Mum quickly wipes under an eye as she keeps her attention on Dad.
“While they’re busy working, we’re in the background, quietly making sure that everything else is safe. It’s listening to the everyday things that they need, those little worries they’ll overthink, that then make the big things feel too big. It’s reminding them on their good days, and their bad ones, how much you love them and how important they are in your life. Some days, your mum feels like her troubles are too much for me, and she’ll overcompensate by making my favourite meal, adding my favourite chocolate to the grocery list, buying me an extra expensive birthday present. So even on the mundane days, and especially on the harder days, I tell her I can’t believe how lucky I was that day I saw an angel, and three little cherubs stroll past my shop.” Dad lays a hand over his heart with a big smile. “I’ll never forget that moment. The clouds parted and sunshinerained down as if to say,Look, here they are, everything you ever wanted.”
Tears gather in my eyes, but don’t fall. I was so young when Dad came into our lives, I forget sometimes that he’s not my birth dad. He’s never loved me and my sisters any differently. We’ve always been his girls.
“Just keep showing up, darlin’. He’ll pull his head out of his arse soon enough. Let him get there. The journey’s still going, the road’s just a little messy.”
“It’s hard to learn how to trust someone new when you know what it’s like to be broken.” Mum’s voice wobbles over the words. “You’re always worried that you’re making the same mistakes. Scared of the same thing happening, but next time, you won’t be able to pick up the pieces and put them back together again. Then things go right, and you’re gripping onto them so tight you wonder if you’re suffocating them, ruining everything because you’re not meant to have good things. It can be a dark place, and when you’re in the thick of it, you don’t realise how far you’ve come until someone points it out. If you really don’t want to give up on this guy, then don’t. Just be there, waiting with the light for when he’s ready to find you.”
Chapter thirty
It’s been three days since the accident. Isabelle stopped messaging me, and I feel like the biggest piece of shit for ignoring her. Caleb gives me the stink eye anytime he sees me at Grams’s house.
I’m frustrated that I can’t just let myself talk to her. I’m too scared I won’t be able to look at her without feeling like a fuck-up. I disappointed her and let her down. I’m also frustrated that I can’t even get my underwear on without the help of a pair of tongs to get them up my damn legs.
“ARGHHHHHH!” A piercing shriek fills the air and startles me, sending the tongs flying and my briefs falling back down to my feet. “You beast! Don’t you manscape?”
I roll my eyes at Mason, covering my junk, even though he’s the one who barged into the room without knocking.
“Dude,” he says, more serious now. I take a breath and look at my brother, preparing for what’s coming next. “Is your dick pierced?”
“Why are you looking at my dick?” I say, exasperated as I try to wiggle my toes over the tongs to pick them up since I can’t bend down that far with the cast.
“It’s only natural to compare.” Mason shrugs.
“But I’m your brother.”
“It’s even more natural to want to one-up your brother, even in the dick department. Come on, how big does C-three-P-hoe get?”
I scoff and shake my head. “I’ve never measured.”
“I can feel the heat from your lying pants from here.”
“You’re an idiot,” I say as I finally latch on to the tongs and flick them up, catching them between my hands.
I sit back on the bed, still covering my junk, as I start to get my underwear on, while Mason just watches.
“You know, you could help.”
“Oh no.” He laughs. “I’d never get that close to your junk.”
I raise my eyebrows at him. “Just stare at it to figure out who’s bigger?”
“Well, the piercing certainly levels you up even if you’re the smallest.”
I finally manage to get the briefs all the way up. “Look at it this way, I’m the tallest brother. You can do what you want with that information. Hand me those shorts while you’re at it.” I point to the wingback chair in the corner of the room, where black track shorts lay with my hoodie.
Mason tosses them both to me with a grimace. “But I’m the shortest out of you, me, and Caleb.”
I hook the shorts over one foot, using it to maneuver the fabric up my cast. “My condolences then, brother.”
I finish dressing myself with no help whatsoever from Mason. I hobble over to the dresser, collecting my phone and wallet, ignoring the chain with a rose quartz hanging from it that sits beside my stuff. When Caleb brought my phone back the night of the accident, there was a bag of belongings that the tow truck company gave him before they took my car away. Isabelle’s necklace was sitting at the bottom of it. I slide my good foot into my flip-flop, pick up my crutches, then swing past Mason as I leave the room.
Grams is working today, helping Mum plan their next community project, and Grandpa took Tiny with him to his bridge club. Mason drew the short straw to take me to my doctor’s appointment. Lex kept offering to take me since she doesn’t work during the day, but she’s already been filling in at The Wayside since she has bar manager experience.
I slowly make my way through the house and out the front, where Mason’s ute is parked. I open the door, then wait for Mason to join me so he can take the crutches while I slide in.
He takes them, his eyebrows pointed down and his lips rolled together, then he looks up at me.
