6. French Toast
FRENCH TOAST
Drie’s phone buzzed, lighting up on the kitchen island as five matching brunette heads turned to watch it vibrate on the granite.
“Is that him again?” Nellie dropped her crochet hook with a snarl. Given that the only two facts her sisters had to go on were that a breakup had occurred and that she was upset enough to make the three-hour drive home, Drie felt a surge of affection for her violent little sibling.
“It’s barely seven in the morning. Unless one of you four just butt-dialed me…” She trailed off with a helpless shrug.
“What is it with this guy?” Sam huffed, her chocolate eyes narrowing in a remarkably uncharacteristic manner. Drie eyed her stoic older sister, marveling over how identical the indignant expression was to Nellie’s, and how it only served to strengthen the uncanny resemblance between the two.
Sam and Nellie fell second and fourth in the lineup, with a four-year age gap between them, but they were the only two in the group who truly looked like sisters.
Because while Jeden, Drie, and Rosy got most of their looks from their respective fathers, Sam and Nellie were the spitting image of their mother.
“Can I just answer and tell him to fuck off?” Sam continued, glancing back toward Drie with hope in her eyes.
Nellie began nodding in earnest, pushing her yarn onto the cushion beside her as she made to get up. Drie’s hand on her shoulder pulled her back onto the couch.
“No,” she answered, her voice firm. “Just let it be. I don’t know what his game is, but I’m not playing. If he wants to call every five minutes or type messages until his thumbs fall off, he can knock himself out.”
“But—”
“No.”
“No fun.” Nellie slumped back, crossing her arms with an indignant huff.
Drie shook her head in exasperation. She twisted back around to see if anybody else was paying attention to Nellie’s teenage dramatics, but she was brought up short at the glances being exchanged behind her, loaded looks being passed around like a gathering of mother hens.
Drie was tempted to start clucking at the three of them when Jeden leaned forward in her seat, her gaze intent. Her hazel eyes were brought into sharp focus as she scanned Drie’s face slowly through her thick, squared, black-rimmed glasses.
To some, the moment may have felt intimidating, but she was well-acquainted with her sister’s careful perusal.
Jeden’s vision was deteriorating faster than the doctors had ever anticipated, and although Drie was feeling particularly vulnerable that morning, she wouldn’t begrudge her sister the ability to see her face.
It was such a simple thing that the rest of them took for granted.
“You love him,” Jeden said gently.
Drie finally looked away, toward the window overlooking the backyard where Rosy’s flower garden was planted. The sun shone brightly that morning on the bees petal-hopping and the hummingbirds flitting between the surplus of blazing red feeders filled with sugar water.
“Have you talked it out? Could it be a misunderstanding?” she asked.
Drie turned her gaze from the window and met Jeden’s eyes. “He doesn’t love me.”
Sam rubbed a hand over her mouth, one brow arching high upon her forehead. “Surely, he didn’t actually say that.”
Jeden frowned, squinting hard at Drie. “You’ve only been together a few months. You wouldn’t have ended things over that.”
“I didn’t. He did.” She sighed to a chorus of gasps.
“I’m paraphrasing here, but he told me he doesn’t love me.
He never will…” The words caught on the lump in her throat, so she coughed twice before continuing, her voice dropping to a whisper as she forced the words out, “And it makes him feel bad to know that I love him.”
“He fucking said fucking what?” Nellie shouted.
“He also said he still wants to be my friend,” Drie continued, ignoring Nellie jumping back to her feet, crochet hook clenched tightly in hand, looking for all the world like she intended to use it for murder.
“And based on the fact that he’s been calling and texting nonstop, it seems he may have actually meant it.
” She dropped her head into her hands, feeling exhausted.
Leaving at three in the morning had done her no favors. But she’d been unable to sleep, her mind reeling with the bomb Fisher had dropped.
She’d noticed that he’d not been responding when she expressed her feelings, but she’d assumed he just wasn’t ready to say it.
