If you were to do a CT scan, you’d see a piece of her there. The one I can’t let go of, even though I know she wants me to.
I think our history is that of a fairytale. We are just caught somewhere in the middle, the conflict between the main characters, but you know they’ll get their happily ever after.
Sutton’s parents are high school sweethearts, and my mom was always their third wheel. Their friendship stretched from coast-to-coast and through college, where my mom met my dad. It was serendipitous that our dads were drafted to the same team out of college.
Sutton’s parents are my second family. Her mom would stay the night when our dads were on away game stretches before they adopted the girls.
Her parents moved three doors down when they were going through the adoption process. Something about manifesting by purchasing a five-bedroom house with a pool, that simply had to be filled with kids running around.
It was a crystal blue day, not a cloud in the January sky, when they brought Sutton and Meave home. Mom had hung a huge banner across their porch.
They had told us they were adopting one little girl. Meave popped out of the car door first before turning around and extending a hand to another little girl.
I’d never seen that color of red hair before, or that many curls. Her hair was in pigtails on the top of her head. Shorter than it is now, but always everywhere.
I didn’t understand the word beautiful when I was six, but that’s what I thought when I said to my sisters,Wow, she’s pretty.
My sisters, Jordan and Molly, teased me for weeks after about having a thing for redheads. One time at Disney, we were at a princess character breakfast, and Ariel was the only character I’d take a photo with. Bright maroon cheeks and a toothless smile that I’ll never be able to live down.
Maybe it is redheads, but I think it’s only Sutton. Always has been.
Sutton behaves as if her purpose in life is to make me not want her. She doesn’t realize, though, that my entire existence is wanting her.
I was always the only boy among the four girls. She never made me feel left out. We were the ones to skate together. I carried her on my back when she fell off her scooter and busted open her knees.
We were inseparable till high school when she becamefriendswith Izzy. That friendship ended with me taking the blame for an Izzy-sized mistake, and my friendship with Sutton snapping like a thin thread.
I’ve been working ever since to sew it back together.
Just like I’ve been trying and failing to sew myself back together.
I fling open my door. Sneakers haphazardly on my feet, one of them untied, and run down the stairs.
“Do you know where Sutton is?” I ask Elliot.
“Should be at the…” She looks down at her phone. “Never mind, she’s at the grocery store.”
I find her in produce,meticulously examining apples. No bruises, firm enough that it’ll crunch when you bite into it. Slightly yellow, especially if they are Honeycrisps.
“Heard that one’s poisonous,” I say, walking up next to her, plucking one from the pile and twisting it in my hand.
“Go away, Carmichael.”
I don’t. She pushes her cart to a refrigerated section of fruit.
I pick up a package of berries, check the bottom, and then place them in her cart.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“For what?” She continues shopping, not minding me trailing behind her or the items I’m dropping into her cart. She has a long, lined piece of paper listing all of her groceries in categories. Little boxes next to them that she checks off as she adds them to her cart.
I take the pen tucked behind her ear, reach around her to check off berries.
“Assuming you’d tell Elliot.”
“There isn’t anything to tell her.” Really? “Besides being volunteered, I don’t know anything about?—”
“You laughed,” I interject, the truth falling out of me. “That’s why I left.”
