He frowned. “Didn’t think so either. Think she heard Marcus bought the shop?”
Unease twisted around in my stomach like a nest of snakes. “Maybe. Though I don’t know why she’d bother coming all the way back. I’ve only seen her a handful of times since … well, since it ended. The last time was a few weeks ago. She seemed her usual then.”
“Charming? Messy? Manic?”
“All of the above.”
His frown deepened. “Was she up or down?”
“Up. She wanted to hike Cahuenga, so we did. It was … nice. Like the old days.”
“The thrill isn’t worth the fallout.”
“You say that like I don’t know.”
Kash huffed. “You didn’t sleep with her, did you?”
I shrugged. “It’s Wendy,” was all I said. Which, of course, meant yes.
That earned me a roll of his eyes. “You’re so predictable.”
Rather than argue, I ran a hand over my mouth. “You know how it was with her. I loved her—or who she was when she was lucid. And when she wasn’t…”
“You wanted to save her. Help her. I get it. But man, you are a glutton for punishment, getting back in bed with her.”
“It was the last time. She told me afterward she had a boyfriend.”
“You’re fucking kidding me,” he said flatly.
“Don’t worry. Lesson learned and all that. At least she’s consistent.”
This time, his eye roll was accompanied by a snort.
A rumbling came from the hallway, the unmistakable thunder of someone running up the stairs.
“Dinner!” Laney called, the word trailing down the hall and up the next flight.
“Who knows?” Kash asked, hauling himself out of the bed. “Maybe Wendy’ll actually use whatever lives between her ears and stay away.”
“Let’s not press our luck,” I said on a tight laugh, following him out of our room, thinking of her.
Five years ago when I’d met Wendy, my orbit had shifted, centering around her. She had the energy of the sun, warm and bright. It was intoxicating, the vitality radiating from her, and I siphoned it off to fuel my own.
But that’s the thing about a star. Get too close, and you get burned.
Whatever I schemed, she was down for. Whatever I wanted to do, she was in. I thought I’d adventure through a lifetime with her. So when she hit lows, there I was, stable and steady, a lifeline in the storm.
She needed me. So I gave her everything, heart and soul.
I told myself it wasn’t her fault when she refused meds, dropped out of therapy. I blamed her parents for their neglect, their irresponsibility, for the lack of love she received. I wanted to save her from them. From herself. I wanted to give her the life she’d never known.
So I used my trust on our house in Santa Monica. Let her shop without constraint. The debts grew, and my trust dwindled. My odd jobs wouldn’t pay for Hermès purses anymore, wouldn’t fund the house. So we packed up, headed into the Valley where it was more affordable, and found an apartment in Reseda. My thought was that when things turned around, we could settle down there and raise kids, despite the fighting it had taken me to get her off the west side. And that fight seemed to bleed into everything. The good times quit outweighing the bad, her lows longer, harder. I thought we’d never make it when I found the Vicodin, when I uncovered her addiction—that fight was so intense I left the house when she started slinging plates at me like frisbees. When I came home, every ceramic in our kitchen had been reduced to rubble, the room a wreckage of porcelain bursts and nicks slashed in the walls.
I found Wendy in our room, unresponsive. A handful of pills, a couple of drinks. An ambulance. Stomach pump. Her tears, her sorrow when she woke, as desperately real as her rage had been.
Wendy had two triggers—financial security and abandonment. And that knowledge should have been my clue. I should have known then that it was going to fall apart. But like a fool, I had faith.
And then I found her with him.
It was the stuff of nightmares. After all we’d been through, after everything I’d given, I came home to find her fucking him in my living room. Everyone has a line, a boundary that once crossed could never be retreated beyond again. And that was mine.
I believed her when she said she was sorry—not to get me back, but because despite it all, she didn’t want to hurt me. She moved back to Santa Monica with him. And when he dumped her like a broken armchair, she came back, begging. I was sick enough to consider taking her back.
But what I’d told her was as true then as it was in this very moment—I couldn’t forgive her just because she was sick. Not for what she’d done.
The most I could offer was to help her find jobs—which she would inevitably lose—or help her secure apartments—which she would live in until she either couldn’t pay rent anymore or found a new guy to shack up with. She bounced from man to man, always rich, always connected. And when they discarded her, as they always did, she would come to me. It would start as dinner and end up with us in each other’s arms. But there was always a surprise—she needed money, had been dumped. Or worse—she came to me for comfort when she had a boyfriend I didn’t know about. Which made me the other man.
Beyond the pale. That last time was the last time.
But still I knew deep down that I’d answer the call. Because if I didn’t help her, no one would.
When Marcus had summoned us home, I realized I’d only been staying for her. And coming back broke the shackles I hadn’t realized I’d been wearing.
Hearing that she’d followed had them hovering over my wrists all over again.
But this time, it was different. This time, I wouldn’t sacrifice. It was time I moved on, and for the first time in a long time, moving on felt possible.
I mean, aside from the fact that I was living in my childhood home with my siblings.
Our old room hadn’t changed much, though Kash had moved into Laney’s old room when she left for college—it was bigger and had a bay window. Of course, he’d relinquished it to Laney when she came home. And since Marcus’s room had been turned into a junkyard of homeless boxes and furniture, Kash and I had ended up back in our room together.
He’d called bottom bunk, and when we’d wrestled for it, he’d won, thanks to a well-placed punch to the nuts. Always was a cheater—it was the only way he could beat me. As such, every night, I climbed a tiny ladder and slept close enough to the ceiling that I couldn’t raise my arms without putting a fist through sheetrock. Lucky for Kash, I wasn’t claustrophobic.
We trotted down the stairs, passing framed pictures of all of us, from naked butts to posed studio pictures. Kash and I took turns insulting each other, Laney chiming in with a flick of my ear that ended up with her over my shoulder, squealing. Marcus remained civilized, only offering an occasional one-liner, and Mom followed behind, fussing over his suit and warning me not to knock anything off the walls.
We burst into the dining room like a herd of wildebeests. Dad sat at the head of the table, sighing as he closed his newspaper, his moment of solitude passed. Jett entered the room with a casserole dish in mitted hands and Mom’s apron tied around his neck and waist—the purple one with the little yellow flowers.