Chapter Thirty-Three
Thirty-Three
It’s a little after five when I pull up outside Shannon’s house. I’m not sure I make the conscious decision so much as I just start driving.
I have never been here before. All I’ve seen of this house are the pictures from the listing—sent to me by Mom—after they first bought it. Shannon’s car in the driveway is the only reason I’m confident I’m at the right place.
The house is an old-ish split-level covered in a sandy red brick that’s common in our part of the world.
Like everything in Shannon’s life, it has been chosen meticulously.
It’s on the older, more historic side of town, facing out over the park.
There’s a path cutting through it which you could follow all the way to town hall, if you wanted to—perfect for an aspiring mayor—and the leafy, tree-lined street is quiet, the houses all charmingly well-groomed.
I take a deep breath and ring the doorbell, listening to her footsteps approach.
The door swings open.
I give her a perky “Hey!,” wildly overcompensating for how I actually feel, which is like there’s an elephant sitting on my chest. I’ve stopped crying but the evidence of it is still all over my face. My eyes are swollen and glassy, red splotches on my cheeks and neck.
She’s just home from work, I think. She’s barefoot, her black silk blouse untucked from her pencil skirt. Still so many bangles. What a tragedy it would be if she never forgives me—I’ll never be able to tease her about the fact she’s turning into Mom.
Shannon has yet to say a word. She inspects me, her arm poised over the door, ready to slam it shut in my face at a moment’s notice.
“I’ve come to apologize,” I say, shakily thrusting a bottle of wine toward her.
Bringing a bottle of wine is a thing people just do in the suburbs, and I thought, maybe naively, that it would be better to show up here with something to offer her. It feels pathetic now. The longer she stands there without taking it, the dumber I feel.
If she’s going to leave me on her doorstep, fine. I came here to apologize. I don’t need to be inside to do it.
“I’m sorry,” I say, taking a leaf out of Connor’s book, thinking of the sweet, unfussy apology he gave me after I kissed him. Sometimes simplest really is best.
“I’m sorry for what I said to you at the dress shop.
You were right that it’s none of my business, and that I don’t get it.
And…” I hesitate, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.
“Worse than that, I didn’t even try to get it.
Not just that weekend, but before. I thought I knew better than you about what’s best for you, and I was wrong, and I’m sorry.
I won’t make that mistake again. I know you said you hate me, and after how shitty I’ve been that’s fair enough.
But if you ever want to be sisters again…
” The word quivers, shaking with my tears.
I swallow, then give her a pitiful smile, like no need to worry, I’m not crying, it’s fine.
“If you ever want to be sisters again,” I continue, stronger now, “I miss you all the time. Now would you please at least just take this wine?”
I wag the bottle in her direction, and finally she takes it, stepping aside to wave me in as she does. It’s as close to forgiveness as she’s going to offer me. I grab it with both hands.
—
Her house—as expected, it’s Shannon—is beautifully high-spec.
The inside is a lot more modern than the exterior suggests, with sparkling granite countertops and engineered wood floors.
It’s somewhere between a showroom and a living Pinterest board; the entire place is done in neutrals, and though there’s more “live, laugh, love”–style quotes on distressed wooden boards than I’d recommend to anyone, it’s also comfortable, and modern, and very on trend.
After a tour of the bedrooms, she steers me back to the main living space and opens a door leading down to the basement, flicking on the light as she descends the wooden stairs.
“The basement is mostly Dan’s space,” she tells me. “He calls it his man cave, or whatever.”
Now I understand why the rest of the house is so nice. She’s managed to sequester Dan to the basement, where he’s clearly taken full advantage of his design liberties.
If you took a teenage boy and gave him a work placement at an interior design firm, this is what he’d come up with.
Ridiculous leather furniture; a fully stocked bar tray on top of a mini fridge for his beers.
A guitar hanging on the wall. I know for a fact he can’t play, so he’s bought that just to make him look cool.
It’s so quintessentially Dan I almost laugh.
“Where is he, anyway?” I ask as we return upstairs and into the sunny living room.
“Out, don’t worry.”
I try to say something like oh I’m not worried or that’s too bad, but I don’t want to upset our fragile truce with a blatant lie.
I expect her to walk me back toward the front door, but instead, she leads me out onto the back deck and orders me to sit.
