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My eyes go to hers, and she smirks at me. She knows all too well what Charleston means to me, both individually and in relation to Aaron.
“Yeah.”
She shoves my arm. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Your whole I’m-gonna-close-off-and-pretend-it’s-not-a-big-deal-when-it-is thing.”
I whip my head around to look at her and she smiles in satisfaction. “Exactly.”
I cross my arms over my chest and look forward, but then her hand wraps around my upper arm.
Her voice is soft and pained. “Rae baby, when did we stop talking to each other about things?”
Oh.
My eyes flit around the stadium. I don’t know what I’m looking for. An answer? There isn’t one. At least, not a good one.
I uncross my arms and reach down and take her hand. “I’m sorry.” I look at her tentatively. “I’m not trying to not talk to you. Sometimes I don’t even realize I’m doing it. I get so lost in my own head that I don’t recognize I need to reconnect with the rest of the world.”
She nods slowly. “I know. I feel like you used to… I don’t know… let me in more.”
“Sarah…” My voice comes out quiet and broken. “This year has been hard for me. It’s not about you. There’s a lot of pain inside me. In my mind, I think it’s easier to deal with internally. Or ignore it by reading a good book. Or sort it out by listening to music and crying.”
“I know. I hear you at night sometimes. I want to crawl in bed with you and tell you it’s okay.”
“Fuck, Sarah. Don’t make me cry here.”
She laughs. “Sorry.”
“You can always crawl in bed with me. I don’t say it enough, but it means a lot when you do that. Especially when I don’t ask. You’re my sister. No one cheers me up like you.” She smiles softly and I continue. “As for Charleston… I don’t know. I’m excited and I’m nervous. I can’t wait to go back, but if things aren’t better or on their way to being fixed with Aaron, I don’t know what I’m going to do. It’s hard being apart from him, especially when he’s so confident and kicking ass at what he’s doing. And I’m horny for him constantly. But there’s still so much left unsaid between us. There’s this layer of pain and hurt underneath it all for both of us—at ourselves and at each other—but we can’t effectively get into all that right now, so we keep saying it’s all okay and slapping bandages on it, which doesn’t help at all. It hides the problem instead of fixing it. I’m hurting. I’m mad at myself. I’m mad at him. I miss him. I want him. I want us. I’m miserable. And yet, I’m happy and I’m proud of him. And a whole bunch of other things, too. It seems like every day I discover something else one of us fucked up, and I try to deal with it. Basically, I’m a mess, and I just keep putting makeup on and twisting my hair in a bun and trying to make messy work, because for the time being, it’s all I’ve got.”
Sarah takes me in and squeezes my hand. “You’re a pretty mess.”
“Thanks,” I say quietly.
There’s feedback from the speakers as the announcer starts talking. We stand for the anthem and cheer as the boys take the field. Once the game is underway, we sit in silence again.
This year has been weird. I never thought the relationships between us would bend and twist. I never thought we’d forget how to lean on each other. It’s always been the six of us. We’re starting to feel a little more whole again, but this conversation with Sarah is making me realize how much even the two of us have disconnected.
I bump her shoulder with mine. “I’m not the only one not talking about things, you know.”
She looks at me with wide eyes. “What do you mean?” she asks in a quiet, high-pitched voice. When she looks and talks like that she reminds me of a little kid.
I smile softly. “Joel, Sarah. Don’t tell me it’s nothing. We both know it’s not.”
She looks forward, eyes locking on Joel at second base. When she looks back at me, she has tears in her eyes. “Itcan’tbe anything. He means everything to me. Trevor and I shattered when we broke up. We’re just now getting back to true friendship. Do I need to mention you and Aaron?”
Tears prickle in my eyes, too. “Baby, it’s different. You and Trevor ended because it wasn’t right. Because a part of you—”
“Please don’t say it. He wasn’t the reason. He wasn’t.”
“But a part of you has always been pulled to him.”
She stands and cheers as Joel lands a catch for a perfect double play and the team heads back to the dugout.
When she sits back down, she says, “It’s like he knows a part of me that I can barely find without him.”
