She picks up the grinder, carries it to the sink, and dumps the beans.
“Margot, you didn’t—”
My voice is drowned out by the roar of the garbage disposal.
“Now,” she says after shutting off the disposal. “I need some stuff for the cookout today, so why don’t you come with me, and we can get some delicious coffee house lattes on the way?”
“Um, okay,” I sniff and wipe my eyes again. “Just give me a minute to get out of my pajamas.”
“Pfft,” says Margot, dismissing me with a wave of her hand. “Just do what I did, throw a sweatshirt on, and some flipflops.”
Sure enough, Margot is wearing pajama pants, a lightweight sweatshirt with no hood, and flipflops. Granted, they all have designer labels, no doubt, and she looks like a million bucks in them. But the fact that she moves in the circles of the rich and famous but isn’t afraid to slum it to the store in her PJ’s makes me love my big sister even more.
“Yeah, okay. But I still need to get said sweatshirt from my room. And I’ll still have to walk two steps behind you, because I don’t own anything that would make me look that fabulous.”
“Nonsense. Now hurry up. I’ve just dumped our coffee down the garbage disposal, and I’m in severe caffeine withdrawal.”
Thankfully I get to my room without another run-in with Damon. I choose a raspberry colored long-sleeve shirt that makes me look like I actually intended to wear my pajamas to the grocery store and be cute about it, and head back down. Just as I reach the top of the stairs, I see Damon closing the front door behind him. I resist the urge to cry again. I’m going to get coffee with my sister, and everything is going to be alright.
6
Amanda
“Spill it,”demands Margot as we wait for our lattes.
Margot and Stirling had rented a car for the whole summer, so I hadn’t bothered. I tried to get her to turn into the first Starbucks we saw, but she made me hold out for a small local coffee shop she’d discovered. I’m a creature of habit, so I’m doubtful that it will be as good.
“It’s all my fault,” I say as I fidget with the zipper on my wallet.
“I seriously doubt that. I’m sure you share some of the blame, but it takes two to make—and break—a relationship.”
The barista buys me a little more time when he calls our names. I make a production of adding extra cream and some cinnamon to my latte at the condiment counter. When we finally get into the car, Margot shuts her door, shutting out the rest of the world. Suddenly I’m feeling claustrophobic.
“I’m not driving us to the grocery store until you tell me what happened between you and Damon,” she says.
“Like I said, he’s mad because I hit him in the nose—”
“Not,” she says pointedly, “in the kitchen this morning. You know what I mean. What happened to cause the breakup?”
I take a deep breath and begin: “I ended things abruptly one night at the height of our relationship. We’d never been closer, and things had never been better between us. There was no reason at all we should have split. And I let him think it was because I didn’t think he was good enough. Really, I was just afraid that Father would chew him up and spit him out. I didn’t want that for Damon—for us. But I never gave Damon the choice or the chance to decide whether or not being with me was worth facing the humiliation that Father would surely try to inflict on him.”
Margot stares straight ahead for a long moment before she finally starts the car.
“Alrighty, then,” she declares as she puts the car in reverse to back out of our parking space.
“I know. I fucked up royally.”
“I can’t blame you, though. As they say on ‘Chopped,’ great idea, poor execution. Your heart was in the right place, and you were trying to protect Damon. That alone is proof that you loved him.”
“Isn’t it ironic now, he’s become just the kind of man Father would have loved me to marry—rich and successful.”
Margot glances at me as she pulls out of the parking lot.
“But we both know that Damon is so much more than that. You can see it in his amazing artwork. And I for one would like to believe that that man is still in there somewhere, even if he is a coffee diva now dressed in designer clothes.”
“I guess we’ll never know,” I mumble, and take a gulp of my latte. I signal the end of this conversation by reaching over and turning on the radio. I don’t care what the station is as long as I don’t have to talk about this anymore right now.
We come back from the grocery store loaded down with more food than five of us could eat in a month, much less a holiday weekend.
