Chapter 23 The Fun Kind of Breaking and Entering #2
Laurel scoffs, shucking off soil from the plant she knocked over while making her entrance. “With that? Were you going to guacamole us to death? The Ring doorbell wasn’t working, and you weren’t answering your phone.”
“And then Laurel got attached to the idea of breaking in.” Petey grunts and squirms, fighting with the window until his feet find the floor. “Can you believe she’s never done it before?”
“And you have?” Now that I’ve decided not to clock them on the heads, I set my muddling tools on the newly empty plant stand. My poor monstera.
“Just for team hazing. The fun kind of break-ins. Like this one.”
“This”—I wave my arms around the room between the busted window lock and spilled potting soil—“isn’t fun.”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic.” Laurel breezes past me toward the stairs. “ We had lots of fun.”
“I’ll clean it up, Char. Don’t worry.” Petey looks around the room. “Where’s all your stuff?”
Laurel answers for me, heading to the master without invitation. “Everything’s in her bedroom.”
“Like a dorm? Very cool,” Petey says brightly. “You guys go talk. I’ll take care of this window.”
Laurel leaves Petey behind, trudging up into my room, where she flops onto the bed. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?” she asks.
“It’s dead,” I answer, hovering at the door.
“Dead?” Her eyes widen. “You let it go dead? This is much worse than I thought.”
Laurel skates through her life with a perpetually broken phone. What right does she have to judge me? “So what?”
She tucks and rolls off the bed to rummage through my dresser. “You get physically anxious when I let my phone go below thirty percent. I can’t count the number of times you’ve responded to a screenshot with one of those grimacing emojis.”
“Because you do it all the time and the last twenty always goes faster than you think!”
“Ethan didn’t make it sound ‘cut yourself off from society’ bad. What happened with him? Spill,” she demands.
Hearing Ethan’s name uttered so casually burns like lemon juice on a paper cut. Saying it might shatter me into so many pieces, I’ll be trapped in my duvet for the rest of time. “He talked to you?”
“He asked me to check on you. Why do you think I’m here?
” God, why does his unrelenting kindness hurt so much more than anyone else’s cruelty?
“I’m still mad at you, by the way,” she says haughtily, wandering over to the minifridge.
“Did you dredge up ancient history with him, or is that, like, an exclusively ‘me’ thing? Aha!” she yells, slamming the fridge door shut. “Halo Top. I knew it.”
“It looked good,” I respond, not sure why I’m immediately on defense.
“ No one thinks it ‘looks good.’ It’s ice cream that hates itself.”
She’s right. I saw it in the freezer section yesterday while I was wandering around Target in search of objects to fill the void: a faux-driftwood shelf I already hate; a wearable blanket; individually wrapped mozzarella pearls; yet another water tumbler; and, yes, slightly off-tasting dessert that can be reasonably consumed by the pintful.
“Did you break my window to come in here and criticize me?”
“I was worried that when you got around to reaching out, it’d be with baskets of expensive pears and apology flowers.
Thank god you were too busy eating bed salads, because that degree of earnest contrition would’ve been so mortifying.
The food waste alone…” She trails off, eyes still fixed to the Halo Top label.
No one has examined the calorie content of diet ice cream with more drama than Laurel Beekman.
“Look,” I start, because, right now, I’m willing to talk about anything—even this!—so long as it’s not Ethan. “I didn’t…I didn’t want you to… not get married if you wanted to get married.”
She shakes her head so hard, it becomes a full-body earthquake. “That sentence doesn’t make any sense, Charley!”
“I didn’t get in the kayak knowing I’d take out your officiant, okay? I only wanted to talk to you to see if marrying Petey was honestly what you wanted.”
“Because you thought it was a bad idea, and only Charley knows what good ideas are.”
“No,” I argue. “That’s not—”
“Why can’t you acknowledge me for the person I am? You never miss an opportunity to remind me of the person I was , who was actually pretty great, by the way. Just with a lot of self-loathing and a tiny self-sabotaging streak.”
“Self-loathing?” That stops me in my tracks. “What’re you talking about?”
“You’ll have to read my therapy journal for the answer to that one,” she responds, moving from the fridge to the bar cart, and I’ve almost given up on the conversation when she says, “I didn’t think I was a good person, Char.
Like for a long time. I thought there was something rotten in me that would spread to anyone who got too close.
