Where the hell is ugly shirt man?
“It’s not happenin’,” I whisper, stepping back, pulling the usual nonchalance back into my features. “Clearly, you haven’t seen my brother when he’s angry,” I add with a wink, registering my brother zeroing in on us.
“Or I have, and I just don’t care,” he says. My eyes dip to his mouth without my permission. He sees it, that cockiness broadening his shoulders in real time, and I briskly turn away.
“Well maybe I’m just not into you,” I tell him, leaning across the table as I try to sink a solid green. A curse flies out of my mouth when I fail.
“Sure,” he says, dipping his head low to whisper right in my fucking ear. To my dismay, Ishiverjust before he rights himself, busying himself with lining up his next shot.
“Thought you got lost in the toilet,” Granthuffs as he swipes at the profuse amount of smoke in the back corner of the bar. “Can you smoke indoors?”
“Don’t be such a Debbie Downer. Live a little,” I tell him as I shove the stick into his chest, sneaking off toward the dance floor before Andrew says another infuriating thing.
2
Sloane
“Sloane, shut that damn thing off!” Grant bellows from somewhere in the apartment and I blindly feel around the coffee table from where I lay on the couch, trying to find my phone without fully committing to opening my eyes.
The irritation in his voice, that he doesn’t bother to hide, is confusing because were it not forme, Genevieve Dupont wouldn’t have graced our presence at that dingy bar the other night. More gratitude—that’s what I’d like for shoving him toward the woman of his dreams. She walked into the room and he calmed down entirely. Returned to who I know he really can be, just by being near her. It shocked me, and, well I wouldn’t say this to Grant because he’s far too practical and not nearly whimsical enough to really get it, but I feel like I’ve known her forever. Felt it when we spun each other around the dance floor until we were dizzy, that there’d always been a part of my heart waiting for her to get here.
But maybe my brother does feel that way. I wouldn’t know because getting him to open up about anything feels like all thetimes I siphoned gasoline from Clemmie’s neighbor’s car. Slow and painful, with the intermittent taste of poison. I’ll think I’m getting somewhere with him but make the wrong move and he’ll seize up. Try to distract from the point at hand.
Like Connie. Or Genevieve.
Somehow, we’ve managed to focus far more on my life in San Francisco than anything else, which is extremely inconvenient because I’m actively trying to forget so much of it. Gen’s managed to get me a job at the Boston Conservatory where she dances. It should help; I’m hoping it helps. Not painting has, I’m sure,notbeen helping me move on from Elliot and all my mess.
Connie’s treatment plan will be finalized today, so I imagine most of my weeks will be spent with her if she’ll allow it, but even my early attempts to just catch up were met with push back. And I get it: she’s sick. But I want to be there for her, came all this way to do just that.
My alarm goes off again.
“Sloane!” Grant’s voice comes again. Really, he needs a muzzle. “I’m grabbin’ breakfast at Vida’s with Ben if you can get it together in the next—” he pauses. “—ten minutes.”
I’d rather poke pins in my eyes than watch the rich kids of Astor Hill kiki at their glorified dining hall. It’s not that I’m a stranger to grotesque levels of wealth. Growing up with Evie and Beau, it was almost unavoidable. But the art scene in San Francisco had been such a breath of fresh air after all that, and to come back here to more of it? My nausea pitches just at the thought.
A bunch of nepo babies, walkin’ around with Daddy’s credit card.
“Aren’t you just describin’ yourself?” my brother mumbles from the kitchen, I think.
I didn’t realize I’d said that out loud. The curtainsprotecting me from the blistering sun are wrenched open, and I fling my arm across my face in a panic.
“Grant!” I try to chuck a pillow toward him, but it just rattles the wall art instead. “If that’s what I am, what does that make you?” I stick my tongue out, forcing myself into a more upright position only to find that my head is throbbing.
A pair of painkillers and a glass of water are shoved in my direction across the coffee table, and I look up to find my brother sternly glaring at me, arms crossed like he’s looking at a fugitive. Like somehow, he knows my one chief aim in life right now is convincing him to repair his relationship with Connie. I already know what’s coming, and I’m by no means prepared to navigate the mine field that is Grant Fielder. My brother, with the cross he bears and his holier than thou attitude, is theworstperson to peer pressure into anything.
Grant, come try this cigarette.Glare.
Come on, Beau and Evie left the liquor cabinet open.Eyebrow raise.
Xavier has the keys to the rec center. Either come or keep your mouth shut.He stayed home.
For all his perfectionism, he’s also the only person I’d actually trust with my life; I know that at the end of the day, he would risk life and limb for me. Would wreak havoc on anyone who messed with me.
And this is how I know he’ll fight this hard, how I know he’ll either shut down or blow up on me rather than have a normal conversation if I even mention Connie wanting to see him. He closed that door a long time ago and I know, by the death stare he’s serving me, that he’s going to do anything to keep it that way. Not just because he stopped trusting our birth mother years ago, but because he’ll think he’s protecting me. He’ll be right, I’ll be wrong, and that’ll be the whole story.
God, he has a savior complex.
But if there’s one thing Idoknow, it’s that slow and steady really does win the race. I’ll wear him down with my good graces and more good behavior than he can ever imagine. He’ll trust me, and once he does, he’ll see her. I know it.
