“The entirety of Chicago didn’t.”
I studied him, locking on the rosy flush inching up his neck, his hands now clenched at his sides. He was attracted to me and hehatedit. Blinding euphoria engulfed me—I almost giggled out loud. Suddenly, it wasn’t inappropriate or unfair for me to fantasize about Dex, it was normal. We were two hot adults on a road trip together. Of course thoughts would crop up.
I smiled and slipped his shirt on, deftly buttoning it from the bottom. “One time I posed nude for an art class,” I toldhim. He turned sharply toward me, keeping his eyes trained on my face.
“Really.”
“Mm-hmm. So there are at least twenty nude portraits of me in existence.”
Something flared in his eyes, almost certainly recognizing why I was screwing with him. I took my time with the last buttons, biting my cheek to fend off a shit-eating grin, and then he leaned a shoulder against the car and lowered his gaze.
His eyes traveled down my body, his shirt hanging loosely from my frame, the flippy skirt showing off my legs, back up again. Lingering.
Fire engulfed me.
“You wanna know something funny?” he said.
I threw on a smile, as if his lazy perusal of my body hadn’t turned me on more than my ex-boyfriend ever had. “You’re going to tell me something funny? Oh, absolutely.”
He shut the trunk of the car and brushed past me. “I posed nude for an art class too.”
“Liar.” I grinned, following him down the sidewalk. The bar sign flickered in the distance. “You’re lying, right? You have to tell me if you’re lying.”
He smiled in a way that told me he relished my curiosity and could stoke it until it crackled into a consuming blaze, leaving nothing but ash. Butgod, that smile.
I’d let him.
Thirteen
We left the bar thirty minutes before midnight. Head swirling from half a mojito and the sharp scent of Dex’s shirt, I walked to the hotel in a daze, listening to my sister prattle on about how awesome Bree was, the community of it all, how crazy that Dex was a part of it. My head was swimming and every inch of my skin felt tender, bruised. It had been a long night.
Bree did most of the talking. She moved to Massachusetts from London at fifteen, earning attention from classmates as the worldly newbie and obvious lesbian. I watched Phoebe hang on every word as Bree told us about the bullying she endured and her struggles finding a safe place for herself, and I nearly lost my breath when Phoebe admitted she’d been dealing with the same thing at her new school. My sister was being bullied. Twelve meetings with Principal Chambers and only the last one hinted at anything close to this revelation. And considering the way Dex avoided my eyes, I was the only one out of the loop.
I’d spent a lot of time grappling with my bisexuality in high school, but I wasn’t bullied. No one called me names. No oneeven really knew. I remembered the look on Phoebe’s face when we came out to each other, like we were members of the same club, and now she looked at Bree with admiration, something so much more than simple camaraderie.
I wasn’t enough inanyway for her. And I hated myself for thinking such a shitty, selfish thing, especially when Bree and Phoebe were opening up and I was warping it in a what-about-me-ism I’d regret tomorrow, but I could feel myself hitting a low. My sister was going through hell, asking everyone but me for help, and it wrecked me.
Shoving down the pointless hurt feelings and unfair thoughts, I’d listened to Bree shift the topic to Dex. How the two fell into a friendship in detention and spent the rest of high school attached at the hip, then proceeded to attend the same local community college.
Floodgates didn’t burst, but Bree unleashed a trickle of secrets: Dex finished his degree at Northeastern, and after graduation they moved to Chicago with a few friends, spending nearly two years in an apartment with a view of Lake Michigan. It was easy to see their deep bond when Dex allowed himself to retaliate Bree’s teasing, and it filled my chest with a fizzy sort of feeling, like I’d drunk a gallon of Diet Coke.
Phoebe steered the conversation back to Bree’s life in Chicago, and Bree seemed to have limitless patience, answering my sister’s questions with such an easy confidence; I couldn’t remember ever feeling that sure of myself, even at my best, but I recognized the spark in Phoebe’s eyes like it had once been directed at me. Bree and Phoebe ended up in a rapid-fire back-and-forth with Dex chiming in every so often. I felt myself fading. By the time we reached our hotel, I was an inch tall and ready to cry my eyes out in the shower. Dex veered for his room, casting me one last look over his shoulder like he knew somethingwas off. In our room, Phoebe spent another twenty minutes gushing over her new hero before passing out in bed.
Was it easier for parents? Or harder? Dealing with a child slipping out of reach because it’s the kid’s job to hate and grow and rebel and conquer. Parents intercept and guide. But siblings?Sisters?Maybe I would’ve been able to guide Phoebe in a way that mattered before I was the one obligated to. Ever since, I’d straddled those roles—sister, guardian—never quite inhabiting either. Phoebe needed me and I just watched.
Once Phoebe was asleep, I closed myself in the bathroom, pressing my forehead against the cool wood of the door, trying to breathe through the pain. The pain of failure and selfishness. The pain of missing my little sister who used to beg me to read to her before bed. The pain of missing my dad, who would’ve held me tight and told me tomorrow was a new day.
God, I missed him. The grief hit like crashing waves, another, then another, pulling me under. This happened, sometimes. I held on to the grief for too long and it blew up in an all-consuming way, overriding everything. I’d collapse to the floor and cry until I was dry heaving and I’d stay there, too tired to drag myself to my bed. I knew it would kill him to see me like that. For anyone to see me like that. And it would be mortifying to admit out loud in therapy that, almost a year later, grief still paralyzed me.
I sat on the floor of the shower, hugging my knees to my chest. Vision blurry. Head static. Breaths slow, staggered. The skin on my face felt tight even as warm water flowed down it, the quiet rush acting as white noise to ease the pulsing in my ears.
Pathetic.
I didn’t have the luxury of passing out in the shower, so I forced myself to stand and shut off the water. My legs wobbledas I wrapped a towel around myself, skin raw, fingertips pruned. I wiped steam from the mirror and my cloudy reflection stared back, red eyes empty, aged a decade in a year.
And yet I’d grow. I’d probably get old, wrinkled, gray, and my dad never would.
But that was a breakdown for another time, so I dried off and pulled on my pajamas, my tired limbs fighting each step through the hotel room. Phoebe snored peacefully, face buried in the pillow. My bed remained pristinely made, almost stiff. I stood beside it, knowing I would stare at the ceiling until the sun rose.
