Chapter 45 Chris
CHRIS
Larissa had been staying at my house for over a week. We ate all our meals together, spent almost every minute hanging out.
It was the happiest I’d been, maybe in my whole life. And somehow the saddest I’d ever been too.
I hadn’t talked to Mike.
Xavier texted me updates letting me know Mike had come back from the cabin a few days ago. He’d come home with a black eye and a mild concussion from when I’d hit him, to find Larissa moved out.
I’d thought about texting him. Then I remembered how he’d almost killed her and how Donna had treated her after, and I changed my mind.
I focused instead on getting Larissa set up with what she needed.
We got the small business loan and we’d spent the past week shopping for boards and plates for her graze table mock-up.
We went to antique stores and boutiques and consignment shops looking for the perfect ones for the vision she had.
Then I’d take her to lunch somewhere, a new place she hadn’t tried with a safe menu. At night we cooked together. Read.
Talked.
We talked for hours sometimes. And then when we went to bed, we’d text from our rooms. I could hear her laughing through the wall.
Last Thursday, New Year’s Eve, we went shopping and got the charcuterie meats and fruits and cheeses she needed.
Then we spent the evening on the sofa together rolling salamis into roses and watching Times Square on TV.
When the ball dropped, she hugged me and kissed me on the cheek.
I still felt it, days later. Like her lips left a tincture on my skin.
I was not free to love her. But at least now I was free to take care of her. I could help her and didn’t have to hide it or pretend it was someone else doing it. I could spend time with her and look at her and be what she needed.
I was in the kitchen, making eggs for us while Larissa was in the shower. We were going thrifting later to find more plates. I was standing over the stove when the phone rang.
It was Mike.
I stared at the screen, debating whether to answer. Whether I was ready to hear what he had to say.
“Hello,” I said, picking up after the fourth ring.
There was a long silence and I thought I’d answered too late. “Hey,” he said finally.
He sounded bad. Not drunk. Just bad.
I turned off the flame, moved the pan from the burner, and went to the garage.
“I’ve been wanting to call you,” he said.
I nodded like he could see me. I shut the door behind me and sat on the steps, looking at the side of my car.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Fine.”
“Is she okay?”
“She’s fine too,” I said.
“She’s staying with you?”
“She is.”
“Good,” he said. “Thanks.”
Another silence.
“My mom said she quit the café—”
I scoffed. “Is that what she said? Your mom put nuts on the menu. Larissa didn’t have a choice.”
“Wait… what?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure—”
“I’m very sure,” I said.
I could feel the tightness through the phone. “I didn’t know she did that. I’m not okay with that.”
“No? Because it felt like you told her that Larissa deserved it.”
“I didn’t tell her shit. She saw Larissa in the cameras getting her stuff from the house, she asked me, and I told her we broke up, that’s it. You think I want my mom knowing why she fucking left?” His voice cracked the tiniest bit. He took a moment to recover. “I’m gonna talk to her,” he said.
“Yeah? Talk to Janessa, too, while you’re at it. Make sure you ask them both how they treated her the whole time you two dated.”
“What do you mean? They were nice to her. Mom let her use the kitchen—”
“Right. What do I know.”
It was shorter than he deserved and meaner, too, but he took the jab. Then we fell into nothingness again.
“How’s your hand?” he asked after a time.
“How’s your face?”
“Bad. I wish you would have hit me harder.”
He did manage to get a smile out of me, even if it didn’t reach my eyes.
“Can I come over?” he asked. “To see her.”
“No.”
“Can you tell her something for me?” he asked.
“Tell her yourself.”
“She blocked me.”
“Then that’s your answer,” I said.
A long pause. “Okay. I deserve that. That’s fair.”
We sat there not speaking for a long beat.
The garage door opened behind me and Larissa peeked out. “There you are—Oh, you’re on the phone,” she whispered. “Sorry. I’ll finish breakfast.” She went back inside and shut the door.
Mike heard her. I could feel it through the line.
I knew what it was like to be on that side of the call. To hear her voice on the other end. It’s what longing felt like.
I didn’t envy him the feeling, even if he did deserve it.
“You’re sure she’s good?” he said, his voice thick.
“She’s good.”
“Does she need money or—”
“No.”
She did, but she’d never take it from him. She barely took help from me.
Another ocean of silence.
“You told me,” he said quietly. “You told me so many times and I don’t know why I just didn’t fucking listen.
And I want you to know that I’m getting help for it.
Okay? And I’m sorry. You had every right to hit me.
I know you and I know you feel bad about it and I don’t even want you to, all right? It was all my fault and I know it.”
I stared at the concrete garage floor between my feet.
“If she ever needs anything, please let me know. I’ll get it for her,” he said. “She doesn’t need to know it’s from me. Anything she needs.”
I scoffed inside.
Now he was the one who wanted to take care of her in secret.
