28. Adair
28
ADAIR
M y anxiety about messaging Sarah Banner has finally receded into near-nonexistence, so when it finally comes, the reply is somehow both jarring and exactly what I expected:
What the hell do you want?
I take a deep breath, fingers hovering over the keyboard for a minute as I try to collect my thoughts. I think I’m about to make the dumbest move of my life. And that’s saying something.
I write back and hold my breath. I see the little dots that she’s typing back and my mouth goes dry as I wait for her response.
S arah’s shoulder-length hair is darker than it was in her profile picture. It’s still easy to spot her when she walks into Bean-Go, hand wrapped around the strap of her purse. I stand up to meet her, hoping she can’t tell that my legs are shaky. Up close, it’s unnerving how much her eyes look like Jack’s. She’s got a brisk handshake and doesn’t protest when I say I’ll pay for her coffee.
Gigi makes our cappuccinos and hands them over. I gave her the lowdown on the whole stupid situation I’d gotten myself into two days earlier when things were slow and told her I’d cover for her the next time she wants to take off an hour early. When Sarah is occupied adding sugar to her cup, Gigi meets my eyes and mouths, good luck .
Sarah and I take a corner table by the window. It usually is at this hour anyway, but I’m relieved that the place is mostly deserted.
“So, who are you? How do you know my brother?”
“I’m his boyfriend. Well, kind of. I guess.” Uh-oh. This is not the best way to start off. But should I use boyfriend? I mean, we are now, right? We have to be. I licked him clean after he took a piss, for fuck’s sake.
Sarah’s kind of frowning at me and I realized I spaced out on her for a second. Shit. “He doesn’t like to use that word,” I say with what I hope is a disarming shrug.
“Mm-hmm.” I can’t tell what that means. “How’d you meet?” she asks.
What do I tell her? Obviously, not the truth: He chased me through the woods and hit me with his belt and made me cry and I wanted it more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life .
“I spend a lot of time hiking the trails at the park where he works. We kind of started talking and —” I shrug and turn on the smile I give customers when they’ve waited too long for their order. “We just kind of hit it off.”
Her expression wavers between wariness and outright suspicion. “What do you do?”
“Oh.” I wave a hand around the coffee shop. “I work here. I’m a barista.”
Her eyes narrow. “How old are you?”
“I’ll be twenty-three in another month or so.”
“Jesus Christ.” Sarah rolls her eyes and I fight the urge to smile. There’s no way you could see that mannerism and not know that she and Jack are brother and sister. “So, he asked you to get in touch with me and make this plea on his behalf?”
“God, no! He has no idea I contacted you.”
“What? Are you yanking my chain?”
I cringe. “I know, I know. I’m kind of going behind his back. I admit that probably wasn’t a great idea, but I figured it was… better this way.” Sarah frowns. “If you tell me you still hate his guts, then I’ll know never to bring it up to him again.”
Her mouth twists into a grimace as she folds her arms. “I guess you want me to sit here and listen while you tell me he’s changed and all.”
“No, I’m not trying to tell you that.” Sarah’s eyebrows shoot up, but I press on. “He probably hasn’t changed. But the thing is, he isn’t who you think he is.” I lean forward in my seat, putting my elbows on the table. “His ex, Nathaniel, lied . Maybe it was for money, maybe it was out of shame —I don’t know why.”
When Sarah raises a clearly skeptical eyebrow, I shake my head. “Jack told me he didn’t abuse Nathaniel, and I believe him. I really think Jack’s telling the truth.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s perfectly happy to present to the world as a complete jerk with a prickly attitude who likes some fucked-up shit.” I lift one shoulder in a shrug. “It’s fine. I like some fucked-up shit, too. But my point is, he’s never hid that. He’s never pretended to be somebody he’s not.” I break off with a laugh as a thought hits me. “Even when I sometimes wish he would.”
“Why do you care if I talk to him again?” Sarah asks. Clearly still skeptical, she sits back and folds her arms.
“Because I think he still cares about you.”
Her eyebrows go up. “Did he say that?”
I snort out a laugh. “Not in so many words. You know the guy.”
For the first time, a tiny smile emerges, tugging at the corner of her lips. “So how could you know?”
“Because meeting Rosa and realizing who she was rattled him. He didn’t like me pointing that out and denied it, but I can tell he definitely was. He was so…” I trail off, remembering the hurt, angry look in his eye when he first told me about the girl.
“Sad?” Sarah supplies.
I shake my head. “No. Pissed-off. It just — I could tell it struck a nerve. When something actually hurts his feelings, he’s not as good at hiding that as he thinks he is, you know?” Sarah nods wordlessly.
“And, honestly? Some of it is my own selfish reasons,” I admit with a sigh. When Sarah presses her lips into a thin line, I sigh and jump into the deep end.
“I’m sorry if this is overstepping or projecting or whatever, but I was raised by a single mom. She busted her ass. My granddad helped out as much as he could, but if she’d had someone else besides just him, she might have had an easier time.”
Sarah is frowning at me, but she looks more puzzled than mad, so I continue. “I’m sorry, I know this is none of my business. Maybe you’re not like my mom! Maybe you’re doing great and Rosa’sdad is involved in her life and pays child support and all that good shit. But I just…” I’m out of words. I grimace and shrug, lobbing the ball back into Sarah’s court.
A guarded look creeps back into her eyes as she looks at me. “You seem like a nice guy,” she says, her words measured. “I hope you’re with a man who treats you well.”
At first, it seems like an odd thing to say, until I realize: She’s not hoping that for my sake. She’s hoping for hers —which means that at least some part of her wants this estrangement to be over.
