Chapter 1 – “Liability” - Lorde
VICE
“LIABILITY” - LORDE
The only thing worse than falling into unrequited love is grieving it.
It is the human condition to romanticize life, even the most far-fetched fantasies.
Like unconditional love. We spend our time daydreaming about those who refuse to give us anything, finally offering everything.
Greener grass and brighter skies and the grasp of strong hands catching us when we fall.
Even when you’re not loved, you can live in reveries of realities where you are.
Except for the reality of death. Because death can’t be romanticized.
The finality of it is suffocating. Forgetting and forgiveness are no longer options.
Time stands frozen.
Your last words echo through eternity, becoming permanent. Like tattoos upon the soul.
And we’re buried with our ink.
I watch the cursor blink in the blinding brightness of my computer screen. Wiping the exhaustion from my eyes, I reluctantly let them fall onto the clock in the corner of my laptop: 3:46 a.m.
Sighing, I highlight the entirety of what I just wrote and press delete. “Nobody’s going to read a fucking romance book that starts like that,” I mutter to myself in the dead of night. My head falls into my hands, fingers massaging my temples.
I shut off my laptop and turn on the small lamp on my desk, illuminating my room in a warm glow. My body instantly settles at the change in lighting.
I’m not afraid of the dark, but I do fear the calamitous spiral my mind will send me down if I think too long about all the lives I’ll never get to live.
An unfortunate side effect of being a romance writer in the harsh, unendingly torturous reality I now find myself inside.
Darkness and creative attempts tend to bring out the demons I spent nearly four years burying—the ones so briskly brought back into my life when my twin brother unexpectedly turned up at my Brooklyn apartment and hauled me home to California.
I’d left for a reason.
It’s easier to ignore the ghosts that haunt me when I’m not face-to-face with a childhood of memories those ghosts left behind. Especially on days like today.
I never think of him. Not consciously. It may be his face in my nightmares, his voice screaming when I remind myself of all the parts of me worth hating, his absence that made the place I once called home a barren wasteland. But I don’t think of him.
Except on October second.
October second is the worst day of my life.
It’s weird now that I can compartmentalize it.
If I think about that moment too deeply—the smell of the emergency room or the look on my brother’s face, the vomit I spewed along the concrete outside or the sound of his mother’s scream, the way the sheets in my guest bedroom had still smelled like him or the mug in my sink from the coffee I poured for him that morning—it comes roaring back.
I’m not sure how long it took me to reach the point where I could pluck each of those triggers and place them inside their own box, teaching myself to acknowledge the reality of those memories, but pretend they don’t exist at the same time. A few months, maybe.
I was able to function after that, by all appearances, at least. I attempted to get back to work, knowing my publisher had provided me extensions on all my deadlines due to extenuating circumstances, but I quickly found that while I was surviving the day-to-day again, deep-seated depression and suppressed grief cause writer’s block. Who would’ve thought?
My move to New York was supposed to be brief. Get my family off my back about therapy, fresh air, and the lifeline I forcibly cut my ties with. I was going to go out there, sublet a cute apartment in Greenwich Village, and live out my Carrie Bradshaw dreams.
Instead, I failed. At everything. And for some reason, it was comforting.
It’s so much easier to be sad because you’re a failure than to be sad because you lost all the love you’d ever known.
I wallowed in that. The failure, the depression, the one-night stands, and the heavy drinking.
Then Everett knocked on my door.
I could cover up well enough if I had notice.
Nothing motivated me to clean my apartment like a call from my parents or my brothers letting me know they were going to come visit.
I could play the part of hopeful writer and New York tour guide, happy and optimistic to be living in the City of Dreams.
I wasn’t expecting Everett that day, though. He showed up uninvited, took one look at my dead eyes, the stranger in my bed, and the mess I was living in and hauled me back home.
He was convinced that the smell of the ocean, my favorite West Coast coffee, and my mother’s arms would heal whatever demons I spent those years fighting.
I hate to be a disappointment, but six months after moving in with my twin, his girlfriend, and her ten-year-old daughter, I can say with confidence that I am.
A disappointment, an imposition, and—still—a massive fucking mess.
So, I resolve to stay up all night, staring at a blank computer screen and attempting to form words.
I think the only reason my brother hasn’t kicked me out yet or forced me to get a job is because I’ve been convincing him that I’m writing again.
