CHAPTER TWO || ELI
“Happy birthday!” My older sister, Sam, sounded far too awake for nine in the morning on a weekday.
She hardly even slurred her words. Which meant two things: first, she’d slept through the night like a normal person so she could wake up and wish me a happy birthday, and second, she’d only just started drinking for the day.
She was probably only on her first glass of wine.
“Thanks,” I replied, blinking against the too-bright overhead fluorescent lights of the emergency department, clutching the phone like a lifeline. I was too exhausted from my fourteen-hour shift to actually sound like I meant it, even though I did. I didn’t mind her wishing me a happy birthday.
“Bad night?”
Bad night. Bad month. Bad year.
A year ago, almost to the day, Sam and I had lost our father.
I had moved back to Los Angeles to help out with the estate, only intending to stay until the ink dried on the paperwork.
That’s what I’d told myself, at least. But then I’d gotten thoroughly stuck.
Sam needed me, so I had sublet my apartment in San Francisco, quit my job, and moved in with her.
Then I’d taken a position at the nearby hospital—a five-minute drive from the house we’d grown up in.
It was only supposed to be temporary, just to pay the bills that were rapidly piling up, but that had been ten months ago, and I didn’t seem especially motivated to leave.
And, up until a month ago, I had been dating a—in retrospect, very cagey—gentleman who had seemed plenty nice enough, right up until I discovered he was married and was not, in fact, a very nice guy at all.
Granted, I was one hundred percent sure it was my fault somehow.
If there’s a walking red flag within a ten-mile radius, I’ll probably end up going out on at least one date with him.
But that’s what therapy was for, right? If I was going to get my head shrunk by a trained professional, I might as well get my money’s worth.
As for my night, it had been screwed on wrong from the start.
First, there was the middle-of-the-night text from another ex who didn’t know I was back in LA, wishing me a happy birthday at exactly midnight.
It wasn’t the cagey guy—Colin—I’d dated for three months when I’d moved to the area.
No, it was that ex. The real one. The one I’d actually been dumb enough to fall in love with, years and years ago.
Everyone has that one ex-boyfriend where even thinking about them feels dangerous because it brings everything rushing back and you forget what it was like—for a moment, or for a month.
And then, before you know it, you’re right back where you started.
So yeah, he was the one who texted me at exactly midnight, even though it had been a very, very long time since we’d last spoken.
Then, if that wasn’t enough to ruin my entire week, to top it all off, I lost a patient—a young man with two gunshot wounds to the abdomen. Way too much internal bleeding to stabilize him.
“Eli, are you still there? Was your shift… not good?” Sam asked, only slurring a little and sounding concerned. I had been quiet for too long.
“You could say that,” I told her, suddenly feeling like I was on the edge of tears.
“You lost someone.”
I swallowed, feeling too worn-thin to lie to her. “Yeah.”
“Shit, Eli.” She hesitated. “Listen, I—I could bake.”
I let out a surprised laugh. Sam could hardly boil water, and it was a completely left-field suggestion—which was, of course, precisely what I needed. Sam always had the uncanny knack for snapping me out of whatever funk I—admittedly, often—found myself in.
“Have you ever baked anything?” I couldn’t quite hide the skepticism in my voice. “Even one time?”
“Don’t be a jerk. It’s your birthday and you’ve had a shitty night at work. When you get home, I’m going to bake you a cake. For breakfast. Or dinner. Or whatever the hell meal it is for you right now.”
“I’m pretty sure all we have in the house is bread, milk, and vodka.”
“Incorrect. We’ve got everything we need to bake a delicious and fucking scrumptious cake for you,” Sam informed me, sounding more lucid than she had in months.
A note of pride entered her voice. “I stopped by the store yesterday and got everything we’d need.
” Her breath hitched. She let out a long breath. “Before I…”
She trailed off, and there was a long moment of awkward silence.
I could fill in the blank well enough, though. Before she’d started drinking for the day. That was what she’d been about to say—or somewhere in that ballpark, at least.
We both understood she couldn’t quite make herself stop once she got started.
And I knew that yelling at her, getting upset, hiding her booze, giving ultimatums, or trying any number of other tactics wasn’t going to work.
That was the shitty part—I couldn’t stop it.
I had tried once, and it had nearly destroyed our relationship.
And Sam was all I had—the only person I still gave a damn about.
But more importantly, I was all she had, too.
There was no one else left who cared about what happened to her.
“Sam, it’s okay. We can talk about it. I’m not going to get mad. I promise.”
