“Well, Vail, it sounds like you’ve got yourself a situation,” he said.
“Aren’t we a pair?”
We seemed to be.
“I don’t know what to do. How did you trust yourself enough to even try with Laird?” Dallas was one of the only people in the world who had grown up the way I had and knew where I was coming from. One of the only people whose advice I would actually trust.
Our entrées arrived, but I wasn’t interested in the food. I picked up my fork and pretended to eat anyway.
Dallas cut into his steak salad. “It took a long time. A lot of us hooking up and me telling myself it was only going to happen one time, in spite of it happening regularly. I really put him through the ringer and I don’t know why he stuck around. I’ll probably never understand what he sees in me. But love, when it finds you…well, it has a tendency to make you change your mind about things.”
His smile made little lines crinkle around his eyes. He really was happy. Anyone could see it.
That made sense. For him. Dallas hadn’t lived full-time with our mother. His father had actually wanted partial custody, so he’d been gone a lot. My father didn’t want me, so I only had our mother. Things were different for him. She was different with him. She didn’t raise her son like she raised her daughter.
“You love him? Youreallylove him?” I asked.
He smiled and nodded. “I do. More every day. I wake up next to him every morning and I feel so…lucky. If he hadn’t made the first move, if he hadn’t been persistent and forced me to look at myself, I don’t know where I’d be. I like who I am with him.”
That last sentence hit me between the eyes. NowthatI understood. I liked the version of myself I was with Lea. Even though she forces me to think about uncomfortable things. Even though she yanks out all these difficult feelings that I’m used to pretending don’t exist. Being with her is a challenge, but I think… I think I need it. I needher.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
“Too many things,” I said, turning my attention to my chicken and citrus salad.
“You can talk to me, you know. We may not know each other as well as we should, but I am still your older brother. Or, I’d like to be. If you’d let me.”
A very loud part of me, who had always wanted my big brother, had always wanted him to be my protector, wanted to scream and say yes.
The more cautious part of me couldn’t trust this. Didn’t want to trust it because what if he was lying? What if he changed his mind? What if this was a trick? It was going to take more than him coming out to me and talking about his boyfriend over lunch for me to believe it.
“I would like that. But I need time. And…and I need to get through this wedding.”
He didn’t appear upset that I didn’t immediately agree.
“We’ll get through it together. And you said that Lea is coming with you? Allegra won’t like that.” He’d been calling our mother by her first name.
“No, she won’t, which is why I’m doing it. I can’t stop her from marrying him, but I can make her wedding uncomfortable, which is almost better.”
He laughed. “Laird will get a kick out of it. He really wanted to come with me. Maybe…maybe we can come up this summer together and have a visit. I know he’d like to see his parents. They’ve been really great about everything.”
We spent the rest of the time talking about his life and my narration job and before I knew it, we’d been sitting together for hours. I had never talked to my brother for that long in my life.
Outside the restaurant, he held his arms out for a hug. I stepped toward him, letting him enfold me in the scent of clean linen and the same cologne he’d always worn.
“Say hi to Laird for me,” I told him.
“I will. And I’ll see you at the wedding. If it gets too bad, I have a rental car so we can make an escape.” It didn’t hurt to have a backup plan.
He hugged me again.
“It’s really good to see you, Vail.”
“It was really good to see you too.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lea
