Chapter 13
Eris
She knew it was love
when it asked nothing more of her
than to be herself
― Mark Groves
The dinner with Denny’s parents was pencilled in for Thursday.
For the first half of the week Eris was caught in a weird trance, swinging between a gut-deep necessity to keep herself occupied and a dull inertia she couldn’t shake off. She wasn’t big on walking into new things, least of all unprepared.
It wasn’t long before Denny picked up on her distress.
“I’m telling them something came up and you can’t come.”
Eris’ back arched off the bench as she pushed the barbell up towards Denny’s looming face, biceps and triceps burning from the strain.
“C’mon, c’mon!” Denny cheered, hands hovering under the bar, ready to compensate for any potential failure. “Almost there!”
A choked cry scratched Eris’ throat. She gathered all the strength in her core and arms and, with one final push, straightened her elbows, dropping the barbell back into its hooks.
Denny clapped furiously above her. “Two-hundred pounds! Are you joking?!”
More people gathered around from all over the room, clapping and whistling. Eris held on to her headphones. There was no music in them, as the bluetooth kept losing connection to her phone, but it was better than nothing.
Denny shooed everyone away, then wrapped Eris up in a crushing hug.
“That was freaking incredible!” She didn’t seem to mind that Eris was sweaty and gross and probably ruddy all over her face. “We need to get you a pair of new headphones.”
“It’s alright,” Eris muttered, relishing the warmth of Denny’s breath on her naked skin and the pride she was oozing.
They hadn’t come out to the gym gang yet (understandably, Denny wanted to tell her parents first), but she was under the impression that everyone was looking at them differently.
Gina had given them both a big smile and a sound pat on the back for absolutely no reason when they’d arrived on Monday and Noah had said something along the lines of ‘I demand a thank you’.
Whatever it meant, it had made Denny snort.
“Don’t cancel with your parents,” she said, picking up her towel. “I want to meet them. I just…” It was hard to verbalise when even she didn’t fully understand how she felt.
“Excuse me?” A man approached them. “Are you finished?”
“Yeah, sure.” Eris grabbed a wipe from the dispenser on the wall and sanitised the bench before leaving it to the guy.
She collected her phone and Denny’s from the ground and moved to the pile of mats by the dumbbell rack to register her new record on the gym’s app.
An explosion of confetti took over the screen. ‘Congrats! You beat Denny by 5 kg!’
Denny found the same message on her own phone, but in reverse: ‘Watch out! Eris just beat you by 5 kg!’ “Give me a couple of weeks and I’ll kick your arse!”
“Dream on.” Eris jabbed her with the butt of her phone.
Denny’s eye lingered on the back of the case. She bit her lip.
“Who’s M?”
Eris snatched the phone away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay.”
It would’ve been so easy to move on and forget about it if Denny hadn’t been so yieldingly understanding. She didn’t deserve such a cold treatment.
Eris seized her arm before she could walk away. “No, wait.” It was going to hurt, but she was getting tired of keeping secrets. She could let go of one thing. Denny deserved to know. “We should talk about it.”
“I shouldn’t have asked, it’s none of my—”
“I’m going to meet your family. This is as close as you’ll get to meeting mine.”
Eris lowered her headphones around her neck, allowing the clinks of the weights and the muddled chatter to drift to her ears.
She jumped back to sit on top of the mats, took a deep breath. “Micah was my brother.”
The moment the words left her mouth almost two decades’ worth of repressed grief plunged on her. A fraction of it crept into Denny’s features.
“Was?”
“Is?” Eris’ fingers curled tightly around the edge of the mat, index picking at the thumb. “He’s dead, for all I know. I haven’t seen him since I was ten.”
Gentle caresses stroked her wrists, feather-light. “What happened?”
“He ran away from home as soon as he turned eighteen. I woke up to this note on my pillow and assumed it was just one of his stupid stunts.” A sniff, sharp as a blade. “I never saw him again.”
“Why leave the note if he didn’t intend to come back?”
“Mikey was the only person who truly cared about me. He wouldn’t have abandoned me by choice.”
“You think something happened to him?”
That was the part Eris had always refused to confront. She’d rather imagine Micah living a happy life without her than dead.
Denny hopped on the mats next to her, a fluid and effortless motion for her long legs. She leaned her head upon Eris’ shoulder, waiting in silence until she was ready to carry on.
“Our dad was a dealer. He was… unstable. Especially around me.”
Eris felt Denny tense against her. “You were just a little girl.”
