37. Sean
THIRTY-SEVEN
SEAN
The house was too empty without Mikey. Normally, I would’ve holed up until New Year’s and thanked my lucky stars for my isolation.
Instead, I felt itchy and uncomfortable.
Margaret read me like a book, and I didn’t know what to do about it. I’d ruined things with Lizzie. Ruined things with Aaron and the rest of his family. Was I in the process of ruining things with Mikey? Would I be so caught up in my own pain for the remainder of my life that I wouldn’t see what was right in front of me? That I wouldn’t see what my own son needed from me?
Lizzie wasn’t home when I drove up to her house, and I stayed on the curb and watched the dark windows for long enough that I began to feel like some kind of creep. Then, with a deep breath, I put the truck in gear and headed to the one place I didn’t want to go.
Aaron’s Christmas tree was lit up and twinkling in the living room window. I cut the engine and slid out of my vehicle as my throat dried up and my heart began to thump. When I rang the doorbell, time slowed to an excruciating crawl.
Emily opened the door. Her eyes widened slightly. “Sean,” she said.
“Is Aaron home? I should have called. I’m sorry.”
“He’s—yeah. Come in. I’ll go get him.”
“Thanks.”
She led me to the den, where I sat down on the edge of one of the armchairs, lacing my fingers together as I waited. In the month and a half I’d been back in town, this room had become familiar. Now, it was uncomfortable. I was overstepping.
But that’s what I’d been doing all along, and it was time for me to face my fears.
Aaron appeared in the mouth of the room. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, his jaw showing more stubble than usual. He watched me with eyes of a lighter brown than Lizzie’s, then dipped his head. “Sean.”
I stood and wiped my hands on my pants. “Thanks for seeing me.”
He nodded and took a seat across from me. Silence stretched; he wasn’t going to make this easy on me. I didn’t blame him.
I inhaled and started with the most obvious of my sins. “I should have told you I was interested in Lizzie.”
Aaron blinked. Frowned. “You… This wasn’t just… This has been going on for a while?”
I licked my lips. “Since I came back, yeah.”
“She set you up on dates with other women.”
“They were torture.”
Aaron stared at me like he’d never seen me before. “I thought Christmas was the first time.”
“I…no.”
We were quiet for a while. I looked down at my hands and rubbed my knuckles, trying to think of what to say. I wanted to tell him what he meant to me—but I also wanted to tell him his sister was something else altogether. I wanted to rage at him for not appreciating her, but I wanted to ask him for forgiveness too.
I was a mess. I’d made a mess of this.
Thinking of the perfect way to fix this was impossible, so I settled for honesty instead. “We ran into each other the week before Thanksgiving, but it wasn’t until Thanksgiving itself that I really noticed her.”
“Noticed her,” Aaron repeated, brows drawn.
I worked my jaw and stared at a spot on the floor before darting my gaze up to his then back down again. “Yeah. She was standing in the kitchen, staring out the window, and, I don’t know… Just the way the light hit her, or the look on her face…” I trailed off and forced myself to look up again.
Aaron stared at me hard. I couldn’t read the expression on his face. I had the sneaking suspicion I was making everything worse, but how much worse could it get? My best friend had caught me with his little sister on Christmas Day and punched me. Well. Grappled with me like we were teens again.
All I could do was keep going.
“We spent some time together while she was trying to set me up on those dates, and she’s just—great. She’s funny and bright and she makes me feel like everything’s going to be okay. It’s like she has this light, you know? And I kept looking forward to our meetings, kept finding excuses to bring Mikey over to her house. She made me actually enjoy Christmas.”
“She made you enjoy Christmas?”
I huffed a laugh and spread my palms. “I tried to stop thinking about her, because she’s your sister and you’re my best friend. The whole reason I moved here was to have a support system for Mikey, and the first thing I did was try to blow it all up. I tried, man. But she kept setting me up on these dates with other women and all I could do was compare them to her. There was no spark, or their laugh wasn’t as bright as hers, or their eyes didn’t pull me in the way hers do. I kept trying to make myself attracted to these women she set me up with, but none of them were right because none of them were her.”
“Jesus,” Aaron said in a hushed voice.
I swallowed thickly and put up my hands. “I’m not trying to antagonize you. I know I should have said something to you, but—but…” I exhaled. “It just caught me by surprise, Aaron. It was like a two by four to the side of the head.”
Aaron gave me that same odd look, but the edge of it had softened. He gulped, then said, “You’re in love with my sister.”
“I…” I met his gaze as his words landed between us. All I could respond was, “Yeah.”
“Holy fuck.”
