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She hands me to the pot to dry and pulls the plug in the sink.
“Nothing?”
“What am I supposed to do? She’s going back to Paris. And I’m here.”
“And you’re in love with her.”
I groan. “Damn it, Nat. Didn’t you hear what I said? She lives inParis.”
“Yeah, you mentioned that. But honestly, that’s a cop-out.”
I gasp. “What the hell does that mean?”
“You’re using it as a reason not to go after what you want. You feel the same way about her, don’t you?”
“I don’t,” I say. “She’s just a fling.”
The look she gives me tells me she doesn’t believe me. And I don’t believe my words, either. No matter how much I try to convince myself it’s not a big deal that this is over, I’m not fooling anyone. Especially not my sister, who knows me better than anyone.
“I don’t feel like I’m enough for her,” I finally say.
The words come out of nowhere, and it surprises me as much as it surprises Natalie.
“How can you think that?” she asks. “Noah, you’re the best guy I know. You’re so dedicated to everything you put your mind to, and you—”
“It’s not that simple. You know my track record with women, right? And I’m not the man I wanted to be.”
Natalie snorts. “The football thing?”
“What does that mean?”
“Look, I get it. You wanted to be a football star and it didn’t work out for you that way. But you’re happy now, right?”
I nod.
“I wanted to be a wife with a ton of kids running around. I wanted the white picket fence and the dog and the stability that comes with being married to a doting husband. But then David died, and I had to change course. Shit happens, Noah. We can either let it define us or let it shape us.”
I groan. “You’re my little sister. You’re not supposed to be wiser than I am.”
She grins at me. “And yet, here we are.”
I laugh, and the joke relieves a bit of tension.
“You’re hard-working. You’re loyal. You’re serious about what you believe in. There’s nothing about you that’s not good enough. I know letting go of our dreams is hard, but if you let all that shit go, there’s space for new good stuff to happen.”
“Raven said something very similar,” I say.
“Well then, she’s a smart woman.”
I nod. Natalie packs everything away.
“Tea?” she asks.
She puts on a kettle to boil when I accept and we stand in silence for a while, listening to the water heat, the pressure building in the pot. When it’s forced out the spout, the kettle whistles, and Natalie pulls it off the burner.
“Look, Noah, I get it. You don’t date, and giving your heart to someone is scary. As a person with the leading authority on how much it fucking hurts to lose someone, I get why you don’t want to close your eyes and jump. But if I had to go back and do it all over again, I would still marry David. Even if I knew he was going to die.”
“Really?” I ask, my stomach twisting. I remember how bad it was when he died in that accident, when Natalie found out she’d lost her husband. It had taken me weeks just to get her out of bed. She was on autopilot with Kylie, doing the bare necessities to look after her baby. “Wouldn’t you rather not know him at all? Spare yourself that pain?”
