I shake my head. I’ve never been much of a crier but I have to pause for a moment to catch my breath. “She said...she felt like I wasn’t there for her,” I say. “Last night. Her mom is sick with the same thing Mom had and...fuck, I don’t even know if she’s okay.”
I rub the heels of my hands into my eyes as a headache starts to build. The restaurant is suddenly too loud.
“She said, if I had been there for her last night none of this would have happened. We wouldn’t have been caught. And... I don’t know, maybe she’s right? I was ignoring her. I ignored her, when she needed me, because I was pissed at her for not coming to Amy’s party. It was so petty. Who the fuck does that?”
Jeremy winces over a sip of his Bloody Mary. “Are you, like, asking me my opinion?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I just... I hate that she’s hurting.” My chest aches. “But you know, she said some really shitty stuff to me, too,” I say, on a wave of indignation.
“Like what?” he asks around an enormous bite of waffle.
“Like...” I follow a dent in the wood with my fingernail. “I was a mistake.”
Jeremy nods, like he agrees with the general shittiness of such a comment. “Do you think she meant it? Or was she just...” He shakes his hands, his arms, his head, a quietahhhhcoming from his open mouth. The woman on his other side leans away as she scowls at him over her shoulder. “Totally panicking?” Jeremy asks.
I shrug again. “Maybe she meant it.” Even as I say it, I don’t really believe it. She meant to hurt me because she was hurting and scared. But the way she looked at me every moment before that one, she didn’t see me as a mistake. She needed me.
I think she might even love me.
“Maybe... I don’t really care if she did.” The words make me a little sick. “That sounds...screwed up, I know. I just... After the last two years, and losing Mom, I felt like I needed something to go right for me. And she...she was the one thing that felt right. Even if it was wrong. Even if we weren’t supposed to be together. I want that back.” I can’t hide the aching in my voice. “I want her back.”
Jeremy tosses his napkin on his plate. He seems to have scarfed down his meal. I worry for his digestion. I rest my head in my hands, staring down at my cold food. The Hollandaise sauce has congealed into a yellow blob.
“Can I tell you something about my friend Wesley?” he asks.
I huff out a laugh. “Yeah, sure.”
“You’ve always been defined by someone else.”
I sit back in my stool. “That seems...unnecessarily rude.”
“I don’t define you that way. That’s whatyoudo. You think of yourself as Amy’s brother. Your mom’s nurse. And you probably thought of yourself as Corrine’s assistant, and then Corrine’s lover. You define yourself in relation to other people,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Maybe you need to define yourself by, you know...” He shrugs. “You. You’re always going to feel lost,” Jeremy says. “If you don’t know who you are.”
“Since when did you become so wise?” I ask, mostly to distract myself from the sudden urge to cry.
He lifts one shoulder. “I started going to therapy after Angie and me broke up. It’s given me...perspective.”
“So... I shouldn’t try to win her back?”
“I don’t know.” He sounds wary. “She sounds a little mean, to be honest.”
I smile. “She kind of is. But...it’s like, her protection. It’s not real, you know?”
He studies me. “You’re kind of gone for this girl.”
I shake my head. “She’s definitely a woman.”
“Chambers.” He shakes me by the shoulder. “You’re smart and kind and honestly I’m impressed you hooked up with your boss because I never really thought you had it in you.”
He’s right. I can’t even bring myself to be offended. “I didn’t either. Amy and I went as each other’s dates to junior prom,” I remind him. He snorts a laugh but quickly composes himself.
“Because Amy wasn’t out yet,” Jeremy counters.
I laugh. “But also she’s still my sister and mostly because I was too much of a chicken to ask the girl I really wanted to take. And remember that time I punched myself in my own eyeball asking Talia out in college?”
He winces. “Oh yeah. That was a train wreck.” He rubs his own eye. “But she said yes.” He points at me triumphantly.
“That was a sympathy yes.” We all knew that.
