Chapter 27
twenty-seven
LOCKE
Billie was my first best friend. Long before I realized best friends didn’t have to be siblings. I just got lucky they happened to be.
My little sister likes to poke her fun and get her jabs in, but she will always answer the phone when I call. Up until a few years ago, no one else understood how merciless being my father’s child was.
Then Grant came into the picture. We didn’t grow up with him, and getting to know him was a slow process, but there’s something about being a McCarthy that can’t be explained. You have to live it to know. And we know.
After being shoved back into my cowardly shell by my father, they were the two people I thought to call. Rosie could talk me out of any low place in my life, but right now, I just want my siblings.
Grant doesn’t stutter once when offering to pick us up. Billie doesn’t hesitate to skip class when we call her. Normally we’d be harsher on her academic choices, but we let this one slide.
The wind chill coasting along Boston Harbor forces me to tighten my gray coat and cross my arms impossibly tight. I’ve never been here during the fall. And never with family—real family. Already, being with them starts clearing my head.
My sister shivers, shrinking into her knitted sweater, and knocking her black boots across the leaf-littered sidewalk. Grant hands his extra coat to her and she mumbles in appreciation.
“Why are you wearing a skirt in the middle of November?”
She scrunches her red nose and folds the coat over herself. “I didn’t think I was going to be walking the harbor today.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Huffing, she kicks her foot. “I have stockings under, idiot. It’s not as cold as you think it is.”
“Your entire face is red.”
“Is this what you called me out here for?”
Billie rolls her eyes, but there’s a faint smile under her irritation. I laugh softly. Being with my siblings is something I’ll never take for granted. There are a handful of things I’ve endured because of my last name, but if being their brother is the pay off, then all of it was worth it.
Sighing, I remember it was those hardships that lead us out here. “I had a meeting with dad.”
“Shit.” Grant’s voice says over the crunching leaves beneath our feet. “Was it about the club?”
“What club?” Billie asks, and my eyebrows knit together.
“You haven’t seen it?”
“Seen what?”
I think she’s messing with me. Billie is on social media twenty-four seven. Her dream career is all about social media. I think she’d pour it into her veins if she could. I figured she was the first person to see it, and was just waiting for me to bring it up.
But her face is blank, shoulders shrugging. She hasn’t seen it.
That’s not normal.
“The video of me getting into an argument at a bar.”
“What?!”
Billie stops in her tracks, jaw dropping and hand slapping over her mouth. Grant throws a glance back at me. I think he feels it too. Even if he’s still learning about Billie, he can tell this is weird.
“Why don’t you know this?” My arms cross. The wind whips again, cold November air piercing every exposed inch of skin, but I ignore it. Too focused on my sister’s expression going from shock to defeat.
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” Grant and I reply in tandem. He says, “It’s strange you haven’t seen it though. You live on social media. There’s no way you would’ve missed it.”
Billie gulps. Her arms drop back to her side and she walks down the paved path again. We follow soundlessly. There’s another fact about my sister engrained into my heart.
She’s a people-pleaser. Painfully so. She’ll sacrifice every part of herself to keep the peace, with her friends and within our family. She makes up for silent spaces with jokes she doesn’t really think are funny and silently suffer for everyone else.
There are only a few people she doesn’t force that persona around. I’m one of them, and for the first time now, Grant. Seeing her do this—slump her shoulders and show any sort of discomfort—means something is really, really wrong.
I brought them here for me, originally. So I could be around people who understand me and can comfort me with just their presence.
Observing my little sister like this reminds me that our sibling bond works both ways.
I’m okay with putting my problems on the back burner while I wait for Billie to confide in us.
I can be there for her just as she is for me.
Silent minutes pass. The only sounds are a few kids in the opposite direction laughing, and the slow lift and fall of boots on a sidewalk. We don’t rush her. We wait.
Eventually, Billie kicks a rock down the stone pathway and mumbles, “AJ and I aren’t friends anymore.”
“What?!”
Together, we stop. My voice echoes. My little sister turns around, tears gathering in her eyes, and Grant immediately wraps her in his arms.
I’m not even halfway recovered from shock when she starts crying. He’s patting her head slowly, awkwardly looking between us, and my life feels like it’s officially unhinged from everything I thought I knew.
