Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Devon
I’m getting hangry. Like turn-green, flip the table kind of hangry.
We are waiting on Jeff’s arrival to order entrees and I’ve polished off a bread basket filled with dainty biscuits to no avail.
Luckily, the soft lighting of the restaurant and the flow of chatter and laughter has me distracted from the enormous pit in my gut that I can’t blame entirely on my hanger as I steal a glance at Jeff’s empty seat.
Unluckily, my sister and my soon-to-be-ex-friends won’t stop recounting my top ten greatest hits.
“Can we please not tell this story again?” I ask my ice water. But no one seems to hear me.
“Where were we again? Montgomery Park?” Tara asks.
“No. Behind Thomas Mansion,” Meredith corrects. “Remember Devon tried to get in?”
Is it possible to hate your friends and sister? I look to where Jeff should be seated again and try to tell myself it’s a good thing he’s not here yet for this nonsense.
“How much snow did we get that night, T?” Kev asks.
He turns his perfect white smile on me and I glare at him.
We’d been dating for a while at the time, well past the point of awkward butterflies and desire to be perfect.
But nowhere near comfortable enough to deal with the “Shitty Sled Incident,” as Tara and Meredith have fondly entitled it.
“Enough that I had off from high school for three days. And enough to have to dig a hole when Dev’s stomach started to hurt,” Tara laughs. Her curls bounce softly off her shoulders and I imagine sawing one off with my messy butter knife.
I shake my head and glare instead.
“I had to sled the rest of the night with one sock,” I say softly, and Kevin pats my hand across the table.
“I offered you my sock,” he says, pressing his lips together, eyes glittering.
“My hero. Too drunk to drive me to a restroom, but just drunk enough to de-sock for the lady,” I say and he inclines his head and pretends to tip his imaginary cap. I can still hear the sound of his laughter that night when I complained that my toes would fall off from frostbite.
“Not to change the subject or anything, but I believe we are here for a reason,” I remind them. Everyone looks at Tara.
Tara’s smile is otherworldly. I’ve seen it bring grown men to their knees when she gives it her all.
And right now, she’s giving it her all. Kevin is leaning toward her, his upper body tilting across the table so hard, he might fall face first into the empty breadbasket. Where the hell is the breadman?
“I’ve met someone!” Tara tells us in a breath.
Meredith groans while I say congratulations. Monogamy is not Mer’s cup of chai.
“So does this mean I have to stop sexting you?” Kevin asks.
“Of course not,” Tara replies seriously.
The door at the entrance pushes open and I crane my neck to see if it’s—
“You ok, Dev?” Tara asks, turning her neck and looking toward the door.
I nod too hard and pinch my neck.
“Of course. I’m excited for you!”
And I am. Don’t get me wrong, I want my sis to meet the one, but Tara meets a lot of someones. She’s stunning. Magnetic. Someones are lining up around the block for my baby sister. Have been since we were in high school. So, while I’m happy for her, I’m not moved to make a toast or do a cartwheel.
“I can’t wait to come up to NYC and meet him. I’m so hap—"
She lifts her hand to stop me and her stack of bangles slides down her wrist toward her elbow.
“And I’m moving to Milan to live with him,” she finishes. And I need someone to shut my mouth, to shake me back to consciousness, to give me chest compressions. But my useless doctor friends don’t do a damn thing to help.
“You’re what?” I sputter, suddenly wishing I’d ditched Kevin and Mer to meet her here alone.
She meets my eyes and I see the unspoken challenge.
Try to stop me. I’ve seen that look before so many times—when she was eight at the top of the waterfall in Lauterbrunnen, when she’d found that sky diving pamphlet beneath her wiper in high school, or when she’d stepped foot in that run-down flat in the meatpacking district in NYC fresh out of design school.
There was no stopping Tara once she had that look.
“I know this seems sudden,” she begins.
“A heart attack is sudden. This is—"
“But, I actually met Marcello on my last trip to Milan—he owns the hotel I’ve been staying at—and we’ve been talking over the last several months and, Dev, I’m in love with him.”
Holy shit, the look she wears as she says this. How am I supposed to compete with that? No amount of reasoning or logic will wipe away the dopey, eye-sparkling grin that she’s got plastered across her face. I fan myself with the menu, but it doesn’t help.
“Are you guys hot?” Meredith and Kevin are looking down at their laps like they are performing surgery down there. “Why didn’t you tell me—before—when you met him?” I ask and she presses her lips together and waits for me to reflect.
Alright, so I’m not the person you’d call when you want to hear “go for it.” I get it, I’m reserved.
Cautious. She of the rules and what ifs.
But I’m still a little hurt that she’s hidden something that’s earth-shattering enough to make her pick-up and move across the world and leave the city she loves—and me—in the dust. Though at this point I’m used to the dust. Don’t even need my inhaler anymore.
I go through the motions—take a sip of cab—put down the glass.
Pretend to listen as Kevin asks her a question.
But I can’t hear much beneath the ringing in my ears as I total up the distance between Italy and my mom’s house, all four thousand of the miles bouncing around my skull like a bowling ball between bumpers.
