Chapter 15 #2
“Your sister.” I point her figure out, with the sparkly tube top and denim jacket, leaning over the bar, ordering a drink.
“Sierra?”
“She’s your only sister.” It’s confirmed as she turns around, drink in hand, wading away with the rest of her presumed friends. They giggle and snicker and are absolutely covered in body glitter.
“How’d she get in here?” Dean asks me as if I know. “She’s only seventeen.”
“Fake IDs have existed since the dawn of time, Dean. She said she’s an Andy McKinney mega fan” I recall. He is not pleased with my answer.
“She shouldn’t be here,” Dean’s voice is harsh, as if he can’t believe his sister would act this way after the way she behaved last time. “I can’t believe she’s drinking again after last time. I’m going to go find her.”
“She’s right there,” I say, eyeing her in the corner with a guy with a wispy mustache, skinny jeans and big, black Doc Marten boots. I follow Dean as he makes his way over to where she’s standing, her friends scattering like birds sensing a storm. Some friends they are.
It takes a moment for it to register on her face what’s happening when we get there.
“What are you doing here?” She asks, sipping on her drink. Dean snatches it right out of her hand and sniffs it.
“Alcohol? Really?” Dean asks, setting it down on a nearby cocktail table. “What are you doing here, Sierra? How’d you even get here?”
“I drove here, dummy.” She has no patience for him.
“With what car?” Dean is deeply, thoroughly angry.
“I just drove Mom’s.” She acts like it’s no big deal and not a grand theft auto.
“Are you serious?” Dean asks, and I can tell he’s pretty pissed by the lines appearing in his forehead. “Are you just planning on driving home after drinking?”
“No, idiot, Johnny’s going to drive.” She elbows the lanky guy behind her with his hand on her ass, even though Dean is standing right in front of him, angry as a wasp.
Dean takes one long look at him. “Johnny, get the fuck out of here before I kick your sorry ass. She’s only seventeen.” Johnny lifts his hands up, and skedaddles, leaving Sierra alone.
“What the fuck, dude?” Sierra barks. “He’s my friend. He graduated last year. We took AP Bio together.”
“I don’t care. You shouldn’t be here. This isn’t a place for kids.”
“I’m not a kid!” Sierra shouts. “I turn eighteen in two weeks!”
“Well, you’re acting like one!” Dean retorts. “I’m taking you home. Right now. Madeline, stay with Mark.”
“Oh, so now you tell her what to do, too, huh?” Sierra starts crying angry tears. I know them well, and I want to interject, but even I know this isn’t my place. “You love to act like—like you’re the boss of everyone. Even when you’re not there!”
“What are you talking about?” Dean barks.
“You just left Mom and me like it was no big deal.” Sierra wipes her hair out of her face.
“I only left to pay for your college!” Dean’s exasperated.
“I didn’t even get into college!” She snaps back.
“What?” He asks.
“I didn’t get in. To Yale. They waitlisted me. So it doesn’t even matter.” Sierra wipes a tear from her eyes.
“Sierra, it’s just the waitlist. And there are other schools than Yale. There’s the University of Maine, of Connecticut…” Dean tries to calm her down, but she’s furious. “It might be for the best. As long as you go to school—”
“You just love telling everyone what’s best for them! You can’t do that if you’re not here!” She pushes past Dean, then me, and walks into the crowd and I immediately lose eyes on her.
“Well, fuck,” Dean sighs. “That didn’t go the way I wanted.” He dives into the crowd and I follow him.
“Let me talk to her,” I say to his back.
“No, I’ve got her, you don’t need to worry. Just enjoy the rest of the concert.” Dean’s pace is so quick, I can barely keep up.
“Just let me help,” I try to talk some sense into him. “Maybe she needs to hear it from someone else.”
“You don’t know what she needs!” Dean exclaims, and I stop following him, as we reach the exit.
“Fine. Go find her yourself. I’ll see you at the Airbnb,” I say, defeated. I can’t make him want my help. He exits The Belladonna, and leaves me standing there, my back to the crowd.
Mark drops me off at the Airbnb shortly after 11 o’clock, thirty minutes after Dean left me at The Belladonna. I haven’t even gotten a text from him, so I shrug off my jacket and dress, and get right in the shower. Washing the grime of the night off feels divine.
I put on my last clean long-sleeved shirt and pair of soft pants.
There’s a large bookcase in the living room, and I select a literary fiction novel off the third shelf.
Once I’ve curled up, the main door creaks open.
I look up from my book, and Dean enters.
He kicks off slush from his shoes onto the doormat.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” He replies, shedding his coat, putting it on the other armchair, on top of mine.
“I guess you didn’t drive her home.” I say.
“No. I think she left before I even got outside. She’s not picking up her phone.” He stands in the doorway, shaking his head.
“Do you want me to try calling her?” I ask hesitantly, afraid he might decline my help again.
“You can try, but I think she turned it off.” Dean sends me her contact info through a text, and I try ringing her. We both watch the phone go straight to voicemail. I send her a text, and try calling again, but nothing.
“I only hope it was Johnny driving her,” Dean laments. He looks tired, like he’s been up all night worrying.
“She’s not that stupid,” I say. “He has to be. He wasn’t there at the venue, was he? After she left?”
“No. You’re probably right.” Dean sits on the sofa and sighs, his head held in his hands. “She was right too. I left her.”
“You didn’t just leave her,” I reassure him. “You left for a reason. You took the job for her, so she could afford school.”
