Eight
Liem
After my awkward meeting, I go back home. Home? I guess the apartment feels more like home than I’ve felt in a while. How do I tell Bri that David is the reason we get to stay in New York for the month? Should I even tell her?
All this time, I was hoping to run into my ex, then I ran into hers instead.
It isn’t like I’m working for him specifically, only his company, and it’s not like shmoozing them means we’ll become besties, but I have to tell her I saw him and talked to him—that I’ll be working tangentially to the idiot who fucked her over—right?
Knowing he looked well-rested and happy while she’s hopping all over Brooklyn walking dogs and assembling college girls’ furniture for green juice tips?
I’ll gauge her mood and take it from there.
Inside, I don’t see her at first, then I spot the curls waterfalling over the couch’s arm. I circle it, accidentally stirring her from a nap. It’s not her usual naptime, though I’ve only had two weeks of observation.
She blinks up at me. “Hey.” As she sits up, I can see on her face she’s not feeling well. “How did it go?”
“It, uh . . .” I trail off when her face falls even more. Something’s not right. Maybe this isn’t the best time to tell her. “It went okay. They approved us to move to the next stage.”
“Oh, yay. That’s great, babe.” There is no luster in her tone, no melody in her voice. She huffs, her hand gripping her lower stomach.
“You okay?”
She perks up as if I caught her in the act. “Yeah! Everything’s good.” Her pinched brow says the opposite.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s—” She exhales like someone in labor. “I’m gonna go lie down in my room.”
When she tries to walk, her gait falls heavily to one side. Limping? Hell no.
I go to her, gingerly lifting her from her feet into my arms. She doesn’t protest. Bri accepting help is both rare and worrisome.
In her room, she helps me lower her onto the bed, one of her hands never leaving her stomach.
“What is going on?” I ask again.
“I’m fine, really.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“No, I’m good. It’s . . .”
“It’s what?”
I swear her brown skin gains a tinge of pink. “It’s cramps.”
Oh. My concern lessens. Not that cramps aren’t bad, but at least it’s something she’s survived for years, not a threat of imminent death. “How bad are they?”
She seems surprised by my question, then the pain distracts her. “Not that bad. It’s like a four.”
A four out of ten, yet she can barely walk. If my history with my mom and aunts has shown me anything, a four for them would be an eight for me. “Lie down. Let me make you some tea or something.”
Beneath the pained slant of her brows, she refuses again. “You don’t have to do that. Seriously. This is nothing compared to what I used to go through.”
“You’re in pain. Let me help. What do you need?”
She assesses me, her expression somewhere between bewilderment and suspicion. “Heat. That helps best. I have a heating pad in that drawer.” She points.
“On it.” I find it, unfurl it, then plug it in. She watches me with a look of surprise while I lay it down, letting her roll onto her stomach on top of it. “Is that okay? Enough heat?”
“It’s perfect. Thank you.”
“Do you need heat on your back too?” I ask.
Her look of bewilderment returns. “Are you from this planet?”
“Huh?”
“You never cease to surprise me, that’s all.”
“So, the back or . . . ?”
“Yes. The back too.”
There’s an electric blanket tucked in the dresser in my room.
I’m sure this old building gets as drafty in the winter as it has been humid this week.
A quick read of the instructions verifies it’s safe for my plan.
I fold it over into a strip, hoping to concentrate the heat only on the area she needs.
She watches me the whole time as if waiting for me to sprout a second head. I do what I’ve been trained to do, tucking her in to add pressure, leaving her arms exposed to keep her from overheating. I flip on the little fan sitting on her nightstand. She sighs with relief.
“How’s that?”
“This is amazing,” she says.
“Good. Did you take any meds?”
“Yes. Not that they help much. I have endometriosis.”
Though my scientific knowledge doesn’t extend far into biology, I’ve heard of that. The long word to describe extremely painful uterus shit no one should have to endure. “I’m sorry. I’ve heard that’s terrible.”