“He’s never hurt me.” Not when I didn’t want it or couldn’t have stopped it. But since I can’t say that, I add, “He’s never abused me. He’s not like that.”
Sarah throws a skeptical side-eye my way. “I saw photos of what he did to Nathaniel. Lots of photos.”
I take a deep breath. “I know. Jack told me. I understand you probably don’t want to think too hard about this because he’s your brother and all, but did you ever consider that it might have been consensual?”
Sarah wraps both hands around her coffee cup and looks away for a minute. “Yeah,” she finally says. “He told me it was. But you gotta understand, at that point…” Her lips crease into that thin line again. “Things were kind of… rough.”
“Rough like how?”
She sighs. “The weekend before I found out everything about Nathaniel, we were supposed to be barbecuing. I went into our garage to grab some more beer and walked in on Jack and Barry —my shithead ex — arguing. It wasn’t a physical fight yet, but I showed up in the nick of time. They were right up in each other’s faces. I screamed at them both to cut the shit out and act like adults. Jack stormed out and just left.”
“Did you ever find out what they were fighting about?”
“I tried asking, but Barry just said he didn’t want to talk about it. And even Jack’s temper didn’t hold a candle to his, so…” Sarah lets her words trail off with a shrug before taking another sip of coffee. “But it didn’t matter what they were fighting about. I was pissed-off at Jack because he walked out on me. He got Barry torqued up and then left me to deal with him being a fuckface. By myself.”
I hear the subtext she’s not saying. I weigh my next words. I know what I want to ask, but I also know it’s a risk. I don’t want Sarah to get offended and leave.
“Did Jack know how Barry treated you when he wasn’t around?” I ask quietly.
I watch suspicion, fear, anger and sadness all chase themselves across Sarah’s face. “I —” she starts before she cuts herself off. She straightens up in her seat and narrows her eyes to give me a sharp stare. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I force myself to meet her eyes. “Did he know Barry was abusive?”
Her shoulders stiffen and she pulls in a hiss of breath between her teeth. I’m bracing for her to chew me out. I just hope she doesn’t chuck the cup at me, because I’ll be the one mopping up the spill.
All at once, her posture slumps into something brittle. Her sigh sounds exhausted. When her gaze meets mine, I see a weary defeat in it.
“No.” I think she’s going to say more but she drops her eyes and traces her finger along the rim of her cup.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“That was part —maybe a big part; I dunno —of the problem,” she says haltingly, still staring down. “I wasn’t in a headspace to believe that anybody who left marks and bruises on their partner could be a good person. Or to understand how somebody could want to be treated like that.”
I shake my head. “You don’t have to understand how, or why, people are like that.” She doesn’t say anything, so I push ahead. “But even if you can’t understand it, can you at least believe that I’m telling you the truth? Can you accept that Jack might have this part of him that you don’t understand, but that it doesn’t make him bad, or abusive? Or that doesn’t make him incapable of loving — or being loved?”
Sarah is quiet for another moment before asking, point-blank, “Do you love him?”
The question should catch me by surprise. Instead, it’s my answer that does.
“Yeah.” Her figure gets blurry as my eyes mist up, while the echo of my voice rattles around in the empty space between my ears. “I, uh, haven’t said it to him yet, though.”
“Do you think he loves you?”
“Yeah, I do.”
She shoots me a sharp look. “Has he told you that?”
“Not yet,” I say with a nonchalance I’m not sure I feel. “His feelings can be like a bull in a china shop sometimes. I want to give him the space he needs to crash around first before I bring up anything that might get broken.”
I breathe an inward sigh of relief when Sarah’s eyes crinkle at the corners and she snickers. “ That sounds about right.” Her smile fades, though. She looks lost in thought. “What happened to your mom?” she asks abruptly.
“What?”
She does that tight thing with her lips again before she answers. “You know, you said she raised you by herself. What happened to her? Is she still around?”
“I don’t see her much anymore. She lost our old apartment and had to move in with her older sister a few years ago. Her sister had a stroke last winter, so my mom is basically her full-time caregiver now. She lives about four hours away, and her car isn’t all that reliable. So...” I trail off. When I realize I’ve been staring out the window, looking out at the highway on-ramp, I bring my eyes back to Sarah. “Why?”
She shrugs slightly. “Just wondering. Sorry. I should get going,” she says after making a show of looking at her phone. “The bus is gonna drop Rosa off in another half-hour or so.”
“OK, thanks for agreeing to meet up and coming out here. And thanks for listening. I appreciate it.”
“What are you going to tell Jack?” she asks.
I follow her lead and stand up, my heartbeat quickening. “I don’t know. You tell me. What should I say to him?”
That defeated look steals over her features again, and I’m sure I’ve just spilled my guts to this woman for nothing.
“OK, yeah.”
“What?” I can’t believe my ears.
“Tell him I’ll get together with him. We can talk. If he wants to.”
“I’m sure he will,” I tell her, although even as the words are leaving my mouth, I’m realizing that I’m actually not sure.
“When are you going to talk to him?”
“I don’t know yet,” I admit. “Like I said, he doesn’t know I got in touch with you so, uh, I have to figure out how to break it to him. Give me a few days, maybe a week.”
“And you’ll see if he wants to get together?”
“That’s the plan.”
“OK, Adair, thank you.” I go to put my hand out again, but Sarah catches me by surprise with a quick hug. “It was nice to meet you. Hopefully see you again soon.”
A s I drive home, my elation at how well that went is all too quickly replaced by panic as I realize: Now I have to confess what I did to Jack.
Probably better to break the news to him a little bit at a time. Ease him into it.