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No. None of that sounds right. None of that conveys at all how I feel about him, or how I wish he would feel about himself. Before I get the chance to fumble my way through this, there’s a knock on the front door. And then another. And another. It’s in the same strange little rhythm we used when we were kids. I know before I open the door who’s behind it.
“Hello, dearest sister,” Ensley all but sings, gliding into the apartment behind me. Eden follows her with a less emphatic nod and a tight smile.
“What are you doing here?” I ask. “Not that I don’t like seeing you guys, but this is kind of a surprise.”
Ensley swings her arms wide. “Well! Eden had some errands to run on this side of town, and we just wanted to tell you the good news in person.”
I hear the bathroom door close, but Weston does not come out into the living room. Trying to look without my sisters seeing, I catch a glimpse of him from the corner of my eye. He hovers in the doorway, hiding from my family. All the better. I don’t want to explain to them right now why there’s a guy living in my apartment that they’ve never officially met.
“Oh? What’s the good news?” I run the gamut in my head. Eden finally got a match on Bumble who didn’t try to send her a dick pic? Ensley attended a protest where they stopped some new strip mall from going up? Someone got a new dog? Nothing feels right.
“We paid for you to retake that math class to get into the pharmaceutical program,” Eden deadpans in her usual monotone. Before I can begin to argue, she cuts me off with a hand in the air. “And we hired a tutor. You’re going to pass.”
“Isn’t this exciting? You’ll be a pharmacist before you know it!” Ensley takes my hand in hers, nearly cutting off my circulation with the amount of jewelry she wears pressing into my skin. There’s a stone for every chakra. And right now, my heart chakra is shattering.
Eden looks around the room, eyes roving over the stained carpet and my pile of dirty work clothes in the corner. Thankfully, she doesn’t see the man hiding in the doorway to the bathroom. “Then you can have the life you deserve. Just think, you can marry another pharmacist—maybe even adoctor—and have a bunch of smart, talented babies.”
Everything about the interaction stings. The way that my middle sister doesn’t think the life I have is the life I want, the way that they plan something like this without asking or thinking to consult me. They didn’t even ask if they could swing by. They just showed up on my doorstep with news about my life.
Big news. Important news.
And now I either have to disappoint them or myself.
I’m stuck in that void between truth and happiness.
“Thanks, guys,” I manage to squeak out, trying my best to sound enthusiastic about any of this. I offer them something to drink—a diet soda or a glass of water or something—but Eden has a hair appointment in the next ten minutes, so they can’t stay. They have simply decided to drop this in my lap and then flounce off without a second thought, treating me like the poor little sister again. In their eyes, they know best simply because they’re older.
After the door closes, Weston emerges from his hiding spot, wearing only a pair of jeans with his hair still damp.
“Why didn’t you tell them?” he huffs at me as I try to ignore how hot he looks. Because he doesn’t get to say that to me. Not with what I now know about him.
An emotional tornado swirls around me. “Tell them what?”
He runs a hand through his hair, visibly irritated that I need things spelled out for me. “Retaking a math class they paid for so you can get into pharmacist school isn’t what you want.”
The frustration of the day hits me all at once, and I snap at him harder than I intend to. “Youshould understand that we don’t get the life we want.”
Weston reels away from me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Interacting with my sisters has made me far too tired to ask the questions I want to ask. I’m not ready to talk about things, and neither is he.
I stab my pointer finger in his direction. “What would you be doing if you decided to have the life you want?”
“I don’t know.” Stunned, the confrontation melts away from his shoulders, and his whole body relaxes. “It’s not the hand that I got dealt, so I’ve never thought about it.”
All the packed baggage of my past and his is stuffed down my throat, clogging it with a lump of emotion I can barely speak around. “Well, maybe you should take some of your own damn advice. Maybe you should stop twisting yourself into a pretzel to please your selfish mother. I feel like you’ve punished yourself long enough.”
“Elowyn,” he says, voice low, laced with a dangerous edge I rarely hear. “I’m not punishing myself. This isn’t about me, it’s about my mom—”
“But what about us, Weston?” I cut him off, my voice rising. “What about whatwewant? What aboutourdreams?”
“Our dreams?” He scoffs, shaking his head. “Your dreams, you mean. I never had any.”
“That’s not fair,” I say, stung.
“Life’s not fair,” he retorts, running a hand through his hair again. “But you can’t just dismiss my responsibilities. You can’t just... demand that I choose you over my mom.”
“I’m not demanding anything,” I counter. “I’m simply asking you to consider your own happiness. To consider our happiness.”
