37. I’ve Always Been Controlling
I’VE ALWAYS BEEN CONTROLLING
PRESENT
I’ve just finished my bath when Lucas or Brody knocks. (It’s got to be them, because they’re the only two people in my life who still do the “Shave and a Haircut” knocking pattern after seeing Sheldon Cooper do it on The Big Bang Theory.)
It’s an inside joke we started during nationals, which has apparently never gone away.
I tighten the robe I’m wearing over a tank top that barely covers the rash. Then I knock twice to finish the pattern, unable to forget Khloe’s question: Just how much of my friendship with Brody and my relationship with Lucas is based in nostalgia?
I open the door to find Lucas, looking freshly showered and far too handsome in lightweight sweatpants and a formfitting black cotton shirt.
Despite the fact that he spent the night here, despite the fact that I woke to find an origami flower on the table beside me, a brief note explaining he’d had to go back to his own room to shower and get fresh clothes, Lucas gestures, asking for permission before following me in.
“Is your suite as nice as mine? It’s very spacious.” This must be the worst post-sex talk two people have ever engaged in, but my brain just isn’t functioning.
“Brody mentioned you were considering bringing one of your sisters. I think that was the justification for a larger living area.”
I’d forgotten.
In some long-ago plan, pleading sister duty was one of the shields I considered hiding behind to get out of coming. I settle onto the couch with a small groan, as if the sand from earlier left an imprint, despite the long and thorough shower.
“I considered inviting your favorite—”
“Aurora’s not my favorite.” Lucas isn’t sitting yet, hovering above me and studying my face in a way that makes me feel terribly self-conscious.
Is there a rash I missed? Or is it my hair?
Something else entirely? “At best, she’s tied with Leno and Levi.
And depending on how Wren and Harper have developed, I’m sure it would become a five-way competition. ”
I pause a moment to note the present tense. The implication that Aurora is somehow still one of his favorites, the clear invitation for me to reintroduce Wren and Harper into his life.
“Aurora isn’t particularly happy with me at the moment, and I’m sure you’ve experienced this with the twins, but I don’t see how I could have brought Wren without also bringing Harper, and vice versa.”
Because Daisy and Gwendy are both only children, I’ve talked about my sisters less than I used to.
My mother can barely be trusted to complete parental forms—would likely miss far more without the double safety net of me and now Aurora.
But Lucas and I always had a relationship that was romantic, collegial, but also .
. . almost surprisingly family oriented.
Thus, it feels natural to tell him, even now, about my sisters.
“Would you like to tell me what’s happening with Aurora?”
“Nothing. I mean, the normal problems that come from being a smart woman in STEM. Classmates accusing her of getting additional opportunities because of her pronouns. But the good news is Aurora’s . . . sharp. Much brighter than I was at her age—”
“Not true.” Lucas’s voice is firm, the one I’m starting to brand his brooks-no-argument, I’m-a-CEO tone. He comes to stand behind me, his hands unerringly finding the tight knots buried there, that I’d been unconsciously rubbing at. “Don’t fish for compliments.”
I open my mouth to argue, but instead, a small moan escapes. My shoulders are in that much pain. He adjusts his angle, but I’m sinking too much into the couch, and the height difference is not to our advantage.
Lucas pats my shoulder and points to the bed.
I shouldn’t.
I know I shouldn’t.
But my neck hurts and my shoulders hurt. For that matter, my heart and soul and very being hurt. I swallow, looking up at Lucas’s profile, breathing in his stupid Old Spice scent.
There is no reason to deny myself this. I walk over to the bed and take my robe off, lying face down. Lucas settles next to me, to my side so that he can work on my shoulders without crushing me with his weight.
“You were saying?”
“She’s smart and determined.”
“Reminds me of her older sister.”
I huff out a small laugh, which is muffled by the pillow and my half groan as Lucas works on a particularly difficult knot, using his knuckles to dig into the tense tissue at the edge of one shoulder blade, before he uses both hands to stretch out my head and shoulder, moves he perfected while trying to find a cure for my cluster headaches.
