Chapter 29 Erin
Erin
I was still friends with Cisco, who had recently broken up with Chad.
We were both single, though I was more single than Cisco.
He had regular dates and hook-ups. I asked him if he knew any decent straight guys and he set me up on a date with his cousin Fabian, who had broken up with his fiancée six months previously.
‘Not a rebounder, thank you very much,’ I said, but Cisco insisted that Fabian was over Natasha and ready to dip his toe into the dating pool again.
Fabian was an unusual-looking man, with a low forehead and madly bushy eyebrows, but the widest smile and perfect teeth.
He was a tiny bit on the short side, but I didn’t mind that.
He had longish dark hair and a great sense of humour.
He was a high school English teacher and rented a tiny studio in Greenwich Village.
He also had a second job, teaching deaf kids how to swim.
Dad was heavily hinting that I should settle down and start a family.
I wasn’t too sure. I liked my independence, and I was now an assistant editor, which was more satisfying than interning.
I earned peanuts but I finally got to work on some copy.
I hoped to move to their fiction imprint, but it seemed like so did every other assistant in New York.
Much as I enjoyed my independence, I wanted someone to share meals and watch TV with.
I had gone to the movies on my own a lot.
Apart from Milo, my longest relationship thus far had been four months, and I didn’t have high expectations, but I fell for Fabian hard.
He fulfilled all my desires, including the more intimate ones.
I liked everything about him, and I learned to trust again.
I told him all about Milo and what he had done to Ruby, our family being split down the middle, and Ruby’s subsequent alcoholism.
He was horrified and angry on my behalf, and even though I no longer cried about it, he encouraged me to go back to a therapist. ‘You’ve been carrying around that guilt for years, guilt for bringing him to your home, for not believing your sister, for not being able to talk to her. You should see someone.’ And so I did.
I didn’t think it would help. However, I was able to rationalize everything, break down every part of the fallout, and realized that there was nothing I could have done.
She didn’t say it directly, but my therapist clearly disapproved of my mother choosing one daughter over the other.
I tried to explain that it wasn’t like that, but when I thought about it, Mom could have tried harder to get me to Dublin and she needn’t have done the whole move so suddenly.
We were all still in shock. Dad had his church community and his business.
Mom was right to take Ruby away to distract her from everything that had happened, but I needed the distraction too.
I hadn’t wanted to go at the time, but she could have insisted.
We could have gone to Dublin for the summer and then moved to another city where Dad had a church.
I wondered why that had never been an option.