A knock sounded at my door, and I pulled my glasses down my nose before looking up from my drafting program. Shannon stood outside and dangled a bottle of pale yellow juice between her fingers.
“I come bearing gifts,” she said. “You have to be hungry.”
Glancing at the clock, I realized it was nearly four in the afternoon, and I’d been working on this design straight through since eleven. I was hungry.
I nodded and stood, stretching to work the kinks out of my neck and back. She was careful to shut the door quietly, knowing I hated the way everyone else slammed everything around here.
Did they not remember the hell we went through to restore this building? Or the shit we took from Angus when we bought it? This brownstone was a labor of love, one that owned actual blood, sweat, and tears from each of us. The least we could do was handle the doors with a bit more care. I wasn’t going to be the one repairing those hinges.
“I wanted to apologize about Friday. There’s nothing else I can say other than I’m sorry.” She set the bottle on my desk along with a bag of raw pistachios, and sat. “Carrots, honey, lemon, and celery. Andy said you were loving all things carrot.”
Andy was my partner in juice crimes. She was the only one who appreciated a decent cold-pressed juice in this office, and she often spoiled me with some of her homemade creations.
One glance at the label on the bottle and I knew Shannon dropped at least ten dollars on this juice. She probably sent her assistant, Tom, to get it from the Kendall Square café, but it was the thought that counted.
“Thank you,” I said. A glance at my glucose monitor showed I was damn close to setting off the low blood sugar alarms, so I dug into the juice first. “I was going to stop for lunch soon.”
“You can’t be skipping meals. I’m going to have Tom start placing a lunch order for you every day. You’re going to get yourself sick,” she said.
I hadn’t been taking care of myself, not the way I should. But Shannon didn’t need to know that.
“Save the nutrition lecture for another day, Shannon.”
“Fine.” She paused, took a breath, and continued on. “I’m sorry about the ASNE event. It’s the only event I’ll miss this season.”
I thought about her comment while I plowed through a handful of pistachios, and realized it was ridiculous for my big sister to escort me to these events.
“Actually, skip them all,” I said. “I’m sure you have better things to do.”
For as long as I could remember, she had been the ranking female figure in my life. I could dump my problems on her and she’d sort them out, gathering them and placing them in an order that made sense. I’d spend all day winding up issues in my head, letting them build and strengthen until they were little cyclones, and she’d walk every single one of them back.
My role was equally well-established. I helped her select reasonable clothing—her taste was atrocious, and left to her own devices, she’d wander the streets in cable knit ponchos and purple culottes—and managed her online dating profiles. We ate brunch together most Sundays, then spent the afternoon hitting open houses throughout the city.
My siblings claimed Shannon coddled me, and that I disproportionately sided with her in business, but we shared a bond they’d never understand. We were both exiled, refugees from our own father.
He detested all of us, but Shannon and I took the lion’s share of his wrath.
Angus kicked her out before she finished high school. He invented reasons to hate her, but most of all, it was because she was our mother in every way possible, and he was set on destroying every memory. It was easier to tear Shannon down than live with the reminder of Mom. He did the same thing to Erin, but he also liked beating the shit out of her.
He evicted me the summer before college. He was convinced of my homosexuality—despite my earnest efforts at losing my virginity to a woman—and wouldn’t tolerate that kind of sin any longer. He clung to the gay piece as the focal point of my expulsion, but in all reality, he abhorred everything about me.
For nearly a decade, Shannon and I learned to live with his torment and abuse, shielding each other from the worst. But over the summer, things started changing.
She seemed distant and distracted, and became aggressively defensive when I called her on it. We’d never kept much of anything from each other, but now we were relative strangers.
She peered at me, her expression turning sour. “Is this about Angus?”
“What? No. No, this has nothing to do with him, and if it’s the same to you, I’d rather we not continue bringing him up.”
That fucker was good and dead, and we needed to stop resurrecting his memory every twenty minutes.
“That sounds like it’s definitely about Angus.”
“Shan, stop trying to psychoanalyze everything I say. I have a shit ton of designs to finish today, and I need to get my ass on the treadmill tonight, and then I’m going out. Thank you for lunch, but unless there’s something else, we’re finished with this conversation.”
She tapped her finger to her lips and sat quietly while I emptied the bag of pistachios and drained the juice. She was probably watching to confirm that I was, in fact, eating.
“There’s one more thing. Something I hope will make you happy.”
