I play around with Shallots for a time while we make incredibly small, small talk.
When he senses that I’m relaxing a bit, Danny hops from his truck and scratches Shallots’s ears before he grabs a fresh, cold six-pack from his cooler. “So, what was Los Angeles like? Pretty different from Wake, I’d imagine.” He cocks his head toward the lake and starts to walk.
“Oh, ever so slightly,” I say with a laugh. “This is probably a hugely unpopular answer, but I didn’t exactly worship LA. I mean, it’s a great city; it’s just notmycity, you know?”
“How so?”
“Too glitzy. Too busy and too loud for me. Too much pressure to keep up appearances. To look perfect, be perfect, and beonall the time. I learned to hate leaving my house because I was scared to not be wearing some supposed right outfit. It’s a lot of beautiful girls wearing nerdy glasses and pretending that they aren’t as hot as they are.” I laugh. “A friend’s fake spidery eyelashes nearly scratched my cornea once when I hugged her. I quit that shit pretty fast.
“After we moved there, my sister and my mom became…I don’t know … obsessed with everything I’m not. Stuff that felt meaningless.”
There’s now one less beer in Danny’s six-pack, and I take in half before I continue, “Mom and Erica are thriving though, in their own ways. LA turned them into superficial—but very happy—drones.”
“Like how?”
“My mom is a workaholic, engulfed in the real estate market.” I wave behind me. “Truly, I’m not sure how she lived in this house.
I mean,rusticwould be generous. I haven’t seen her love anything less than insanely modern and high-end years. But apparently, she liked this house back in the day.” I pause. “Maybe she liked her old life. Who knows? Pretty sure she’d devolve into some sort of hysteria if she had to move back.”
Danny’s dimples are too cute when he smiles. “And your sister?”
“Erica. She’s a makeup-industry blogger and shit. A so-called social media influencer. A fan of the spider eyelashes. It’s creepy.”
His confused frown is perfect. “I don’t even know what that means, but it sounds kinda weird.”
“That’s a smart reaction.”
Danny laughs and takes a drink. “But you must still be close, right?”
“Not so much.” Then, I give him the real truth. “No, not at all. We haven’t had much of a relationship in years.”
“Why is that? I mean, you sound very different from each other, but is that all?”
“I don’t know. She changed when we moved and had to grow up in LA. She grabbed on to shit that I couldn’t relate to. Found friends and interests that pulled us apart.” I think for a minute. “She withdrew from so much.”
“How do you mean?”
“Drowned in other things. Focused on anything without meaning. The way my mom did.”
After I warn him about watching his step as we keep walking, we settle next to each other at the end of my dock and both instinctively strip off our shoes and socks.
I can’t help but smile.My dock. At least for the time being.
Shallots waddles up, and we both automatically move a bit when he wedges his way between us before collapsing against Danny and launching into loud snoring.
“So, you think there is nothing left of the Erica you used to love?” he wonders.
“What? I didn’t say that.”
Although he’s right to ask because I have talked about her as though the sister I knew is totally gone.
He shrugs and drinks. “At least you have a sibling. Might be worth trying to salvage that. Not everyone gets a family. I’d kill to have that kind of shared history with someone.”
He’s got a point.
“So, LA apparently turned your mom and sister into beasts. What did that city turnyouinto?” Danny scratches his arm and looks out over the water.
The air here is so fresh, so clean. The quiet so beautifully consuming. Those things contribute to making my truthful reply more painful. “Nobody. It turned me into nobody.” There is a part of my heart that nearly audibly breaks.