“Who’s…” My brother’s voice barely carries over Billie’s sobs. “Who’s AJ?”
I should say something. I want to, but I’m too frozen in shock to move or do anything. I don’t have a good answer, honestly. To Billie, AJ is everything.
My hands are locking themselves in my hair when she sniffles and backs away from Grant’s chest.
“AJ is-” She coughs, cries a bit more, then breathes. “Was. AJ was my best friend.”
“He was more than your best friend.”
I instantly regret saying it. Agony covers her face, and she starts sobbing into Grant’s chest again.
“I’m sorry Billie. I’m just… so shocked.”
My little sister cries. Louder this time, grabbing onto the arm I offer her while she stays stuck to Grant’s side.
I’m devastated for her. Half of my brain goes into older-brother-protective mode.
Immediately wanting to call AJ and ask him why the fuck my sister is sobbing her eyes out.
The other half is still struggling to process everything.
Grant’s elbow knocks into mine and he starts mouthing words silently.
What’s going on?
Billie still has her head down. I let her cry, and reply wordlessly, trying not to add salt into a wound I never thought would be there.
AJ is the guy she likes.
I shake my head. That’s wrong. Saying she likes him is such a belittlement of what they are to each other.
Childhood best friends. They do everything together.
My free hand is making small motions, trying to emphasize what over a decade of friendship and growing together means, but I don’t know if it’s possible. I’ve seen Billie develop with AJ her entire life. From daycare to now. He’s her constant.
Growing up, she’d always change what hobby she liked, or what job she wanted when she got older, but one thing stuck. Billie was always sure AJ was the first and only boy she’d ever love.
I don’t know if something that deep can be explained over autumn winds and quiet cries.
Her soulmate.
I wince. From saying something so cheesy about my sister, and from the fact that it’s true. He can’t be described as anything else.
Grant nods and leans his head onto Billie’s. I squeeze her arm. We stay there, silently comforting her and letting her expel the emotions that must be killing her. I wonder how long she had this bottled up, and realization hits me all at once.
“Fuck.”
I say it accidentally. Billie moves, taking her now mascara stained face away from Grant’s chest, and sniffles.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“No.” Her hands wipe at her cheeks. They come up with black streaks, and she groans before digging through her leather purse. “I told you about AJ. You have to tell me, too.”
She didn’t really tell us. But I don’t point that out, because I hate seeing my sister cry.
“It’s just…” I consider this is the wrong thing to tell her. I could lie.
Billie motions for me to keep going while she pulls a wipe from her bag, and I sigh. I can’t lie to her, or Grant. It’s wrong.
Bracing myself for what might happen, I twist my face together before speaking.
“Halloween is when the bar argument happened.”
She stalls.
“Oh.”
Grant whines, throwing his hands up. “Guys, I know I’m still getting into this whole sibling thing, but you need to keep me in the loop. What does that mean?”
Her hand starts to shake a bit. I’m about to hold her again and think up things to say when I give AJ a phone call. I’m realizing now why I never got a text back from him last week.
“AJ’s birthday falls on Halloween. I threw him a party this year.” She takes a long, deep breath. A light film of tears gloss over the green of her eyes, but she blinks them away and continues cleaning up her face. “That’s where I saw him kissing another girl.”
I wish I was holding something. Just so I could drop it and watch it shatter to pieces. That’s the only response dramatic enough to represent how I feel.
Every year since Billie was fourteen—after she officially confessed to me that she had plans to marry AJ—I’ve said her best friend is in love with her. I know I’m right. I’d bet my whole life on it.
I wait for Billie to tell me she’s kidding. This is all one elaborate joke, because the boy who handmade her crafts every Valentine’s Day and went to prom in a baby pink tux for her did not kiss another girl. He couldn’t have.
Billie throws everything back into her bag, shrugs her shoulders with a sad smile, and my heart drops. She’s not joking.
“We both had an eventful Halloween, huh?” She fakes a laugh and elbows both of us. Trying to lighten the mood because she thinks that’s her job.
I cross my arms and shake my head. “Don’t do that shit with me. You’re allowed to be sad.”
The inauthentic expression falters. As if she’s been given a permission slip to feel, my sister drops her entire body and lets her voice slip into sadness.