“That’s why I chose the school I did,” Lola confesses quietly. “I don’t regret it. I’m glad I went to school where I did. But I did it partly to stay close to her.”
“I did the same for him,” I admit, something I never voiced at the time. But I chose a close college so I could keep an eye on him, since the people who were supposed to never did. They were too caught up in work, too intent on lashing out at each other, even after they split.
“Do you ever feel like you love him more than he gives you any reason to?” she asks.
I laugh, but it’s tinged with a little sadness as I nod an emphatic yes. “Yeah, I do, but he’s like Puss in Boots when he bats his eyes.”
“No one can resist those help me eyes.”
“I’m powerless against him,” I admit. “But I don’t regret it. He needs someone, and in his own way, he appreciates it. He’s grateful, and that seems to hook me every time.”
“Luna’s the same. Even though she’s so needy, she’s also so loving. She’s like a puppy.” Lola sighs, her gaze drifting away. When she speaks again, her voice is low and vulnerable. “Is it our fault that Luna and Rowan are still so dependent at times?”
“That’s what my friend Reid says,” I admit, flashing back to my conversation with him this morning. “He said I need to learn to say no to Rowan. That I need to let him fend for himself. He’s probably right, but it’s hard.” I can say to Lola what I can’t to Reid. He hasn’t been through the same things. He hasn’t seen a younger sibling start to spiral, to lose their sense of self, and been the only one who tries to help. “I love my kid brother. Flaws and all. Fuckups and all. And I’ve been saving him since we were kids.”
Lola lifts her glass, takes a drink, and exhales. “And I don’t know what I’d truly accomplish if I said no to Luna’s crazy requests. She’s independent; she supports herself. I’m not paying her bills or anything. She’s just sometimes a little . . . overly needy.”
“And he’s sometimes wildly un-independent when it comes to little things,” I say.
“So maybe we agree on this point,” Lola says, a quirk to her lips.
A grin tugs at mine too. “That there’s nothing wrong with helping a sibling?”
She tips her glass to mine. “To family. To loving them, flaws and all.”
“I will definitely drink to that.” As the crash of pins echoes in the background, I knock back some of the beer, and for the first time in a long time, I feel understood when it comes to my choices about my brother.
I still don’t know if I’m doing right by helping him out of every jam. But at least I’m not alone in having no damn clue what the answer is.
The waiter arrives with our food.
“And here are your fries, your sandwich, and your burger. Enjoy,” he says.
I grab a fry, and my taste buds cartwheel. “Salt and carbs. My favorite drugs,” I say with a happy food moan.
“Mine too,” she says, her pretty brown eyes twinkling.
And as I look at her face, I see something so very real—I can still make her smile.
Something I did before.
Something I failed to do when I returned to school.
When I said that shitty thing—It was only one night.
I shouldn’t have said that.
I should have said a lot of other things.
Talking about my brother reminds me of that. I’ve had to be the adult with him. I had to take care of him when my parents stopped doing it.
I have no regrets. I love that kid like crazy. I want to give him everything I saw them take away.
But even though I’ve chosen to play the role of the mature one with Rowan, I haven’t always done it for myself.
I certainly haven’t always done it with the woman across from me.
The night I went to her dorm, I wasn’t ready to face the truth of my feelings.
There’s no need to now either.
But I can do something I failed to do then.
Maybe it’s because of the salt and carb high, or maybe it’s because of this crazy night, or possibly it’s because not many have the opportunity to say what they should have said way back when . . . Whatever the reason, I draw a deep breath and speak from the heart as she reaches for a fry. “Hey, you.”
She looks up in surprise.
The fry falls into the basket as I say, “I’m sorry, Lola.”
9
Lola
They’re words I longed to hear nearly ten years ago.
They’re the only words I wanted then.
Well, those, followed by Let’s try this whole first date thing again.
But I can’t quite believe he’s saying them. And I don’t want to misread him. Is he sorry for what happened to us? For our crazy siblings? For our absentee parents?
Or maybe just for the fry that fell?
Nerves thrum through my bones as I wipe my hand on my napkin. “For what, Lucas?”
He heaves a sigh, then rubs a hand across the back of his neck. “There were a lot of things I didn’t handle well the night I came to your dorm.”
My heart speeds up. It’s pumping with anticipation. But not for romance, or for sex. It’s an anticipation I didn’t expect to feel.
It’s the wish for resolution.
To truly put the past behind us.
To say the things we couldn’t say as two hotheaded twenty-one-year-old aspiring artists who wanted each other. Who wanted to see if maybe there was something more to all those nights of friendship.
“What sort of things?” I ask, my pitch climbing as I study his handsome features.
Gone is the sexy smirk he wears so well. In its place are serious eyes, flecked with honesty. “For starters, I shouldn’t have said that thing about it being only one night. The night before,” he explains. “That was dumb and—”
I know exactly what one night he means, and I am bursting to say something too, something I didn’t even realize I needed to say until just now.
“I’m sorry too,” I blurt out, cutting him off, because it feels so damn good to say it at last.
He flinches in surprise. “What are you sorry for?”
And I know. I know exactly what I’m sorry for. I didn’t give him a chance to truly apologize. Sure, he should have batted first back then. Definitely, he’d needed to explain better. But I was so wounded that I put on my armor immediately. “I didn’t give you a real chance to explain. I went into self-protection mode,” I say, my voice marked with potholes as we revisit the past.
In the scheme of things, it’s not such a terrible moment. No one died, no one fell ill, and no one lost a home.
But even if it wasn’t the end of the world, it was the end of something else—it marked the end of a fantastic friendship.
There was a before and there was an after. And Lucas and I were never the same.
“Lucas,” I say, leaning closer, emotions bubbling up inside me, spilling out. “I was so upset that weekend. When you didn’t show. I was . . .” I pause, searching for the right word, recalling how I felt as I waited for the guy who’d rocked my world a few nights before. “Devastated. I was devastated.”