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Taylor had assumed that she’d shielded me from the brunt of it, that I didn’t notice how Mom had fallen into a deep depression after our father had passed away and then bounced back into a manic state. She’d evened out eventually with the help of medication, but I knew. I’d always known that it was Taylor who was cooking my dinners and making sure I got to all my extracurriculars. And it was my sister who was there when I had my first seizure at fourteen.
My relationship with Taylor had always been out of balance, with her need to take care of me and with my need to be taken care of. But I was tired of relying on my sister all the time. I was twenty-four years old, a grown woman.
And right now, playing on our typical seesaw wasn’t as comforting as it usually was.
“I gotta go.” Dean squeezed my shoulder before sauntering to the stage. Taylor pushed the beer back in front of me with her index finger, though I already felt like a child who’d had her toy taken away for being naughty and left the glass where it was.
Onstage, the Anchormen started in on their first number after the lead singer introduced himself and the rest of the band. They were good for a dive bar cover band. They played a variety of songs, from the Rolling Stones to Shawn Mendes. I mostly scrolled on my phone, ignoring my ex-boyfriend’s text messages.
Jordan and I had broken up in the spring after a fight had turned…bad. I knew he wasn’t a violent guy, but he had smacked my wrist, which caused me to spill my pills all over the floor, and then he wouldn’t let me pick them up because he was so dead set on keeping all of my attention. He wouldn’t let me go. Wouldn’t let me do anything besides listen to him explain in his shouted words that he loved me and he couldn’t understand why I was talking to some random guy at the bar we were at. I believed him when he said he hadn’t meant to hit my wrist—he was trying to grab my arms to keep me in place—but it didn’t make me feel any better about how he had basically trapped me in the bathroom.
Dean and Taylor had had to come and get me because I was too shaken up to drive. It was always about the driving!
Jordan and I hadn’t spoken through the summer, but he’d recently started texting me again. Telling me he was working on himself. Apologizing. And while I hadn’t yet been able to text him back, I also didn’t delete his messages or block him, because I had loved him. I just didn’t know if Istillloved him. I had too much of my own stuff to work through to figure that out.
Namely, finding a job, a place to live, the money to fix my car, and, of course, the courage to drive again.
After my diagnosis, my doctors had wanted me to wait until I was at least eighteen to get my license. But by then, I was so in my head about it, it took me two years before I passed the test.
It wasn’t that I was a bad driver. It was that I was a nervous driver.
I didn’t like driving in big cities or at night. Or to places I wasn’t familiar with. Or anywhere that required parallel parking. Or in the rain. Or on, like, really long drives.
But other than that, I was totally fine.
Until some college kid had run a stop sign and T-boned me five hours ago.
My sister was right. I was still trembling, and I curled my hands into fists, tucking them under my arms when I crossed them over my torso. I ignored how Taylor was practically eye-fucking Dean next to me and bobbed my head along to “Something to Talk About” as I swept my gaze around the bar to the group of gray-haired guys with their eyes on the television while eating baskets of chicken wings. To the few tables in the front of the stage which were mostly taken up by the girlfriends and wives of the guys in the band. To the group of women in matching T-shirts like they were on some kind of sports team. To the preppy white guy making his way out of the bathroom.
I canted my head.
I knew him.
How did I know him?
Leaning into Taylor to make sure she heard me over the music, I asked, “That guy sitting catty-corner to us, thick head of curly hair… Does he look familiar to you?”
She peeked over her shoulder and shrugged. “Not really.”
I turned and lifted my drink as an excuse to check him out again, and at that very moment, he pushed the sleeves of his sweater up his forearms.
“Oh my god!” I slapped at my sister. “That’s the Hot Professor!”
She narrowed her brows at me. “Who?”
“The Hot Professor. You have to have seen it. The video’s everywhere.”
“What’re you talking about?”
I exchanged my still-full beer for my cell phone, scrolling through my social media for the viral video. “He’d been in the middle of an interview about something or other, and his toddler interrupted. It was hilarious. And hot. He’d pushed his sleeves up his forearms in the video too. Just before his kid came in.”
I found said video and played it for Taylor. “Oh yeah, yeah. I’ve seen that. So funny.”
“That’s him!” I whisper-shouted, setting my phone down and swiveling back around on my stool to full-on stare at the Hot Professor. “He’s actually cuter in person.”
Taylor followed my line of sight.
“But what’s he doing?” I asked, mostly to myself.
