19
SEBASTIAN
I walk Ellie to her car, signaling my brothers to stay in the motel room. This was my dare, so I feel responsible for ensuring it ends well. My dad has managed to wipe out the chance for us to say what we want to say to Ellie. We don’t want this to be a one-off. We want her to be our girl.
But how can I tell her that now when she looks like she wants to cry, and our lives have just been tossed in the garbage?
“We’ll leave here in thirty minutes,” I say softly as she opens the car.
“Maybe an hour,” she stares across the parking lot, her eyes unfocused. “I don’t know how mom is going to be. It might take me more time to get up to your rooms and gather what you need.”
“Colby’s going to send that list while you’re driving, okay?”
“Sure.” Her eyes drift back to the open door of the motel room, and her lips part. I wait for her to say something, but then her breath comes out trembly, her bottom lip wobbles, and she slides into the driver’s seat without another word.
“It’ll be okay,” I say softly, leaning in to be closer to her. Staring straight ahead, she nods, but she doesn’t believe me.
“You don’t regret the dare, do you?” I ask.
A quick shake of Ellie’s head is all I get in response. What I want is a kiss. A soft, melting kiss that tells me she feels the same. Instead, she reaches for the door handle.
“I’ll bring your things to the sidewalk.”
“Thanks,” I say, taking a step back so she can close the door. And she puts her foot on the accelerator and speeds from the parking lot in a flash.
Back in the room, Colby is pacing like a caged wildcat, and Micky has taken up a position in the old wooden chair that is barely strong enough to hold his weight.
“She’s gone,” I say.
“Yeah. We got that,” Colby snorts.
“Is she okay?” Micky asks.
“I don’t think so.” Shoving my hands in my pockets, I lean against the scuffed wall. “But how much of it is the situation she’s going to walk into at home, and how much is about what we just did, I don’t know.” I huff a sigh and chew on my bottom lip. “Actually, strike that. I know it wasn’t anything I did. I mean, sex like that only leaves a smile on a girl’s face. Now Colby and his black mood and disintegrating prophylactics... that’s another matter.”
“You actually believe I wanted to come inside her?” My brother pauses, staring at me like I’m an imbecile.
The comment was a way to make a joke in a tense situation, but now I come to think of it, maybe my brother isn’t so blameless for ending the evening on a downer. “You always want to be the best at everything. You had to fuck your way through the condom to prove a point.”
“Sebastian,” Micky warns.
“What? You don’t think it’s true. Not even a little. He only went last, so he’d know what Ellie would have to compare him against.”
“I went last because I enjoy watching and because I was trying to work out how the fuck I was going to handle being inside her again, knowing it’s probably the last fucking time,” Colby says, and I’m surprised to see him shake his head, defeated.
Maybe I’ve been too harsh, but it’s difficult not to suspect your triplet of something when it fits with the way they’ve always been. He’s the oldest and the most competitive. I blame my dad for that.
“Whatever,” I shrug. “It doesn’t really matter.”
“It fucking does.” Colby’s eyes widen. “You’re saying I wanted to upstage you. This was about us sharing, about us showing Ellie how we can all be something better together than we are apart. And you’re suggesting I wanted to create some kind of hierarchy already?”
“We all know our place, don’t we?”
Colby lowers his head, and Micky clears his throat in the corner.
“This isn’t the best time to be having this conversation,” he says softly. “There’s a lot of change happening right now. We need to be unified, or we won’t get through this.”
“We are unified,” I say. “You know I love you both more than I love myself. I’m just pointing out something that’s important. Because if any of our fucked-up ways of being together as triplets rub off on how we interact with Ellie, then we need to deal with it separately. She doesn’t deserve to get in the middle of our issues.”
“That wasn’t what it was about,” Colby says solemnly. “And I love you too, bro. I guess I just got carried away. She gets me in the sack in a way that no other girl has ever gotten me before, and I wanted to revel in it in case it was the last time I get to feel that way with her.”
Outside, a car pulls noisily into the lot, breaks screeching, and wheels spinning. Laughter bursts from inside it. A bottle smashes against the asphalt, and my attention is drawn to the open door. When I look back, Colby is watching me.
