Chapter 7
Chapter 7
Present day
Taormina, Italy
Italians eat their meals in the middle of the night. At least, that’s what it feels like.
Early June in Sicily means that the sun won’t fully set until well past eight, but by the time Nyota and I stumble our way into the lantern-lit terrace garden, the sky is already dark. If it weren’t for the clear shine of the stars, I wouldn’t be able to make out where the air starts and the sea begins.
It doesn’t help that we’re the last two guests to show up for dinner.
And about five minutes late.
We march side by side down the cobblestone path, ready to make our shameful entrance. “How are they all so goddamn punctual?” Nyota mutters in my ear.
“How did we manage not to be?” The walk from her room took us forty-five seconds, tops. Running behind has to be some kind of superpower. And the problem with a thirteen-people wedding party—including her, me, and a sixteen-month-old toddler—is that it’s simply not crowded enough to hide our terrible manners.
Everyone’s already sitting at a long, rectangular table that has been set on a platform made of stone tiles, right in the middle of the lush garden. Strings of fairy lights crisscross above it like a canopy, casting a warm golden glow across the crisp white tablecloth and the earthy wildflower centerpieces. When the coastal breeze lifts, the candle flames nestled in little terra-cotta jars flicker, making the glassware sparkle. Red lanterns hang from the closest trees, cypress and olive, as if marking the border between the villa and its groves. Behind all of it, a solemn, moonlit silhouette oversees eastern Sicily.
Mount Etna.
Most guests are already sipping dark red wines, and shots of something that seems to glow neon orange. There are at least three animated conversations going on at once, loud even over the hypnotic chorus of the cicadas. When Tiny barks, then barrels toward me like I’m a soldier returning from a one-hundred-year deployment, they all come to a stop.
Tisha notices us and begins tapping her glass with a knife.
“Get ready,” Nyota whispers to me. “It’s loser’s open mic night.”
“At last,” her sister declares. “Here they are—our most preeminent guests, bestowing upon us their invaluable attendance.”
Everyone laughs. My cheeks feel sunburnt. Nyota curtsies gracefully and mutters, “Little baby Jesus, why did you not make me an only child?” but her smile stays in place. It’s an act of pure ventriloquism.
“Hardest battles, strongest soldier,” I whisper, searching for Rue’s eyes. Sorry , I mouth at her as I rub Tiny’s back. I could go to her, hug her, maybe even fuss over how stunning she looks in her white dress and French braid. Except, she would hate it.
She shrugs, the curve of her lips small but warm.
“What do you two have to say for yourselves?” Tisha asks. The arm wrapped around the back of her chair belongs to her fiancé, Diego. He’s a Silicon Hills tech bro whom I really, really want to find annoying for being part of the crowd ruining my weird little city. Sadly, he thwarted my plans by turning out to be adorable and never wearing a Patagonia vest, driving a Tesla Cybertruck, or drinking Soylent. I remain on high alert; in the meantime, I wave back when he grins at me.
“I think we can give them a pass, babe,” he says. “I bet they have valid excuses.”
“Such as?”
He shrugs. “Their brains are not fully formed?”
“Ah, yes. The raw, unbaked prefrontal cortex of juvenescence.”
Nyota rolls her eyes. “Tish, quit being jealous because the party doesn’t start till I arrive. We were simply engrossed in our discussion topic—mean girls who act all haughty and superior, even though they notoriously wet the bed well into their teens.”
“I was nine —”
“I didn’t say we were talking about you—”
“—and I had a nightmare—”
“—and yet you’re being so defensive, I wonder why?” Nyota takes a seat across from her sister, ready to spend the night bickering.
