I closed my hands around the pills. “What are they?”
There was a pause where I imagined my sister grinning.
“Honestly, Polly, since when have you asked what something was before taking it?”
“Since I saw purple butterflies talking to me at our kitchen table,” I shot back honestly. It was enough to keep me off hard-core hallucinogenics for life.
“Well, this will stop the razorblades cutting at your eyeballs right now,” she replied. “No butterflies.”
Lucy would know. Where I didn’t drink on the regular, she loved cocktails and partying. Which meant she had experience with hangovers. I had experience seeing her hungover and teasing her and generally riding around on my high horse.
That horse had thrown me off, left me in the mud and I was never going to get on it again.
I trusted my sister with my life, which was good since it felt like I was fricking dying.
I put the pills in my mouth.
Cool glass settled on my lips and I drank the precious water Lucy was offering to me. I suddenly realized my mouth was the Sahara. My fingers settled around the glass and I gulped until it was empty.
“You might not want to...” Lucy trailed off as the water reached my empty and protesting stomach.
I groaned at the pain of the liquid hitting it, seriously concerned about it coming right back up. If the sound of Lucy’s heels retreating on the hardwood floors were anything to go by, she thought so too.
But I managed not to empty my stomach, more out of sheer force of will than anything else. There was a pause where I willed the world to stop spinning, and spearing me with flaming swords.
“You didn’t barf, impressive,” Lucy commented. “Though, I guess you’ve got an iron stomach after gallivanting through Europe for a year eating god knows what.”
The thought of food both disgusted and hungered me.
“It’s Europe, Luce,” I said, my voice little more than a groan. “They’re kind of famous for their cuisine.”
“Yes, but in the nice restaurants with tablecloths, wine menus and free bread. You likely were eating street food with hippies.”
I pursed my lips.
She wasn’t exactly wrong.
I wasn’t the restaurant type of girl. I immersed myself in the culture, I ate where the locals ate, and it wasn’t at places with pictures on the menu an English translations and rude waiters.
“Speaking of,” she continued, snatching the glass from me. I imagined a scowl on her face while my eyes stayed firmly closed. “How is it that my little hippy sister did not inform me that she was coming home?” A pause. And I knew Lucy well enough this was more of an inhale before the screech. “Oh, right! How about the fact she didn’t inform me that she was motherfucking leaving in the first place?” she yelled.
And I knew she properly yelled this time since it felt like my ears were bleeding on the outside and not just the inside.
I didn’t speak, a little because I feared I might vomit if I opened my mouth, or my eyes for that matter, but mostly because I knew Lucy was not done. The sound of her heels pacing the floor in front of me told me that. She only paced when she was super pissed.
“And maybe you thought I might, you know, want to come?” she yelled. “I love pasta. I love Italian things. I know they make good shoes. I could’ve visited the birthplace of Manolos. Did you think of that?”
“You’re kind of a newlywed, and Keltan took you to Lake Como on your honeymoon,” I said.
“It was a lake!” she screeched. “It’s nothing but a sea without the salt. Or beaches. Or sharks. Wait, are there sharks in lakes? If there aren’t, Lake Placid had some seriously big plot holes.” She paused. “But that is not the point. The point is you were going through a divorce and hurting and then you just left, and I thought you were going to join a convent or something. It was a traumatic time.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmured.
“Oh, I’m not done,” she snapped. “And then when you finished your little Eat, Pray, Meditate Without Shoes On, you come home without telling anyone and then get drunk with my husband. Without even inviting me. I am much more fun to get drunk with than Keltan.”
“You’re pregnant,” I pointed out, and I realized I hadn’t even seen Lucy pregnant yet since I was pretty sure the conversation I had with her last night was all with my eyes closed. I itched to see her glowing with a new life inside her, hopefully with a little more meat on her bones, since I knew Keltan would not let her starve herself when she had a baby to feed.
I knew Lucy wouldn’t do that either. Because I knew that she would love that little being inside her from the first moment she’d found out. All of her vanity was surface. Deeper down, she was one of the most selfless, brave and loving people I knew. She would do anything and everything to take care of her baby.
I didn’t open my eyes because I was still sure I’d throw up if I did so. Not because I was scared I’d burst into tears when I saw her. That’s what I told myself at least.
“I’m fun to get drunk with even when I’m sober,” she hissed, unaware of the dark turn my thoughts had taken.
I was happy for her continuing tirade, it stopped the demons from doing too much damage.
“Because I’m fun,” she continued. “And I’ve missed my sister and I’ve worried about her more than I worried about my ankles looking like Kim Kardashian’s.”
The bed depressed.
A hand went to my forehead, it was cool, warm, and dry. Comforting for none of those reasons, but because it belonged to Lucy. My sister. My protector, best friend, and lecturer. The woman who burned down the cars of men that had broken my heart. Put them on terrorist watchlists and then fed me ice cream for the short period I’d considered myself heartbroken in between relationships.
I had no idea what heartbreak was back then.
Nor did I have an idea what love was.
Not until him.
I’d been so sure I’d been searching for it. That all-consuming, beautiful and fulfilling love, that I’d run from what I’d found. Because it wasn’t beautiful. Or fulfilling. It filled me up only long enough to rip me apart from the inside out.
“Keltan told me why you drank whisky,” Lucy murmured. “That you saw Heath. That it was bad.”
My stomach clenched for different reasons than the aforementioned whisky, though it was still making sure I didn’t forget about the after effects.
Heath’s name whispered from my sister’s kind lips was worse than any whisky induced hangover.
I swallowed hot ash, struggling to sit up without hurling and to blink without crying. “Yeah,” I agreed on a croak. “It was bad.”
It was now I found the strength to blink my eyes open. I immediately snapped them closed when a light that burned my corneas assaulted me. I took a long second before I tried blinking again. And I did it slowly, gave myself time to get used to the obnoxiously bright light obviously designed to give me some sort of brain bleed.
Lucy came into focus.
And I was right, she had a glow.
And not just because I was hungover and the light in the room had the power of the sun itself, despite the fact the curtains were drawn.
No, because she was Lucy. And she was beautiful no matter what. But she had changed. It was jolting for me, since the last time I’d seen her, she was still beautiful, but her angles were sharper, more severe in a gorgeous, runway model type of way.