Page 100 of 10 Signs You Need to Grovel

Before I hyperventilate, I grab my phone and call E.

Three rings later, he answers. “Is there a nuclear strike I’m not aware of?”

I squint out the windshield and attempt to slow my breathing. “What?”

“Did they announce they’re discontinuing that brand of tomato soup you use for that one dinner you know how to make?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You never call me during the day. Figured it was world-ending stuff.”

I lean the back of my head into my seat and press the heel of my palm against my vibrating sternum. World-ending sounds about right. “Sadie has a job offer from Arizona.”

“Since when?” The teasing vacates his tone.

My voice turns stone-cold devastated. “Since a while ago. She’s been lying to me, telling me she was negotiating a different job, then that someone else got the position. Probably started lying to me about it before that. And it’s the job of a lifetime. She’ll never have another opportunity like this. I can’t stand by while she loses herself again because of me. So I told her to accept it, but she won’t take it. Insists on staying here while I’m at Duke, and she doesn’t want to move Max. Which I get, she’s probably right. I just know this will eat at her. She’s already pulling away from me, resenting me for what she’s giving up. I’m totally, completely fucked.”

“And you’re still starting Duke?”

Pretty sure I already summed that up. “I told her I’d ditch school. She wouldn’t consider it, and it doesn’t solve the Max problem.”

“So you’re listening to her and going to Duke.” His tone morphs from questioning to downright accusatory. “While Sadie gives up this once-in-a-lifetime job.”

“Yes, again, that’s what I said.”

His laugh is far from amused. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re an idiot.”

This is why I’ve shut my family out for the past decade. They never fail to rile me. “It’s been fun, but I gotta go.”

“No, you don’t. What you need to do is stop hating yourself.”

“I don’t hate myself. Not anymore, at least.”

“Kind of, but kind of not.” When I don’t hang up or rebut his comment, he says, “If you think something enough, you start believing it. And that was your mantra for most of WITSEC. I’m worthless. I’m a loser. I’m nothing without Sadie. All of which is bullshit, but, even now, your brain keeps slipping into that rut.”

My lip curls. “You weren’t exactly busting with self-confidence without Delilah.”

“No, I wasn’t. But I still found enough in me to like that I could move forward. I took hold of my art. Made a career for myself. You purposely wasted away your days for years, because you didn’t think you deserved better.”

“Which is why I’m going to Duke.” I gesture angrily at nothing. “To fix that part of myself so I can finally move forward and be what Sadie needs.”

“Duke isn’t forward, Des. Duke is backward.”

I blink through the car’s windshield. Jasmine and Zoey have arrived. My favorite psychoanalyst pops out of an unfamiliar car. I’m surprised when a man gets out of the driver’s side and says hi to Sadie. He has similar features to Olivia with less unnerving intensity. He doesn’t talk long to Sadie, but Olivia grins brightly at him, waving when he leaves. My best guess is she decided to give her father a second chance. A reconciliation I helped orchestrate.

As happy as I am for her, I can’t muster a smile. I’m not picking up what E’s putting down. My overanalyzing brother is seeing things I don’t understand.

“Sadie told me I have to go to Duke, E. Said she’d leave me if I didn’t. If that’s not a neon sign saying she can’t see past what I’ve become unless I get that degree, I’m seriously missing something.”

He sighs. “At the risk of sounding insensitive, you’re missing everything.”

“Fucking asshole,” I mutter.

“Sadie thinks you want Duke. She’s pushing you because she thinks you’re devastated that you lost your law degree and future and feels like she’s the cause. That losing her caused you to lose your drive, and that knowledge devastated her. It still devastates her.”

Like her giving up the assistant position at the art museum in Raleigh all those years ago devastated me. All well and good, but he’s missing a big part of this picture. “You didn’t see her with Justin Bernardini boasting about me going back to law. She talks to Max about it all the time, telling him what a great lawyer I’ll be. She may think she’s pushing me for my sake, but she’s also gripping onto that image of me. She needs me to be the guy she fell in love with before WITSEC. Not the stagnant bartender I became.”

E’s next sigh holds little patience. “The hiking program you’re running, has it been successful?”