Thirty-Two
Tait
Ava shoves past me, followed closely by Grady and Lucy. All three of them freeze to stare up at Henry.
Ava’s stormy expression immediately dissolves, replaced by a hysterical smile. “And who is this ?” she exclaims with a delighted smirk.
Miffed by her initial indignation, my knee-jerk reply is, “Nobody. What the hell are you doing here?”
The expression returns. “I think the better question is what the hell are you doing here? You promised you would call me weeks ago, Tait. Enough is enough, let’s have this out like grown-ups,” she says, and I feel myself start to stiffen in rage.
“How dare you. You’ve got some nerve, Ava.”
“I do?! What about you ?!”
“ I’m not the one who hid that I already had a relationship with all of them, Ave. You let me be the last to know. You want to talk about being a grown-up, well, you first. You know you hid that shit from me on purpose.”
She sniffs, folding her arms and looking down. “I wanted that choice to be about me, not about how it would make you feel, Tait. I’m sorry if that hurt you, but there’s always been so much that does not make sense about this, and I wanted to know the rest of my— our —family.”
“I don’t care that you wanted a relationship with them, Ava. I cared that you lied to me, that you hid things from me.”
“As if you wouldn’t have judged me for it. You’re so self-righteous, Tait. You’re so closed off to anyone and anything that might hurt you that I knew you would have resented me for it!”
“YOU DIDN’T EVEN GIVE ME THE CHANCE!”
At this, Lucy steps in. “Ladies, let’s just… take a breath here. Tait… uhhh, do you want to change, perhaps?”
I’m tempted to say no, to stomp my feet and tell everyone to fuck right off, but then I remember that I’m wearing Henry’s bedsheet.
“I’ll take you home, Tait,” Henry says. “The rest of you can help yourselves to coffee. There’re some Danishes in the fridge and anything else you want.” He grabs a T-shirt from his laundry room and swiftly guides me out the door.
The short truck ride over is silent, and I’m grateful.
It’s when we get inside that I notice the solemn look on his face, and my brain plays back what I said. “Henry, I didn’t mean that you were nobody. I just was… caught off guard.”
“Tait, I’m a grown man. I don’t care about that; I don’t actually care what you tell your sister about us right now because I know what we are. I just… I’ve never been around sisters. I didn’t know how, uh… I guess I’m a little taken back by how volatile you guys were back there.” He half smiles apologetically, scratching the back of his neck, and I chuff out a laugh.
“You have no idea. That was nothing. She jumped out of my moving car once because I wouldn’t let her borrow a sweater, but she had just lost my favorite pair of earrings! She called me a ‘stuck-up, sour-faced bitch’ and told me I smelled like cabbage. Then she bolted out of my car before I could take a swipe at her.”
I really laugh, then, at his horrified expression. “I take it Grady never chased you around with a knife?”
“What?! No. Oh my god, you did that?!”
“Hey! I resent that assumption. She did that to me! And that’s actually a very common sibling rite of passage.”
“Aggravated assault with a weapon is common among siblings?”
“Not the actual assault part, just the threat of it.”
“Ah, okay. Should I get back and hide the sharp objects?”
“No, just make sure I know where the best ones are.”
He sighs. “Tait…”
“I know, I know. I’ll just go shower.”
I’m tempted to ask him to shower with me, but I sense that I should use the time to sort out my thoughts. Instead of doing that, though, my brain starts doing this wonderful thing: oscillating back and forth between thoughts of him and last night, and violently pivoting back to Ava being here. By the time I get out of the shower, I feel a disturbing combination of annoyed and happy that my sister is here, and then horny over Henry again.
Yikes. The dam is broken and I’m feeling all my feelings rush at once.
I change into some leggings and a long-sleeve Lycra top, seeing through my window that the sun has broken the cloud cover. I catch my reflection on my way out and notice the smile I can’t seem to suppress, despite my annoyance.
I know I need to get things sorted, to manage my own expectations, Henry’s, and to keep my thoughts and feelings in check. To build a castle in the sky here would be a terrible, terrible mistake. But also, fuck it. I’ve got a few weeks to feel these good things again, and I want to just feel them, unapologetically.
Maybe that’s why Ava’s presence here feels so annoying. I am not happy that she lied, no, but I’ve enjoyed getting to know everyone too, so her lie of omission hasn’t had any true negative consequences. Her presence is just a reminder that my reality exists outside of here, though, and maybe I don’t want that.…
“Henry?” I call out as I come around the corner of my room. “I just realized something—what’s your middle name?”
But when I get to the stairs, it’s Ava on the couch waiting for me, not him.