“It’s definitely not a vibe.” She chuckles, her brow pinching again. “If you can imagine, this is way better than it was before surgery.”
“You had surgery?”
“Almost four years ago. But that was after a decade of seeing doctors who all said I was ‘just sensitive’ until one agreed to cut me open and found my insides all covered in uterus.”
Only Bri can make jokes about being neglected by the medical system. “Can I do anything else to make it better?”
“I’ll be fine in a minute.”
Here I was worried about hurting her when I told her about seeing David, and she was here hurting already. This is not the time to mention it. Careful not to jostle her, I climb into the bed, lying beside her, sharing the breeze from her fan.
“You’re going to lie here with me?”
“Yeah, why not? I figured I’d distract you from the pain. Unless you want me to leave.”
“No, stay. It’s just that I’ve never known a man who is so fine with talking about cramps.”
I chuckle. “I spent my formative years in a house with all women. This is a normal Thursday for me.”
“All women?”
“Yep. My grandma, Mom, two aunts, and my sister.”
“Damn,” she says. “That explains a lot.”
“Explains what?”
“You being the way you are.”
“I think that’s a compliment?”
“It is,” she says with something close to a smile.
Her brow tenses again, and she reaches for me.
I scoot closer. Eyes closed, her hand still finds my cheek, stroking it with her thumb, as if soothing me helps soothe her.
I’m as happy as a lap dog under her touch.
She could punch me in the face and I wouldn’t mind.
I probably deserve it after spending the day with her ex and not punching him.
“Tell me more, please,” she says.
“About the house?” I ask.
Her nod is more of a nudge against her pillow. “Anything. How’d you end up with all women? I sense child of divorce vibes.”
“Well, you’re wrong. My parents are married,” I say. “They got remarried after they divorced.”
“Knew it.” She giggles. It’s good to hear, even if it’s slightly at my expense. “Why’d they split up?”
I’m not sure how to phrase this. “They fought over how to raise my sister.” They should have fought, but my dad is my dad. He doesn’t ever say much, and he didn’t say enough back then. “Mom left him and moved us to Seattle to live with my aunts and grandma.”
“What was going on with your sister?”
I stroke my fingers up and down her forearm, focusing on her hand against my cheek, hesitating to discuss my sister without her around. I have never and would never out her.
In my silence, Bri fills in the gap with the worst. “She’s not sick, is she?” she asks, sounding worried. “Is she okay? There’s nothing seriously wrong with her, right?”
Fuck. Why did I leave it so open-ended knowing what Bri went through with her mom, and what she’s going through herself? “No, she’s fine! She was never sick, it was more about how to raise her . . . in society.”
Her eyes stare into mine for a moment, as if she’s reading my mind. “She’s trans?”
My eyes widen. How the fuck would she—? Stupid question. Bri is Bri. We share the same brain half the time. She gets me, zero judgment, full acceptance. I don’t need to protect my sister from someone who will respect her as much as I do.
I return her stare, giving her all the answers she needs without saying a word.
“And your dad didn’t accept her?” She needs no further explanation. “Sorry, but he’s trash.”
A light laugh escapes me. Glad she said what I can’t. “He was raised in the South. There was a lot he needed to unpack, and his fear came out in all the wrong ways.”
“But your mom understood?”
“Not right away. But a lot quicker than Dad.”
It was my grandmother who told Mom to get her shit together.
The only unconditional love that should exist is the love a parent has for a child, she told her.
Unconditional means unconditional. I didn’t expect someone of her generation to understand, but she did in a heartbeat. That’s why my sister shares her name.
“When did your sister tell you?” Bri asks.
“Oh, god. When she was, like, five. She thought the word for siblings was ‘brother.’ When my mom corrected her, I remember her asking me, ‘Then why do you call me your brother when I’m a girl?’ ”
Even through her pain, Bri cracks the same smile I do, as if seeing the memory as well.
