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A minute later, the gates part and a slick and sleek black Jeep emerges. Wouldn’t you know, there’s Annalise, behind a pair of sassy sunglasses, blonde hair whipped by the sea breezes.
When I was her age, I was driving a ’95 pickup with a missing tailgate and a bad paint job. The nicest car I’ve ever owned is the six-year-old extended cab I bought from Tripp last month.
One thing I’m certain of? I’ve never looked as good in any vehicle as Annalise does right now in hers. Hardly the woman who needs to pick up a stranger. The guys must be crawling all over the place.
When she peels out, I get a fresh sense of who she is.
Again, my sympathies to Tripp.
I follow her—as much as possible—back to the house. She’s already out of the Jeep and nearly to the side door. I trail her inside, and when I step into the climate-controlled kitchen, she’s standing at the counter, already playing back Tripp’s frantic voicemails, sighing, huffing, and swerving her eyes up to the ceiling.
I kick back against the industrial-sized refrigerator and wait for my partner to pick up.
It takes Annalise a full minute to convince him she’s not dead. After that’s settled, she moves to the more challenging task of telling him where she’s been and what she’s been up to. At first I’m amused at the half of the conversation I’m privy to, at her obvious efforts to explain without in fact lying. It’s a struggle, and she ends up employing a different tactic—snottily telling him to buzz off. But Tripp is relentless, and in time, outright lies spill out.
I think over my words to him at the towing company, parsing them to see if I flat out lied. I’m not such a heathen that I don’t recognize lying as a sin—I guess—but what puts a queasy feeling in my stomach is the fact that Tripp is my friend. I owe him more than prevarications and obfuscations.
So does his sister. I don’t judge her for it, that would be the height of hypocrisy, but I don’t much care for this drama I’ve become a player in. Worse is the reason for it all. The incident with the Jeep might have been an opportunity to acknowledge we’d met and let him make the obvious—albeit incorrect—assumption as to how. Instead, we’re both turning ourselves inside out to ensure he doesn’t know that I’m at the house with her. And why is that? Annalise has her own reasons, I think, but I believe she’s also trying to protect my week at the beach.
I’ve always been a confident kind of guy. I live my life and make no apologies, but it’s beginning to eat at me that my friend, the best one I have, would never—ever—want me hanging with his sister. My chest tightens, but…I get it. I really get it. He knows me too well.
Finally, the call ends, and I can’t tell if she’s irritated or exhausted. I also forgot to pay attention to exactly what story she told.
“Is the cavalry called off?”
She nods slowly. “For now.”
Sounds about right. Tripp is not easily brushed aside. If he thinks something is off with his little sister’s story? Like I said, trouble generally finds me.
I should leave just in case, but I’m tired suddenly. In lots of ways, but probably things are cool for the time being. Tripp now knows his sister is alive and kicking, he’s three hundred miles away, and he does have a job. Two of them at the moment. The one he gets paid for and the thankless one of trying to find a way to dig me out of the hole I find myself in. Dug for myself? A very real possibility.
I release a long breath. “Guess I’ll get out of your hair then.”
Gaze distant, lost in thought, Lise barely nods.
I let myself out, feeling a little like I’ve just been shown the door.
Annalise
It’s been a long day and it’s barely past noon.
Every day is this way lately.
My stomach growls, yet I’m too tired to eat. Or not in the mood. I leave the kitchen and tromp up the stairs, curling onto my unmade bed.
By no means is this the first time I’ve lied to Tripp. Now, when it comes to lying to my brother, most of the untruths have been passed along unwittingly by my parents. Them I have told countless lies. I was a pretty typical teen in that regard. I made my own plans, plans I liked to carry out without parental interference.
By my college years, I started feeling guilty and most of the occasional lies were to keep my family from worrying, not to cover bad behavior. It was little things like,no, I never walk alone on campus at night,orof course I never text and drive.
Yes, I happen to have a big brother who, although he’s been out of the house for more than a decade, is still over-the-top protective—unless he’s completely disengaged from the family altogether. How is it that he has the right to disappear, like, completely drop off the grid for months at a time, and then waltz in whenever he feels like it and give me a hard time for how I live my life?
I shake my head at the ceiling. Probably because he’s a guy. Men always get a pass on stuff.
But…
But none of that changes the fact that I hated,hated, the sound of the lies spilling off my tongue. I tried to measure my words, but my brother is relentless. Really, I can’t believe he bought any of what I said on the phone, like that I would come to Galveston to visit a friend but not go home. That my car broke down and the lousy people at Jake’s towed it anyway. I played it cool when he told me his partner was staying at the house, assuring him I was heading back to school.
I’m an adult now, not a child. It’s time my parents, my brother included, treat me like the grownup I am.
