Chapter 10 #3
And then suddenly, when Brynn was six—because it felt sudden, even though Bridget’s cancer had been progressing for years—she became an only child.
The memories of her sister that she carried forward into adulthood mostly took place in those hospitals.
In her dreams, she was always trying to get back there to see her again, but she could never find her.
Could never locate the right room and get inside.
She desperately wanted to, even if what awaited her was her sister’s frail body, hooked up to machines, smaller than Brynn, even though Bridget was two years older.
She pushed against a door, but it didn’t budge.
She wanted to get inside. She needed to get inside.
And she was so, so frustrated, angry, even, that she was in this stupid hospital.
That she couldn’t get to Bridget. That there was nothing she could do, no matter how hard she rammed her body against the solid weight of the door.
“Brynn,” a soft voice called, and she felt something brush across her cheek.
She lifted her hand to her face, but there was nothing there. She was still in that hallway, trying to find her sister.
“Brynn.” She heard her name again, even though she couldn’t tell where it was coming from. There was no one else in the hallway with her. There never was.
She jerked sideways with one last burst of effort to break through, and she collided with hands that held her—on what she was realizing was the sofa.
“Are you okay?” It was Hallie’s voice. Soft but insistent. And it was Hallie’s hands, too, pressed into Brynn’s biceps, keeping her steady.
She blinked. Slowly, the room came into view. She’d fallen asleep at some point, with only a light on the end table illuminating the living room.
“Brynn,” Hallie pressed again, though she still spoke in a low, hushed tone. There was more urgency in her voice now than the first time she’d spoken, and Brynn tried her best to push the bad dream away.
“I’m sorry.” She tried to sit up, but Hallie's focused touch held her right where she was.
“Don’t be sorry. You seemed like you were having a nightmare. I just got home and couldn’t leave you like this.” She moved one of her hands so that she could ghost her fingertips across Brynn’s cheek, and Brynn let out a soft sigh as she leaned into the touch. “Do you want to talk about it?”
And then Brynn remembered that Hallie had been pulling away from her this past week. She didn’t seem to want the closeness that Brynn was starting to crave like a drug.
But most of all, it wasn’t fair to pull the dead sister card, even if she wanted Hallie to keep touching her so gently, which she was graciously still doing. Her fingertips trailed from Brynn’s cheek over to her temple, where she’d scratch lightly before she’d start the pattern all over again.
Brynn shook her head, trying not to move too much and disrupt the path of Hallie’s fingers. “It’s no big deal. Just a bad dream that I have sometimes. Sorry you had to bear witness,” she joked, trying to impress upon Hallie that it wasn’t a big deal.
Really, it wasn’t. Brynn had been having some variation of this dream since she’d been six. She’d been living with it for far longer than without.
Hallie eyed her warily and stilled her thumb along Brynn’s cheek, starting to rub light, focused circles there. “You were crying.”
Embarrassment warred with sadness, and she wasn’t sure which one would win until she said, “Does being a crybaby count if you don’t even know that you’re doing it?”
But Hallie wasn’t relenting. If anything, she was digging her heels. She had taken off her shoes and was curling up next to her on the sofa before Brynn realized what was happening.
“Is this okay?” Hallie asked at the same time that Brynn was already scooting backward to make room for her. Once they were settled, with a single blanket draped across both of them—Brynn’s favorite way—Hallie reached up and turned off the light on the end table, bathing the room in darkness.
The inn was relatively quiet, but she could still hear the sounds of the pipes that ran through the old building, of footsteps padding down the hallway.
But right now, in this moment in Hallie’s embrace, her bad dream actually felt more like a memory from long ago than anything else.
Far less present than when she’d woken up.
“Do you want to talk about it? The offer still stands,” Hallie asked, her voice a soothing timbre that made Brynn want to snuggle in closer.
She resisted the urge.
Brynn bit her lip. Of course she wanted to talk about it with Hallie, even if her tears had stopped and her heart rate had returned to normal.
Brynn was finding that she wanted to do anything and everything with her.
