Chapter 31
Thirty-One
ELI
When I got home, the adrenaline of the day was starting to wear off.
The flat was almost pitch black, the only light coming from the glare of the TV.
The quiet din of it told me a reality dating show was on.
I didn’t know which one, but I knew it wasn’t the one we had been watching.
I shut the front door and toed off my shoes before I walked slowly into the living room.
Addie was lying on the sofa. I could tell that her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy from where I was standing.
“Are you okay?” I asked. My voice was barely above a whisper, but it sounded like a shout in the dark room.
“I made a paella,” Addie said instead of answering my question. She didn’t even look at me.
I looked through the doorway to the kitchen and saw the biggest pan we owned covered and on the counter. “You did what?”
“I made a pae—”
I cut her off. “Yeah, no, I heard you. I just had a hard time for a second trying to figure out how you had the energy to make a paella after that lunch shift.” I came to a stop behind the sofa, looking down at her.
She finally looked at me, a short bark of a laugh roughly escaping her. “It was less to do with energy and more to do with the fact that I needed a distraction. And paella is temperamental enough to require a great level of concentration.”
“Why did you need the distraction?”
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Clara is engaged.”
It was a statement. One almost completely devoid of any emotion.
“Why do you look like this is the worst possible news you could hear?”
“Because I’m sad,” she said simply, casting her eyes away from me and staring blankly at the TV.
“Why are you sad? Are you secretly in love with your sister’s fiancé or something?” Another dry husk of a laugh as she held her phone up to me. It took it and saw a photo of Clara and Jesse.
They looked happy. The light in Clara’s eyes was brighter than ever. Jesse’s cheeks were flushed. Their smiles were wide. I felt a sense of peace looking at the photo. The love between them was palpable. Even through a screen.
“They seem happy,” I said, trying to keep my tone neutral. I still didn’t quite know what had caused this reaction in Addie. I tried to hand her phone back, but she pushed it away.
“Look at the picture properly,” she snapped.
I zoomed in and finally saw the culprit of Addie’s current mood.
“The twins are there?” I asked.
“And Rachel,” she bit out and snatched her phone from me.
“Well, surely there’s a story there?” I asked timidly.
“The story is, Eli, that I am still on the outside of my own family despite being twenty fucking minutes away from them now.” She dropped her phone and threw an arm over her face. I heard her sniffle.
I walked around the sofa, lifted her legs and sat down, settling them back down on my lap.
Unsurprisingly, she was in her usual flat attire of shorts and an oversized T-shirt.
This one had an ode to Treasure Planet. Her skin felt cool under my touch.
I pulled the blanket off the back of the sofa and draped it over her lower half, my hand resting on her bare calf.
“I think you might need to start at the beginning,” I said gently, my thumb rubbing circles on her leg.
“It’s stupid,” she grumbled.
“Tell me anyway,” I encouraged, sweeping my thumb up her calf once more.
She finally dropped her arm away from her face and took a deep breath as she wiped under her eyes.
“I couldn’t be here anymore. Back then. When we were young and fresh and had just finished secondary school and everyone kept telling us to get ready for the rest of our lives.
I couldn’t be here anymore. I didn’t think it was possible because two of them literally left London, but I watched those four weave their web together even tighter when they went off to uni, and they didn’t mean to, but they left me behind.
They could drink, and they were going out, and they didn’t have a curfew, and they were doing the whole living thing.
It was the first time I had ever truly been aware that they were older than me.
And I hated it, so I started wishing time away.
I figured that once I was out of secondary school and could do all the things they were doing, we would be on an even playing field again.
“But then Dad had a heart attack on my bedroom floor, and Clara wasn’t there, and I realised that the playing field would never be equal again.
Because I had seen this seemingly impossible thing happen in the house we grew up in.
In the room I grew up in, and she only had to deal with it after the fact.
Clara could still walk into our house, and it felt normal for her.
I couldn’t even sleep in my own fucking bed because I felt like I was living in Groundhog Day.
That image of him falling to the floor, gasping for breath.
The panic flooding my system, and the way it made my blood feel cold.
It didn’t matter that I knew he was fine, that he was going to be fine. I couldn’t escape it.
“I’d applied to a couple of unis outside of the UK.
I guess just to see if I could get in, and I was accepted into one in New Zealand and another in Canada.