New York had been far enough. Hopping on the train was a task reserved more for Tara than it had been for me, with her ability to travel light and on a moment’s notice, without the anxiety that clawed at my ribcage and the thoughts that stormed my brain every time I had to leave my comfort zone.
But there is no trip home from Milan on a whim.
This trip requires planning. This trip requires a jet.
Breathe in for four. Hold. Breathe in—wait.
A dark-haired man pushes through the door and my heart jumps then falls when I realize it’s a stranger. Where the hell is Dr. Dick?
“Your job?” I ask finally, sneaking another glance at the door. I check my phone screen again to see if he’s texted. My throat feels swollen. Jeff is usually annoyingly early.
“Will be in Milan. Michael’s already set me up there.”
God damn it, Michael. Why do you have to be such a good boss? Why can’t you be more like Principal Ass-stache?
“That’s great,” Kevin says beside me. His eyes meet mine and I nod. It is great. Great. Great. Great. “Devon, are you alright?”
My chest is constricting, squeezing my heart like a sponge, and I let out a breath to give my insides more room. I just need to breathe. But the oxygen—where the fuck is all the oxygen? Meredith’s hand finds my shoulder and I turn slowly so I don’t get any dizzier than I already am.
“Dev, I think you need some air. Come on, let’s get you outside—”
Her fingers twine through mine and I’m being towed around the tables of happy, oblivious diners by Mer, like a little girl dragging her doll behind her. Tara stands to follow and Mer points back to the seat. She obeys.
When we push through the glass doors, the humid night air does nothing to ease my chest.
“What’s going on? I can’t remember last time this happened,” Meredith demands, looking me over.
I put my hands on my knees and stare down at my bootless calf.
It’s like half the size of the other calf.
I hate that Jeff was right. I should have done my exercises.
I hate it more that he isn’t here right now and that my heart is bursting out of my chest with the need to know he’s ok.
I hate most that if I just stuck to my gut, avoiding him at all costs, I wouldn’t be hyperventilating on Broad Street ruining my little sister’s life news.
Even if that news has another family member leaving me.
“She’s moving to Italy,” I murmur to the curb beneath my feet, pulling in sharp breaths between words. I lift my watery gaze up to Mer’s. “Has Jeff.” Breath. “Texted you?” Breath.
Her face changes. Realization hits. She reaches for her phone in her back pocket, checks her messages, and shakes her head. Then she presses a button and holds the screen up to her ear.
“I’ll call the hospital,” she says to me, rubbing my back with one hand while I focus on my breathing.
She’s so stunningly calm. Part of her training, I’m sure.
No freaking out when your scalpel is hovering over someone’s aorta.
She watches me out of the corner of her eye as she speaks, “Shelly, it’s Meredith Brown.
Can you page Dr. Harrison for me and have him call me immediately? Yup. Ok. Perfect. Thank you.”
She turns to me. Looks me over again and shakes her head with a small smile.
“I’m sure he’s fine. He will call us, Dev.” She pats my head like I’m a tiny child.
Meredith is calm but not so great with the warm and fuzzy.
“I knew you were freaking out about T, but,” she pauses, wrinkling up her nose. “I didn’t know you were thinking of—you know—your—”
I put my hand up so she stops. No need to go there.
Why would she realize something like that?
It’s not like talking about it will fix a damn thing, and it barely ever affects me like this.
Anymore, at least. But tonight was different somehow, with Tara at the table and Jeff’s empty seat.
Then the heart wrenching news that my sister is moving across the world.
It triggered something. Somehow it took me straight back to that night, sitting at the table with my dad’s empty seat.
“It’s no big deal. This is Tara’s night. Let’s get back inside,” I say softly, now that I can breathe again.
Meredith nods, but her lips turn down and she looks me over, diagnosing like I’m a patient.
“Fine, but just give me a signal if you need to get out again. Touch your nose or rub your nippl—”
“Alright. Alright. Let’s go.”
The moment we push through the doors, Tara’s almond shaped eyes lock onto mine, worried and confused.
She has the same amber flecks as me and right now they are catching the light from the low-hanging lanterns dangling over our table.
I sit down slowly and work up the strength to do the right thing despite the dagger twisting in my chest. It was hard enough to watch her go two hours north. This will be hell.
“To love in Milan,” I offer, my voice as shaky as my hand lifting the wine glass.
“You’ll really love him, Devon,” Tara tells me, and I look up from the knot in my napkin and nod as we clink our glasses together and sip (chug) our drinks.
“Of course, I will!” I sound unconvinced. Unconvincing. Un-convincable.
But Tara just turns back to Meredith as she asks whether Marcello has any brothers.
Marcello? Really? How long can a man named Marcello last?
I signal the waiter for a refill and chastise myself for being so petty.
I’m sure Marcello is a perfectly lovely man and I want my sister to be happy—to find love.
Someone that will choose her and not some job.
Someone that will show up and fill the empty seat.
When the waiter makes his way back to the table with the bottle of red, I try to discreetly let him know to keep it coming.
The wine is too smooth and Tara’s news is too much and Jeff’s seat is still glaringly unoccupied.
And even through the warm haze that has suddenly settled around me, I can already see that this night is going to be shittier than the great sledding explosion of 2014.