Chapter 31
The trip back to Toronto blazes by in a haze.
After the sprawl and noise of the wedding, Leo’s apartment feels so still.
There’s only the gentle pinging from the streetcar that runs by his house, nothing to drown out the whirr of his thoughts.
He pulls down all the shades and sinks into his plush couch, something lumpy pressing into his back.
He reaches behind him and pulls out Simran’s sweater, the one she was wearing the last time she came over, a few days before their first kiss.
Even as one part of him tells him not to do it, he presses it to his nose and inhales deeply.
It smells just like her hair, floral with the hint of the ocean.
“Argh!” He stands up and flings it into his closet. Changing, he meets up with some friends at the basketball court close by, channeling his frustration and sadness into winning a game of pickup by twenty points. But after it, he’s back to his too-quiet apartment and his too-loud thoughts.
He flips on the TV. An old favorite is playing and he hopes it’ll distract him.
But there’s a rattling inside him, like a loose cog.
He and Simran went from that perfect night at the hotel just a few days ago to barely talking.
Is that all they are ever going to get? Maybe his leaving has broken them—but Simran’s obstinance left him no choice.
What else could he have done? Trying to change her mind was like talking to a wall.
The jangle of keys snaps him out of his thoughts and Leo looks up. Titanic has been on for half an hour but he’s barely watched a minute of it. He twists on the couch to see his sister walk into his apartment, a small carton in one hand.
“Leo.” She greets him before looking past him at the TV and nodding at the man on-screen. “Leo.”
He mutes the television and gets up, pouring them two cups of coffee, along with some type of creamer that’s basically a candy bar in liquid form for Olivia, and joins her on the couch. “So how was Europe?”
“No way. No fun sightseeing stories for you.” She crosses her arms and stares at him sternly. “Not until you tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s nothing,” he says, shaking his head and unmuting the TV.
Liv grabs the remote from his hand and mutes it again. “Your expression would depress Eeyore, you’ve not mentioned Simran once when all you’ve done is bring her up every second sentence for the last two years, and you’re watching your in-your-feelings-over-a-girl movie.”
“Fine. It’s something but I’m not ready to talk about it,” he says. He makes a split-second decision and tosses Liv his phone. “Just don’t let me call or text her, okay?”
She immediately puts it in her back pocket. “You know I relish having this type of control over another person,” she declares as she shoves half of a purple-frosted donut into her mouth. “Go forth and wallow.”
“I’m not wallowing. I’m just—” He breaks off as he looks around his apartment, shades pulled to blot out the beautiful summer sunshine, the ultimate tearjerker on TV. He thinks about Simran’s sweater and drags a hand down his face. “Fine. I’m wallowing.”
“You have till six p.m.,” Liv tells him. “We have Sunday dinner with Mom tonight.”
Leo groans and drops his head back onto the sofa. The last thing he needs is his mother recreationally therapizing his possible breakup with the girl of his dreams.
“It might not be that bad. She’ll probably just want to talk about her and Félix’s trip,” Liv says.
Leo softens. “You think?”
“Possibly. She deserves to, after all she’s been through. First my dad, then yours. I hope to get lucky enough to have my third marriage be to a kind, caring man who spends half the year at his ancestral home in the Dominican Republic.”
Leo frowns at the ceiling. “I hope to get lucky enough not to have a third marriage.”
“Such a romantic,” Liv declares in the same tone someone might call a person an utter moron.
True to her word, his sister doesn’t bother him for the rest of the afternoon, letting the movie play before putting on another one of their mutual favorites, The Shawshank Redemption.
Morgan Freeman has just intoned his closing lines about hope when Liv stands.
“All right, let’s go. We’re meeting her at The Swan. ”
Leo’s spent the last six hours in the same position: sunk deep and low into the oversized armchair, a cushion to his chest. He pulls it over his face. “Please don’t make me go.”
“You know the deal,” Olivia says. She slaps the side of his leg. “We don’t miss Sunday dinner unless we’re out of town. I know you don’t want to go. That’s the reason for the rule: to keep it when it’s hard, not when it’s easy.”
Sighing, he stands. He gets his sister’s point.
And in the end, dinner is fine, as it always is.
Even though his mother can be a bit much—you can take Dr. Linda out of her practice, but you can’t take the practice out of Dr. Linda—she doesn’t ask about Simran.
