He ran a hand through his hair. Sophie didn’t know the half of it, and he was in no mood to tell her.
“No, I didn’t. But it’s fine. She’s an old friend who I haven’t seen in a while. That’s it.”
Sophie rolled her eyes. “My darling brother, that’s like saying the ocean is a little damp.”
“Come on, it’s not like we were about to run off and get married or something,” Freddie said. “We were practically kids when we were together.”
“Right. I distinctly remember a conversation about rings, though.”
Freddie took another sip of his beer.
“What even happened between you two?” she asked. “One minute you were looking for a place to live in Buenos Aires with her, and then she just never came up again. Did she cheat on you or something?”
“Jesus, no,” he murmured. “Nothing like that.”
“Then what?”
“We broke up.”
“Okay, butwhy?”
His head fell back on the cushions. He didn’t want to turn over those last few weeks, especially with his sister. How Anne had pulled back, forcing distance between them until she ended it. How, even after her practiced speech, none of it got to the core issue, the reason that drove her to decide to do any of it.
Anne said she wanted to break up because they “wanted different things.” As if either of them knew what the hell they wanted back then. He didn’t even know now. And by the looks of it, she was struggling, too. The future had been such an amorphous, intangible thing between them that he hadn’t really thought about it before she ended their relationship. Then after, he put all his energy into the future in a desperate attempt to erase the past.
“It was eight years ago,” he replied. “I’m over it. You should be, too.”
“Right.” She let out a bitter laugh.
He opened his mouth, ready to reiterate his point in the hopes that she would let it lie, but then he caught the hurt that flashed across his sister’s face.
Sophie had always been his fiercest ally. Even when they were little, and their parents would catch him playing video games at three a.m., she would be the one to argue why he didn’t deserve a punishment. She was also the one who convinced their father not to dismantle Bertha after he found out Freddie had raided his plumbing van to build it. And once Anne started spending time at their home in Queens—enjoying his mom’s homemade dinners and indulging in his dad’s obsessive ranting about the Mets—Sophie was more than happy to adopt Anne as the little sister she’d always wanted. Tonight had been a quick flash of that, enough for him to realize his sister had lost something eight years ago, too.
“Sorry, Soph,” he murmured.
“It’s fine.” She waved him off, the Wentworth signal to move on. “You’re coming out to Mom and Dad’s next weekend, right?”
Shit. He vaguely remembered a text from his mom earlier in the week, something about Christmas decorations in the basement, but it was one message among a flurry of others, and he had completely forgotten.
“Do I need to?”
He felt like an ass the minute he saw his sister’s glare.
“Are you serious?” she asked. “You know Dad’s back won’t let him lift those boxes up the basement stairs. And if you don’t do it, Mom will try and end up with a broken pelvis or something.”
Freddie winced. “Thanks for the guilt trip.”
She just shrugged. “Jimmy’s not around for the literal heavy lifting anymore, so you need to step up.”
“All right, all right. I’ll be there.”
They finished their drinks before he called her a car to take her back to Queens, then walked with her downstairs to make sure she got in safely. After that Freddie went straight to bed before he spent any more time thinking about how far his life had veered from where he thought he would be eight years ago.
CHAPTER 9
FROM: Theo Travers
TO: Anne Elliot
