Chapter 45 - Andrew
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Andrew
The most vivid memory I have of growing up in my childhood home is watching my two older brothers share a room.
While I had my own filled with bins of plastic toys and their hand-me-down electronics, they bonded over sleeping a few feet from each other.
They’d connect through video games—ones I didn’t quite have the hand-eye coordination for yet—and odd fashion choices like baggy jeans and puka shell necklaces.
All while I played with my LEGO and action figures.
Now, looking at the dusty treadmill and elliptical machine from my door through theirs, I wish it was their two twin beds I was looking at.
Thankfully, my parents didn’t turn my own room into a home gym—if you call two exercise machines and a lone yoga mat a gym.
Instead, my parents left my twin-size bed intact, swapping out the old navy bed sheets for pretty floral ones for guests.
But the Star Wars decals my mom strategically placed on both sides of the window are still there.
A nice little reminder of my childhood while I stay with them.
“Are you all settled in?” My mom is by the doorway, a stack of towels in her hands.
“Yep.”
“Where are you keeping all your furniture?”
“It’s in storage,” I answer.
“So, it’s just your clothes?”
I nod. “And a few other things,” I say, loosely gesturing at the boxes I brought along with me.
She sighs, suppressing it with a placating smile. “Well, it’s nice to have you back home.”
I nod, the only response I have to offer that isn’t ungrateful or dispirited.
She and my dad are putting me up without charging me rent after all.
But there is the narrowing margin of my freedom with the probing “Where are you going?” and “Are you going to stay out late?” I’m sure to expect in the coming weeks.
Just last night, after coming home at one a.m. from the Coldplay concert I went to with my friends, I was hit with an impassive lecture in the morning about the hordes of drunk drivers on the road past midnight.
It was my last hurrah before what feels like a sanction for falling for the wrong girl.
I just hope this isn’t a permanent situation.
“I’m just putting a few things away,” I tell her. “I’ll be down in a bit.”
“Okay. Teeny’s going to be here with Everett and Sadie for dinner.” She turns to leave, and I shut the door behind her before slumping onto my bed.
Fuck. I can’t believe the shit show of my life.
With rent due next month and almost zero income, I had to let go of my apartment.
Luckily, my lease was up—silver linings or whatever.
And, of course, there was the awkward conversation with my parents.
I explained to them I lost my job, claiming budget cuts and unforeseen layoffs, an easy cover for the truth.
Now, I’m turning in my keys Monday morning and trading my independence for my childhood room, floral bedding and all.
Considering how quickly these changes are happening, it feels like my argument with Grace was ages ago.
I miss her so much. I want to tell her it’s all okay.
That we can forget about everything and just go to my apartment, or hers, and go back to the way things were when we’d settle in for a quiet evening of television and home-cooked meals.
But I don’t even have an apartment to bring her back to anymore.
How can we move on from this when I can’t even give her anything beyond sneaking her into my parents’ house in the middle of the night like I’m some delinquent teenager.
Maybe once I have my shit together, I can talk to her.
Unless she’s found someone better. Like that doctor guy I saw her with who absolutely seems to have his shit together.
No wonder she didn’t want to tell anyone about us.
It’s another hour before Teeny arrives at my parents’ house.
I hear them pull up into the driveway. The light slams of the car door and the carefree chatter from her, Everett, and Sadie can be heard from my room, and I know it’ll be minutes before my mom comes back upstairs to get me.
I trudge downstairs, and just as predicted, I run into her at the base of the stairs.
“There you are,” my mom greets me. “Teeny’s here.”
I nod, walking past her to the kitchen to greet Teeny’s brood.
“Hey,” I call morosely. Teeny and the rest of my siblings know about my big move back home.
They haven’t called me with a lecture about saving money for emergencies like this.
Though Josh texted to ask about Thad and whether I’ve heard from him.
I told him Thad has been courteous enough to respond to my emails but no news about a job opening.
Just a kind “It’s good to hear from you” followed by a regretful “I’ll be in touch if we open up the finance position,” adding a considerate “I hope it’s sooner than later” before ending it with his sign off.
“Hey, Andrew,” Teeny says with a sympathetic grimace on her face. It catches me off guard, but I guess it’s expected. Thirty and moving back with your parents is enough to earn a look of pity.
I wave with a tight-lipped smile, passing the silent greeting to Everett and Sadie too. Sadie, dressed in what looks like her track uniform, waves back while Everett tips his chin up to acknowledge me.
“Andrew,” my mom calls, walking into the kitchen. “Can you take out the trash?”
“Sure.” I open the pull-out trash can from under the kitchen island. As I’m tying the plastic strings together, Teeny picks up the recycle bin in the corner near the back door.
“I’ll help with the recyclables,” she announces.
“I can get them,” I tell her, gesturing my hand to the bin in her hands.