She’d never once considered the possibility that he believed loving her to be an impossibility.
The audacity of such a statement sparked kindling within her, overshadowing the hurt.
She was grateful for the distraction and leaned into the feelings of anger and resentment.
They were unfamiliar, but they were better than the sorrow. She had cried enough already.
The tears had started the moment she stepped onto the elevator, and throughout the evening, into the deepest, darkest hour of the night.
She’d used that time to mourn what could have been.
The relationship she thought she had and the man she thought she would marry.
But then she decided, at some point in that late hour, that she was done.
Drie had made herself a promise as a child, so no matter how much it hurt to let go, she would do what she had to do to continue moving forward.
“I can’t be his friend.” She spoke the words to the floor, though she could feel the intensity of her sisters watching and listening.
“I love Fisher. He knows that. We’ve only been together for a few months, but I was happy.
He could’ve been the one. Things were so easy.
Too easy, I guess.” She snorted, looking around at her sisters’ expressions—Jeden’s thoughtful, Sam’s concerned, Nellie’s furious, and Rosy’s compassionate. She shut her eyes again.
“I’m not sure how to proceed. I had no clue he’d been struggling with his feelings, and I feel like such an idiot for missing the signs.
” Drie paused, remembering the pain she had seen reflected in his own eyes.
“I don’t think he wanted to hurt me, but he did.
And I want to be his friend, but I can’t just be his friend. I can’t.”
“He shouldn’t expect you to. He’s such…such a—dildo!” Nellie interjected.
“Shh,” Rosy hushed gently from the chair she’d pulled up, off to the side of the overcrowded couch. “Let Drie speak.”
Drie smiled weakly at her, the youngest of their five.
“I’ve had my heart broken before. I’ve survived the disappointment of finding out that someone I loved did not care for me in the same way.
And I’m grateful every day that I have you guys to show me what unconditional love actually feels like.
But I want to be a man’s priority. I don’t need a lot.
I just want to be someone’s number one. I want to be a person who doesn’t get walked away from, for once.
I deserve to have a man fall completely, desperately, head over heels in love with me. ”
“Hell yeah, you do,” Nellie cheered, tackling Drie into the cushions. Even Jeden let a smile crack her chronically serious expression.
“Well, it doesn’t appear that I’m needed.” Grandma Ruby drolled from the archway leading into the hall, where she’d no doubt been loitering and eavesdropping—her two favorite pastimes.
“Grube,” Drie breathed with a smile, extricating herself from her sisters’ limbs to hug the little lady. As always, she patted Drie softly on the back, her body stiff in the hug, but allowing it nonetheless.
Drie stepped back, and Grube smoothed a hand over her soft salt-and-pepper bob as she looked up at her, analyzing her in the same quiet manner as Jeden had.
She reached up and patted her gently on the cheek.
“As long as you remember your worth, the rest will fall into place. Loving someone is never a mistake. Those who turn their backs on love…That’s who you pity. ”
Drie swallowed hard. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Grube nodded and turned toward the kitchen. “I feel like making French toast,” she said. “Jeden, dear, do I need flour or cornstarch for that?”
Jeden released a soul-wearied sigh and climbed slowly to her feet as the other girls giggled. “Neither. Grube, wait, you know I’ll make you— no, we don’t need the flour. Why don’t you— Yes, we need milk. No, that’s coffee creamer. Hey, wait—WAIT! Did you just break an egg in the kettle?”
Drie cackled with her sisters as they watched Grube totter around the kitchen, shadowed by their professional chef of a sister who was trying her best to simply prevent the woman from injuring or poisoning herself.
It was a sight Drie had sorely missed while she was away at school. Things were a mess with Fisher, and she still had a lot to work through, but she knew those women would get her through it. And as Grube tossed a sneaky wink over her shoulder amidst the chaos, Drie felt nothing but loved.