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“Benji warned me you’d be grumpy.”
Grumpy is a tame descriptor for my volatile mood. I scowl but she only brightens further.
“It’s a family hangover recipe.” She rinses the mug in the sink and then fills it with coffee from a brimming pot. When she slides it over the counter to me, I cradle it in both hands.
“You’re forgiven,” I say and hear a gentle laugh.
I settle onto a barstool at the marble island. She leans both hands on it like a diminutive bartender. “How are you, really?”
“Oh, you know. Ran my girlfriend off.” I should have stayed in Ohio. Given Vivian another day to herself. Maybe then this wouldn’t have happened. Can you tell I’m in the bargaining stage of grief?
“Walter Steele’s daughter? I doubt you have the power to run her off.”
I lift my face and my eyebrows at the same time Benji walks into the kitchen, his hand wrapped around his own coffee mug. “Vivian is Walter Steele’s daughter? Holy shit.”
My attention is on Cris. “How did—”
“I recognized her the moment I saw her.” She waves a hand of dismissal. “Didn’t you?”
No. I was besotted by long hair and a sassy attitude. Cheap shoes and that entrancing wiggle in her walk.
“I recognized her brother,” I say instead. “Then she told me. Or maybe I asked her. I can’t remember.” God. How many brain cells did I annihilate last night? I scrub my forehead. “The point is, we talked about it. Eventually.”
“She seemed guarded around everyone but you. She must love you.” This from Cris.
“Very funny.” But it’s not funny. Cris is a woman and as a woman has a very unique take on my situation. Which leads me to ask, “Why would Viv dropping her guard mean she’s in love with me?”
“You found her tender underbelly, Nate,” Cris answers. “And then she rolled over and showed it to you.”
“Uh, yeah, and then she left. People in love don’t leave.” Plus she told me she was incapable of loving me. Not the most wholehearted of assurances.
“You left your mom,” Benji tells me. “And you love your mom.”
My frown deepens, and Cris shifts on her feet like she’s uncomfortable. Benji’s allowed to call me on my shit, straight-up. He knows that. Cris does not know that and probably worries we’re about to come to blows. He gets a pass because he’s adopted too. He understands the pain of losing family, and the challenge of acclimating to a new one.
“She didn’t leave you so much as show up for her brother. You made her choose, Nate.” He shrugs. “She chose.”
“I didn’t make her choose.” But did I? “I simply warned against micromanaging him. I wanted her to realize her life was her own. I wanted her to depend on me. To trust me.”
To love me.
I fiddle with the bracelet on my wrist and listen as it gently scrapes the face of my watch. “I went to visit my mother but she wouldn’t accept my help. She told me I was dead to her. I don’t want Vivian to feel that sort of pain, especially from a family member she’s so close with. I was trying to keep her from being hurt.”
“Now who’s micromanaging?” Cris asks softly.
This time when I scowl, she steps partially behind Benji and shoots me a nervous smile.
“I just remembered I have a phone call to make.” She scampers from the room and my brother folds his arms over his checkered shirt.
“Way to go, now you ran off Cris.”
I do not laugh at his lame-ass attempt at a joke.
“We all fuck up, Nate.”
“Yeah. Some of us more than others.” I stare into my coffee like it might hold the answer, but after I finish that cup, I realize it doesn’t. Cris and Benji have disappeared into his office. I hear them chatting quietly. Me? I’m sitting here like a pouting giant who’s run out of village people to terrorize.
The adage about loving someone and setting them free trickles through my mind and as loath as I am to admit it, for the first time in my life I wonder if it holds some truth.
