Chapter 18
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
Drake
“There’s my boy,” Mom says, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. Her smile is a little brighter, a little less forced than it’s been recently. “How was your drive?”
“Excuse me,” Evie says from the sink. “Why do you sound so happy when he shows up? When I show up, it’s like, ‘Oh. Yay. Evie’s here.’”
Mom rolls her eyes. “That’s not true.”
“It is true,” I say, tugging Evie’s ear as I walk by her. She smacks my hand away. “She loves me more.”
“Be nice,” Mom says as she pulls me into a big hug.
The house is warm and filled with the unmistakable fragrance of pot roast and apple pie, evoking nostalgic childhood memories. It’s the scent of late nights after football practice, of Sunday afternoon dinners and chilly fall evenings. It’s comfort in its simplest form.
Dad and Elodie’s voices trickle in from the family room over the sound of one of Dad’s Westerns.
Evie complains as she returns to doing the dishes—a chore everyone knows, because she never fails to remind us, is her absolute least favorite.
Mom stirs something on the stove, content that her family is home, and for the moment, life is as it should be.
“Where’s the boyfriend, Eves?” I ask, peering over Mom’s shoulder into a pot of noodles.
“Like I’m going to bring him here. We just started dating.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mom asks. “Why wouldn’t you bring him here?”
“Oh, let’s see. How far back should we go?” Evie sighs with the drama only the youngest child can provide. “Tony Rosedale. Brock Lon. Kyle Stannus. Then there was Xander Willoughby.” She looks at me over her shoulder, her lips pressed into a thin line. “Remember what you did to him?”
I lift a brow. “Remember what he did to you?”
“I remember he never talked to me again. That’s what I remember.”
“Who are we talking about?” Elodie asks, giving me a quick hug.
“Your siblings are discussing why Evie won’t bring her new boyfriend home,” Mom says.
Elodie fights a grin. She understands. Unbeknownst to Mom or Evie, Elodie was the one who told me that Tony fucking Rosedale grabbed my sister by the neck and shoved her against a wall.
She didn’t rat out Brock or Kyle, and I can’t remember how I discovered Xander’s misdeeds.
But word gets around in a small town, and my older sister made sure certain things got back to me.
“So how far along are we in the list?” Elodie asks. “Have we hit David Darrow yet?”
“Thank you,” Evie says, grateful to have support. “I’m glad that someone understands what a cockblocker Drake is.”
“Evie Mae!” Mom gasps. “What did you just say?”
“Don’t you have to have a cock to block?” I ask, teasing my sister. “Or are you using your boyfriend’s cock as the proverbial cock in this equation?”
Mom groans, looking at me and pointing toward the living room.
“Sorry, Mom,” I say cheekily. “I’m just trying to understand what’s happening.”
“Get out of here and go say hi to your father,” she says.
Evie sticks her tongue out at me as I walk away.
I make my way toward the sound of a gunfight over a card game, taking my phone from my pocket. I glance at the screen, wondering if Mario texted me back. A grin splits my cheeks when I spot Gianna’s name on the top of my alerts.
Sorry, Mario. You’re going to have to wait for a reply.
Gianna: Have you checked your socials? O M G
I lean my shoulder against the wall and type out my response.
Me: No. Why?
Gianna: Francine called me this morning and told me to look. I’ve gotten fifteen THOUSAND new followers since Thursday, and I’m pretty sure I can never use the direct message feature again. Do you know how many dick pics I’ve received over the past few days? Do girls send you pics of their boobs?
Laughing, I shake my head. Only Gianna would ask that.
Me: On occasion. They’re never solicited.
Gianna: Well, you tell those hoes that you have a girlfriend now and the only boobs you’re going to be seeing for the next six weeks are mine. I mean, theoretically. You don’t seem like you want to see them.
Me: You don’t appreciate that I wanted to focus on your mind first?
Gianna: I did have a great time at dinner. The drop-off afterward? Not so much. But you did pick out the perfect first date spot. I keep thinking about those chicken skewers.
Me: Any requests for our second date?
Gianna: Is sex off the table? If so, boo. But I also love your taste in restaurants, and feeding me is never the wrong answer. But inside. Eating and fighting bugs on picnics is not my idea of a good time.
An idea crosses my mind, and I can’t type fast enough.
Me: Do you have plans for Friday night?
Gianna: Is this your way of asking me out on a second date?