“I’m probably going to get fired when we get back anyway.” He leans his head back on the sofa, stretching his legs out.
“What do you mean? Why would you get fired?” I ask. I have no idea what he’s talking about.
“I’m not going to be able to keep you away from the pharmacy if we’re together.
And I wouldn’t want to. Craig will probably be pissed,” Dean gives me a steely cold look—not that he’s angry.
He’s scared. “If anything, you’ll probably be there more if I’m still working there.
And I think he might try something drastic like a restraining order. ”
Together. He wants to be together.
“You could just hand deliver my prescriptions.” I offer.
“Maybe…” Dean rubs his eyebrows, and fusses with his hand on his chin.
“But I don’t think it’ll work for long. If I know you.
” He lets out a sad laugh. “You still won’t be able to come into Martell’s.
At all. Not even in an emergency. Craig would fire me on the spot.
His entire reason for hiring me was to get rid of you. ”
“Do you even want to work for a piece of shit like Craig?” I ask. “Someone who would comment to TMZ about me like that? Someone who would want to get rid of me?”
“No,” Dean says. “Frankly, I don’t.”
“I could like, get my stuff delivered.” I say.
“There’s like two delivery drivers in York Falls.” Dean gives a feeble laugh. “Craig would know it’s you.”
The implication brings a tear to my eye—I’m really going to have to uproot my entire routine…
I wouldn’t be able to do the things I’ve done for the last five years.
I can’t go to the pharmacy anymore. But maybe that would be for the better.
I’m not the kind of girl who visits the pharmacy every day any longer.
“So, there’s no winning?” I ask. “Either way, I have to find a new pharmacy.”
We stare at each other in silence, the gears in my mind turning to see how we can make this work. So we can have it both ways. So Dean can keep his job to support Sierra. So we stay together and keep what we have going. It all leads up to finding a new pharmacy.
“I’ll get my license and buy a car. I’ll find a new pharmacy.”
“That’s great, Madeline, but—"
“What?”
“I’m—” He starts, but my heart rate jumps up at the thought of what’s about to come next. Is he quitting?
“I’m moving.” He says quietly, like he just smacked me across the face. “I need to move.”
“You’re moving?” I ask. “Moving where?”
“Back to Allagash. It’s clear Sierra needs me to be present with her. She’s drinking, and she’s given up on college, and she needs me to be with her. It has nothing to do with you.”
Uncontrolled tears start streaming down my face, and I feel like I can barely move.
How did I lose him when I just got him? I feel like I’m on a spaceship when the oxygen is getting low, launched far out in the universe, far from home base, no way to return.
Standing at the edge of the universe, I watch Dean stand up and begin to walk away. He’s going to quit, just like that.
“Where are you going?” I ask, an echo floating in space. “Are you leaving now?”
“I’m just looking for a blanket, okay? I’m going to sleep in the living room. You sleep in the bedroom.” It feels like a non-answer. He returns with a large, knit blanket from the bedroom.
“We need to talk about this. You can’t just quit the job.
Sierra needs the money for school. There has to be a way to make it work.
” I say. We stand across from each other, inspecting one another, like we might each be standing on an improvised explosive device.
I want to reach out and touch him, but he’s a raging inferno, and if I reached even an inch, I’d be burnt to dust and ash. I never dreamt about losing him.
“She needs me more than you do.” He tells me. “I can’t let her live like this.”
“Is this it?” I ask. The end, I mean. Before we could even really start.
“Yeah.” Dean can’t look me in the eyes, but his are all I see. His hair hangs in the way, caught in his glasses. I see small tears forming in the corner of his eyes. This stings. It’s a forest fire in the summer, blazing through the trees, and all I want to do is feel the seasons passing.
“You’re just giving up?” I ask, but all I want to ask is what about us? We swam, and swam, and we made it across to the shore.
“I don’t have a choice.”
“What about you? What do you need?” I beg. I want to tell him I love him, but I hide it away in the furthest corner of my heart. I will keep it all right here, buried in the crevices of my beating, fleshy aorta, and then one day, I’ll die too. “Don’t you want to talk about this?”
“What’s there to talk about? What options do we have? You have your house; your home is in York Falls. Andy’s life was there. Your life is there. You can’t just leave it.”
“Can you at least kiss me one last time?” I plead.
“Go to sleep, Madeline.”
“Please.”
He gingerly takes a step towards me, and wraps a hand around the back of my neck.
Finally, he looks into my eyes. I see a million candlelit stars in them.
This kiss will only turn into a memory that needs to be repressed—but he’ll just pretend it’s not happening until it’s over, and I’ll relive it for the rest of my days.
He presses an otherworldly, celestial kiss to my lips. I get a taste of a summer day, blue skies, sun-kissed skin and monarch butterflies—no porch light on to call me home, fireflies dancing in the woods, the soft, cool breeze of the clouds rolling by, all cloaked in joy.
Soon the sun will rise, and the romance of it all will be just as fleeting as it came.
I grab his waist, and pull him closer to me, begging him to deepen our kiss. The longer we stay like this, the further our inevitable pain remains. But still, despite my efforts, he pulls back.
“Goodnight.” He says, and it’s like watching waves of the ocean become stronger and stronger until you’re not able to swim anymore, and the water whisks you away.
“Goodnight.” I whisper, slipping into the darkness of the bedroom, crashing into the bed blindly.