Only— “I don’t want you to do this because you feel badly for me. Especially since…”
Hallie adjusted her position so their legs intertwined, and she started running her hand soothingly up and down Brynn’s T-shirt-clad arm. “Since what?” she coaxed.
“Things have been weird this week,” Brynn admitted.
“And I know that I can be a lot. Especially in close quarters. So I’m sorry if I did anything to make you uncomfortable.
If you tell me what it is, I can make sure that I stop doing it.
Because I really, really do value your friendship.
And I would never want to put you in a difficult position.
” There. She’d said the hard thing. The words were out, and, surprisingly, she didn’t want to take them back.
A look that Brynn didn’t quite understand flashed across Hallie’s face before she frowned. There were long, agonizing seconds before Hallie answered. “I should be apologizing to you, Brynn. You’ve done absolutely nothing wrong, and I’m sorry if I ever gave you that impression.”
She could hear the genuine sorrow in Hallie’s voice, and it made Brynn’s own heart ache, like she was experiencing Hallie’s sadness, too.
Nothing was making sense right now. Not Hallie’s genuine remorse, when she’d obviously had a good reason for whatever had made her behave this way over the past week.
Or—and Brynn’s more pressing matter, both literally and figuratively—how they’d gone from barely touching for days to having their bodies pressed so closely together that Brynn couldn’t move without them ending up more or less on top of one another.
Trying to make sure that Hallie had enough room, Brynn slung her arm across Hallie’s hip and pulled her in closer. She wondered whether Hallie could feel the way her heart was thrumming unevenly in her chest.
Maybe she could, since Hallie swallowed deeply, her fingers faltering against Brynn’s warmer-by-the-second skin. But she wasn’t taking the blanket off of them, even if she melted into a puddle in the process.
It would be so, so easy to get lost in Hallie’s touch, how it made her forget everything outside of their little cocoon.
But Brynn, being who she was, couldn’t do that.
“Then…” Brynn chewed on her lip, trying to find the right way to explain herself. Because things had been weird this week. She wasn’t making that up. No one loved a good routine like she did, and theirs had been wholly disrupted since– “Is this about my date with Natalie? That I’m dating women?”
Hallie groaned and shifted her legs, which momentarily distracted Brynn because of how their bodies melted into one another, solidly, from hip to thigh, like they were bracketed together.
Brynn let out a quick breath, refusing to lose her momentum even though it felt insanely good.
Hallie’s touch always felt good, but this was beyond the usual comfort that being near and connected to Hallie elicited in her.
Even if all she wanted to do was focus on that sensation, she couldn’t stand the idea that Hallie may think she was a less-than-upstanding person.
“I promise that I’m not trying to use anyone,” she said. “I really am interested in meeting and dating all types of people, even if I’m not sure exactly what I want.”
Hallie was frozen, their faces so close that, even in the dark, Brynn could tell that she wasn’t blinking. “You should date whoever you want, Brynn. I want you to find happiness. You are such a good person, and you deserve it.”
“Deserving anything implies a ‘just-world theory,’ which has largely proven to be untrue,” Brynn ruminated, breathing softly into the small space between them.
Hallie’s hand stilled against her arm. “Brynn,” she responded, her tone laced with the humored exasperation that had become ever-present in their friendship. “You know what I mean.”
Their faces were only inches apart, and Brynn could smell the sweetness on Hallie’s breath from whatever drink she’d had on her date.
Quietly, Brynn spoke the words that she rarely, if ever, shared with people. Gregory knew, but she had never told Grant. “If good people got what they deserved, which was full, happy lives, then my sister wouldn’t have died. That’s what I was dreaming about.”
Her parents, for as open and loving and soft as they were, never talked about her sister. She’d realized very early on after the loss that it was simply too painful for them. They’d put their grief in a box, choosing instead to focus all of their energy on Brynn’s life. On her happiness.
Most days, she tried to strike a balance of remembering Bridget while not drowning in the unfairness of a life lost far too soon.
Hallie didn’t respond immediately. Instead, her hand started moving again, tracing an attentive pattern across Brynn’s forearm, the hairs prickling along Hallie’s path. “I didn’t know that you had a sister. Do you want to tell me about her?”