“I’m starving,” Lucy says after a few minutes, and we both start laughing. Because yeah, food would probably have been a good idea, first.
She puts on one of my sweatshirts and I put on a pair of jeans and we pad downstairs into the kitchen, where I start a pot of pasta.
She gets the clothes from the front hall—“because I already know where the washing machine is!”—deposits the contents of our pockets on the counter, and starts a load of muddy laundry.
I reach for my phone, reflexively, and, “Oh, shit.”
“What?”
“Brody’s in trouble. I have to go bail him out.”
“Of jail?”
He sighs. “No, luckily, but only just. He got into a fight outside Oscar’s. They separated the guys and hauled Brody back inside, but he’s banged up and very, very drunk and Jill didn’t want him driving, so she texted me.”
“Jill—our waitress from the other night?”
“Yeah. We’re friends.”
“Friends with benefits?”
She sounds possessive, and I don’t hate it. “We were,” I say. “She’s all but engaged now.” Besides, I don’t say, you have nothing to worry about. You are in a league of your own.
And I don’t just mean the sex, although that was next-level, out-of-control, apply-the-superlative-of-your-choice.
“Want me to go with you?”
“Nah, I’ve got this.”
“I know you’ve got it. But—”
There’s a softness to her voice that makes me sit up and pay attention in a way I wouldn’t have if she’d been sharper.
“Gabe, you’re good at everything. You can take care of anything. I don’t doubt whatever’s up with Brody, you’ve got it totally under control. I’m not asking that. I’m asking if you want me there.”
I do want her there. I want her there, and everywhere, in a way that scares the shit out of me.
“You’re starving, though,” I say.
“I’m a big girl. I can eat a power bar. And maybe Jill can get us something wrapped up to go?”
I hesitate, but she doesn’t. She crosses to the stove and turns the heat off under the water.
“Let’s go,” she says.
“What were you thinking, asshole?” I ask my brother. His face is bloody. He’s going to have one hell of a shiner, and he’s lucky his nose isn’t broken, although it is bleeding pretty bad—his shirt is definitely ruined.
“He had it coming,” Brody growls.
“Your fighting days are supposed to be behind you, man. You have a kid. You have to be a good role model.”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he says sullenly.
“I might, if you talked to me.”
He sinks into silence, then, draws in on himself, and I realize how much there is about my brother I still don’t understand and might never.
Lucy watches us, quiet. I have never appreciated, so much, what it means to be there for someone. To just stand there, out of the way, not intruding. Just witnessing. Her being here means so much to me.
It takes some effort on the part of Jill, Lucy, and me to get him loaded into my car. “Hey,” Jill says. “Follow me back in a second.”
I do, and she runs into the kitchen and comes back with a paper takeout bag. It smells unbelievably good. Thank you, Lucy, for figuring out how to get us fed in the middle of a crisis.
I head out to the car, but as I approach, someone calls my name.
I turn to find a pretty woman with long dark hair and Connor’s eyes. I’d know her anywhere, even though I haven’t seen her in a couple of years. Rachel, Connor’s sister. The one who got Brody’s undies in a bunch on the boat. Brody maybe thinks I didn’t pick up on that, but I did. And I always knew, even back when we were kids, that Brody’s feelings for her went deeper than “my best friend’s baby sister.”
“Is he okay?” she asks.
We both look toward the car. Lucy’s watching us, curious. Brody appears to be at least half asleep, his head lolling against the window.
“He’ll be okay,” I say carefully. “Did you see what happened?”
Rachel nods. “I don’t know exactly what went down, but I could tell Len was giving him a hard time before it happened.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. But still. He needs to learn how to walk away.” I sigh.
“Some people find that harder than others.”
“Tell me about it,” I say, and we exchange tight smiles.
“Tell him—tell him I said hi.”
I log the concern in her eyes and nod. “I will.”
I slide into the driver’s seat and pass Lucy the takeout, then rest my hands on the wheel for a second, pulling myself together.
“Did she see?” Brody slurs from the back seat.
I don’t try to pretend I don’t know what he’s asking. “Did Rachel see the fight, you mean? Yeah, she saw.”
“Fuck.” Brody taps his forehead against the window glass.
“If you don’t want people seeing your dirty laundry, you shouldn’t air it in public.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he grinds out.
I don’t remind him that that’s because he doesn’t talk to me. He’s still too riled up and volatile. I let it go.
Still, I’m wary, driving with one ear cocked to the back seat. I’ve rarely seen Brody this drunk, and I know that with the blood he may have swallowed and the blows to the head he took, he might be sick.
Sure enough, we haven’t even gone a mile when I hear him retching in the back seat.
