Go have an adventure with the girl we love, man. You’d be a fool not to take it.
Cash’s words are on repeat in my head as Ingrid lays her head back against my chest on the sandy beach.
The sun is setting, and Cash is off with Britta. They’re shopping or something. I don’t know. I haven’t been able to think about much else since he said those words to me yesterday.
…the girl we love…
I exhale. Hard.
Cash lost the right to feel anything for Ingrid when he left. How he came back. How he let Fanny treat her.
It used to bother me when Ingrid and Cash were together.
But I also knew there was nothing I could do about it. Ingrid acted like I was the plague. And that was easier.
It was easier to think she hated me.
“You keep huffing,” she says in my arms.
I kiss the top of her head. She smells like sunscreen and saltwater.
“I have a lot on my mind,” I say.
Her hands slide along my thighs. She pushes herself up and twists to face me.
“Like Elowyn? Or Margot?”
I shrug. “Maybe.”
Maybe thinking about Cash and Ingrid is easier than thinking about my half-sister and her sick mom.
A dying mom?
I don’t even know.
I should know.
“Cash thinks we should go to New York,” I blurt out, trying to distract Ingrid.
Ingrid smiles. “No. We’re not talking about New York. Or Cash. We’re talking about Elowyn.”
The most irritating part of being in a relationship with the right person is that you can’t ever pull a fast one on them.
“What do you want me to say, Blondie?”
“Say you’ll call her.”
In a perfect world, I could do that.
In a perfect world, there was enough room in my dad’s life for both of his children. But he destroyed a marriage and abandoned a son in favor of his affair partner and their daughter.
He could have done things differently.
He could have made room and space for me.
Hecould have lessened the blow a little.
“We’re half-siblings,” I tell Ingrid. “But that doesn’t make us brother and sister.”