“No, no. I want to help.”
My brow furrows in confusion, but I don’t fight her. I walk out to the backyard in the direction of the trash bins when Teeny’s urgent steps round to my front, stopping me in my path.
“Hey,” she says, though not in a cheerful greeting sort of way, but as if she’s asking me what’s wrong with me in the single-syllable word.
“What?”
“You want to tell me what happened?”
“You mean moving back in with Mom and Dad?” I ask. “I thought they told you. I lost my job and had to give up my—”
“No,” she interrupts. “With you and Grace.”
My eyes round. “What?”
“What happened?” she asks again, this time not clarifying. She wants the details. Actually she might already know the details, and this inquisitive snooping for more may be her search for my side of the story.
“You talked to her?” She walks away from me, emptying the empty bottles and cans into the recycling bin a few feet away. I follow suit, heaving the trash bag into the regular trash bin. “Why did she tell you?”
“Because she’s my best friend,” she tells me matter-of-factly. “And she’s going through a rough time, and she needs me. So, are you going to tell me what happened?”
“What do you mean she’s going through a rough time? Is she okay?”
Teeny doesn’t answer me. As if holding back the details I want like a hostage situation will force what she wants from me. I cross my arms, and when a weary sigh softens my lingering hurt and frustration, I give.
“I’m not who she should be with,” I tell her.
“Why?”
“What do you mean ‘why?’ Do you want me to be with her?”
Her hands meet her sides as she considers my question. “That’s not up to me,” she says. “All I know is she’s spending her time watching sappy romance movies and cries during all the sad parts. And she feels horrible about everything.”
“She’s the one who didn’t want anyone to know about us,” I say. “She’s ashamed of me. I’m unemployed, I do food delivery to make a few bucks, I live with my parents. It’s no wonder she didn’t want anyone to know about us.”
“Andrew.” My sister places a warm hand on my arm and gives me a soft squeeze. “None of that matters to her.”
“Of course it does. Why do you think she didn’t tell you about us? Or her family?”
“Because she was scared.”
“Yeah, she was scared people were going to freak out about us and—”
“No, she was scared that what happened with her ex-husband would happen again.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“She got freaked out, and all she could think about was how the divorce was her fault, and it was all because of her that her marriage turned out the way it did, and she was scared of it happening again.”
“That’s crazy. I would never treat her the way Frankie treated her.”
“She thought that about Frankie at one point too.”
My heart breaks for Grace. The shame and criticism her ex-husband treated her with left a mark after all these years, and I didn’t even realize how badly it affected our relationship.
“Why didn’t she just tell me this?”
“She didn’t even realize that was why she couldn’t tell people,” Teeny explains. “All she knew was she kept feeling scared and nervous about people knowing, and—”
I bolt back toward the door, leaving Teeny talking to herself.
“Where are you going?” she calls after me.
“I need to talk to her.”
“What are you going to tell her?”
“I don’t know. I just need to talk to her.”
“Do you even know where she’s at?”
It didn’t even dawn on me that she might not be home. “I’ll go to her condo.”
“She’s in Malibu,” Teeny informs me. “She’s at her parents’ anniversary party.”
“Shit!” I mutter under my breath. I forgot about the party.
“But I have the invitation,” she says, the optimism in her voice bringing back the urgency in my movements.
She reaches for her phone in her pocket and starts scrolling through it.
“I have it here somewhere. When I told her I couldn’t make it because of Sadie’s track meet, I let it get lost in my inbox.
” I grow impatient watching her, and she finally says, “She sent it such a long time a—here!”
She points it in my direction. A fancy Evite in calligraphy font for Elsie and Robert Han’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. I take the phone from her, sending a screenshot of the invitation to myself and hurry to my room to grab my keys. Teeny follows at my heels.
“What are you going to tell her?”
“I don’t know,” I answer, shoving my wallet into my back pocket. “I just need…she needs to know I’m not Frankie. I’m not going to treat her the way he did, and if we need to keep things between us for her to understand that, then so be it.”
I saw how he treated her. Like she was two inches tall.
He ground into her brain this idea of herself.
That she’s not worthy of love and affection, and any bit of attention he gave her, it was given with spite and hatred.
That’s not me. I love her. And not only do I love her, but I respect her and care about her too much to treat her like she doesn’t mean anything to me.
She needs to know this. Even if she doesn’t want to be with me, she needs to know that she’s worthy of love.
I come bounding down the stairs, and just as I round the newel post at the bottom, my mom stops us. “Where are you going?”
“I have to go do something,” I vaguely tell her. “I’ll be right back.” A lie, considering Malibu is a good two and a half hours from here.
“But dinner—”
“Mom,” I hear Teeny call. She offers some vague yet pertinent reason for my sudden disappearing act, but I don’t hear it. I’m already halfway out the door.