I hate being a liar almost as much as I hate being a disappointment, so I try my best, but my brain is perpetually empty, I think.
It appears that I can’t stop being both of those things.
My routine is to be up when Everett and Dahlia start their day at four in the morning because they’re go-getters. I check in with them and make conversation before either of them is fully awake. They assume I’m working away at my manuscript, and I’ve always been a late-night writer.
Then, when they get home from work at the end of the day, nobody questions why I’m still in bed, and nobody asks me to have dinner with them so we can talk about our days and pretend like I’m as fucking happy as they are.
I throw an oversized cardigan over my shoulders, rising from my desk and sneaking down the stairs. I put my tea kettle on the stove as I hear the sound of the shower turning on above my head. I sort through the pantry in search of my favorite tea, grabbing the honey too.
A few moments later, I hear what resembles pounding horse hooves more than footsteps descending the stairs, just before my massive, six-foot-something brother turns the corner. He’s got only a towel slung around his waist as he runs a hand through his wet dark hair.
“Motherfucker!” Everett gasps, rearing back when he flips on the light and finds me standing at the kitchen island. “Christ. You’re like a goddamn cat.”
“That’s a compliment to me.”
“Up early or haven’t slept?” he asks as he walks over to the coffee maker and gets a pot brewing.
Everett doesn’t have to open his businesses until after ten o’clock, but since Dahlia has been taking a baking course at a nearby culinary institute and has to be there by six, Everett gets up with her every morning. He makes her coffee, sees her off, and then gets her daughter ready for school.
“Haven’t gone to bed yet.” I yawn, knowing he’s aware of my sleep schedule. I think he’s still hopeful I’ll get my shit together, that one morning he’s going to get up and find some kind of productive, motivated, ambitious version of me who’s ready to take on the world.
“How’s the book going?”
The kettle begins to whistle, giving me the perfect opportunity to avoid the question. I snatch it off the stove and pour my tea. My brother watches me as he waits for Dahlia’s coffee to brew, leaning back against the counter with his arms crossed.
I put everything away and creep toward the staircase. “Well, I’m going to try to get a few more words in.” A few words I won’t delete. “And then get some sleep. Have a good day.”
“Lele.” My brother’s voice is stern, and the tone makes me pause, turning to look at him. “You know what today is, right?”
My stomach bottoms out. “Yes, Everett,” I murmur through clenched teeth.
“Are you okay?”
I sigh, throat suddenly tightening. “I am fine. The only thing that makes me not fine is when everyone is asking me if I’m fucking fine.”
Everett lifts his eyebrows, entirely unconvinced. “I ask you so much because you lie and say you’re fine when you’re clearly”—he waves his hand in my direction—“not fine.”
“I don’t want to talk about it today.” I glance down at my feet because I don’t like the guilt that shoots through me when I look at his face.
“You don’t want to talk about it ever, but you need to. Today, especially.”
What the fuck is there to talk about? I loved someone. He broke my heart. I said terrible, horrible things to him that I can never take back. He died. The end.
“Good morning,” a tired voice sounds from behind me as Dahlia hops off the bottom stair and strolls into the kitchen, smiling.
Everett gives me a look that says he’s not done with this conversation, but when his eyes flit to his girlfriend, they turn molten, his face so bright, it’s like I’m not even in the room. He smiles at her, and it’s like the world goes from darkness to daylight.
I never thought I’d see my brother in love like this.
I never thought I’d see him in love at all.
It was weird to leave Pacific Shores knowing him as an emotionally unavailable playboy who loved to party, and come home nearly four years later to find him not only in a committed relationship, but also giving total dad energy to his girlfriend’s daughter.
Wild.
Watching them together is borderline repulsive, but I still can’t stop myself from smiling as he pulls her against his chest and drops his mouth to her lips. The soft moan that escapes Dahlia is definitely my cue to leave.
“Okay, well, you two have a good day. I’ll see you this evening.”
“Good night, Elena,” Dahlia sings, laughing into my brother’s neck.
I turn the corner, heading up the stairs just as Everett calls out, “Elena?” I pause halfway up, waiting for him to continue. “Do not get upset with Mom and Dad, or with Leo, if they come to check on you today.”
I don’t respond as I continue to my room, shutting off my lamp and drenching myself in darkness, crawling into bed and letting it swallow me whole.