“You can always be yourself, Colby. Especially around us. I hope Ellie will want to take another step with us. It was on the tip of my tongue to dare her to go on a proper date with us, but she’s on her way to deal with the fallout of our parents’ failing relationship. It wasn’t the time.”
“So, we wait,” Colby says, glancing into the corner of the room to check if he has Micky’s agreement. He nods, and Colby turns back to me.
“We wait,” I say softly. “Looks like we might do a lot of waiting today.”
An hour later, we all jump into the car and make the quick journey back to our family home. On the way, I message Ellie asking if everything is okay. All I get in response is a sad-face emoji, and my heart sinks. After our confrontation, I have little to say to my brothers, so the journey is quiet. As we’re pulling up outside the house, dad calls to check up on us.
“We’re going to stay at Molly’s Motel,” Colby tells him. I guess it makes sense. We paid for the room so might as well use it.
“We can do better than that,” dad says, but Colby ignores him. “If you want to join us, we’re in room one-zero-three-three.”
Dad pauses for a second and thinks better of pushing an alternative plan. “Okay. I’ll be there in an hour.”
“We’re getting stuff from Ellie right now,” Colby adds. “But you need to resolve this, Dad. We’ll talk more later.”
Dad clears his throat, and for the first time, he seems chagrined.
Ellie must have been looking out for our car because she appears in the doorway, carrying a large bag. Wearing sliders, with her hair scraped back, I can tell from her red eyes that she’s been crying. As I jump out of the passenger door, all I want to do is run up the driveway, pull her into my arms and tell her everything’s going to be okay. I want to hold her head against my chest so that she feels safe and shelter her from anything negative that the world wants to throw at her.
I just want her to know that I’ll always be there for her if she wants me to be.
But I can’t do any of that. For all I know, Lara’s in the window, watching everything.
Ellie’s in the firing line enough. She doesn’t need me to make it worse.
“Here,” she says, reaching the sidewalk where I’m standing. “I think I got everything.” She hands me the bag and takes a step back, clutching her arms around her body, her hands half hidden in her sleeves. The additional distance she feels she needs to put between us stings.
“How’s your mom?”
“Not good,” she says. “I’ve never seen her like this before. Well, not for a while.”
“Are you okay?”
“No.” Her voice is flat, and her dark eyes are shadowed. I reach out to rest a hand on her arm. It’s the most I feel I can do to communicate what I need her to know, but she steps away.
“I should go back in,” she says blankly.
“We’re going to do our best to make things right,” I tell her. “I know it seems hopeless right now, but we’re going to make it better.”
“What would make it better, Seb?” Tugging the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her hands, she twists the fabric. There’s something wounded and childlike about her I’ve never seen before.
“My dad admitting he’s the king of the douches and begging for forgiveness.”
She shrugs. “My mom’s not a forgiving person. I’m surprised that you haven’t worked that out yet.”
“Our family is worth fighting for,” I say, but as soon as the words are out in the cool evening air, I realize that they’re a mistake.
“Family?” Ellie doesn’t speak the word as an accusation. She’s not blaming me for what we’ve done together. I know she takes equal responsibility for it, despite it being my dare. But the question is there. What would any of us be fighting for? Fix our parent’s marriage, and we’re only heading to destroy it again if we allow ourselves to continue being more than fake siblings. I know for a fact that our dad would be against a relationship. Forget Lara. If one Townsend man can’t be trusted, how would she ever consider her daughter shacking up with three?
It’s all too much to ask.
“We’ll get there,” I say. “It’ll get better.”
“You’re always such an optimist,” Ellie says, taking another step back. Her eyes are glassy with unshed tears. “But sometimes life is just shit, and nothing can change it.”
Then she turns and strides back up the driveway.
I watch until she’s disappeared into the house and closed the door to our home behind her.
In the car, no one says anything on the drive back.
There’s nothing left to say.
When we get back to Molly’s, Dad’s car is in the lot, and he’s sitting in the driver’s seat with his head resting against the seat and his eyes closed. In the darkness, with the hollows of his cheeks and eyes shadowed, he looks much older than his years.
The noise of our car pulling in front of him draws his attention, and he climbs slowly out of his vehicle with shoulders hunched.
Looking around, I guess at his train of thought: his car is worth more than all the other cars in the lot put together.