Me: I’ll pick you up at six. Wear closed-toe shoes, jeans, and a cotton top.
Gianna: That does not sound sexy at all. I’m guessing sex is out of the question.
Me: You could wear a trash bag and be sexy.
Gianna: Charmer.
She’s going to want more details, and I’m not going to give them to her.
Anticipation is half the battle. So I slide the phone back in my pocket and round the corner into the living room.
The gunfight has stopped, and the cowboys appear to have swapped the saloon for a brothel.
Dad is stretched out in his recliner, the remote in his hand—dead-ass asleep.
His breaths sound like he’s blowing raspberries.
“Is he asleep?” Elodie whispers from behind me.
“Yeah.”
“Mom is on the phone with Aunt Vivi. Wanna take a walk?”
I nod. “Sure.”
We step out the back door into the yard where we rode bikes, built forts, and chased lightning bugs as kids. The big oak tree used to hold a tire swing that Evie fell off and broke her front tooth. Our playset is long gone, as is the sandbox, but it still feels so much like home.
The older I get, the more this shit matters.
I have championship rings, my highlights are played on sports channels to this day, and I’ve been more places and done more things than people usually do in a lifetime.
But as that slows down and I take a moment to take stock of what I have, the more I realize that the most I ever had was here. In this house.
“Still having baby fever?” I ask as we mosey toward the lake at the back of the property.
She tugs her hoodie closer to her neck to fend off the cool breeze.
“I think I just need a new hobby. I mean, would I like to have a baby?” She considers this.
“Yeah, I think I probably would. But I want to have it with a guy I love and have a whole family, a dog, and a white picket fence. I don’t want to do it alone. ”
“Makes sense.”
“What about you?” she asks. “Evie called me the other day to tell me about your new girlfriend. By the way, we decided not to talk about it in front of Mom unless you brought it up. We’re afraid it’ll set her up for a big letdown when she finds out that it’s only for, what, six months?”
“Six weeks.”
“How’s it going? I listened to Gianna’s podcast on the way over here, and it was hysterical. I’ve never listened to her before. You two couldn’t be more opposite if you tried.”
“Yeah, well …”
She’s not wrong—at least from an outside perspective. But I’m not sure that she’s right.
The only moment last night when things felt a little bumpy was when I asked her what she wanted in life. It was the first time she paused. It was the only time she stiffened. She rolled her head around her shoulders like she was trying to ease the stress that the question caused.
But why?
I lay in bed last night long after we got off the phone—because she called to thank me for dinner—and thought about these things. Nothing makes sense, yet so much makes sense at the same time.
She can list all the reasons she should be happy, but falls short of saying she is happy. Her goal in life was to buy a home, yet permanence makes her uncomfortable. She faults men for being hedonistic douchebags, but then faults me for not treating her like a piece of meat.
Gianna may say things that make us seem miles apart, but when we’re together, it doesn’t feel that way at all.
“She’s complicated,” I tell my sister.
“In what way?”
I kick a rock down the path and think about how to explain it.
“Gianna’s very independent and knows what she wants …
except she doesn’t. I asked her last night what she wanted for herself in a few years, and she said it’s not something she thinks about often.
For someone as smart and successful as she is, I find that surprising. ”
“People can be ambitious and still shy away from being strategic. You can be strategic and not ambitious. Think about it. They’re not mutually exclusive.”
“I guess.” I lift my face toward the sky, letting the sun warm it.
“What bothers me most, I think, is that she has this extroverted personality and says everything that’s on her mind without thinking twice about it.
But as I get to know her, I wonder if she’s hiding behind that.
Is the outlandish shit she says—the innuendos and sarcasm—there to shield her from something? ”
Elodie considers this, her brows pulled together. “Could be.”
“She said no one had asked her what she wanted out of life and that her friends knew she’d be fine. And I asked her if fine was okay. Didn’t she want to be happy? I mean, doesn’t everyone want a life where they’re happy?”
“What did she say?”
I sigh. “She said she was … comfortable, I think. Fulfilled. But she stopped short of saying she was happy.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know what would make her happy.
That happens to people. Hell, it’s happening to me right now.
” She grins at me. “I wanted a baby a few days ago. I was convinced it would make me happy. Now, the happiest scenario that I can fathom is going home to a quiet house, a glass of wine, and a true crime show. Those things are mutually exclusive.”
“But what if she knows what she wants, what would make her happy, and is afraid to want it? It would explain her approach to relationships. She always has an eject button, always has an out.”