In a moment of extreme pettiness, I chose Canada because the uni was in Montreal.
And if I lived there for four years, then I would have something over Clara that wasn’t watching our dad fight for his life in my room.
But also, I thought it would be a way for me to stay connected to my parents while I was living in a different country.
How could I not feel connected to them when I was living in the city where they fell in love?
I hadn’t planned on staying there beyond getting a degree, but you know, life happens.
Four years became five. Somewhere in year six, I got a call from Becky that she was engaged.
Then, in year seven, I got an invitation to her wedding.
By the time the wedding came around, I’d been gone for eight years, and so much had happened, and even though I knew of it, I didn’t really know about it, you know?
Why did my sister spend so many years with a guy who broke up with her in less than five minutes after a decade together?
When did Jesse become so integrated into their lives that when Clara invited him to the wedding, Becky didn’t even bat an eyelid?
When did Rachel officially throw in the towel when it came to dating, and did anyone try to talk her out of it?
I had so many questions, and I couldn’t ask them because, as far as they all knew, they were keeping me in the loop.
“And they were. They really did over-communicate to make sure that I knew all the big stuff. But I was still out of the loop, because the big stuff isn’t always the important stuff.
It’s in the small stuff, too. I thought maybe things would change now that I’m not in a different country and time zone.
But here I am, in walking distance, and somehow, everyone was at my sister’s fucking engagement but me. ”
Addie sniffed again. I started massaging her calf in earnest. She tensed for a moment when my thumb pressed into the belly of her calf, but then she melted into the touch. As she relaxed, I carefully asked my next question.
“Okay, so what is the actual story of the engagement?”
Addie made a small sound of contentment that morphed into a loud sigh as she melted further into my touch.
“Because Clo was supposed to be with me for most of today, Jesse figured that he finally had a big enough window to make her a surprise meal where he was going to pop the question. But there was a slight problem because Jesse decided to make a dish that he had no experience with, and he called Becky to help. And then Becky asked Lucy to pick up some stuff that she couldn’t get, so Lucy showed up.
Jesse had been using Rachel as a sounding board for proposal ideas, so she knew everything, and when she saw the twins arriving at their flat, she knew something was afoot, so she got involved too.
I guess Clo went home earlier than she planned because I wasn’t there, and now here we are. An engagement photo I am not in.”
“By the sounds of it, it wasn’t supposed to be a ‘them’ event with you finding out after the fact. If today had gone differently, then you all would have found out via the group chat.” I tried to sound reassuring, but wasn’t sure I was nailing it. I moved to massage her other leg.
Addie huffed in annoyance as her muscles relaxed.
“Intellectually, I know that. But that doesn’t change the fact that I was calling for two chicken, one fish, while they were witnessing Clo get engaged.
And why did Rachel know Jesse was planning on proposing, and not me?
Her sister. Why didn’t Jesse come to me?
And also, that’s my mum’s fucking ring, so why couldn’t she have given me a hint? ”
“I don’t want to make you feel worse than you already do, but does Jesse know you that well? Do you even have his number?”
Addie gently prodded me with her other foot. “It’s annoying that I can’t lament about this with the girls, who would let me be irrational in peace and wouldn’t try to offer helpful advice or be a voice of reason.” Addie pouted.
I continued. “Also, your mum probably didn’t say anything about the ring, just in case you accidentally let it slip to Clara that she didn’t need to try and come up with her own proposal plans. You were the one she was talking to about that. Do you know if the girls knew about that?”
“I never asked. I wanted to feel special and think that she was only confiding in me about her woes in trying to propose to him. They might have known.”
“But maybe they didn’t. Maybe Clara wanted that to be something only between the two of you.
Don’t hate me because I am about to be the voice of reason again, but I think you should talk to them about how you feel.
You’ve lived in a certain rhythm for a long time, and it can be hard to alter that, but if they don’t know how you feel, then they can’t make more obvious adjustments. ”
Addie was silent again, her legs getting heavier in my lap as I continued working my thumb into her muscles.
“You know, I thought talking to you was going to be the hardest conversation I was going to have this week,” she said quietly.
My hand stilled.
“Why would talking to me be so hard?”
“Because you’ve been avoiding me since we had sex,” she scoffed.