Chapter 6 #2
My phone starts to ring after I change into sweats and a T-shirt. My sister’s name pops up on my phone, along with a picture of her holding my niece just after she was born. “Juliet,” I answer with a smile. “I can always rely on you to be awake whenever I feel like chatting with someone.”
She snorts. “You do realize that you need to make more friends, right? Wanting to chat with your little sister in the middle of the night is sort of pathetic at your age.”
I can hear my niece, Terra, making babbling noises in the background. “How is… Carmel?” I ask, hating the ridiculous town she found off a half-ass Google search.
“Come on, Ash,” she sings. “You know that’s not the full name.”
I roll my eyes. “I am not only disgusted by the fact that there is a town named Carmel-By-The-Sea, but that you decided to live in such a ridiculous place.”
“California really is the best state,” she says with a dreamy sigh. “And I love this town,” she sniffs, her voice taking on a more defensive tone. “It has all these cute old cottages, and the vibe is something else. It’s straight out of a fantasy novel.”
“How is the cottage?” I ask, pouring myself a glass of whiskey. I won’t be able to get to sleep for a while now anyway, I think, Summer’s long legs appearing in my mind.
“The cottage is still a disaster,” she replies. “There’s only so much that Pinterest can teach me.”
“Wouldn’t it have been easier just to get a place near Mom and Dad?” I question hesitantly, knowing my sister bristles at the topic.
Juliet had found out she was pregnant, dumped her college boyfriend, and taken off with little more than a quick phone call, leaving an unfinished bachelor’s degree behind her.
Our mother had been devastated that she hadn’t been able to throw Juliet a baby shower or be there when the baby was born.
Juliet had kept in touch with me but had been vague about where she was moving.
I blamed her ex; she had… implied that he had been less than kind to her.
I had no proof that she had found out she was pregnant and panicked, but it was an easy conclusion to come to.
Juliet took a gap year to travel after high school and followed it up with a second gap year, much to our parents’ dismay.
She dropped out of college at twenty-three, with just a few credits left before graduation.
Our father didn’t understand why she didn’t stick it out, but something had obviously spooked her.
Could’ve been her ex. Could’ve been the daunting idea of being a young single mother. She never said.
“I like it here,” she deadpans, clearly not open to discussing why she decided to find one of the smallest beach towns on the West Coast and why she didn’t want anyone to know she was there. “It’s a fresh start that I desperately needed.”
Our mother hated it when Juliet referred to her drastic move as a ‘fresh start’, mainly because we had been given very few details on the why of it all.
Not to mention, Juliet had not been home to visit, and none of us had met Terra in person yet.
Terra will be turning three this year. Juliet had willingly cut her family out of her life, besides the occasional phone call to our parents.
She spoke with me more, but refused to come back home.
“Plus, the bakery I was able to purchase here has been taking off lately, and I think we all know there’s no way I would’ve been able to accomplish something like that in Seattle,” she continues.
“You’ll let us come visit soon, right?” I ask, knowing that Mom and Dad probably don’t even know the name of the town where their daughter and granddaughter are living, just that they’re ‘somewhere near the beach’ in California.
It was none of my business to force Juliet to open up more than she was willing.
She’d been a troubled kid growing up, and pushing her for more than she was ready to disclose always resulted in her getting farther away from you.
It had taken her hitting eighteen to finally form a proper bond with her, considering our significant age gap.
Nine and a half years didn’t often feel like a lot once we were both adults, but growing up, it felt like we had decades between us.
“Yeah, once I’m good and settled,” she states, which is her normal response to that question. “But enough about me. Is there any particular reason you felt like talking to your baby sister in the middle of the night? Besides the fact that I am clearly your best friend, of course.”
“Of course,” I muse. I take a deep drink of my whiskey before topping it off, wondering if I should tell my sister what’s been going through my mind. Will she think less of me for having a creepy infatuation with my student?
My niece lets out something that is half-shriek, half-giggle in the background, and I can hear Juliet rattling some sort of toy as she tries to distract her, probably hoping to get her back to sleep. “Are you still there?” she asks after a moment.
“Yeah,” I reply, blowing out a stream of air. “I’m going to confide in you right now, but just a fair warning, it’s going to make me sound really bad.”
“Like, I’ll have to possibly lie to the cops, bad or just morally bad?” she questions. “I can work with both of those, but one is definitely going to take more preparation on my part.”
“There’s nothing technically illegal about it,” I say weakly.
She pauses, and I hear the clink of a glass being set on a counter, and I have the feeling my sister is pouring herself a glass of wine. “Continue.”
“I think I’m attracted to my student,” I get out in a rush before I finish off my second glass of whiskey.
Another pause. “Can they walk into a bar?”
“Yes,” I huff out a humorless laugh. “Ironically, I see her at my favorite bar almost as often as I see her in class.”
“Could you get in trouble for dating her?”
“Absolutely.”
“Are you considering dating her?”
“No.”
“But do you want to date her?”
“No… maybe… I don’t know.”
“Does she want to date you?”
I think about the way she approached me tonight, how she laughed, and how she made that wager, how her ‘prize’ was having another drink with me later. I think about all the times she reacted to my touch as I helped her home.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “It hasn’t come up.”
“Look, Asher,” she starts, taking on the tone she gets right before she starts to lecture someone. “I know you. I know you would never hold your position over someone, but I also know how much your job means to you. I don’t want to nag you, so I won’t. All I’m going to say is, be careful.”
I stare into my whiskey, and Summer’s eyes flash through my mind.
Be careful indeed.