“Sorry to disappoint,” she says with a knowing smirk. “But I bet it’s something über manly, like Buck, or John-Wayne, or Major, or something.”
I reply with an eyebrow lift.
“Sorry,” she says.
“It’s fine. I need to make some coffee really quick before we get into it, though.”
“Henry already brought over his whole pot—or what was left of it, at least, after the rest of us got to it,” she says, cocking her head curiously to judge my reaction. “He grumbled something about yours being garbage before he left.”
“Oh. That was, uh… nice of him.”
“Can’t we just start with him, and then have out the rest after?” she whines, letting her arms fall to her sides.
“Ava, no. And not another word until I get some coffee, please,” I say, but I feel my lips pull up more as I head to the kitchen.
Properly armed with caffeine, I head back out to the couch and sit. After a deep breath, I ask her to go first.
“I’d been wanting to talk to you for a long time about it, but I kept chickening out whenever it came up in conversation and I just didn’t know how to approach it. You always seemed to understand Mom a little more than I did, and while I’ve long since forgiven her, I just don’t see why we weren’t more encouraged to have a relationship with our father as kids, Tait. Since having Jack, that feeling has only intensified. I don’t think there’s anything Casey could do to me for me to not let him have a relationship with Jack. It’d be different if he did something to him, I guess, but Dad never did anything to me, Tait, to either of us. And we have a whole family here. I have my family and Casey’s parents, but… Well, I guess that’s why I didn’t tell you. I felt greedy with wanting more. You’d lost your whole family when everything happened with Cole, and you just… caved in on yourself. So then when I started having a relationship with everyone, I didn’t want you to feel like the one who was left out. I just started connecting to some of them through social media. It was really just Grady. Well, I guess LeighAnn also. And Lucy. And yeah, I wrote back to Dad’s letters, but you knew that already, Tait.” She finally looks up at me with watery eyes. “I’m so sorry I hurt you, though.”
“It’s okay. I think… I think you were right in wanting to get to know them. They’re all pretty great. This place is pretty great.” I sigh. “And I’m sorry I left you hanging for so long. I think I wanted to punish you, but I took it too far. I hope you didn’t have to take time off of work, Ava.”
“I did, but it’s well worth it, and it’s only a week. I’m here to celebrate your birthday, too.”
“Oh, shit. I have to help Lucy set up. She’s invited all the cast and crew from the show and they’ve got a huge tent and everything,” I say, and move to get up in a panic.
“They hired people, Tait, it’s fine. Please, sit with me. Tell me everything.”
I hug her, then, because I have missed her. I let a few tears fall and so does she, but since we pride ourselves on not being overly mushy (we absolutely are) I sit back in a flourish, moving my coffee farther onto the table and away from the danger of my flying hands as I launch into it all.…
“I’m just… I’m really glad I came,” I finish.
“… Oh my god,” Ava says, and she starts to cry.
“Ave, what the hell? What’s wrong?” But then I see her laughing as she cries.
“You just… you sound, and look, like you again.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.” I laugh back.
“No, Tait, really. I just have been so worried that the opposite would happen, you know? That all this would make you want to shut down and shut out more. But you’re out here living life like a Tim McGraw song!”
I roll my eyes. “Stop. ”
“I mean, it literally sounded like that. You were all ‘I went four-wheeling, I went Rocky Mountain hiking, I went—2.7 seconds—in a pond with Cowboy Thor,’” she sing-songs, badly.
“I’m truly impressed that you made that up actually. I can’t even be mad.”
“Tait, I’m really happy that you’re scoring with hot Henry over there, but I do have one piece of advice for you…,” she says, ominously, and I nod for her to proceed.
“Always stay humble and kind.” We explode, laughing so hard that tears are streaming down both our faces, until I hear the gravel crunching under tires outside.
“Oh my god,” I say, “I have a good idea. Stay right there and follow my lead!”
I hop over to the kitchen and grab what I need, schooling my face into an appropriate expression. I hear boots hurry up the steps, and I can tell it’s Henry by their heaviness alone. When I hear that he’s close, I scream, “HOW DARE YOU!! GET THE FUCK OUT!!”
“NO, TAIT, NO!!! DON’T!!!!” Ava screams back.
Henry bursts through the door, pale and terrified when he sees me wielding the knife at Ava. He instantly hurls himself at me, but I drop it on the counter and snort out a laugh, followed by Ava. “We totally got you!” I laugh, pointing. But his expression remains. My laughter dies in the ether between us.
“It’s your grandma. She’s in the hospital.”