“I know it’s a lot to take in. I feel like I should’ve known. Like, when I went to Sequest that day and he told me to call him Dex… I don’t know. It looked like he was in pain.” She paused, taking a shaky breath. “Hewasin pain.”
“Phoebe,” I said into the pillow. “I’m so tired.”
“I googled him,” she blurted. “August Dexter. He’s one of the founders of Stall.”
My brain seemed to jerk awake as if electric-shocked. I rolled over, meeting her wide eyes. “The dating app?”
“It was him and Bree, and a couple of their college friends. How insane is that?”
Dex was a co-founder of one of the country’s leading hookup apps. I stared at Phoebe, my mind swimming hard to keep up with this information.
“He resigned last year,” she told me. “According toForbes, they bought his share for, like, a billion dollars. Just kidding. It didn’t say the amount.”
I returned my face to the pillow, releasing an anguished groan. “Phoebe. This is none of our business.”
“Dex wants us to know. He was going to tell us everything.”
“I’m having a hard time believing anything he says right now.”
“Okay, yeah, it was bad to let us think he was Benji,” she admitted. “But you know what else is bad? Opening someone’s mail.”
“Oh, sonowthat’s a thing you care about.”
I felt her sit beside me, the sweet scent of her coconut shampoo more like a warm blanket thrown over my shoulders. “It’s not like he’s a different person,” she said, a note of caution in her tone. “He’s exactly like us. He’s just trying to get through it. But it’s different because when Dad died, we had each other. We had Arden and Noah. Dex didn’t let himself have anyone. That kind of loneliness fucks with your head. He lost hisbrother.”
I turned my head to meet her eyes. Her teeth worried her bottom lip, fingers scratching at her own nail polish.
“I know,” I said. “I need time. I need space. But I’m… we’re not done with him.”
Her shoulders sank in relief, and I realized my sister would’ve let Dex go if I asked her to. My beautiful, selfless girl. She’d grown so much, with Dex playing a not-insignificant role. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t contemplated how to keep him in her life without touching mine, but merely imagining it was painful. I wasn’t done with him, I couldn’t be. I just hadn’t figured outhow.
In the hours since the revelation, I’d grappled with whether or not a case of mistaken identity could be considered a betrayal, landing in a frustrating gray area. A complicated situation made trickier by grief. I couldn’t blame Dex for holding back in the beginning, but once the trip was on the table, he should’ve explained. He should’ve come clean before anything happened betweenus. I would’ve hated him if I wasn’t neck-deep in my own debilitating loss.
Grief fucks you up. It’s fickle and stagnant and overwhelming and it never ends, no matter how far you think you’ve gotten from it. It’s just there, forever.
Dex lost his brother and dismantled his entire life in the months that followed, doing everything in his power to put distance between himself and the grief, and then we showed up with a fresh wave to knock him to his knees. It broke my heart to consider the amount of pain he was in the day we’d come to Sequest with the letter, or since. How much pain does someone have to be in to be physically unable to say a name out loud, even if they’re desperate to?
Phoebe lay down beside me, looping her arm through mine. “I’m glad,” she said. “I thought… I don’t know. I thought maybe you’d hate him forever.”
“After everything, this whole year, I’d never hold someone’s grief against them,” I told her. “He wasn’t trying to trick us. I know there was nothing malicious about what he did, at least not deliberately.”
“He’s a sad boy,” she said, resting her head against mine. “And we’re sad girls. Match made in heaven.”
“I’m still mad.” I shut my eyes. “Or maybe not mad. It’s hard to sort through my emotions right now. I don’t know what I am. My brain and my heart and my body are all… disconnected.”
“I kept thinking maybe I should be mad, but then I thought…” Phoebe swallowed, inhaling sharply. “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you. It’s my worst nightmare. And Dex is living it.”
Tears sprang to my eyes and I pulled her in closer. Phoebe roughly swiped at her cheek. “I’m here, Bee,” I said through thetightness in my throat. I couldn’t speak on Dex’s pain, could barely make it through my own, but she was opening up to me, asking for reassurance. This, at the very least, I could give her. “I love you. I’m not going anywhere. You know that, right?”
She let out a shaky breath and nodded, holding my arm tighter. She was my world. The brightest spot that illuminated even the darkest of days. And if I thought too hard about the possibility of Dex losing that, I’d fall apart again.
“I just wish it was different,” she whispered. “I thought it was different.”
This trip had cut through the awfulness wrapped around our world, giving us a chance to breathe for the first time since September. For almost two weeks, existing felt easier. We weren’t backsliding to slammed doors and rolled eyes, but a majority of the good surrounding us had drained.
“I did too,” I said. “Maybe it still could be.”
Our breathing slowed, my eyes grew heavier.