He cleared his throat. “I love you, brother. I just wanted to call to say that.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Okay.”
“We’ll hang out soon, yeah? Get you back on those weights.”
“Sure,” I said, knowing I didn’t mean it.
We hung up.
I sat there for a moment. The motion sensor light in the garage turned off and I stayed there in the dark.
This was a breakup.
Not the one between him and Larissa, the one between me and Mike.
My mind hadn’t changed in the time I’d had to think about it. The friendship as we knew it was over. It was worse than a divorce because it was all I ever knew. There was no “before” Mike.
I was in unfamiliar territory. The ground slipping from under me, the foundation of my life, disintegrating. Mom and Dad dead, my friend group scattering. Xavier was gone and Jesse was always with Becca. I hardly ever hung out with him without Mike anyway.
I was done with Donna and Janessa, too, which meant Tony by default and probably the Maddox family as well because they were Mike’s cousins, not mine.
They’d still invite me to the parties, but it wouldn’t feel right going if I wasn’t going with Mike.
I’d miss Benny and Jane’s wedding. No more Thanksgiving at Mike’s house.
No Christmas or summer at the cabin. I grew up there and I wouldn’t see it again, and I didn’t even want to. It was the scene of a crime now.
This was a pivotal point in my life and I knew it in real time.
I was floating. Drifting around on the wind, nothing to anchor me but her.
And she was enough.
If Larissa was the only friend I had left in this world, I could live with that, because the reality was it had already been that way for a while.
Mike stopped being my best friend a long time ago. At some point it shifted and I became his keeper instead.
She was my best friend.
And I was only realizing it now because it never occurred to me that anyone could ever take that spot from Mike. It was a truth almost as old as I was, something I didn’t even question. And maybe I should have. Because I’d been lonely for a very long time.
When I went back inside, Larissa was at the stove plating the eggs. “Who was that?” she asked.
“Mike.”
I saw her tense. “He’s not going to come here or anything, is he?” she asked, handing me a plate.
“No,” I said, taking it.
“Because I know it’s your house and he’s your best friend and—”
“He’s not coming here.”
She leaned against the kitchen counter. “Okay. I don’t know why, but the thought of seeing him makes me feel like throwing up.”
“Should I get my water bottle?”
She gasped and it broke the tension a little. Then her face went serious again. “Chris, I really don’t want to be the reason you and Mike are weird.”
“We’re weird because he made it weird,” I said. “He’s not my priority right now.”
“And what is?”
“You,” I said, without even thinking about it.
“Christopher… You don’t need to do everything you’re doing,” she said. “I appreciate it but it’s a lot.”
I set my plate on the table and turned to her. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. About what you told me that night we did the secret shops, that you lost your voice screaming at your dad to change.”
I paused, trying to think about how I wanted to say this.
“I felt responsible for my mom for a long time. I felt responsible for Mike—”
“And now you want to be responsible for me?”
“No. I want to help you be responsible for yourself. I want you to be so successful you don’t need me or anyone ever again.”
“You don’t want me to need you?” she asked.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what you want,” I said simply.
“That’s what makes you feel safe. And it’s what you do for people you care about.
You lift them up and help them be the best version of themselves.
I thought for a long time that’s what I was doing for Mike, but I wasn’t.
I was just enabling him, pouring myself into a cup with a hole in the bottom and it’s just—”
“Draining?” she said.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “Draining.”
She hugged her arms around herself and we fell into silence.
“My mom’s like that,” she said, after a time. “Draining.”
I nodded slowly. Yeah, I could see that.
“I’m so scared of being my mom,” she whispered.
I shook my head. “You could never be your mom.”
“No? Because I chose the same kind of man she always does.”
“That doesn’t make you her. You get to make mistakes. You don’t choose it if you change it. And anyway, Mike lied about who he was. And I’m sorry for any part I played in that.”
She nodded and looked away from me. “I understand why you did it,” she said.
I studied her. “You do?”
“Yeah. I probably would have done the same thing. It’s a thin line between helping and hurting sometimes.” Her eyes came back to mine. “And you get to make mistakes too.”
I smiled a little. I was glad she said it, to be absolved of some of the guilt. As for Mike and Mom, I loved them, but I wasn’t willing to blame myself for their outcomes. Not anymore.
You can’t love someone more than they love themself.
Unless of course it was her.
I could love Larissa no matter what. That was out of my control.
We watched each other. Her leaning on the counter and me standing by the table.
I could swear for a split second that her eyes dropped to my mouth.
Maybe they did.
I would have been happier with you.
She turned and went to serve herself breakfast and the moment passed. I sat down to eat, pretending I was fine. But I wasn’t. Not really.
I meant what I said: I didn’t want her to need me. I wanted her to want me. It wasn’t the same thing.
But even if she did, it wouldn’t matter.