Chapter Twenty-Seven Archer
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Archer
“You okay, QB?”
I paused as I reracked my weights, meeting Williams’s concerned gaze. I’d been quieter than normal for two days before someone finally asked. Even Analise gave me a wide berth at home.
“No, Grant, I’m not.” I laid my hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Thank you for asking.”
“D-do you want to talk about it?”
My entire body felt heavy with grief, and if I tried to explain a single bit of it to anyone, I’d end up crying in the middle of the fucking weight room.
“Not yet, kid. Not yet.”
“Archer, hello?”
The question hardly registered because I was staring at my phone, wondering what would happen if I just called her, texted her, anything.
Analise called my name again.
I turned my phone over so she’d know I was fully paying attention. “Sorry. What?”
“Could you give me a job?” she asked with a hopeful smile. “As much as I love lounging on your couch after school, I need something to do. And I just don’t know if I want to go to college or not.”
“Doing what?”
“I could be your assistant? Or . . . Oh! I could manage your social media. You never do anything. The last post you made was eighteen months ago, and it was a picture of dirt.”
“It was breaking ground on my house, Analise. I was excited.”
“No one else was,” she muttered. “Did you ever read the comment section?”
“No.”
Analise gestured like I’d just proven her point.
I laid my head back on the couch. “Fine. Social media manager. How much will that cost me a month?”
“I don’t know. What did your first job pay?”
“Eleven million a year,” I answered dryly.
Her shoulders deflated. “Oh. Well . . . maybe a bit less than that, plus room and board?” she asked hopefully.
“Seventy-five grand. Half of it goes into a savings account, and you have to take some online classes to figure out what you want to do.”
Her eyes lit up. “A month?”
“A year, you punk. Give me a break.”
“I’m kidding.” She leaned forward and hugged me tightly around the neck. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said gruffly.
Why did every small act of kindness make me want to have a fucking breakdown?
Three days since I’d driven away from the shelter and I was ready to crawl out of my skin. I’d never felt so uncomfortable in my own body before, like I’d pulled my clothes on backward. Or I was wearing my shoes on the opposite feet.
Something didn’t fit right.
“Archer,” Analise said haltingly.
“Yeah?”
“You can talk to me, you know.” She twisted her fingers around the fuzzy blanket in her lap. “I don’t have much relationship experience—”
“You don’t have any,” I pointed out.
“I don’t have any. But I read a lot of books,” she said with an imperious tilt of her chin. “And I watch a lot of romance movies. I know how this works.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. You screwed up, didn’t you?”
“Why do you assume it was me?”
Analise arched an eyebrow.
I rolled my eyes. “It was both of us.” I scrubbed my face and sighed. “It was mostly me, though. I’m too fucking impatient.”
My sister set her hands in her lap and gave me a look. “Tell me what happened. No sex details, please. I don’t want emotional scarring.”
“No details to give you there, kid.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You haven’t slept with her yet? I figured you would’ve been, like, right in bed with her, based on the moony-eyed looks you were giving her.”
I contemplated inducing a voluntary concussion just to get out of this conversation. “You told me you didn’t want details,” I hissed. “And I was not moony eyed.”
She snorted. “Okay.”
“This isn’t helping.” I was getting a migraine. I’d never had one in my life, but I was getting one now. “Where’s the sage advice, oh wise one?”
“Tell me what happened.”
The CliffsNotes version was all I was capable of, because when my mind replayed it, I’d get stuck on the details and fucking spiral.
In hindsight, I could see Remi’s discomfort, could see her gearing up to admit what was going on in her head.
And it was in that hindsight that I felt that familiar self-loathing when my worst instincts ran right the fuck away with my mouth.
After my somewhat-matter-of-fact retelling, Analise’s brow pinched. “So you hear her fears as rejection because Father has twisted your perception of how you engage with the world. That if something isn’t going perfectly, you’re failing.”
My stomach twisted like a knot, cold sweat forming along my hairline. “That’s . . . that’s not exactly right. She can’t even tell me what she feels for me, Analise. But even that is a moot point because I was so fucking impatient that her kid probably thinks I’m a monster.”
“There is no way he does.”
It still felt like breathing through thick mud when I recalled Gavin’s face. “You didn’t see him.”
“No, but I know Remi. She’d never let him think something of you that’s untrue.”
“I felt like a monster,” I said wearily. “Isn’t this always my problem? Something happens that I’m not expecting, and I just . . . don’t fucking think.”
“Your intent is always good, though,” she added in a gentle tone.
At the expression on my face, she held up her hands.
“I know, I know. That doesn’t make you feel better, but it’s the truth.
Every time you’ve gotten yourself stuck in a corner like this, you’re headed in the right direction.
You just . . . go about it the long way.
Like you’re climbing up the side of a mountain barefoot when you could just take the sidewalk around the base.
You’ll get there eventually, but God, you make it harder than it needs to be. ”
“This is a really flattering analogy.”
“Yeah, well, you’re kinda bad at this.”
“I’m ten years old than you,” I snapped. “Let’s cut the condescension by about fifty percent, please.”
“Relationally, you’re a toddler.”
“Hey. I’m trying here.”
Her eyes were fierce. “I know you are. And he’s made you think you have to do everything exactly right all the time, and you don’t.