Leo thinks she is going to at one point, but then Liv kicks her under the table and she changes the subject.
Halfway through the meal, he hears a buzzing and Liv hands over his phone.
For a second he hopes it’s Simran, but it’s Amerie giving him the good news that he got the promotion.
At least one thing is going right in his life.
A small part of him itches to call and tell Simran the news, but he pushes the thought away, handing his phone back to his sister.
“You asked Mom not to bring up Simran, didn’t you?” he says to Olivia as they walk back to their respective apartments after dinner.
“You showed up. You kept your end of the bargain; I thought that earned you a reprieve.” They cut through Trinity Bellwoods Park, still packed with people as the sun starts to set.
Leo spies a couple, both reading, curled into each other under the shade of a tree.
The casual intimacy presses on his heart.
“She made a promise to me,” Leo says, the words sharp.
“Simran. And she broke it. Twice. Each time I ask her to be in this with me, and she says she is … but then she won’t hold up her end.
” He runs a hand through his hair. “It sucks. I don’t think I ask for much.
It made me mad and it really hurt me. I’d do anything for her; I deserve to be able to count on her. ”
“You do,” Liv agrees as they turn the corner onto her street.
Now the emotions are flowing fast. “And underneath it all, I’m still so fucking crazy about her. So much of me just wants to let this go, let her get away with it, like the first time. Maybe there’s too much of Mom’s voice in my head and I’m trying to fix something that’s none of my business.”
“You’re talking to the wrong person about having Mom’s voice in your head,” his sister says. “I became a guidance counsellor.”
Leo laughs.
“Look, you don’t give up on people,” Liv tells him, as they stop at the gate outside her apartment.
“You are the only person in the world who I know who would put up with your dad—but you do, and you don’t mind it.
I don’t think you know how to give up on people.
It’s the best thing about you, even if it’s annoying.
When I was ten, I had an entire plan formulated to throw you in the trash bin of a McDonald’s. ”
“Which one?”
“The one on the corner of Queen and Spadina,” Liv says.
“That is the sketchiest McDonald’s in Toronto!” Leo says, offended.
“There was a raccoon family living in the dumpster! You wouldn’t have been alone. I’m not cruel. Anyway, it didn’t matter. You were just so damn nice I couldn’t do it.”
Leo crosses his arms. “Does this story have a point?”
“Yes.” She hands him the bag of leftovers. “She feels the same way as you do; you should have seen her face when she told me about you guys. She looked so shiny and hopeful, like a Disney Channel tween. Maybe she just can’t see past whatever is going on with her family.”
“What if …” He swallows to give himself a moment to voice his deepest fear. “What if she keeps breaking her promises? What do I do then?”
Liv gives him an obvious look. “Don’t let her.”
“Is this the kind of sage advice you give your students?” Leo asks.
“Can it, smart-ass. If you want something good, then you have to learn to fight for it just as much as she has to learn how to keep it. Don’t let her off the hook, but don’t give up on her either.
It’s like our dinner rule. What matters is what holds you two together when things are difficult, not when they’re easy. ” Leo lets his sister’s words sink in.
“All right, I’m beat. Here’s your phone.” She tosses it to him so quickly that he doesn’t have time to catch it and it falls to the street with a sickening crunch.
“Olivia, come on!” he says roughly as he picks it up. The screen is completely shattered.
“Oops …” she says, cringing. “Sorry! I’ll get you a new one tomorrow.”
“Maybe I would have been better off with the racoon family,” he mutters. When he gets home, there’s a text he can just barely read through the cracked glass.
Rishi Chopra [8:36 p.m.]: Ashok uncle went to the Hospital today. He’s fine, it was a false alarm but the Family was a little shaken up for a bit. I don’t know if Simi told you so I wanted to make sure you heard. Let’s catch up when I’m back from my Honeymoon?
A tumult of feelings flashes through Leo: concern and relief over Ashok uncle, hurt that Simran didn’t call him, and an unexpected warmth at Rishi thinking to tell him.
That night he falls into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Well before his alarm is set to go off, he startles awake with a crack of clarity: All that matters is what holds them together.
Simran pushed him away and even though she shouldn’t have done that, Leo shouldn’t have let her. He shouldn’t have left.