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"Youknowwhat."
I shake my head. It's a mistake. My brain feels like it's rattling around in my skull. "I'm not talking about that. There's nothing to say."
He sighs, and then sits down on the floor next to me. "Well, I don't care, because I'm going to talk about it and you can listen, you little shit. And I can call you that because I'm your only big brother." He smooths out the creases in his pants. It's probably the first time he's sat on the floor in twenty years. "You need to think, really think, about what really happened. Don't get blinded by your hatred for Gerry. I get it, weallget it."
"What are you talking about? What is there to think about?"
He shifts, obviously uncomfortable. That makes two of us. "Why would she do this? I know we've all been wary about her, but what does Clarissa really get out of this? Doesn't she have more on the line than you do with this ridiculous arrangement?"
I scrunch my face up. "I thought you were here to say'I told you so.'I think I would've preferred that."
He rolls his eyes. "Tough shit. Something's not right, man. I don't know what it is, but something's not right. I saw her at Damien's wedding. Literally the worst place for her, considering their past, but she didn't care. She was there for you. She couldn't take her eyes off you. And that's saying something because I still maintain that you're ugly as fuck."
His words pound against my head like a blunt mallet, barely able to get anything through my thick skull. "I think I prefer when you're quiet."
Annoyingly, he doesn't look offended. "I'm just going to say one more thing. No one ever said it was easy to trust someone else. Nothing that's worth anything is easy. Think about that before you convince yourself that everything in the last two months with her didn't happen."
He pats me on the shoulder as he leaves. "Either way, nothing that you're looking for is going to be at the bottom of a bottle."
But I'm just not ready to listen.
***
Days bleed into night and into days.
Nothing but my telephone screen tells me it's been almost a week since I last saw her. Why does it feel like a fucking century?
One drunken day leads into another until even my brothers give up on me and stop visiting. The only person I see is Hannah, who comes in and throws a bottle of water and a granola bar at me now and then, and makes a plea for me to get showered.
I do, one time, crawl into the bathroom, and sit on the shower floor, fully clothed, the water cascading over me, for hours, until Hannah comes in, turns the tap off, and tries to dry me off as well as she can.
A week after the confrontation in my office I get an alert on my phone that reminds me of the reservation at Blue Hill at Stone Barns I'd made for Clarissa to celebrate three months of Malt being open.
Fuck.
A week. That's too long.
Get the fuck up, Matthias.
It hurts. Everything hurts.
Or maybe it's from the sheer act of standing up after being horizontal for over a week.
And for the first time since I last saw Clarissa, I leave my office.
I take another drink while I wait outside the back door of the club. She usually arrives around eleven p.m. but who knows where she's been staying since I kicked her out of my life.
It's over an hour before I hear her footsteps down the side alley.
"Matthias."
Her voice twists in and around my head and I take in the sight of her, dressed in a strappy summer dress, sunglasses covering her eyes, coffee cup in her hand.
How had I never realized what my name could truly sound like until the right person said it?
The wrong person, Matthias,the wrong person.
She walks by and reaches for the door.