“Look, just for this one day, it’s not about my bullshit. It’s about your bullshit.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said, but I laughed again. I smiled, too—and I even meant it. “Look, you can try baking me a cake if you want. I’ll have the fire department and poison control on standby, but if you bake it, I’ll attempt to eat it.”
“You’re an ass.”
“As your brother, it’s in my contract. I have to be. Sorry about it.”
“Eli?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m really sorry about your patient.”
“I know. It’s okay,” I lied.
It wasn’t.
But it wasn’t her fault, was it? She wasn’t the one who hadn’t been good enough—fast enough, perfect enough—to save him.
* * *
“We’re going out,” Sam announced twelve hours later.
I gripped my steaming cup of coffee in my hands, even though it was almost ten at night.
After getting home, I’d ended up helping her bake the cake, but it had still somehow turned out mostly inedible.
We’d had a good time trying to follow the recipe she’d found online, though.
Afterward, I’d crashed for nine hours solid, totally dead to the world.
And then I dreamt of him again.
I had no idea who he was to me, or why I kept dreaming of him, but I had for years.
Just like always, he wore a deep emerald-green tunic with elaborate gold embroidery that looked brand-new, like he was all dressed up for Halloween.
His too-bright blue eyes were the same color and intensity as a midday sky someone had done up in technicolor, and his features were nearly too delicate for a man.
But the way he touched me—filled with hunger and haste and desperation—was anything but delicate.
But I loved that, didn’t I? Enough that I couldn’t stop myself from breathing his name over and over, like a prayer, right into his ear while I gripped him close and touched him, too.
Nicolas. Nicolas. Nicolas—
The moment I woke up, I felt the same extraordinary loss I always did, like a piece of my own soul had been scooped out.
And just like always, the pain in my chest came back.
It was a sharp, searing sensation that usually faded into the background almost at once upon awakening.
But today, it was still there—a persistent dull ache, like someone had gotten ahold of my heart and decided to give it a good, prolonged squeeze.
I had run every test on myself I could think of over the years—one of the dubious perks of being a doctor—and there was nothing medically wrong with me. Whatever this was, it had to be something else.
Sam eyed me. “Eli, are you listening?”
I blinked at her. “Um. Sure. Yes.”
“Lies.” She took a gulp of her own coffee, then smacked her lips. “Anyway. Get dressed. We’re going dancing.”
“I still feel exhausted. The last thing I want to do right now is dance.”
She glared at me. Oddly enough, she wasn’t glassy-eyed at all—which probably meant her coffee was just coffee this time.
“Too bad,” she told me. And I realized, belatedly, that she’d gone through the effort to do her makeup.
And she was dressed more nicely than usual—a pair of black denim jeans and a deep-red halter top.
“It’s your birthday, and you have the night off on a weekend for once, so we’re celebrating the occasion. ”
“Shouldn’t we be doing whatever I want, since it’s my birthday?”
But I couldn’t help staring at her as the caffeine worked its way through my tired brain, helping me connect the dots.
Sam looked almost… sober. And way more wide-awake than I had seen her in a very long time.
Her normally wavy long brown hair was down and now perfectly straight.
While I slept, she hadn’t been drinking. Instead, she had been… getting ready.
Sam rarely left the house. And when she did, it was usually just to walk to the corner store for more cheap wine and cigarettes.
Still staring at her, I added, “We could stay home and order some Chinese food. Maybe watch a dumb movie together?”
It was what we did almost every time we hung out, on the rare nights when I was off work and she was still coherent enough to follow a movie properly.
“Nice try, bucko.” She even rolled her eyes a little. “You’ll thank me later. Now go put on some pants and a decent shirt. And take a shower. Not in that order.”
That confirmed it. She definitely wasn’t drunk. Yet.
I swallowed the rest of my resistance and decided that, yes, this was an occasion worth celebrating.
It had been years since I’d seen her actually sober for any length of time.
Granted, I’d been gone for a long while, doing a residency in San Francisco that had seemed to take approximately one and a half million years, but still.
I set my coffee cup down on the circular wooden table we’d grown up eating on—pockmarked with water rings but still standing, even after a lifetime of use.
“Yeah, okay.”
I couldn’t help but smile as I left the room to get ready.
Even though I knew it couldn’t last, for the first time in a long time, it felt like having my sister back.
It felt like I wasn’t alone. And, even if the dull ache in my chest still lingered, the dream I’d had of the strange man with even stranger clothes was completely banished from my mind.