Where people would love me and I’d hurt them—like Dad does. ”
“That’s not…” I trail off, because it’s so untrue I hardly know how to refute it.
Laurel’s not rotting. She’s almost too alive. She’s bold and expressive, existing in vibrant Technicolor that makes everyone shine a little more by being near her. But how do you out-logic the illogical?
So I start with something simple and unequivocally true. “You’re nothing like Dad.”
“I know that now ,” she says, flashing her eyes to me before retreating to the protection of a mostly full bottle of St-Germain.
“Not like know know. It’s one of those destructive thoughts that’ll probably lurk in the back of my head for the rest of my life, but I know that’s what it is now.
Whenever I was about to explode out of my skin and had to run away, I used to think, This is that selfish and harmful part of you .
I wanted to protect everyone from it. I know you hate how I am sometimes, but—”
“I don’t hate how you are ever,” I argue, but her face is incredulous.
“It’s true. There’s never a second when I feel only one feeling about you.
In every moment, I love you and I’m exasperated with you and I want to be more like you.
It’s always all of it. All the sister stuff.
That’s why you and Peter scare me so much.
You love him in a way that’s so enormous and consuming.
I think I’m going to lose you to it. Like you might drown in it the way Mom and Dad did. I can’t lose you too.”
She groans, but it’s the lighthearted kind you do when you love someone so much it’s infuriating.
“Oh my god.” She flops onto the bed next to me.
“What our parents have isn’t ‘love.’ Loving someone, really loving them, it could never be like that.
And in what universe do you think you’re going to lose me?
You can’t lose me. We’re in this. We’re stuck with each other forever, okay?
” She pulls me tight against her side like we’re kids again, waiting out a thunderstorm together.
“There’s more than enough of my love to go around for you and Peter because love isn’t finite.
It isn’t a thing you have. It’s something you do. Love is a verb, babe.”
“Gross.” My laugh is wet and snotty but no less relieved. “Is that something Petey says?”
“It’s something my therapist says.”
“I get it. You’re in therapy. You’re, like, self-actualized and shit and not walled off from loving everyone.”
She pushes her feet under the blanket and snuggles up beside me. “Oh, you love harder than anyone I know. You’re like one of those gorillas that doesn’t know its own strength. What do you think that disastrous weekend was?”
“Fear? Delusion? Petty selfishness?”
“Shut up,” she grumbles, dragging out the second word. “You could break a rib with the way you love. You’ve loved Ethan that way your whole life, and he loves you too. When was the last time you listened to his first album? It’s…not subtle.”
My fingers rub my temples. “Laur,” I grumble. “It’s not that obvious. You talk like every song is titled ‘Dear Charley.’?”
“Might as well be. They’re all real confessional and yearny.
” Her nose scrunches at her own description.
Laurel’s musical tastes run toward explicit dance pop in which the word “sweat” is hypnotically repeated over a pulsating beat.
“Face it. His songs are about years of pining, and, other than me, you’re the only woman he’s known for more than two minutes. ”
“Maybe they’re about you,” I deflect. Whether she’s right or not, I don’t think I can handle obsessing over Ethan’s back catalog any more than I already am.
“I don’t think he’s in love with me. On Sunday, I asked him if I looked hot and he told me I looked ‘healthy.’ Like I was a great-aunt he had aggressively nonsexual feelings for. That album is all ‘Chuck.’?”
“It doesn’t matter anyway. It could never be me.”
She stares me down with pursed lips. “You’re an idiot.” She opens a tub of face moisturizer I fought off a preteen in Sephora for and helps herself to it. “He’s not doing much better, by the way. It’s not a Halo Top–level depression, but it’s not great.”
“You guys talking about the boat?” Petey strides in and makes his way to the bathroom sink without stopping.
“Ethan’s been talking about buying a Boston Whaler and recording an album using ‘found sounds.’ I try to be supportive, but…
” Petey winces. “It’s so grim, man. Oh, cool, a fridge!
Is there food up here?” Laurel nods and rolls off the bed again.
“Have you seen Ethan?” Neediness cracks in my voice. Even the sound of his name hurts, but I can’t help myself. It’s the only thing I want to hear.
Laurel grabs the low-cal cookie dough dessert and a spoon from the bar cart. “We’re checking in on him constantly. I was sure he was handling this worse than you until we broke into your house, and now I think it’s a dead heat.”