Tisha has been Rue’s best friend since they were kids, and for a little while I resented my brother for not falling in love with her. I never said it aloud, and I hope to bring it to my grave, even more than the time I took a gummy and DMed Malala to tell her that I was sure we’d be best friends, even more than the fact that I cheated on every history exam in eighth grade and know nothing about World War I, even more than the identity of the person I’ve fantasized about while masturbating for the last three years. But when I first met Tisha, she was so easy to talk to. She’d laugh at my jokes, and not let conversations fall into unsettling silences, and allow herself to be charmed by me. Meanwhile, Rue…
At the beginning of her relationship with Eli, back when I was still living with my brother, she was cold and distrustful. She doesn’t like me , I thought. She’d rather I weren’t around. It wrung my stomach tight, the fear that her dislike would pry away my single remaining family member right after I’d reconnected with him. Then I would know, really know, what it meant to be alone in the world.
But Eli was over the moon. I may have been a jealous, possessive, bratty sister, but not one so cruel to take this once-in-a-lifetime happiness away. So I just kept trying. Pushed through the delicate dance of Rue and me puttering around the kitchen, unspeaking. Forced smiles when I returned home after a day at school and she’d stare at me with those wide, serious blue eyes. Challenged myself to get her to at least tolerate me.
Then, early one morning, a few months after she’d walked into our lives and turned them into maelstroms, she showed up at the door.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “Eli’s on a work trip for the rest of the week. He must have forgotten to warn you—”
“I’m here for you.” Her low, husky voice was firm. “Happy birthday, Maya.”
She held out a pot, and I accepted it. A light green, wide-leafed plant sprung out of a ceramic vase.
“It’s a cucamelon,” she explained. “A special type of cucumber. I noticed that you like pickles and thought that you might enjoy this. They are smaller, more or less the size of your fingertip, and tend to be more sour than regular cucumbers . ”
“Did you say ‘cucamelon’?”
“Yes. They are not hybrids of cucumbers and watermelons, that’s a common misconception. It’s the same family, though, Cucurbitaceae. As the plant grows, you may have to repot it into a larger container, and—” She stopped, abruptly. Looked down at her feet. And I felt like a total idiot.
Rue wasn’t cold, or mean, or arrogant. Rue didn’t hate me. Rue was awkward .
I blinked at her, unsure what to say. And maybe unknowingly communicated it in Morse code, because she added, in little more than a whisper, “ It’s not you, Maya. You have been very welcoming. I am grateful for it. I’m not always able to show it, though .”
“Oh.”
“I’m not the best at this.”
“This?”
She sighed. Nodded. “ This .” It should have been an obscure, inscrutable statement, but the relief of it had me feeling as though I were resurfacing after weeks underwater.
It occurred to me that maybe the reason Rue didn’t laugh much was that she struggled to figure out whether people were laughing at her or with her. That she didn’t speak because she didn’t know what to say. And that I could stand to be a little less self-centered. “ I don’t mind the quiet. I… ” I shrugged. Rue said nothing, just calmly waited for me to finish, and in that rock-solid moment I knew exactly why Eli had fallen so uncontrollably for her. “ I don’t mind ,” I repeated. “ As long as you’re not planning to convince my brother that I’m a loser .”
That gave her pause. “ Eli adores you .”
“Yeah? I get scared, sometimes. Because…you know. It wasn’t always good between us.”
She nodded.
“And I don’t really have anyone else.”
“I understand. I have a younger brother. But he…It’s not working out very well.”
We looked at each other. I didn’t say that if she wanted a sibling, she could be my sister. She didn’t say that if I wanted a larger family, I should keep her in mind. In fact, neither of us said much of anything. But everything changed.
I put the cucamelon pot on the back porch, and not only did it not bear the fruits she’d promised me, but it also stopped growing. That’s when I relinquished its care back to Rue, who by then had practically moved in. She nursed it back from the brink of death, and then I had the cutest little grape-sized gherkins to snack on, and a future sister-in-law with whom to sit on the couch for hours, doing schoolwork while she read her dry nonfiction books. Every once in a while, we’d look up, exchange a small smile, and go back to being alone, together.
