Chapter 16
Sloane
I’m so late. I check my phone, taking another huge bite of my bagel and choking it down with the lukewarm coffee I poured when I rolled out of bed twenty minutes ago.
“Have I ever told you that you remind me of the Grinch?” Grant’s rubbing his face as he enters the kitchen, a surprising glint of humor in his eye after his past few days of moping around the house.
“Everyday.” I make a show of grinning through the stale chewed up bagel in my mouth and he sneers.
“Gross, Sloane.” He moves toward the coffee pot and I watch his shoulders sink, whatever levity was there instantly dissipating as he takes in the open bag of bagels and cream cheese.
I knew I should have used a cutting board.
He starts putting things away in jabby sharp movements intended to show me how pissed off he is.
“Stop. I was going to clean that up!” He can be such an asshole when his equilibrium is fucked up. One thing gone wrong in life? Let’s take it out on every human being on planet earth.
“Sure you were,” he responds sharply.
I use my arm to divert him from the few objects on the counter, quickly putting them away. I wish I could replicate his movements, be as passive aggressive as he is and maybe it translates because he says,“What?” his arms crossed as he watches me swallow the rest of my bagel.
“What Sloane? Just say what you want to say.”
I subtly check my phone because I really don’t have time for this but he is being a dick and it’s fine if he wants to self sabotage his own life but he doesn’t get to take it on the rest of us in the aftermath.
“You’re being cranky to me because of your fight with Gen,” I shrug matter of factly, hoping he’ll sigh and go stew in his room—his typical mode of handling conflict.
“Is there more?” he asks and I raise my eyebrows, surprised but also expect the question to be a trap. He wants me to explode, gives him a reason to put me out on my ass.
“You should apologize to her,” I say calmly, getting up to stick my plate in the dishwasher.
“Apologize for what? Asking her to tell the truth?”
So this is a trap.
“It’s not her truth to tell,” I say the words to myself, an internal thought whispered out loud.
But based on the way Grant’s looking at me I know this is about to be a big one.
Betrayal and frustration are so poignant in his gaze and it’s not that I don’t care about his problems, but if I don’t leave now I’ll probably miss Mom’s appointment.
I don’t have time to theorize morality with Grant, a discussion we have had so many times in the past. It never goes well. I live in the gray but he only sees black and white.
“What do you mean? You’re telling me she should just keep this huge secret, one that would shake up Olivia’s life completely, for Will? The same Will who's been shitty to basically every person I’ve cared about since I’ve known him?”
“Sort of!” I snap. This is so like Grant, blaming his life's problems on one person.
If only so and so didn’t do this, then my life would be great.
I don’t like Will, but this isn’t about Will. It’s about Gen—about her making the choice to protect someone she cares about, and about Grant seeing that as a flaw instead of a positive.
I look at the time on the stove. Fuck. “Look, I have to go. I’m going to be late.” I grab my keys, and tug on my boots, sitting haphazardly by the bar stool.
“Late for what?” His voice is full of accusation, suspicion, and I hear it now. How he groups me in with all these things he considers bad.
“Late for what, Sloane?” he spits, and something about the hatred, the rage in his voice has tension pulling at my head like if I don’t explode I’ll cry. Exploding feels easier. Cleaner.
“I have a thing…with Mom.”
I watch that betrayal amplify and morph into something more. A break in whatever cosmic bond twins have. The feeling that the one person who should understand you doesn’t understand you at all.
“Why?”
It’s the way he says it that makes me erupt, like I have something to apologize for, like I proved him right about some unsaid thing between us. Like me seeing our mother hurts him as much as our mother did.
“You know what Grant, not all of us are constantly holding people to an entirely impossible standard. Normal people can’t just decide if someone is good or bad like that.
People change Grant, people have reasons they do things.
Maybe they don’t want to share those things with the gatekeeper of morality.
” Blood courses through my ears and I feel sweat begin to tickle the back of my neck, my heart beating hard in my chest.
“People like Will, people like Connie…” His voice is restrained, like I won’t be able to handle whatever truth he thinks he’s expounding on me.
“They don’t just change Sloane. They don’t get to use their issues as an excuse for fucking up someone’s life.
” I wonder if that's what he thinks I'm doing. Coming in here with all my issues and fucking up his life. This wounds me somewhere, a cut I don’t feel right now but deep enough that I know it’’ll come back later when I think I’ve forgiven him.