It’s okay to tell her that you’re feeling a little lost and confused, which is what she was doing, by the way.
You just swung way too far in the other direction.
You don’t have to walk away because something got you all up in your man feels.
That’s what you do. You shut down when it gets hard, with everyone. ”
I rubbed a hand over my mouth, glaring at her just a little as I did.
“I’m aware,” I managed through a tight jaw. “I just don’t—I don’t know how to stop myself before I get to that point.”
“I don’t know. Maybe put yourself in time-out?”
I gave her a dry look.
“I’m not kidding. Tell her you need five minutes. Chances are, you won’t even need it. By the time you walk away and get his voice out of your head, you’ll be fine.”
“Time-out,” I grumbled. “I’m almost thirty fucking years old and I need to be put in time-out.”
“We all do sometimes.”
“I need her,” I said, only a little petulantly.
“No, you don’t,” Analise pointed out gently. “You want her. The two of you could go your separate ways and you could still live a really fulfilling life.”
Tell that to my heart, I wanted to say. My bruised, battered, self-sabotaging heart that said her name with every weak, sickly beat.
I lowered my voice and closed my eyes. “What’s a fulfilling life, then?
Is it making more money than I can spend and coming home to a dark house with no one to share it with?
You and I both know what it’s like to live that way, chasing that as your only goal, and it’s so fucking empty.
” I opened my eyes, chest heavy with longing as I conjured an image of her face.
The shape of her smile. The bright sound of her laughter.
“I didn’t feel empty when I was with her. I felt whole.”
“No, it’s not about money.” Analise chewed on her bottom lip.
“But every part of our life needs tending if we want to build something good. It isn’t fair for Remi to be the sole carrier of that responsibility.
You have friends, if you’d let them be there for you.
A team, if you’d let them support you. And me,” she said with a tiny shrug.
“You’ve never asked me for advice before.
It’s nice to feel like we can help each other, you know? ”
A decade more life lived than her and I was cowed into silence by my teenage sister, whose sole relationship experience was watching it play out with fictional people.
I tugged her toward me and wrapped her in a hug. Analise sighed, laying her head on my chest. “How’d you end up with such a good heart, kid? I was not nearly this smart or thoughtful when I was your age.”
Analise lifted her head, an incredulous laugh coming out on a short puff of air. “Because I had you.”
“What?”
“You are such an idiot.” Sympathy filled her gaze, but love was there too.
“I turned out this way because I had you, Archer. You had no one for a really long time, and it shows. But I had a big brother who loved me exactly the way I was, who listened to me when I was hurting and did everything in his power to make it better. Our father failed at the most important job he’s ever had, but you still gave me that relationship.
I know what a good dad should look like, because that’s how you’ve always loved me. ”
Evanses did humble themselves. And it turned out, as the sneaking burn of tears pressed at the back of my eyes and my chest pinched with unnamed feelings, they humbled each other.
Analise grabbed my face. “He made you think that you need to be perfect all the time, but you don’t. I have never needed that from you, and neither does Remi. Stop acting like that’s your only option—that you do it perfectly or you have no choice but to tear it all down.”
“So what do I do now?” I closed my eyes. “I miss her, Analise. I miss her so much.”
“Then tell her that. Tell her you miss her and you want to talk.”
Slowly, I nodded. “I never . . . I never told her how I really felt. That I was falling for her. That I fell in love with her,” I amended. “I fell in love with her and she doesn’t know.”
She grinned. “Don’t drop that on her the moment she answers. Lead into it naturally.”
For the first time all week, I felt something other than sick, heavy dread. The hope that took its place was tentative, but it was there.
“Thank you.” I kissed the top of her head. “Maybe I’ll hire you for pep talks instead.”
“Yeah, right. You couldn’t afford me for that.” She gave me a once-over. “You have your meeting with the judge the day after tomorrow, right?”
I nodded. “I had to write out a statement about what I learned. What the experience meant to me.”
Analise’s eyes glowed. “Sounds like a great thing to invite a friend to, huh? A public forum where you can talk about how and why you’ve changed. Women love a display of personal growth.”
I ruffled her hair, laughing when she smacked at my hand. “She probably knows. I think the shelter has to send a copy of the paperwork to the judge before we meet.”
Analise smiled. “Well. That’s convenient.”
I shook my head and smiled, then told her I needed to get to sleep.
When the sky was black and the house was quiet, I sat in bed and thought about Remi. I was always thinking about Remi, it seemed, and I couldn’t help but wonder when that might change, even if I never saw her again.
I tapped out a few text message options. Just to see how they looked.
I can’t sleep. I keep thinking about you. (Pathetic, vetoed immediately.)
I fucked up. I didn’t want to get hurt and handled it wrong. (Better, but too attention-seeking.)
I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. (No, no, no.)
I tilted my chin up to the ceiling and took a few deep breaths. Immediately, my brain went to it shouldn’t be this hard. But that was a cop-out. And I didn’t want to do that anymore.
My entire body ached like I’d been worked over with steel bats. Personal growth was fucking exhausting. But maybe this was the kind of fulfillment Analise meant. The kind separate from Remi.
It took hours for sleep to find me, but when it did, I imagined the edge of a sidewalk curving around the base of a mountain, and knew that the first few steps would probably be the hardest.