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“I’ve readThe Phantom Prince,” I said. “The updated version with the foreword where she completely disavows her relationship with Ted Bundy. If that doesn’t convince you that romance is dead, nothing will.”
Sam stepped down from the ladder, as if he needed to be more grounded to have this conversation. “You do that a lot. Bring up serial killer stuff when the topic turns more serious.”
“What could be more serious than mass murder?”
He gave me a look that immediately made me feel all prickly inside, allyou don’t know me, but then also a littlefuck, you really know me. I blew my hair out of my eyes. The bandana wasn’t doing its only job.
“My parents divorced when I was thirteen,” I said. “And okay, I know as far as original wounds go, it’s pretty banal. Most people I know have parents who aren’t together anymore, or were never together in the first place. I remember talking to some kid in my class a year before they split, some guy with greasy hair I had a crush on, and he said his parents were divorced. ‘I wish mine would be,’ I said, half because, I don’t know, I wanted to impress him. Like I didn’t buy into the picket fence bullshit everyone else did. And half of me meant it, too. They fought all the time, and if they weren’t fighting it felt like we were walking on eggshells, trying to avoid doing anything that might cause a fight.”
Sam and I weren’t even trying to pretend we were painting anymore. I’d set the roller back in the tray, to avoid splatteringpaint drops everywhere while I gestured with my hands, and he’d taken a seat on the stepladder, his elbows leaned on his knees as he listened.
“Like one time, Conner wanted Jell-O. I don’t know why, but kid got it into his head that he really wanted to eat his weight in Jell-O as a fun Saturday activity. Our mom promised to make him some, but she was always tired from work. At that time, I think she was still the office manager for this law firm where the head partner was this complete jackass, like seriously, once he threatened to fire her because we had a trip planned for Memorial Day and she said she wanted to take the three-day weekend.”
I was getting off topic, and saying more than I’d meant to, but now that I’d started I couldn’t stop. “Anyway, so I figured I’d make him the Jell-O. No big deal, right? You throw some colored sugar in a bowl and mix it with water and put it in the fridge. It takes five minutes. But my dad took it out before it had completely set, because he couldn’t get to something in the back of the fridge, and then he was angry that my mom had blocked up the fridge with this giant bowl, and my mom got defensive and upset that I’d made the Jell-O when shesaidshe was going to, and then Conner was crying because he wanted to eat Jell-O and it wasn’t ready...”
I didn’t tell Sam how the story had ended, with my dad throwing the bowl across the kitchen, splattering red everywhere like a crime scene. I bet when we pulled the fridge out to sell the place, some of it would still be on the tile underneath.
“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t know why I told you all that.”
“I can see why you’d doubt relationships, and family, and love,” Sam said. “It sounds like a tense way to grow up, and I’mreally sorry you had to go through it. But, Phoebe, your parents were just two people. Ted Bundy and whatever his girlfriend’s name was were two people. Hell, Bonnie and Clyde stayed together until the bitter end, and eventheywere only two people. You can’t extrapolate your worldview from such a small data set.”
“I mean, Ican.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. Either he had a crick from all the painting we’d been doing or this conversation was wearing him out. Probably both.
“What about Conner and Shani?” he asked. “They’ve been together a while, right? And Conner is planning to propose?”
“How’d you know about the proposal?”
“Conner cornered me at the party and showed me the ring. I thought he was going to get down on one knee formefor a minute.”
That made me laugh. Sounded like Conner.
“So do you think they’re doomed?” Sam asked.
An unfair question. I wasn’t going to be the asshole who actuallysaidthat I thought my brother’s relationship was doomed. Inasmuch as I thought all human connection was a setup for disappointment, sure, I guessed I had a hard time seeing two people able to stay together for the long haul.
But I realized that when I actually thought about my brother—how earnest he was, how good-natured, how openhearted—I found it hard to imagine him betraying Shani or treating her badly. And when I thought about Shani—how dedicated and thoughtful she was, how much she seemed to love my brother—it was hard to imagineherdoing anything to tank the relationship, either.
“I plead the Fifth,” I said, but my final verdict must’ve shown on my face, because Sam’s mouth curved in a half smile.
“Maybe we should put the music back on,” I suggested.
“Fine by me.”
This time, I selected Chvrches’ albumLove Is Dead, grinning at my own joke.
FIFTEEN
WE DIDN’T FINISHpainting until almost one in the morning, and that was only doing a single coat. I was glad I’d paid a little extra for the paint-primer combination that was supposed to cover better, even though Sam had been going around and touching up little places where he swore the color was patchy. I blamed it all on the dim lighting and said it looked fine.
“Think of us as C-Plus Painters,” I said. “Maybe B-Minus if you don’t look too close.”
At some point during the night, Sam had unzipped the top half of his coveralls and let them fall around his waist, so he was only wearing a white ribbed tank undershirt on his upper body. It made me want to do ridiculous, wild things, like lick his exposed collarbones or unzip him the rest of the way.
He totally caught me looking, too. My cheeks felt like they were on fire, and I knew I was probably all pink from the exertion of painting and embarrassment.
“God, it’s hot,” I said, fanning my shirt collar against my skin, hoping he’d accept that as the reason for my flush. “Even central air can’t keep up with summer in this swamp.”
