The door bounced off the frame and banged against the wall, muffling Shannon’s shouted curses as I stormed out. The walk to Café Vanille on Charles Street absorbed some of my nervous energy, and seeing Lauren’s sunny smile brought me down a few more degrees.
“I ordered you a roast beef sandwich.” She pointed to the table. “Sit down. Let’s talk.”
The bistro table was tiny, and I felt like a lowland gorilla as I settled into the wrought iron seat. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Start with why you decided to text me at four in the morning.”
“Sorry about that.” Another sleepless night. “Did Andy say anything to you this weekend? You guys went to the farmers’ market, right? Is that where she got that necklace, the one with the matching bracelets?”
Lauren nibbled her croissant and shook her head. “Not how this works, pal. You need a friend right now, and I can be your friend, but I’m not trading insider information.”
“I fucked up, Lauren. I fucked up everything, and she won’t forgive me, and she’s leaving.”
“You do love a good exaggeration, Patrick.” Lauren smiled and sipped her coffee. “Yeah, you fucked up, but it probably wasn’t everything. Maybe she’s not forgiving you at this moment, but it takes time to walk away from anger and hurt. You need to let her be angry, be hurt, and process things at her pace. Don’t deny her that unless you want her to stay a little angry and hurt forever, but be there when she’s ready to leave those pieces behind. And maybe she said she’s leaving. Is it possible she said that to lash out, to hurt you the way you hurt her?”
I stared at my plate and remembered the lunches spent with Andy. My stomach jolted with the realization I wasn’t simply in love with her. Andy was for me, and I was for her. I could go on living without Andy, but I was going to be one miserable son of a bitch.
Just like my father.
*
Andy’s head wasbent over her laptop. The whir of nail guns obscured my footsteps and she didn’t notice me in the doorway. I set the iced green tea beside her notebook and said, “I’m sorry. I’ll do anything.”
She edged the cup away with the back of her hand, and kept her eyes on the screen. Minutes passed without response while I stared at her, waiting. I couldn’t access the memory of her skin against mine, and as I saw my Andy-less life unfolding before my eyes, an agitated, screaming howl formed in my chest.
I ran to the attic, ducked under the low, exposed beam ceiling, and burst through the door. With my hands braced on the roof deck railing, I gasped for breath. It was sunny and warm, and lilacs perfumed the air, but it might as well have been rain clouds. I was that miserable.
The door squealed behind me, and Matt appeared at my side, his knuckles white around his phone. “What are you doing up here?” he asked.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “What areyoudoing up here?”
He leaned forward and studied my face. “Your eye is twitching. If I had to guess, I’d say that’s a problem.”
A bitter laugh rumbled up from my chest. “Eye twitching isn’t my biggest problem. I’m in the middle of some kind of mental collapse, and it’s all I can do to not punch holes in walls.”
“Oh, me too, that’s great,” he said dryly. “We can lose our shit together. I can’t think of a better plan.”
Matt was the calm one. If there was a bomb to diffuse, I wanted Matt doing it. He mediated the worst of Shannon and Erin’s disputes, and every time Angus went balls to the wall asshat, Matt was our man. Seeing his head jerking in a spastic bob and his eyes erratic, I squinted in concern. His shit was long lost. “What’s your problem?”
“Lauren’s brothers are flying in Thursday night. The Navy SEALs. They’ve been off the grid for a few months. Top secret missions. Naturally.” He gestured to his phone. “They’re going to show up, and they’re going to take one look at me, and they’re going to know their baby sister is my little fuck doll, and they’re going to make my body disappear after the greatest hits of black site torture.”
That did sound bad. “Can’t we just get them some hookers?”
“We do that kind of shit now?” Matt croaked, his hands running through his hair and tugging it until he looked freshly electrocuted. “When did we become the kind of guys who hirehookers? I don’t even know where tofinda hooker.”
“I don’t know, I figured Nick knew something about that,” I said. “It was a bad idea.”
“You think? And that’s not the end of my problems. Erin’s definitely coming. She’s taking a red-eye flight from Rome, and arriving here Friday. I’ve been asking her for months, and I haven’t seen her in so long, and I’m so happy that she’s coming but the idea of Erin and Shannon under a tent at my wedding makes me throw up in my mouth. Shannon doesn’t know yet, and when she finds out, she’ll probably kill me, or ditch the wedding altogether.”
I wish I could remember the argument that precipitated the schism between Erin and Shannon, but it was going on five years and the details were blurry. Shannon definitely had a point-by-point inventory of Erin’s offenses. They were too much alike, and they pushed up against the wrong parts of each other.
Whatever it was, my sisters hadn’t spoken in years and Erin required the distance of an entire ocean to cool off while she worked on her doctorate in Europe.
“I got it,” I murmured. “Let’s stick Erin and Shannon on Lauren’s brothers. Make the girls responsible for keeping you alive.”
“And Lauren can tell them to keep Shannon and Erin apart.” He nodded. “Okay. That might work. Does that mean we’re pimping out Erin and Shan?”
I pressed the palms of my hands against my eyes and groaned. “What they do with two SEALs on leave isn’t my concern. It’s not like they don’t know how to rip off some testicles when needed.”