“A difficult one. But Mikey was older and by fifteen he was too big for Dad to knock him around. When he was around, Dad didn’t dare come near me.”
Denny winced. “Did he ever… You know…”
“No, nothing like that. He just… I had temper tantrums and he had a short fuse.”
The teachers used to say that she was too easily unsettled.
Her mother would call her crotchety and fussy.
Her father was irritated by her restlessness and her listlessness in equal measure.
Only Micah had been kind to her: he’d always tried to understand her mood swings and how to calm her when she freaked out.
He’d stand up to their father and shove him away from Eris and her tears.
‘The more you yell, the more you upset her, you fucking cunt!’
Denny rubbed her cheek against Eris’ shoulder. “What about your mum?”
“She worked.”
“No, but like… She never stepped between you and your dad?”
Eris shrugged. Even as a child, she’d been able to see that the woman who had given birth to her had had no interest in raising children.
Her mother had fulfilled her duties like a soldier following higher orders, loveless words and loveless gestures, and every day that Eris had spent in that house she had felt like a punishment to her own family. Except for her brother.
“When I realised Mikey wasn’t coming back, I taught myself to keep it all inside. I think…” She trailed off, surprised by a sudden realisation. “I think that’s when the mutism started.” A hiccup under her ear made her look down. “What’s wrong?”
Denny let out a wet little laugh. “I need a hug.”
Eris pulled her under her arm and let her squeeze the air out of her. She smudged a kiss to the crown of Denny’s hair. Her lungs filled with her scent—the scent of home.
“This is kinda why I’m so nervous about meeting your parents,” she confessed. “What do I do? How do I talk to them?”
“I know you want a meet-the-in-laws cheat sheet, but you don’t really need one.
We’re chill people in my family. Just don’t call them Mr and Mrs Alabi, it makes them feel old.
Heather and Luke will do. If they tell you anything embarrassing about me and you laugh, I’ll kill you. That’s pretty much it.”
It wasn’t much of an improvement from the tidbits of background Eris had gathered about the Alabis over time.
Heather, daughter of Tansy, was an aviation engineer, Lukan was a pilot.
They lived in Marylebone, too. Eris was curious to get to know the people Denny had come from and see which one of them was more similar to their daughter.
She didn’t know how long they sat on the mats in silence. Long enough for the sweat to dry on their skin. It could’ve gone on for hours if Noah hadn’t shown up to drop off some weights. He took them both in, cracked them a half smirk, deposited the dumbbells, and retreated.
Denny grudgingly straightened up. “I reckon that was our cue to call it a night.”
“We haven’t stretched.”
“Stretching is boring.”
“Boring and important.” Eris jumped off the mats and tugged Denny along. “You’ll thank me tomorrow when you can brush your teeth without wincing.”
“I’ll hate you in the meantime.”
Eris dropped a peck to the cut of her jaw. “No, you won’t.”
* * *
A bunch of keys Eris had never seen before slipped out of Denny’s hand as she neared the gorgeous Georgian door, but she managed to catch them mid-air. She opened and stood aside to let Eris go in first.
It wasn’t how Eris had imagined it happening.
She had rehearsed it in her head: they’d ring the bell and would be met at the entrance with ritual lines like ‘Welcome! It’s so nice to meet you!
’ and ‘Give me your jacket and make yourself comfortable!’, and introductions would follow.
She’d never been someone’s guest and that was how she’d inferred hospitality worked from what she’d seen on TV.
Entering the Alabis’ house unannounced felt like skipping too many steps, but Denny was already nudging her inside.
When the door closed behind her, there was a shrill ringing in her ears. She was vaguely aware of Denny toeing off her sneakers and hooking her coat to a vintage rack on the wall. She was saying something that Eris couldn’t hear. It was all a bit foggy. Something wasn’t right with her breathing.
While her mind struggled, her body instinctively imitated everything Denny did: shoes off, jacket on the rack, phone in hand…
An alarm was wailing outside in the distance. She couldn’t block it out.
“Hey, it’s us!”
Denny’s announcement broke through Eris’ paralysis, kicking her gears out of autopilot mode.
It was like losing a crutch.
The unfamiliar smell of the house closed in on her, a mixture of sandalwood and something spicier.
“Hey.” Denny took her hand, inspecting her closely. “Everything okay?”
Yes, Eris was about to reply, because that was the standard answer to that kind of question. The polite one. The one for people who didn’t care.
Not the answer for Denny.
“I need a minute.”