparing whatever food Sophie had ordered. "Sure, we can be cousins."

"A little lacking in the enthusiasm department, but I'll take it," Sophie said, her tone teasing but her eyes soft with understanding.

It turned out that Sophie had ordered them cheese jaffles, which seemed like a wild thing to pay cafe prices for, but Tristan had to admit they were quite nice and a bit of simple comfort food was probably exactly what he needed.

By the time they headed back to the car, Tristan wasn't sure he felt any better, but the sharp edges of his emotions had been sanded down, leaving behind a more mellow kind of melancholy. It was an emotional state that was unlikely to lead to him crashing the car and killing them both, and in his book, that was good enough.

The drive home was more subdued than the drive down had been, even though Sophie spent all of it awake. She looked up silly quizzes on her phone and made Tristan take them, and it was actually weirdly a little bit fun.

Darkness had fallen by the time they arrived home, and Sophie insisted on helping carry his stuff, even though he could have managed on his own. Tristan had expected Bee to already be in bed, but she was there with Alice, waiting to greet them at the door. When Bee reached out her arms, Tristan immediately dumped his stuff on the floor, stepping into her embrace and holding her close.

“How’d it go, hun?” Alice asked.

Tristan shrugged, his face still buried in Bee's shoulder. "It's over. That's all that matters."

Alice did her best to smile around a grimace. "Bee and I spent our day clearing out the study. It's not much of a room yet, but it's not a study anymore, so I consider that progress."

"I made a sign for your door," Bee added as she reluctantly let go of him.

"I'll go put my stuff away and have a look," Tristan said, picking up the things he'd put on the floor and taking the rest of his belongings from Sophie.

He headed down the hall alone, his footsteps muffled by the carpet as he approached the closed door of what used to be the study. There, on the door, was an A4 sheet of printer paper with 'Trist' written in big 3D letters coloured in with textas, a couple of which looked like they'd started to run out of ink halfway through.

Tristan found himself reaching up, his fingers brushing the letters of his nickname with a reverence he couldn't quite explain. This was who he was now. He'd left Tristan behind at his dad's apartment, shedding the skin of his past life like a snake outgrowing its old scales. He was Trist now, a new person with a new life stretching out before him. He didn't yet fully know what kind of person Trist was, but he hoped that he could be a happy one.

THE END