Chapter Twelve #2
I pantomimed throwing up with my hand. “Have you ever tried having a serious conversation with a fourteen-year-old?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s my job.”
“Oh, right. Sorry. Your ‘job.’ ” I threw up air quotes with my fingers and he shot me a perplexed look. “Maybe you should talk to her about this, then.”
“I have,” he replied. My jaw dropped. “I’m better at keeping secrets than she is.”
“Why does she talk to you?” I asked. “She won’t talk to me. Why does she talk to you but not me?”
“Why are you talking to me, not her?” he countered. I rolled my eyes and shifted to face away from him.
“ ‘Why are you talking to me, not her?’ ” I echoed in an excessively whiny voice. “That’s you.”
He snorted. “Uncanny.”
All annoyance evaporated at once. I could make him laugh again, and maybe things wouldn’t be so bad.
“Hey,” I said. He looked over, and even though I couldn’t see his eyes, I felt the weight of them pressing in on me. “Can you swim?”
“Yes.” He smiled. My breath snagged in my throat. “I’m the kind of person who almost drowns and makes a point to become a really good swimmer.”
“He’s not that good,” Phoebe murmured from the back seat. “He held his nose when he jumped in the pool.”
In the battle between horror that Phoebe was awake and delight over this new revelation, delight won out. I fell into hysterics.
“I did not,” Dex said indignantly.
“You totally did.”
I bonked my head into the window, giggling. “We should get him one of those nose plugs kids use when they’re learning to swim.”
Phoebe snorted, and then laughed outright. “Some floaties for his wittle arms.”
“Maybe we’ll get a kiddie pool for you to practice in.”
“Hilarious,” he said flatly. “You know, some people don’t know how to swim, and they would find this incredibly insulting. And obnoxious.”
Phoebe and I lost our shit.
I didn’t intend to take my sister to a gay bar in Chicago. It’s just that intention means very little when teenagers are involved.
“It’s not the best thing in the world,” Arden said, raising her voice over the pulsing music.
Elbows on the table, I had my phone clamped to one ear, my hand over the other to hear my best friend reassure me that I wasn’t the worst guardian on the planet.
But with two women on the dance floor dry humping to Celine Dion as Phoebe sat beside me looking on with wide-eyed elation, Arden’s words lacked a certain gravitas. “But is it the worst? No.”
“It’s not great,” I maintained. Over at the bar, Dex waited for our drinks, arms crossed, expression stony. I counted a dozen sets of eyes locked on him.
“Maybe not. But is Phoebe happy?”
“Yes.”
“Is she drinking?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t see the problem.”
The problem wasn’t necessarily the gay bar, but my inability to guide Phoebe in a way that mattered.
She took hold of the wheel in our dad’s hospital room and had been steering ever since; I may have been her official guardian as far as the state was concerned, yet I had less power over Phoebe than TikTok.
She played me, every day. Worse, I let her.
When we got to the hotel and she began lamenting about how bored she was, and how the sun hadn’t even set yet, and we were the most boring people on earth for having nothing to do in a city like this, I gave in.
She wasn’t wrong, exactly, but that’s not why I threw on my sneakers and led her down the hall to Dex’s room to inform him we were heading out.
She hadn’t hinted at it and I hadn’t asked, but I knew in my gut Phoebe had heard me talking to Dex.
How I believed I fucked up, that she hated me, that she had a right to.
Our dad wasn’t perfect, and he probably messed up millions of times.
He never said it out loud, though. Not within earshot.
I didn’t have it together like him. I slipped up, admitting my faults and fears in front of Phoebe and proceeded to do nothing to fix them. The mortification burned.
I might not have Phoebe’s respect, but I could win her over by letting her do whatever she wanted. And tonight, she wanted this.
“No, yeah,” I said, swapping my phone to my other ear. Beside me, Phoebe was scrolling through the restaurant’s app that connected to the speakers, picking songs to add to the queue. “That’s what matters, I guess.”
“You’re not bad at this,” Arden insisted. I made a face. At the bar, a large man covered in tattoos sidled up to Dex, and several people drooped in visible disappointment.
“I’m not good at it.”
“Well, you’ve been doing it less than a year. Nobody who’s had their first kid for under a year is good at it.”
I opened my mouth and snapped it shut. “Huh.”
“Boom! Wisdom.”
“Okay, you ruined it a little.”
She laughed. At the bar, Dex also laughed at something the tattooed man said, and my stomach dropped so violently, I gasped. The music drowned out the sound, but Phoebe glanced at me, brow furrowing.