Though I’d never considered it before, I guess even pre-lupus, my body’s always been kind of falling apart.
“But Aurora’s angrier.” So, so much angrier.
“You used to be angry too,” Lucas reminds me, his voice so gentle and accepting it feels somehow abrasive, which is contradictory, and yet . . .
“The other day, when I asked if she wanted a hug, she said in like a totally deadpan serial killer voice: ‘Do you love me?’ Sometimes, even when she tells me she loves me, it sounds a little like I could end you.”
Lucas laughs. “That’s oddly specific.”
“I think it’s my fault?”
Lucas moves my necklace to one side. “You think everything is your fault.”
“She was forced to understand so much, from a very young age, and then—” After Lucas, after all three of my sisters transferred to private schools, Aurora is justified in saying I checked out a little, let myself wallow in post-Lucas life, letting Aurora and the girls fend for themselves, which really meant handing too many reins into Aurora’s too-young hands.
“She got an internship as a high schooler, did I tell you?”
“You did not.”
“At Algan Tech.” In truth, I know almost nothing about the company beyond the fact that it’s a small, local startup, and Aurora shared no details about her day-to-day duties.
At the time, I was in the midst of finalizing diagnoses, drowning under emails and recommendations from Dr. Grier. But that’s not really an excuse, is it?
“She used to share everything, but at some point, I stopped asking and she stopped trying.”
Except, of course, the most recent and trickiest one: What will happen to Wren and Harper once Aurora leaves for college?
Even if I don’t know how I’ll work through the details yet, I owe Aurora the chance to set off on her own, make her own mistakes, far away from the familiar responsibilities I hadn’t meant to saddle her with.
“My opinion?”
“Please.”
Lucas stops massaging and stretches out next to me on the bed, as if this conversation demands his full focus. “Aurora always looked up to you as a sister. Circumstances forced you into a more parental role. Those identities can be difficult to blend.”
I sit up next to him, my leg touching his through the robe in a way that is casual and familiar, soothing in a completely different way. “I think we had a similar conversation about the twins.”
“Yes.” Lucas tilts his head toward me, reaching forward to pinch my chin lightly. “Only I actually took your advice.”
The way he’s holding my head, there’s no way to not make eye contact, particularly given I’m no longer wearing my fake glasses around him, another layer peeled away. “I’ve always been controlling. That’s one of the main complaints against me, right?”
A knock saves Lucas from answering, though I can see the answer in the slight wrinkling at the corners of his eyes, the small micro-tilt of his full lips that seems to say, You need to ask?
There’s no need to look through the peephole.
Lucas is already here, and only one other person I know does that “Shave and a Haircut” pattern that obnoxiously loudly.
“Six minutes until the poker tournament,” Brody tells Lucas, arching an eyebrow at the fact that I’m in a robe. “I could try to delay it a little, if you both need more time, but this is one of the few activities that already had real press scheduled.”
“Charity poker, right?” It’s an annual event of some sort. There was always at least one fluff article about it, but because I only let myself read my program’s aggregated Lucas stories once a year, twice at most, I almost always glossed over this one.
“We all donate money to the pot, and the winner gets to dictate which nonprofit gets the winnings. If there weren’t so many successful poker sharks involved, it never would have been a newsworthy story.
But the pot’s grown each year. Ben Affleck even showed up one year to challenge the STEM nerds.
Lucas, of course, usually wins. Last year he even—” Brody cuts himself off suddenly, squeezing at the back of his neck.
“In my defense, how was I supposed to know Lucas drinks now?”
I narrow my eyes. “Lucas drinks now?”
Brody reddens a little, the tops of his cheeks flushing. “Truthfully, Lucas has been winning the event for years now—”
“Lucas is good at poker?” Maybe I should have read the articles in more detail.
Lucas leans into the doorjamb, crowding me. “I don’t think I’d be good against you, if it helps.”
“Basically.” Brody looks at his watch and grimaces, pulling Lucas into the hallway. “Last year, I tried to get Lucas drunk. Seemed like a good strategy at the time, but apparently, our boy’s got a tolerance now. He never drinks when we’re out, so I had no way of knowing.”