Seconds later she joins me, the bottle of wine slung under her arm.
She pours herself a glass, hands me a can of beer, and then pours a bag of chips out in a bowl between us, her signature chive and onion dip in a container beside.
“How long are you here for?”
I look out across the lawn. “Permanently, I think.”
“How come?”
“I got fired.”
She digests this piece of information, swiping a chip across the bowl of dip.
“What about Connor?”
I knew we’d get to him eventually. Besides Dr. Lang, she’s the only person outside of New York who even knows he exists. Still, I try and dodge it.
“What about him?”
“I thought he was nice,” she says carefully.
I trace a finger along a bead of condensation rolling down the side of my beer can. “Me too.”
“So?”
“What do you want me to say? It was exactly as you predicted.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“I don’t really want to—”
“From the beginning,” she orders. It’s the tone of the Big Sister. It brooks no argument.
I take a deep breath and tell her all of it: realizing I’d been laid off, Carrie’s underhand HR dealings, my mistaking Connor for an intern rather than my new boss.
I tell her about Data Strategy, and the dashboard, and all the dumb little things that have been filling up my days these last few months.
I tell her about losing the wager, and hanging out with Connor, and kissing him, and him rejecting me, and then not rejecting me, and then spending the night at his place after they left, and how it all felt like the start of something big.
It all sounds so stupid saying it out loud. How do I explain the little universe of inside jokes we’d created with each other and how much they meant to me? I simply can’t.
As the story goes on, it morphs into a full-on exorcism. Like at Dr. Lang’s, now that I’ve acknowledged it, it’s impossible to deny the truth of what happened and my own role in it, and I’m desperate to release all the shame and regret that’s been festering inside me.
I repeat what Connor said about me doing it to teach him a lesson, admitting how close that was to the truth, and how given the choice, I accidentally chose Andy, lying and then betraying Connor’s trust in the process and ruining the thing between us that might have been perfect.
By the time I come to my sorry end, she’s retrieved a pack of hot dogs from the kitchen and turned on the barbecue.
She lights the grill, then closes the lid. “So what’s your plan now?”
Think about him every waking moment until I die?
“I don’t know. Find a new job, I guess? At some point I’ll need to pack up my apartment.”
“No, stupid, I meant what’s your plan with Connor?”
“It’s over, I told you.”
“He broke up with you?”
“Trust me, it’s finished. There’s no coming back from that.”
She rolls her eyes. “Oh my god, so dramatic. Did he say the words it’s over?”
“Well…no,” I say, frowning. “The last thing he said was forget it.”
“Ah-ha!” she says, triumphant. “Exactly.”
“Don’t give me that look. He didn’t break up with me because—because—we weren’t even formally dating. That’s what happens in relationships now, they just…dissolve.”
“I doubt that’s true.”
“Try Hinge and get back to me,” I say dryly. Then: “It’s not like he’s been in touch.”
She hums, nodding her head. “Interesting. Have you contacted him?”
I shrug. “He won’t reply.”
“I think you should call him RIGHT NOW,” she says in her bossiest tone. “Just apologize!”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Are you sure? Are you sure you can’t just call him and say Connor, I was an idiot, please will you give me a second chance?”
“It won’t work.”
“It will,” she says, sitting forward. She’s adamant. “I had dinner with you two. That guy is in deep. He’s probably sitting around moping, waiting for you to call.”
“I don’t know what about that story would make you think that.”
“It’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? That’s what people do when they’re in love, they just mope around all day.”
“That’s not—he isn’t…” I splutter through a denial. Shannon is oblivious to my inner turmoil.
“Annie, guys are like…really simple. Like, missing brain cells simple. Just text him.”
The appeal of what she’s offering is undeniable.
She hands me the spatula while she goes in search of more drinks.
I flip the hot dogs, then place the buns on the grill to toast, then imagine Connor coming here, and hanging out on the deck, and bonding with my sister.
I will even graciously allow Dan to be there, though I draw the line at adding him to the daydream.
I’ve just plated the hot dogs when Shannon returns with more drinks, dumping a selection of Ontario’s finest craft beers on the patio table, raided from the fridge in Dan’s man cave. I’m touched by the invitation implicit in this gesture; she wants me to stay.
We eat our hot dogs in companionable silence, watching the sun leave a trail of vivid pinks in its wake as it slowly inches out of view.