She sizes him up. “You remember who won when we wrestled?” she asks, and he looks to the ground.
“You know what? We don’t have to relive that. And come on, I clearly—”
“Say you let me win, and I’ll hand Roger to Scott so we can go again.”
He presses his lips together, and I have to laugh. Kate might be a lot of things, but she was never afraid of stepping up to a challenge or wrestling with one of us when we thought we were so much bigger and stronger than she was. And what she may have lacked in strength, she always made up for with ruthless determination.
It’s one of the things I’ve always admired about her.
And as much as I know this tragedy is killing her, I know she’s strong, she’ll beat this, and somehow she’ll find a way to spin this whole situation into gold.
Kate leads us into the house. She already has a stack of boxes piled up in her fully-furnished den. Jordan takes those while Scott and I carry larger pieces of furniture—things Kate purchased during her marriage or ones that belong to our family.
We’ll be taking most of this stuff over to a storage unit Kate’s renting until she can find a place to stay permanently, which I hope is sooner than later. I’ve mentioned that if she needs any financial help, she just needs to let me know, that I’m more than happy to help in whatever way I can. I’m lucky to have such a good job. What’s the point of having this kind of success if I can’t use it to help my own sister out of a crappy situation?
As Scott and I carry a sofa up the basement stairs, I note how easy it is to do this with him. Like in the bedroom, we read each other’s nonverbal cues amazingly well. Either of us are able to lead without too many issues, and when they come up, we solve them fairly quickly.
We reach the top of the stairs, and I enter the hallway before I say, “Shit. We’re not going to have room to turn.”
“Prop it up on its side and then we’ll roll it and carry it up that way.”
It looks like it’ll be close, but someone got it down here somehow, so I figure we might as well try. We position it on its side, and he says, “Now step down on that first step and grab it at the bottom.”
“Trust me,” I say as I obey, “I’m not worried about topping.”
He chuckles. “You conceited motherfucker.”
He stands on the steps, sweat rushing down his forehead. There’s a patch of sweat in the middle of the tight gray t-shirt he wears. It’s too small for him—in just the right way, hugging close so that it’s effortless for me to keep picturing what his body looks like.
“We make a pretty good team,” I tell him. “Wonder if there’s a correlation with why we have such fucking hot sex.”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that. Now I’m about to push it toward you, okay?”
We finish carrying it into the hallway, Scott’s arms trembling, clearly wearing down from all the work we’ve put into this.
“You good?” I ask.
“As gold.”
15
Damn, this is getting tough.
My neck feels tense from when I pushed the couch up to him on the stairs.
I should ask for a break, but I can take a breather once we finish.
As we make it into the kitchen, a sharp pinch in my neck catches me off-guard.
“Fuck!”
“You okay?”
“Fine.” But as soon as I say that, the sensation intensifies before I start screaming out, “Fuck, fuck!”
We set the couch down as the pain radiates in my neck. I press my hand on it.
I’ve pulled it and effectively blown my whole reason for being here.