“Look, I don’t want to fight with you. You’re my best friend, and?—”
“I’m not fighting. I’m just coming to terms… My sister ? But she’s not… How could you… There are so many other women who are…”
“Who are what?”
“I don’t know. She’s my sister. I never thought of her like…” Aaron leaned back in his chair and scrubbed his face. “This is so weird, man. The kiss, I could kind of understand. Maybe. Sort of. I don’t know. I thought you were drunk, or… I just thought you were an asshole. But this?”
“It’s more shocking to you that I would actually care about her?” My words came out harsher than I’d meant them to, and Aaron pulled his hands away from his face to stare at me.
He shrugged. “I mean—yeah? Lizzie is just… She’s just Lizzie.”
“She’s just Lizzie,” I repeated.
“Yeah. She’s always busy with her kids, and I just never thought…” He frowned at me. “Does she feel the same way?”
I scoffed. “I’m pretty sure she never wants to see me again.”
“Oh.” He seemed relieved, which annoyed me. “Mom just called and said she doesn’t want to host New Year’s.”
“Makes sense.”
Aaron reared back. “Why does that make sense?”
“Um, because we’ve all treated her like shit? Why would she want to see any of us?”
“Whoa, whoa! What’s this got to do with me? If she’s mad at you for coming onto her, that’s not my problem.”
“She’s not mad at me for coming onto her, dickhead. She’s mad at me for not defending her. She’s mad at me for leaving her hanging when you confronted me.”
“What?” Aaron looked utterly confused. Lost.
“I did to her what you and everyone else does, and now she doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean? What do I do to her?”
“You use her, Aaron!”
Aaron opened his mouth. Snapped it shut again. Drew his brows low over his eyes, then shook his head. “No, I don’t.”
“You call her to drop everything to come babysit without warning.”
“She likes kids!”
“You host events at your house and make her do all the cooking.”
“She likes cooking!”
“Not that much! Not so much that she wouldn’t want some fucking help once in a while.”
“So, what, the fact that she doesn’t want to talk to you is my fault now?”
I opened my mouth and just about managed to hold back the harsh words that tried to fly out of it. Instead, I took a deep breath to calm myself, then said, “She steps up when she needs to, but she isn’t appreciated for it, Aaron. And I added to that when I should have been the one person to stand up for her. I treated her exactly like her ex-husband did. I put my own pride, my own needs ahead of hers.”
Aaron looked like he wanted to protest but was too baffled to do it. “Her ex?”
“She picked up his slack, just like she picks up everyone else’s. She hasn’t had someone in her corner in a long time. I saw it, and I still failed her. So no, she doesn’t want to talk to me. And I don’t blame her.”
Aaron leaned his elbows on his knees and stared at the floor. “She bounced back so quickly after her divorce. I didn’t realize…”
“She bounced back because she had no choice.”
Rubbing the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, Aaron let out a long breath. “So, what now?”
“I don’t know.”
We sat there for a long while until Aaron finally said, “I think I owe her an apology.”
I grunted in response.
Aaron stood and stretched, then angled his chin at me. “We good?”
A weight lifted off my shoulders as I got to my feet and nodded. “Yeah.”
Aaron nodded. “Good.”
When he turned to leave the room, I made a noise to stop him. Glancing over his shoulder with raised eyebrows, my best friend waited for me to speak. When I did, the words came out in a rush. “I’m still going to try to get her back.”
He stared at me.
I squared my shoulders. “Is that a problem?”
“You going to hurt her?”
“No. Not if I can help it.”
“Fine.”
And that was it. Friendship mended and saved. Aaron walked me to the front door and gave me a back-slapping hug, and I wondered why I’d been so afraid to face him.
The whole point of having a support system was that they’d catch you when you fell. I’d learned at a young age to walk on eggshells around the people in my circle, knowing they’d leave or die or betray or abandon me when things got tough.
As I got in my truck, I glanced at the twinkling Christmas tree in the window again and let out a long breath.
Not Aaron. Our friendship had survived the turbulence of our teenage years. It had survived the ups and downs of life, of distance, of divorce, kids, changed circumstances…
It would survive this.
A piece of my heart knitted itself back together. For the first time in my life, I was sure of something—of someone. I knew that no matter what, my friendship with Aaron would endure. That support system I wanted to give to Mikey was something I should have craved for myself, but up until this moment, I hadn’t thought I deserved it.
Security felt like a shelter in the storm, a harbor that I could return to when the seas got rough.
And as soon as I felt the wind die down around me, I knew that I couldn’t give up on Lizzie. Not when she was still out at sea, alone in a leaky boat, being tossed around by waves that were taller than she was.
If she let me, I’d be her harbor, and never again would I let her down.