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“How so? Tell me. What was so different about you and Lourde?”
“Lourde is a different type of person. Let’s start there.”
“You mean the daughter of a media mogul?”
“Watch it,” he warned in a tight whisper. “I’ll break your fucking neck.”
“Oh, you must’ve meant a lot younger than you. Is that it? Is that what made her so different?”
“You realize it’s only for Lourde’s sake that I haven’t killed you yet, right? Because I know what it would do to her.”
“Give me a fucking break, would you? You wouldn’t do any such thing, no matter how much you pound on your chest like a fucking caveman. We both know it.”
“I wouldn’t test that theory.”
“Whatever. If it makes you feel better,” I taunted, tired of his threats.
“Why did it have to be her? Why Evelyn? So she told you, huh?” He folded his arms and cocked his head to the side. “You know the whole ugly truth.”
“Yeah, man. I do. It fucking sucks, and it’s horrible. That was a lot for you to take on yourself.”
“Evelyn had it worse.”
“I realize that. But I’m trying to be a decent person, you know?”
“Oh? You’re trying now?”
“And if I am,” I continue, “it’s because of her. She makes me want to be better. Is that what you want to hear? That’s how it is. I wish I could go back and undo the past, man. I really do. But there’s no such thing, and we both know it.” He only scoffed. “When you met Lourde, did you want to go back and undo all the stupid, thoughtless shit you pulled in the past? Honestly.”
“What I may or may not have gone through when Lourde and I first got together has nothing to do with this. See, I knew how I felt. I didn’t want anybody else. Even when I wasn’t consciously aware, I knew it deep down inside. I knew I wasn’t going to hurt her.”
“Why do you assume I’m going to hurt Evelyn?”
“Because that’s all you do!” His shout echoes in the warehouse, causing something small to scamper away nearby.
“That’s not true, man. Do you know how fucking difficult it was for me to open up even to your sister? After what happened with Leila? It was torture. My fucking wife cheated on me. The first time in my life, I let myself be vulnerable around somebody, and that’s what happened. Maybe that’s…”
He waited while I ran a hand through my hair, trying to get my shit together so I’d make sense. I didn’t care if our friendship was over. I would rather it not be, but that wasn’t foremost in my mind. It was her, and it always would be. I didn’t want there to be a wedge between them with my name on it. “Maybe that’s why we were at each other’s throats at first. Because right away, she grabbed my attention, and I wanted to get to know her better, but I couldn’t let myself do it. I told myself all women were the same. Like Leila. Because that was the only kind of woman I had ever known before. But Eve?”
“Don’t call her that. You don’t get to call her that,” he snapped, and I simply shook my head.
For fuck’s sake, everybody called her that. “ButEvelyn?” I asked, putting emphasis on the word. “Evelyn was different. Evelyn, I could be myself in front of. Evelyn, I could trust.”
“Which I’m sure had nothing to do with her disability.”
My head jerked back when he said it. At first, I couldn’t believe my ears. “I think you have a bigger problem than me being in your sister’s life. I think you need to take a step back and reassess how you feel about her. What you think about her. Because right now, the way you’re making it sound? It’s like you think she’s feeble. Like she can’t make decisions for herself. Like the only reason a man would want her is because nobody else would, so he’s safe. Isn’t that what you just accused me of without using so many words?”
He wanted to tell me off. To throw my checkered past in my face and call me every name in the book. But he couldn’t, at least not at that moment, because I was right.
“She’s a real, live, adult woman,” I pressed on. “All these years, she felt separated from other people. Like she would never be the same as other girls. Now, she’s got the chance to feel whole again, and whether you like it or not, I was part of that. I wanted to be part of that. I still do,” I admitted, though I knew he would only scowl, which is exactly what he did. “I’m sorry, man. I’m not going to pretend I don’t love her. I still can’t believe I’m saying it out loud, but it’s true.”
“Yeah, today. Until somebody else comes along, or you get bored, or she realizes she can do better.”
It took a few very deep, very deliberate breaths to keep my temper from exploding. I was doing this for her. Not for me, not even for him. I wanted to make this right for Evelyn. “Maybe one day, she would figure that out,” I admitted rather than telling him to shove his shitty opinion up his ass. “But that’s something I would have to deal with. It would still have nothing to do with you, and at the end of the day, that’s what this comes down to. I know you felt like you had to do everything for her.”
“You don’t know shit.”
“I think I do. I get it now. But she’s got to go off on her own sometime. She has to live her own life. I mean, why else did you go to all the trouble of paying for her surgeries and her therapy and all that? There was going to be a time when she had to step out on her own. I know you know that.”
