‘That happens a lot, doesn’t it?’
‘Three separate sets of families nearby. I’m the ever-reliable brother. Plus, I’m happy to do it.’
Happy-ish would be more accurate. He has found himself bristling lately. He dislikes this about himself. He likes being reliable; it’s an expression of love.
‘Okay,’ she says. She takes a sip of her flat white – a performative sip, surely, as she must have finished it by now. A pause, he guesses, for dramatic effect, or to give him a chance to re-evaluate what he’s just said.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Nothing.’
If there’s one thing Alex has learned in his short time on this earth, it’s that when a woman saysnothing, that is almost never what she means. He chews on the inside of his cheek, considering whether to pursue this any further.
‘Come on,’ he says at last. ‘Tell me what you’re thinking.’
She takes a deep breath, as if preparing for something intense. He braces for impact.
‘It just seems like your family maybe takes you for granted a little bit.’
He leaps to their defence, as he always does – as a loyal brother should. ‘I don’t get that sense.’
‘When was the last time someone in your family did something for you?’
‘Oh, they do all the time.’
In that moment, though, he’s unable to think of a specific example. His sister Jen planned his last booklaunch, but that was more than four years ago at this point. And he used to get invitations to dinner all the time, but he can’t remember when that last happened without it being linked in some way to babysitting or another favour. He opens his mouth again, hoping something will come out, but it doesn’t. He closes his mouth again.
‘When you were in the US, they just had to cope, right? Figure things out without you?’
‘There were fewer nieces and nephews then. Life was easier.’
‘Oh, so before nieces and nephews, they never asked you for anything?’
She is backing him into a corner, and he isn’t sure why. Where is she going with this? He wishes he hadn’t opened up to her about the frustrations of family. About being the Reuben, the boringly reliable older brother.
‘I worry about you,’ she says. Her voice is gentle, her brow furrowed with compassion, but the words don’t land gently. ‘I worry that you let your family take advantage of you too much.’
‘Yeah, well.’ His voice is louder than he intends. ‘At least Ihavea relationship with my family.’
The instant the words are out of his mouth, all he wants to do is take them back. Jess winces, bites her lip. He is mortified, devastated. Here he is, having done the very thing he was trying to avoid by not getting too close: hurt her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, but it’s too late. Her eyes are filling. ‘I didn’t mean it.’
‘I think you did,’ she says.
He wishes she were wrong. A high-pitched sound rings in his ear: the sound of panic. What to do, what to do? How to make this better? He doesn’t know. He’s ruined everything. He has to go.
‘I have to go,’ he says, gathering up his things. Maybe she’ll think the emergency babysitting is now. Let her think that. He’ll figure it out later. For now, he needs to get out of here, before he forgets how to breathe.
Chapter Thirty-One
Jess
What on earth just happened? Jess can’t quite figure it out. One minute they were talking, then he erupted, like a bubbling volcano that had been waiting for a slight shift in the earth. She doesn’t know him well enough to have noticed the bubbling, she supposes. She also clearly doesn’t know him well enough to know how hurtful he is capable of being, how he is able to wield her own fears and hurts against her. Besides which, he is wrong: shedoeshave a relationship with her family. Maybe it looks different from other families, but it still counts. She loves her grandparents; they’ve always been there for her. She tries not to think about their age, about the fact that they won’t be around forever.
And yeah, sure, she hates being an only child. Always has done. Sometimes, growing up, she’d wake up panicking at her grandparents’ house, thinking maybe this was the time her mum wouldn’t come back for her, that she’d be having too much fun to remember she had a daughter and a life in London. Or, worse, that she’d remember, but choose the fun over the daughter and the life in London. At thosetimes, she wished she could nudge a sibling awake and share the anxiety with them. Lily always tells her that it’s not like that between sisters, that half the time she and Anna ignored each other or fought, and that if Anna had woken her up in the middle of the night, she probably would have told her to shut up and just go back to sleep, but even that seems preferable to and more companiable than the dark and the loneliness. She can’t imagine a sibling being cold-hearted enough to ignore her as she quietly sobbed into her pillow. When the iPad came out, she begged her mother for one, and her mother, at some level wracked with guilt, complied. Problem solved: in the middle of the night, she didn’t have to cry anymore. Instead, she could download episodes of her favourite shows and laugh quietly into her pillow. The downside was that she didn’t always feel great the next day at school – but she probably wouldn’t have felt great if she’d been up crying half the night, either.
But now, Alex has made her face the pain she’s been running from her whole life. Keep moving, keep working, and when she’s not working, she’s having fun – snowboarding with Lily, planning a weekend retreat with her book club, binge-watchingParks and Recreation. Writing had seemed like another fun activity, another fun challenge, but Alex has ruined that, too. Writing now seems to be a place of vulnerability, where the areas that feel tender are poked at and prodded.
