“I don’t want to be a bug, David. I can make up my own bed.”
I stop short. “Your own bed?” I laugh again. She thinks I’d let her sleep on a fucking couch?
“I know I can be a thoughtless asshole, but you’re family, Bea. And anyway, I basically kidnapped you; I’m not making you crash on the fucking couch. Your bed is in there.” I gesture to the bedroom door. “I’ll make up the couch for myself later.” I turn my back on her and head around the island into the kitchen, and grab a beer from the fridge. “Want one?” I offer.
Should I be offering her a beer? She’s only eighteen, but we all drank whenever we wanted as freshmen. Who am I kidding, we did it in high school, too. But Beth is still Beth. She’s still Cap’s little sister, even if the more time I spend with her away from him, the easier it is to forget why she’s off limits.
“No thanks,” she murmurs, and proceeds to grab herself a water bottle from the fridge. “If I’m going to stay here, I’m not going to be waited on like some guest.”
Ooh, my assertive little rebel has a point to make. I chew the inside of my cheek to fight my smirk.
“And I can’t steal your bed, David. If I were Sammy—”
I hold up my hand. “If you were your brother, there wouldn’t be some sicko fucking stalking you.” Or there might, because Cap has definitely had his share of overzealous chicks. We all have. But the difference is Cap, me—we can take care of ourselves.
But I know Beth well enough not to articulate my silent elaboration. The dumbest thing I could do right now is to make her feel inferior because of her age or gender. But what she doesn’t understand is that it isn’t about inferiority. It’s about value. It’s not just that she needs protecting, it’s that she’s worth protecting.
Beth’s lips lift into a small smile. “They wouldn’t dare fuck with Sammy. Rory would kick their skinny asses.”
I smile. Also true. Cap’s girl, the one who suddenly showed up halfway through our senior year and converted him from infamous teenaged playboy into love-struck, doting boyfriend, is a fucking badass.
Beth takes a swig of her water bottle, her eyes skating into the living room, back onto that damned couch. And I get it. She wouldn’t be Beth if she wasn’t reluctant to kick a man out of his own bed. If she wasn’t ready and willing to forgo her own comfort for that of someone she cares about.
My chest swells with warmth. I know she cares about me, and owning the affection, sisterly or not, of someone like Beth…it’s not something I take for granted.
“You have dinner?” I ask, partly to get her attention off the damned sofa, and partly because I’m fucking hungry.
Her cheeks heat with a telltale blush, and I wonder what it’s about. “No, I just had coffee.”
Well, that explains nothing. “I’ll order from Mama Nona’s. You want to see the menu?”
Beth shrugs. “I’ll just eat whatever you get.”
I tell her I’m just going to have some pizza, and, predictably, she asks for extra cheese. I tell her to make herself at home and ask her to give me a minute, which I use to straighten up the bedroom and change the sheets for her. When I emerge, Beth is sitting on the floor of my living room, books sprawled out on my coffee table, furiously jotting down notes.
I smile. I want her to feel like it’s her home, too. The more comfortable she is, the less awkward it will be.
I sit on the corner of the sofa—my new bed—and pick up my copy of Angels In America, delving back into “Millennium Approaches” both for my playwright class and because Tony Kushner is a fucking genius.
The buzzer rings, announcing our pizza’s arrival, and I realize that the last half hour passed by in what feels like a single breath. I glance at Beth. I’ve never experienced such comfortable quiet with another girl, and I wonder if it’s another sisterly thing, or it it’s simply a Beth thing.
I buzz the delivery guy in, and he’s at our door a minute later.
Beth asks if I mind if she studies while we eat. I don’t, and I down three slices while I read ahead of my assignment—something I’ve done my whole life, but never would have admitted to in high school.
Beth finally closes and packs up her books around ten, and I close Angels and set it back on the side table. I take a peek inside the pizza box to check how much she ate, and she glares at me in accusation. I grimace, caught. She hates being checked after, and I make a mental note to be more subtle about it in the future.
Because I can’t just let it go. I will never forget the version of her destroyed by that scumbag, Brian Falco. How much weight she lost when she was already barely a hundred pounds soaking wet, how she stopped changing out of sweats, or washing her hair, for that matter. But it was more than the obvious physical changes. It was her spirit. It was like the light drained from her eyes just as surely as the color from her cheeks.
I tried to help her. Even if it wasn’t really my place. Especially not after my role in the whole clusterfuck. But I couldn’t bear to see her that way. Still, no matter how many words of encouragement I offered, how many books I dropped off for her when she wasn’t feeling well enough to even come down from her bedroom, or how many texts I sent, she just seemed to spiral further and further into an abyss of misery until she wasn’t even her anymore.
I don’t even know what happened in the end. Supposedly her mom and Cap finally just had enough, and they intervened and got her help. I suspect there’s something I haven’t been told, some detail too personal to discuss in front of someone considered like family, but not actually family. Someone who, when all is said and done, isn’t bound to Beth by anything more than a lifelong friendship with her brother and the friendship of our parents.
“I ate two slices.” She lets the sarcasm drip from her tone. “Happy?”
I ignore her snark. “So who did you have coffee with tonight?” I ask.
She composes her startle quickly, but I don’t miss it. Her eyes flit from mine to her books, deliberating between truth and lies. But when her gaze meets mine again, and her deep blue eyes gleam guileless and anxious, I know before she speaks I’m about to get a truth I’m not going to like.