“Wow,” I said. “Dex is getting hit on at the bar and I think he’s into it.”
Phoebe stretched up in her seat to get a better view. Arden said, “Oh my god. It’s like he’s human or something.”
I swallowed, unable to tear my eyes from the bar. The bartender set our drinks in front of Dex, who remained focused on the tattooed dude, his expression content for the first time since I knocked on his door an hour ago.
“I should go,” I said. Arden replied in less than a beat.
“What’s wrong?”
“What? Nothing. I’m at a gay bar in Chicago. How could anything be wrong?”
“You’re doing the thing.”
“What thing?”
“The thing when you’re sad but you don’t want anyone to know you’re sad, so you overcompensate with enthusiasm.”
I cleared my throat. “Oh, you know what? I think the bar is going through a tunnel.”
“Violet!”
I made an obnoxious crackling sound and hung up, marginally cheered by Phoebe laughing through her nose. I’d pay for hanging up on Arden, but for now, I needed to avoid the third degree.
Diverting my focus from the bar, I watched Phoebe scan the vicinity for the tenth time since we arrived.
The place itself was cool, lots of exposed brick and timber with bright accents in the lights and artwork.
It seemed to balance on a tightrope between bar and nightclub, definitely the kind of place I would’ve frequented in college, or even today if I was both single and looking for Something. A partner, good times, a break.
I stole another glance at the bar just in time to see a bartender emerge from the back and unleash a scream that had everyone in the vicinity whipping around as she flew over to Dex and threw her arms around him.
“Wow,” Phoebe said. “So he’s, like, known here.”
I’d realized this earlier, when the bouncer recognized Dex and allowed us immediate entry.
I’d made several attempts to interrogate him, but he changed the subject or excused himself from the table each time.
Now, he was caught in a hug with a hot lesbian bartender, and he clutched her like she was so much more than that.
What was up with this guy? My mind’s version of him morphed into something new each time his vault of secrets cracked open: perpetually angry asshole with a sketchy job; the guy who follows you to an orgy and laughs until he cries in the elevator; beloved former patron of a Chicago gay bar. I couldn’t keep up.
“Hey.” Phoebe shoved my arm and jerked her chin at Dex. “Go see what that’s about.”
“No,” I said, scowling. She scowled right back.
“Why?”
“I’m not leaving you alone in a bar.” Laughter drifted over from across the room and I recognized the rusty creak of Dex’s. I slumped in my seat, folding my arms tight. “And it’s none of my business.”
“Since when has that ever stopped you?” she replied. “You can’t not be curious. Dex is like a hero here.”
“He is not,” I said, just as someone burst through the doors with a loud whoop, heading straight for the growing group at the bar. “What the hell?”
“This is crazy,” Phoebe said. “It’s almost like Dex used to be fun.”
A surprising stab of protectiveness erupted in my chest. “Dex is fun.”
“In an unfun way, sure. Maybe he went to college here or something. Did he go to college, do you think?”
I had no idea. The gap of knowledge sent a cool rush through my blood. I could only shrug in response.
“So weird,” she murmured. “He’s like a different person. Is this the real him? Was he a guy who had fun in gay bars before he dumped Catalina?” She shook her head, her tone quiet and thoughtful. “A broken heart doesn’t do this, does it? Change you like that?”
“No,” I said softly, watching as they passed Dex around as if he was the prodigal son.
Phoebe made a decent point; broken hearts do a lot of damage, but I’d never seen one calcify the way Dex’s seemed to, especially considering the evidence indicating he hadn’t always been apathetic and cold.
The more time we spent together, the easier it was to spot the whispers of his past self.
And somehow in a gay bar in Chicago, a scream broke through.
It took ten minutes for Dex to excuse himself and return with our drinks. He sat across from us and took a sip of water, taking a leisurely look around the room. Phoebe and I stared expectantly.
“It’s pretty loud,” he stated.
Phoebe rolled her eyes and reached for her water. I practically dove for my mojito. My rioting brain needed to be snuffed out for the night.
“What was that about?” I asked.
Dex avoided eye contact. “What?”
“That.” I jerked my chin toward the bar, where the hot bartender and several others ogled us. “You’re known here.”
“I asked if you’ve ever been to Chicago and you said, ‘A couple times,’ ” Phoebe pointed out. “You liar.”
He bristled. “I didn’t think it mattered.”
“Of course it matters! If you’ve been to Chicago like it looks like you’ve been to Chicago, you know all the cool places.” She paused, stirring her drink with her straw. “Well, some. You’re not that cool.”