“Nah, we’re all whores here. I mean, literally, anyway. I’m actually a full-time lesbian smut creator. Your mom doesn’t know that about me, though, or she’d probably be less of a fan. But at this point I’m kinda like, well, let’s just burn bridges and call it a day. Nikki, this is Victoria’s brother Kevin. Kevin, this is Nikki.”
“Hey, Kevin,” Nikki said, piling onto the stunned silence Kevin was in. “Has Victoria always been like this?”
“She’s a psychologist,” I explained.
“I see,” Kevin said, still visibly processing.
“I’m a sex worker,” Nikki said. “I just got my degree in psychology. Big difference.”
“I… see,” Kevin said.
“You can sit down if you want,” I said.
“Think I might need to.” He sat down, slowly, still staring straight ahead.
“So, answer the question,” Nikki said. “Was she always like this?”
“Always like what?” he said, still not with it, and Nikki snorted.
“You know what I mean. Don’t we all know what she’slikeat the moment?”
He folded his hands on the table. “I think… I was always like that, too, so I guess it stands to reason Vicky was too.”
“Oh, yeah?” Her voice brightened. “See, I told you, Bridget, it’s just too much loaded family bullshit for her to keep up with.”
Kevin paused. “Vicky, uh, she knows you’re…”
“Oh, yeah, for sure,” I said, and Kevin cringed. I guess he didn’t want to think about his sister watching porn of the girl sitting in front of him right now. If I’d been of more sound mind, I’d probably have figured that beforehand, but did Ilooklike I was of sound mind right now? “She’s really cool,” I sighed. “Sucks with the whole… everything.”
Kevin looked down. “I don’t know… it seems like it can’t be true that you two just won’t work. She already felt so different than before.”
“Sure,” I said, voice a little too brusque, a little too clipped, “maybe, but she still made her choice once the chips were down. It was Sam who told me how I needed to just… face it and make it into a decision. Said that was what he did with you.”
He smiled sadly. “Oh, yeah… well, not that it’s any consolation, but it didn’t go any better at first for Sam.”
I scowled. “You ran away?”
“Whole family’s fucked up,” Nikki said.
“We are. Guess I’ve been realizing that. Sam’s helped me see it. Watching Vicky with Bridget really helped make it… clear, I guess,” he said. “I did the same thing it sounds like Vicky did.Sam came to me and laid out exactly what we’d been doing and said we needed to stop dancing around it and actually decide what we wanted, and I told him I wasn’t ready for a relationship. He asked me when I would be ready, if I needed another thirty-three years, and I got defensive. We stopped talking for a week. I realized I was being stupid, and I apologized. He made me grovel,” he laughed. “Fair enough. I don’t think it really set in for me that it was… real people with real feelings and real stakes, until I saw how badly he was hurt. I took the time to wait for him to come back around, and I’m lucky he did. I think Vicky’s always been running away… maybe I’m just holding out hope she does the same thing.”
I shook my head, looking down at the table, a heavy weight in my chest. “I think I’m done with holding out hope. I’ve been trying to change her mind for so long, I guess at some point I just have to respect the choice she’s made.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want to be a part of it anymore,” he sighed. “She’s a little rough around the edges, but I love her.”
“Have you toldherthat, or just me?”
He frowned. I stood up with a sigh, picking up my drink and my phone.
“You and your mother both. I’m sure all the rest of them too. You’ll say you love her to other people, but never to her face. No wonder everyone’s so repressed all the time. I’m going to go home and brood into my drink. I’ll… I’ll see you later.”
He looked at me like he wanted to stop me, but he didn’t—objections dying on his lips, a hand half-raised, but in the end, he just watched me go, taking the phone with Nikki on call and walking out until I was out in the car slumped back against the seat, watching snowflakes stir, drift down from a thick gray sky.
“Maybe I need to be like Victoria,” I said, mounting the phone up on the dashboard. “Maybe having feelings for people is stupid and I don’t want to do it ever again.”
“Can’t choose not to have feelings any more than you can choose not to want something,” Nikki said. “Not any more than you can choose not to be hungry, or to be tired at nights, or to be turned on when you see a hot girl.”
“Jeez, hitting me where it hurts.”