“It’s possible.” Elodie shrugs. “It’s a theory that makes sense. But remember that you can’t make someone else happy. They have to choose that for themselves.”
We walk in silence the rest of the way to the lake. I pick up a few stones and skip them across the still water. Elodie sits on a boulder on the shore and watches me search for the smoothest rock that I can find.
I’m treading on thin ice when it comes to Gianna, and I feel the proverbial cracks under my feet. This was supposed to be just fun—a way to get a dose of a woman I knew I could never truly have. After all, who is goofy enough to fall for someone when you know it’s going to be over in a few weeks?
Unfortunately, I might be that goofy son of a bitch. And that scares the piss out of me.
“If I tell you something, you can’t say a word to Mom or Evie,” Elodie says.
“You know that I won’t.”
She takes a breath. “I got a job offer in Raleigh.”
I face her with a stone in my hand, water droplets sliding through my fingers. “North Carolina?”
“Yeah. It’s … far. About a nine-hour drive, I think. I didn’t apply for it. A girl I used to work with moved there and is doing the same things she did with us, but she's getting almost twice as much money. She called me a couple of days ago and asked if I wanted to come work with her.”
“What did you say?”
“I said I didn’t know.”
I chuck the rock as far as I can across the lake. The plunking sound it makes as it falls into the water is the same way my spirits nosedive at my sister’s news.
She hops off the boulder and dusts off her hands.
“Do you want to take it?” I ask.
“I don’t know, Drake. I mean, the money is amazing, and there are bigger opportunities for advancement.
And she said their benefits package is out of this world.
” She takes a shaky breath that I know all too well.
“But how do I leave here now? Mom said that Dad has had a couple of good days, but how long will that last? What happens when he gets worse? Mom can’t do this alone forever.
I know we agreed to give them their space for a while, but we’re going to have to be more involved at some point—and I’m the oldest daughter. ”
My palm grips the back of my neck as my sister verbalizes the things I’ve been mulling over for a while. They’re questions that I can’t answer. I’m not qualified to answer them. But I also know this isn’t on my sister, oldest daughter or not, to feel the weight all alone.
I look into her eyes and see what I need to see.
“You gotta take it,” I say through the tightness in my chest.
Her eyes, the color so similar to mine that it’s disturbing, grow wide. “What?”
“You should take it. Ask yourself what you would do if Dad weren’t sick. That’s your answer.”
“But I can’t leave you and Evie here to handle it.”
“Why?” I chuckle. “Evie might be worthless, but I’m very capable.”
She laughs, brushing tears away from the apples of her cheeks. I pull her into a hug, and the way she clings to me tells me she needs it.
“Dad would want you to go,” I say softly. “I followed my dreams, and you and Evie picked up the slack while I was gone. It’s your turn.”
Elodie pulls away, drying her eyes with her shirtsleeves. “Why does being an adult have to be so hard?”
“Because you’re a good person.”
She leans her head on my shoulder as we stand facing the lake. Fish jump, breaking the surface and sending sparkling ripples across the water. It’s peaceful—and I think both of us need a blast of peace.
Finally, she stands and stretches her arms over her head and turns toward the house. “I haven’t mentioned this to Evie, so please keep it between us.”
“Of course.”
I follow her up the path, both of us quiet as we try to make sense of our thoughts. Elodie has a tough decision to make. I fear I might have one of those on the horizon, too.
My phone buzzes again, vibrating against my leg. I stop walking and pull it out. “Go on, Elodie. I’ll be right there.”
“Okay.”
I swipe open the screen.
Gianna: Just got off the phone with Francine. She’s suggesting a moderator for our dating chats. She thinks it might be helpful to have someone ask us questions so we can answer as a couple rather than as podcasters. Peak entertainment value, I think she said.
Me: Fine with me.
Gianna: I suggested Juni. She mentioned wanting to do more technical things, and it might be fun for her.
It might be fun for us, too.
If I have five weeks left with Gianna, I’m going to make damn sure they’re fun.
Me: Sounds good to me.
Gianna: Ok. Enjoy your family.
I smirk.
Me: I’d rather be enjoying you.
Gianna: DONT YOU DARE DO THIS TO ME NOW.
Me:
Gianna: You wanna play? Game on, buddy. I play to win.
A smile ghosts my lips. Little does she know that if she wins, so do I. And I like the odds of playing for keeps.