A few weeks later, when Jade began looking for an apartment, she realized how little she could afford without a roommate. “ I could go live with her. Do you need me to move out? ” I asked my brother.
“Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
He shook his head. “ No. And neither does Rue. We enjoy having you around. She’s worried that you’ll disappear from our lives, and…maybe I am, too? ”
“I wouldn’t—”
His eyebrow rose.
“—do it again .”
He laughed. “ I know you can’t live with your adult brother for the rest of your life. But I’d love having you close by. Strictly for dog walking reasons .” His face was pure seriousness.
I nodded, just as solemn. “ I need you close by, too. Strictly for organ donation reasons .”
“ How fortuitous .” And that’s how Jade and I ended up finding an apartment five minutes away.
I never expected that Rue and Eli would ever have a destination wedding, considering her issues around socializing. But no one here will demand from her anything more than she’s willing to give. No one here is an asshole. Except maybe…
My eyes brush against the figure standing under a string of bistro lights. Immediately bounce back to the safety of the table.
“I saved you a spot next to me,” Minami tells me, and I’m grateful and relieved, like I’ve been saved from finding a seat during fifth-grade lunch period.
She holds out her arms, and I duck in for a hug. Her straight, dark hair smells like baby powder and the same zesty fragrance she was using when she first held me, at my father’s funeral. She strokes my hair behind my ears, scanning my face. There is something maternal, parental about it, but unlike being called a girl by Conor, this doesn’t make me bristle. She earned this, by teaching me how to use tampons, reading through all my college applications, talking me out of shaving my eyebrows at least twice. And if the fact that she’s Conor’s ex makes all of this weird , I’d rather not think about it. “You look tired,” she says.
“Yeah. I’ll sleep great tonight. What’s up, Sul?”
Her husband, a stocky, silent, constant presence at her side, grunts at me. I care deeply about you, it means , but do not ask me to string together a sentence .
“Where’s Her Majesty?” I ask.
“She’s in love with the scent of jasmine, so Hark brought her over to the tree to see the flowers up close. Hey, Kaede? There’s someone here who wants to see you!”
When Kaede notices me, her face lights up, brighter than the lanterns. Little hands grasp in my direction. “Hey, princess!” I wave, ignoring the man carrying her.
“Ma-da,” she squeals, which is as close as she gets to my name. She is, somehow, the perfect mix of her mother and father: light brown hair and dark eyes, small and plump. Kaede was my first exposure to small children. “ I think I want one of these ,” I told Minami the day she was born. “ Or three. And I want them to be like her .” That’s how I became Kaede’s official babysitter. In the weeks since returning from Switzerland, I’ve watched her nearly every day. Which is, according to Minami, “ A lot of unpaid labor. Wouldn’t you rather be out partying ?”
“At eight thirty a.m.?”
“Or—I don’t know. Skateboarding? Making prank calls? Engaging in nuclear fission? I don’t know what twentysomethings do these days.”
“Are you kidding? I love hanging with Kaede. She’s my bestie. Aren’t you?”
Kaede grinned, toothy, and held out her octopus plushie to me—a most resounding yes. The problem is, I may be her bestie, but I’m not the only one.
“So Maya is here, and I’m old news, hmm?” A deep, fake-gruff tone, followed by a light tickle on her round tummy that has her pealing with laughter. Tragic, how much she likes Conor. I thought children come with a built-in jackass detector, like dogs. Then again, Tiny, too, often seeks snuggles from the enemy.
“Hey, baby girl.” Kaede’s little arms wrap around my neck. Conor’s hand brushes against the back of mine, then lingers there to make sure that the baby is well supported.
“Careful,” he murmurs, not letting go. “She’s gotten heavier.”
“I’ve got her, I—” It’s a huge mistake, looking up at him. Meeting his eyes. There is something in there, a guarded, hidden, resigned kind of sadness that reminds me of the first time he handed Kaede to me. “I’ve got her,” I repeat, firm.
Conor nods, slowly, and returns to his seat.