Chapter 15
brIE
When I get back to Gia’s, a light glows below my sister’s door. Without thinking, I knock.
“Come in.”
Gia is sitting up in bed. She takes her reading glasses off and lays a book down on her bedside table. It’s a different pastel-colored illustrated cover than she was reading earlier.
“How was your date?” she asks.
I make a face.
She pulls down the duvet and pats the bed next to her.
For a moment, all I can do is stand there. I don’t have a get in bed and cuddle relationship with anyone, including my sisters.
But now that she’s offered, I really really want to.
Gia found me my first day in Blue Ridge and practically ordered me back to her home.
She’s folded me into her little family as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
I’ve tried to do my share and help out around the house, but she’s never even insinuated she wants anything back while she feeds me and asks what I want to watch on TV.
It’s not until this moment that I realize how bad I want to cuddle with someone who loves me.
I shuffle over. As I climb in, her arm opens up in a classic mom move. I hesitate only for a second before leaning into her.
“It wasn’t a date,” I say. “At least, not with Dev.”
Maybe it’s the lull of her breathing, or the orange blossom scent that reminds me of Mom, but I spill, starting with the scene outside Madam’s Hardware.
Gia is an amazing listener. Mostly, she hums her acknowledgement every so often to let me know she’s listening.
“Up until you asked for the check,” she says, “you and Sawyer were still holding hands? And this all happened after you guys dry humped on the sidewalk—”
“Those were Dev’s words. There was no . . . grinding.”
She says nothing, and I can’t take the silence.
“There was no genital-to-genital touching!”
Gia’s laugh bubbles out, and it vibrates happily against my back. “Too bad, that’s the best kind of touching.”
“Not when Sawyer’s involved.”
“Do you need to see Dr. Levine?” she asks, referring to the optometrist in town. “Especially when Sawyer is involved.”
Ew.
I say, “Ew.”
She twists to meet my eyes. “Those Strong boys might have their heads up their asses, but there’s no ew when it comes to how they look.” Relaxing back again, she adds, “Besides, Lizzie loves him, and she has great judgment.”
Kids usually do. Kids go out of their way just to high-five him.
In summarizing my night to Gia, I conveniently left out how, without meaning to, I let my guard down when Harvest attacked him for “working at the elementary school” and lost it on her.
But that had nothing to do with Sawyer in particular.
I hate when people look down on educators in general, as if we aren’t critically important to the success of future generations.
I feel Gia shrug behind me. “He’s the best of all of them as far as I can tell.”
He’s definitely the lesser of two evils when the ex-mayor is concerned. Sawyer’s dad was a piece of work, a real snake of a politician.
“Will doesn’t seem so bad,” I say. I never really interacted with Sawyer’s older brother much, but by all appearances he seems okay. For a Strong.
Gia scoffs, and it’s the most emotion she’s ever displayed. “You ever see Hamilton?”
“Uh, yeah,” not sure where she’s going with this.
“Will is Aaron Burr. He doesn’t let anyone know what he’s against or what he’s for. He’ll play any angle as long as it gets him what he wants.”
This sounds oddly personal.
“Anyway,” she says, “we’re getting off-topic. After you and Sawyer didn’t dry hump, but did hold hands, you blew up on each other over a trip down memory lane.”
I didn’t go into the specifics of the colored pencils incident with Gia. She has no idea how bad things were for me after she left for college, and I never want her to feel guilty for leaving. But she was a witness to some of the more minor teasing I endured at the hands of Sawyer and his friends.
“Pretty much,” I say. “It just reminded me of all the reasons I can’t trust him. Basically all my bad memories from school are because of him.”
“You know, Sawyer was the one who took you to the nurse that day,” she says.
I pivot to see if she’s serious, mouth agape. I still remember her picking me up after school, two baby teeth clutched in my palm.
“And,” she continues before I can process or ask questions, “it sounds like he didn’t do anything wrong tonight.”
What! I’m speechless.
“If anything,” she says, “he saved you from embarrassment. For all Dev knows, you intended tonight to be a double date all along.”
I pout and lean back against her again.
“Think about it,” she urges. “From what you told me, anything bad from tonight was purely some miscommunication from your past.”
That’s sugarcoating it.
“As far as I can tell, he didn’t do anything wrong tonight,” she repeats.
I scramble for a retort, something he did tonight to intentionally hurt me. Even after he invited himself along, he didn’t expose me for thinking I was going out with Dev. He didn’t engage in Harvest’s flirting. But he did argue with me about our shared memories.
Wait. I look up at the ceiling, trying to remember the conversation. Harvest was the one who called the colored pencils an accident. Sawyer only argued about being the one to take me to the nurse in first grade, which, according to Gia, was true.
In hindsight, the worst thing he did tonight was order wine for me. Which I did want.
My chest feels suddenly hollow. I don’t know what to do with this information, my brain hurts just thinking about it. It’s like finding out the alphabet was in the wrong order this whole time.
“Maybe you’re right,” I say grudgingly. “Maybe nothing bad happened tonight, but it still feels like a bad night. That’s what matters, right? How someone makes you feel.”
I ignore the memory of the heat of him in front of the hardware store, how my body lit up when Sawyer threaded his fingers through mine, the solid feel of his thigh pressed against mine beneath the table.
Gia’s inhalation lifts me with her, and I gently come back down as she exhales.
“Yeah,” she finally says. “How someone makes you feel is really important.”