I exhale. “Any one he’d ask,” I admit, keeping my gaze steady on hers as I force myself to be honest. “He wanted me to watch Sloane.”
It’s ripped out of me, her name is; it’s been embedded in the bloody, jagged mess of my mistakes, haphazardly hung in the midst of it, always on the edge of skittering to the ground. But I say it, I say the truth even though the force of it is a wound in itself.
“And did you?” Mom asks, wringing her hands so weathered from years of using them to hold this small house together. I can’t help but notice how deftly she always has, how the gentle firmness of her guidance right now is something I took from her when I decided to lock her out of my struggles, when I decided to struggle for her.
I shake my head, my breath still shaky in my chest. “No. I couldn’t. I, uh…” I swallow hard, flicking my gaze up to hers from where my head hangs. “Ian helped me. A lot. He’s my…brother,” I tell her, voice cracking on the word, and her eyes lit up, fresh tears welling in her eyes.
“Oh,” she croons, squeezing my hand in her hers. “Andrew, I should’ve told you. You deserved to know everything and I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want things to change even more. Especially after Luis.” She rolls her lips together, shaking her head. “How is he?” she asks of Ian, and the familiarity of the question sends warmth, rather than sadness, through me.
“Funny. Really…fucking kind,” I chuckle, sniffing back tears.
“Language,” she smiles, and I hear the soft patter of rain as it begins to fall in the early spring sky. Dusk begins to spread, a golden glow cracking across the landscape through the mist of the shower, and I’m reminded of Christmas. Of the snow, of the roof—of Sloane.
“I messed up with her.” I don’t need to say who; my mother turns towards me, head knocking to the side as assesses me with soft intensity. “I pulled away. My…Glenn threatened you. And Carm. And I didn’t want to but I pulled away because I couldn’t stand to lie to her.”
“So don’t,” she says, like it’s the obvious thing. The easiest thing in the world. “Honey…you can’t mold everything in this world with your own two hands. It’s not up to you to save Sloane from a feeling. Or me, or Carm for that matter. You be honest, you show up, and what’s meant to be will be.”
“I can’t…” I grimace, molars grinding. “She has so much going on. She doesn’t need…all of this.” What I don’t say is that the thought of Sloane seeing me, who I really am beneath all the lies, scares the shit out of me. That ripping back the curtain and giving her a front row seat to all the ways I’ve fucked everyone over wouldn’t just ruin us—that’s the likely conclusion to all of this anyway. No, what I don’t want is to shatter whatever illusion Sloane still has about this life. The magic and the whimsy, the way she swears there’s a point to all of this? I want that for her. I always want that for her.
Like she can hear the turmoil in my mind, my mom shifts in her seat. “She doesn’t need you to be perfect. None of us do.”
“Mommy,” Carm’s voice comes from down the hallway, timid and uncertain. “Is…is everything okay?”
When I turn, there’s that tell tale panic laced in her gaze, and I hate that we’ve scared her like this. Thrown her back into the hazy memories she has from after her dad died.
“Yes, sweetie. Your brother’s just…figuring out what to do about Sloane,” she says, reducing all of this to the only part that really matters. Carm drops all sense of immediate panic, her eyes shifting into pure anticipation.
“I knew something was wrong! What did you do, you ding-dong?” She leaps over to us, crashing into the small wedge of space between us on the couch. She narrows her eyes, concerned. “Are youcrying?”
My laughter grates out of me, my chest rumbling with emotional exhaustion as I ruffle her hair. “Yeah, actually. I am. You should try it sometime.” It’s not something either of us really do.
“So what happened?” she demands to know as my mom loops an arm around her and tugs her close. “She’s grumpy, and you’re crying, and—why aren’t you at her show?” Carm’s eyes go wide as she shoves herself off the couch, exasperated.
“Shit,” I still, before checking the time. “No, it starts…fuck. In thirty minutes.”
“Language!” they both bemoan, but Carm’s is cut off by her giggle. Mom brushes her hand down my arm in silent solidarity, and I don’t need to say a thing.
I just get up, and go.
39
Andy
It’s just far enough that in the downpour, I’m late. I hear the rain splatter with each hurried step I take, only for a flapping banner, hung in the entry, to stop me cold in my tracks. A name and a face—that’s all it takes for every word I mulled over on the ride here to turn to dust. In the screen printed line up of judges is one of a man, maybe in his forties, maybe older, with eyes that laugh at you through the invisible lens, and his name is Elliot Walker.
Mouth open, I only faintly register the rain that falls on my lips as my mind is wrenched back to every time Sloane mentioned this guy, scouring the memory for a hint of…anything. Dread drips in my veins, gathers in my chest at the idea that she maybe wanted him here, that maybe she pushed against the idea of us because she was still attached to the idea of him—this man who hired the worst of the worst to watch her. To make sure she didn’t step out of whatever arbitrary line he’d drawn around her.
But the thought doesn’t sit right, feels…flimsy and routed in the impulse I still have to run. And I don’t want to do that—don’t want to make choices out of fear. Not anymore.
I push against the door and it drags open, the sound behind it rushing over me as I struggle to find Sloane in the sea of attendees. Delicately illustrated canvases engulf the walls, only leaving small gaps for pale moonlight to bleed through. Spot lights rest above each of them, so that the room feels pocketed with small scenes of life unfolding under the blanket of night.
The familiar breadth of Grant’s shoulders registers from well across the hall, along with Will’s intensely furrowed brows. He drops his gaze to the ground before picking it back up, shaking his head as Gen emerges from a joining hallway, clasping Grant’s forearm, trying to tug him away. Will opens his mouth to speak, but suddenly wires it shut, his nose flaring and I fight the urge to move toward him, to stop whatever turmoil is about to unravel, because I’m not here for any of that.
Angst pulses beneath my skin as I scan the room for her again, my gaze snagging on Jean standing near a high top, his face strained, eyes dark as he furiously speaks to a man in the shadows, who stands just outside of a portrait’s halo. When Jean steps toward him, out of the darkness, a curse flies from my mouth, my neck turning hot, and the rooms begins to suffocate me, is like a?—
“About fucking time,” Olivia says, appearing beside me, her cold hands on my wrist grounding me. I pull in a breath, push a measured breath out. “Where have you been?”
She searches my face like she’ll find an answer, but instead finds something wholly indigestible. I know, because she scoffs, glancing away, the perceptiveness that’s made her a good journalist reading me in under a second.