“Sometimes things are morally grey, Grant. Do I think Gen should be protecting Will? No. Absolutely not. But Will was Gen’s person for a really, really long time.
That was her best friend, so maybe she thinks protecting him is more important than the truth.
Maybe there’s a whole lot of pain under that secret that she knows he’s not ready to face.
” I swallow hard. “What makes Will less worthy of empathy, Grant? Just because he’s fucked up?
What about Mom? Why is she okay to abandon and we weren’t?
” I feel the tears before I can process them, and I don’t know when this argument became less about Gen and more about us.
“She was our mom, Sloane.” He says it like this should mean something, like his pain should trump everyone else's but all I can think is how this proves my point.
“She is our mom.” My voice has a hard edge as I use my hand to brush away the tears.
“This is a mistake. Don’t let her in.” For a second he’s fifteen, eighteen, twenty year old Grant again, giving me a warning he knows I won’t take. Because for him it’s so easy to turn away someone you love when they don’t meet your expectations.
Is there a world in which I could fuck up so bad that he turns me away too? Is it this one?
“Don’t let her in.”
I shake my head, a cruel laugh snaking its way up my rib cage.
“That’s your advice? To just keep pushing her away? Grant, you can’t just keep everyone at arm's length and expect things to get better for you.”
“I let people in. I let you in—I let my friends in. For fuck’s sake this entire argument is because I let Gen in.”
I let you in, I know he wants to say.
The unspoken words ring between us, like it was a favor, like if he could do away with me he would.
Because he’s never really let me in. He’s sat a pillar above me, high up on his moral high horse.
A smaller version of Mom who he wishes would abandon him, too just so he could point his finger and say: see—I told you so.
“This entire argument is because you refuse to let anyone in.” I feel the knot in my throat, like at any moment I’ll completely fall apart.
I grab my keys and my bag, the need to escape, to get far away from this conversation, from the truth of what he thinks of me, because it’s suffocating.
“Apologize to Gen, Grant,” I say, my tone void of emotion as I throw his front door closed behind me, covering my face with my hands to stifle my sob.
Nine years ago
From where I stand at the entrance of Evie Fielder’s bedroom, I can smell it. I don’t need to see the purple bottle to know it’s super hold—that it’s Aqua-net. A memory of that can on a counter I can’t quite reach swims in my vision before it disappears.
I inch forward across the waxy hardwood, as much as I can without her seeing me, inhaling the powdery scent and mentally marking each step of her routine.
There’s a round brush in her hand; a blow dryer in the other.
The little machine roars to life as she lifts her arms like she’s done in silent rhythm for the past thirty minutes.
Tugging like it takes effort, she pulls it through a chunk of hair while her blow dryer gushes hot air from the other direction.
Then, it’s silent, except for the pointed shhh of the hairspray can. It invades my nostrils and now, I notice she’s done. Her glossy blonde hair sits perfectly on her shoulders with a gentle wave, and it doesn’t move. A life sized doll—not even the wind could toss it out of place.
My adoptive mother is so beautiful, it hurts to look. I shut my eyes and strain to see my actual mother, try to let the familiar fumes build an image of her in the likeness of Evie. Youthful. Radiant. Healthy.
Nothing happens. I can’t see anything but stringy strands and smudged mascara but I know she must’ve been like this before. Otherwise, why would she have needed Aqua-net, too?
“Sloane, sweetie?” Evie’s hands are gentle, but they’re on me for only a second before I shrug them away, my eyes flying back open.
She looks into my eyes with way too much concern, and I roll them like it’ll stop her from knowing all my thoughts. Grant loves that about her. He’s always saying how nurturing she is, how understanding.
And I get it; becoming a mother to a pair of eleven year olds is probably an uphill climb, and it must suck not knowing us the way a mother does.
But no one asked her to.
And I have a mother.
When she tilts her head to the side, I know she doesn’t care. She’s going to try to understand me anyway.
“You know, I’ve been meanin’ to give you somethin’,” she says, walking across the hallway towards the art studio, expecting me to follow.
“I’m meetin’ Clementine. Remember?” I cross my arms and push my hip out, a fight I don’t remember the start of pulsing through my bones. She ignores it, patiently waving me toward her.