“Lucas can hold his liquor now.”
“Yes, I bought him at least six shots. He shouldn’t have been able to tell a heart from a spade, but . . . he could.”
Lucas looks at me, his hazel eyes twinkling with mischief, as clear of an admission as I’m likely to get. “Can I come back tonight?”
Brody rolls his eyes, making another show of checking his watch.
“I’m pretty tired.”
“I sleep better next to you.”
Brody groans, throwing his head back in mock disgust. “Six years, a Forbes cover, and God knows how many zeroes added to your bank account, and yet you still have zero game.”
Lucas leans into the frame, blocking out Brody, who is practically prancing in impatience. “Please?”
I reach for the spare keycard I’ve kept just inside the hotel room, handing it over with nerveless fingers. All I can think is: This isn’t a choice either. Not really.
After I close the door, I’m too frazzled to rest. I answer questions about the psychology dissertation I finished editing before I left, do a few of the small tasks Abe assigned to me (none of which have anything to do with actual science or research), and when I can’t put it off any longer, I call Aurora.
She bypasses any attempt at hello and picks up with, “Why are you calling me from Hawaii?”
“I wanted to talk.”
“From Hawaii?”
I take a deep breath and remind myself to count, to breathe, and to not react. “I wanted to apologize.”
Impatient at my stalling, Aurora starts prodding. “Generally? Or for something specific?”
“Both. I shouldn’t have checked out quite so much during the post-Lucas time period, and also, I ought to have checked in with you more.”
“Cool,” my teenage sister says. And even though I know I’m being Brody-level dramatic, all I hear is: I will end you.
“I’m going to figure out what to do with the girls. You don’t need my approval, obviously, but I wanted to tell you I’m supportive of any college you choose to apply to. Your life and all that.”
“Great.” This in her dripping-with-disdain teenage voice.
I head to the bedroom and close the door, as if this will give me additional privacy. “I should have shared before, but you mentioned my health—” I pause, swallow, pray the call gets dropped. “I have lupus.”
“Thank you for telling me.” For the first time, Aurora’s voice reflects emotion. In the background, I can hear keys tapping away.
“Are you looking it up?”
“Of course I’m looking it up.” Her voice is a little tearful now, and I’m wondering whether it would have been better to wait, to tell her in person.
“Maybe I should have waited—”’
“Maybe you should have told me right away. Last summer, right? That’s when you were diagnosed?”
“Yes.”
There is a flurry of clicks again, and before she gets the wrong idea, I try to reassure her. “This doesn’t change your college plans, okay? There’s no cure, it’s chronic, and while there might be complications every now and again, you can always fly back.”
“Okay,” Aurora says.
We talk for another hour as I try to answer any and all of the questions she might have.
Why hasn’t she noticed the rash before? (Because I’ve been careful to reschedule when it’s been visible on my face.) What is this operation?
(Recommended, but frightening, and so yes, I’ve been putting it off for too long.) Should we tell Wren and Harper?
(Let’s not, for now?) Neither of us mention telling either of our parents.
I crawl into bed when the conversation switches to the colleges she’s considering, and I try to remember the advice I once gave to Lucas, when he was overly helicopter-parenting his brothers about their future plans.
I focus on how can I help? instead of what you should do, and for the first time in years, we have an actual, real conversation.
“You were pretty out of it last year when I got my internship.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry—”
“Timing wise, it was during your medical stuff. I get it. But—” There’s a small pause, a clear hesitation. “You should take a look at the company I interned at.”
“Okay. I will.”
I’m buried under blankets that smell blessedly like Lucas and my eyes are already closing. One phone call hardly ameliorates years of disconnect, but it feels like such an amazing, far better than I could have hoped for, start.
“I should get going.” My yawn is audible. I haven’t said it enough, have fallen out of the habit I insisted on establishing when I was younger. But it’s never too late to start again, right? “I love you, Aurora.”
“Cool,” my younger sister says, a second before hanging up.
Only this time, it sounds an awful lot like I love you.