This is one of the very many subtle differences between Nash and me. He calls hockey work. I never have. Everyone sees the blatant differences, like how I'm tattooed and he's not. My eyes are a lighter shade of hazel. I like to keep my hair a little longer and shaggy, and it's naturally a shade darker than his. He's reserved, I'm anything but. However, it's the little things, like this, that always really hit hard for me.
We are so different and I always fought the differences, forcing a friendship, not just a genetic obligation to get along. I stopped doing that and he’s finally noticing. He just doesn’t know why I did it. I’m sure that question will come up soon.
“And just now,” he continues and his voice is one deep decibel away from whining. “I call, no answer. Dad calls thirty seconds later and you pick up.”
“How did you know that?”
“He texted me.”
Fucking hell. Why is Dad making this a bigger issue? I grit my teeth. “I was saying goodbye to someone when you called. I had company. Dad called right before I could call you back. Nash, please stop being a nagging girlfriend. If I wanted one of those, I would have one.”
“So it wasn’t a girl who you had over?”
“So we’re changing gears from nagging girlfriend to jealous wife?” I snark.
“Fuck off, Crew. I’m a concerned brother,” he barks back defensively. I can picture him pacing the oak floors in his immaculate, soulless house. “Not concerned. Wrong word. I know you’re still fine.”
Indicating I wasn't previously. I get super irked by that as I head back into the kitchen and contemplate hanging up on him. But the thing is, he's right. I wasn't fine. When Anne-Marie left me and did what she did, I had some kind of mental break. I admit it. Nash knows the gory details, thanks to our parents. Anne-Marie and I decided to open our marriage. She was convinced we were too young to stay together if we didn't. I agreed because I was scared she was right and I didn't want to fail. I wanted us to work. He knows all of this but we haven't talked about the fact that he knows all of this. I have wondered more than once since I found out he knew I was bi, if he also knows I tearfully confessed, to Mom and Dad I stayed in this open marriage for five and a half months, and that everything was okay because there were rules. No secret hook-ups, everything must be approved by the other person ahead of time, and never in our home, always rent a hotel room. But the rules weren't being followed and I found out the hard way when I came home from a road trip and found Anne-Marie in our bed with a guy I didn't know. The dude ran before I could punch him, which I fully intended to do. And then Anne-Marie asked for a divorce, right there, half-naked, with the other guy's stink still on my sheets. I lost it, dragged the mattress outside, and lit it on fire. She got in her car and left screaming. But my car was still in the driveway, way too close to the burning mattress and it went up in flames. The only decent thing Anne-Marie did that night, and maybe in our entire marriage, was call the cops as she drove away. If she hadn't the whole house would have likely gone up and me with it, because I was too broken to stop it.
I told Nash a little about the breakup, that she cheated and we were divorcing, but I didn't tell him about the mental break. And I didn't want him to know. He wouldn't have broken like that. He wouldn't have needed Dad to sweet-talk the police into writing the whole thing off as an accident and then whisk him away for a weekend to get a grip. Dad took me to this place up in the California mountains. A lodge by June Lake. We stayed in a cabin and in the cabin next door, Dad flew in and paid for one of the top psychologists in America, and that's where I would spend my days. In therapy. It was there I told Dad, with the encouragement of the psychologist, that I was bisexual.
I didn’t tell him how I figured that out. That the arrangement Anne-Marie and I had also included three ways and sometimes that meant another man in the mix, not always just another woman. That Anne-Marie had been the one to suggest it, and that she said she was cool with it, but then she used it as a reason for divorce. “I don’t think you even like women, deep down. I think you’re lying to yourself and to me. You hook up with guys way too easily.” And that later, during the divorce proceedings, she threatened to reveal it to the media if I didn’t give her more than the prenup she had signed said she would get. I agreed to give her more money, not because I was gay, or ashamed of being bi, but because I would give all my money away to be rid of her. Also, I was not going to let her control my coming out. I would tell people the way I wanted when I wanted to.
I kept all that from Nash for a million reasons, for his sake and mine. But he knows now, thanks to Dad, and his reaction has been worse than I could have ever imagined. Our relationship can’t recover from this.
And so here we are with me being a dick to him and him getting annoyed and acting like he has no clue why. Nash is the absolute king of poker faces. If he looks confused, it's because he wants you to think he's confused. He doesn't have an expression hit his face that he isn't aware of. He's the most self-aware person on the planet, not to mention thoughtful, articulate, and calm. So the way he looked like he’d swallowed durian fruit when we fumbled around the subject of my sexuality at the rink made his feelings about it loud and clear.
“So what? What can I help you with Nash?”
I stare at the contents of my fridge. It’s all less appealing than it was before. I grab a chicken kale salad and drop it on the counter. “I wanted to tell you about Dad. And ask if you were… do you want to carpool? We’re going to have to get up there before the team and so I figured we could go together.”
He knows I hate riding with him because it's like traveling with a ninety-six-year-old man. He hates riding with me because he constantly thinks I’m speeding and that I don’t wait at stop signs long enough. I do. So if he wants to travel together, he must be really desperate for us to spend time together. “Yeah. Okay. But I drive.”
“Fine.”
“Cool.” I sigh. “Gotta go. Dinner is calling.”
“I also wanted the name of that lawyer Dad got you hooked up with when you needed one.” And that has me stop in my tracks, halfway to the water cooler to fill my Stanley.
“The lawyer Dad hooked me up with? For my divorce?”
“Yeah. I mean he does other stuff too right?” Nash asks and his voice is off. His words are clipped and his tone is kind of uneven when everything about Nash is usually even.
“Divorces and custody agreements,” I inform my twin. “You got a child I need to know about? A wife?”
“Ha. Ha,” he says but his tone isn’t dry. It’s kind of… anxious.
“Seriously, what’s up?” I say, softening a little. I know how hard it was to be going through something and thinking I had to do it alone. I don’t wish that on anyone. “Why do you need a lawyer and what can I do to help?”
“Answer the phone when I call,” he snaps. “And I don’t need a lawyer. It’s for a friend.”
I almost snort at that because Nash doesn’t have any friends that I don’t also call friend. He does nothing but eat, sleep, and hockey, and I know no one on the team needs a divorce lawyer. Divorcing in hockey is rare and so when it happens, news gets around fast, but the only thing that would be less believable than Nash having a friend I don’t know, is Nash needing a lawyer himself, so I guess he must know someone I don’t. “Charlie Sullivan. And it’s ashe, not he.”
“Charlie is a she?”
“Charlotte Sullivan but she goes by Charlie,” I explain. “She’s young. Like fresh out of law school, but she’s good. But, like I said, she is divorce and family law.”
“It’s fine,” Nash blows me off. “Maybe she knows someone who can help with this girl’s situation.”