Colby bringing him here was a good move. I’m certain that if we stayed in a luxury hotel that the direness of the situation we’re facing wouldn’t be conveyed half as well. This dive motel in this part of town just magnifies what he’s lost, what we’ve all lost.
“Why the hell did you choose this place?” he asks.
“It’s cheap,” Colby says. He locks the car and starts walking, and dad follows, keeping in step with Micky and me.
The bed is still rumpled from earlier, and Colby tugs the sheet that we spread over the gap in the mattresses. Probably wise, seeing as Ellie might have leaked his come all over it.
He tosses it in the corner with no care for our dad noticing, but dad’s too distracted to notice a soiled sheet.
He slumps into the rickety wooden chair and rests his head in his hands. “I fucked up.”
It’s the first time I’ve ever heard my dad drop the f-bomb, and I stifle my shock.
“Yeah, you did,” Colby says. “And it’s not just your life you fucked up.”
Dad looks up, his eyes red and face gaunt, regret plastered all over him. “I know. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“I don’t think you were,” Micky says, slumping down onto the edge of the mattress.
“I made a big mistake.” Dad rubs his face and straightens, dropping his hands by his sides. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Have you told Lara it was a mistake? Have you begged her for forgiveness?”
“I don’t beg anyone for anything.”
I look over to Colby, whose shoulders are bunched with tension. I can see so many similarities between my dad and him. The mask they both wear to cover weakness isn’t healthy for either of them.
“But you still want her? You still want our family?” Micky asks.
There’s that word again. Family as a descriptor doesn’t sit right with me anymore, not after what has happened.
“I do,” Dad says softly.
“Then maybe you need to look at it from Lara’s point of view. It’s not her who’s betrayed the relationship. It’s not her who’s broken the trust. She deserves you to crawl on your hands and knees and say a million sorrys. Whether you like it or not, that’s what you’re going to need to do.”
“But what if she doesn’t accept my apology? What if she can’t ever trust me again?”
“That might be the case, but you have to take the risk. There isn’t an alternative.”
He exhales and shakes his head. “Women. They’re nothing but trouble.”
Colby snorts and rolls his eyes. “You had a perfectly good relationship, and you messed it up. Don’t blame women for your selfishness. Lara waits on you hand and foot. She’s cared for us like we’re her own. There’s not a thing that woman wouldn’t do for her family. She didn’t deserve this.”
There’s a long moment of pause, and then dad stands and paces back and forth. In his dark suit trousers and white dress shirt, rolled at the sleeves, he looks like a businessman who bet on the wrong horse. There’s a stoop to his normally iron-straight posture, and it’s weird because this is the first time I’ve ever really noticed my dad’s humanity. He’s always been larger than life, a mountain whose summit is too high to view. He’s aloof and always in control and never shows weakness. Never lets down his guard.
And here he is, brought to the bottom rung of the ladder, in a sleazy motel room with his sons, all because of his stupidity and selfishness.
None of us is infallible. We might like to believe we are. We might want to project that to the world, but in the end, our vulnerability lingers behind the mask.
“It’ll be okay,” Micky says, and I wonder if he’s seen the same thing as me.
“Just do what needs to be done,” Colby adds coldly.
Dad stops and looks at each of us and something in his expression makes me wonder if he’s truly seeing us for the first time, too. “It’ll only be for one night.” He stares at the three beds that we’ll have to share. “I’ll try my hardest to get things back. I promise. And if Lara can’t forgive my stupidity, then I’ll sort us out something else. Something better.”
“Okay, Dad,” Micky says.
Colby nods, folding his arms as if to say, ‘you better’.
I look around at all the men in my family, missing Ellie and hating how somber everything has become. This isn’t what I imagined things would be like after the dare. I had so much hope bubbling beneath the surface that she would find happiness in this room with us. Nothing is as I expected it to be.
I don’t do serious, and I don’t do negative. I just want everything to be back to how it was, but I can’t say that without sounding needy and pathetic. So instead, I do what I always do and make a joke.
“You assholes better not snore,” I say, then I toe off my shoes and head to the bathroom. There won’t be a sexy girl in my bed tonight, just an old dude or one of my asshole triplet-brothers.
All I can do is hope that tomorrow will be better. Maybe if I imagine hard enough that Ellie is back in my bed, I’ll manifest it to come true.