May was the cutest kid. Got even cuter when she started dressing the way she wanted. Her pigtails and rainbow tutu phase, causing havoc while doing pirouettes through the house. I miss that version. The one before she became a tween and started loathing my existence.
“Mom put her in therapy, put herself in therapy, listened to the medical professionals, did her research. Seattle was a better place to help her with her transition, so we moved, and our dad . . . didn’t follow.”
“But they got remarried?”
“Eventually, yeah. My dad put in the work for her. He learned about my sister’s life, what it meant, went to therapy sessions with her. Mom took him back after they mended their relationship.”
“But did he ever mend his relationship with you?” She asks the million-dollar question.
My dad doesn’t communicate—he barely speaks at all—but somehow, he learned how to work through that with May. Not me. They’re good, and I might as well be a kid again, wondering if my dad loves me enough to come back.
“No. Not really,” I admit to myself as much as her.
“He left during a very important phase of your life. Why wouldn’t he think he owed the same to you?”
She’s right. They divorced when I was thirteen and my sister was seven. By the time he came back, I was grown. He could have stayed gone, and it would have had the same impact.
“It’s fine. My sister’s life has been ten times harder than mine. I can’t complain when he should spend the rest of his life apologizing for what he did to her.”
“Except you can,” she says. “It felt wrong to complain about my pain when my mom was lying in a hospital bed, but that didn’t make it go away. Your hurt isn’t less real because someone else’s pain is worse.”
Taken aback, I’m at a loss for words. Bri has lived three lives, having wisdom far beyond her years. How she thinks she hasn’t achieved enough in her life is beyond me. “I guess you’re right.”
“You deserve his apology too. It was bad enough for me growing up. I assume it would be much worse for a young boy to be without his dad.”
“Your dad left too?”
“You can’t leave a place you never were,” she quips with a humorless smirk.
“My mom had me young and didn’t get married until I was fourteen.
My stepdad is the only dad I’ve known, but he got remarried a year after my mom passed.
I didn’t understand how he could find someone new while her loss was still consuming my life.
I haven’t really been able to forgive him for that. ”
I let her talk, not interjecting some sort of apology or trying to say I understand, my hand still stroking her arm. A silent, pity-free I’m here.
“His new wife is nice. They’re both widowed, her kids are right around my age—but I never found my place with them, and I never wanted to be family for family’s sake,” she explains. “My friends are my real family. The family I chose.”
I’m jealous, in a way. If having close friends feels as good as having her in my life, I can only imagine how much happier I would be.
“I want a family like that,” I admit.
Bri tugs at the front of my shirt. “Then you have to go outside and meet people.”
I sneer at the thought. “Sounds fake.”
“It’s not. Promise.” Her voice is quieter than before.
“How are you feeling?”
“Much better,” she mumbles, her eyes closing and never reopening.
“Do you need to sleep?”
“Mm-hmm.” She’s fading fast.
“I’ll leave you alone now.” I lift her hand from my chest and press my lips to her palm. Why did I just do that? She doesn’t seem to notice.
I crawl off the bed slowly. She doesn’t move when I slip from her room and close the door behind me.
A thought crosses my mind. My sister is one of those people who doesn’t respond to messages, but if I stop messaging her, she thinks I’m mad. I send her a text.
Me: Hey. I love you
We don’t say that often. In our family, it’s implied more than vocalized.
In a rare moment, the typing indicator appears.
May: are you in crisis? are you dying?
Me: No???
May: k cool. love you too ig
Who needs friends when you have little sisters who give half a fuck about you?
I sit at my desk and open my laptop again. The reminder of today’s meeting brings me back into reality. I want to be fully open and honest with Bri the way she is with me, but she has had enough hurt in her life.
If the roles were reversed—if she saw Natalie and said she’d be working with her—I would think about her every time Bri left the house, reopening my wound and renewing my desire to get her back. Bri and I promised we wouldn’t do that.
It won’t hurt if I wait to tell her.