I pull over, fast as I can. Lucy is out of the car before I am, wrenching open the back door, helping Brody out of the car, helping him onto his knees as he heaves up his guts all over the shoulder of the road. By the time I get around the car, Brody’s almost done, and Lucy’s murmuring quietly to him.
I should be jealous of her hands on his shoulders, her fingers smoothing back his hair, but I’m ridiculously grateful. And so in love with her that I stand back from them for a second, in the way she stood back to watch Brody and me.
We get him back in the car, and he passes out a few minutes later. He wakes up just enough to stumble up the steps and into his apartment. Lucy helps me get him most of the way undressed, and then she leaves while I strip him out of his jeans and maneuver him under the covers. I set Advil and water on his nightstand and go out to find Lucy sitting on his couch, leafing through Outdoors magazine.
I drop heavily onto the couch next to her, and she wordlessly turns to me and wraps me in her arms.
“Is he going to be okay?”
“Yes,” I say, hoping it’s true. And then, “I don’t know what’s going on, and he won’t tell me. He won’t tell anyone.”
She nods. “He will, when he’s ready.” Her eyes are on my face, taking me in, all sympathy and understanding. “This is how it’s always been, huh? You taking care of everyone? It must have been hell when they were all teenagers.”
“You have no idea.” I lean my forehead against hers, and she strokes my hair.
“Was that Brody’s kid’s mom? The woman talking to you outside the bar?”
I shake my head. “Justin’s mom? No. Connor’s sister, Rachel.”
“Ohhh.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Is there something up with the two of them?”
“I don’t know.” I don’t know anything.
She must hear the defeat in my voice, because she cups my cheek. Her hand is cool and soft and I could rest my face against it for hours.
We both look toward the closed door to Brody’s room. “We should probably stick around a while, huh?” she says. “In case he’s sick again?”
“I’ll stick around. You can take the Jeep and go home. Brody’ll drive me home in the morning.”
She smiles at me. “You’re a slow learner, huh? I’m not asking to go home. I’m asking if you want me here with you.”
I don’t even try to lie about it this time.
“Yeah,” I say. “I want you here.”
I want you here, as long as you’ll stay.
We open the takeout bags and dig into the food. It’s wings and cracklings. I shoot a worried look Lucy’s way, but she doesn’t even hesitate. She dives right in, stuffing her face with cracklings and starting on a wing.
“They kinda grow on you, huh?” I ask her, amused. “And I didn’t know you liked wings. You didn’t eat them when we were at Oscars.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t as hungry that night as I am now.” She licks her fingers, and I watch her soft lips pull around her digits. You’d think that after a few blow jobs, the gesture would have lost any power it might have over me, but no: I can’t look away, and my cock plumps, envious. Luckily, she resumes eating and digs out a napkin a moment later. Otherwise, Brody’s couch would get a christening.
We eat till we feel more human; then she cleans up the mess and deposits it in the trash under Brody’s sink. She comes back into the living room, smiling. My heart squeezes. It hurts.
“Thank you for coming with me,” I tell her, because I don’t have words for the whole big way I feel about tonight. And her.
“Of course,” she says, but it’s not of course, not at all. “It must get lonely sometimes. Being the one everyone leans on.”
I don’t answer. I reach out and take her hand.
There’s something in her expression I can’t read. Softness, yes, sympathy, but something else. “I lost my dad, too.” Her voice is super calm and level, but I know how hard it is for Lucy to reveal even the smallest things about herself. And this isn’t small.
“Yeah?” I ask it casually, not wanting to scare her off. Let me in, I said to her when we were making love, and I meant it. I needed it. I still need it. Let me in, Lucy, and not just like this in bed, but in all the ways.
“He went to prison.”
I’m surprised, and not surprised. Part of me must have known there was something in Lucy’s past, something to make her so good and clean and careful, when there is so much passion and energy in her that wants to get out.
“When I was twelve. Embezzling. He was treasurer of everything. Basically, one of those guys who’s good at it so he gets asked to do it, like for the Girl Scouts and the school and the Chamber of Commerce or whatever. Turns out he was making a fortune off this. But we weren’t getting rich. We had money troubles. All the money was going to his other family.”
When she says other family, I see it. Twelve-year-old Lucy, suddenly understanding that her father wasn’t who she’d thought he was.
There’s losing your father, and then there’s losing your father. “Oh, Lucy,” I say.
I hold my arms out and she crawls into them, resting her head against my shoulder, exactly where she belongs. And if I felt protective of her before, I am all claws now.
“I was the one who figured it out. My friend Paulina and I. She had a Harriet the Spy complex. She was always snooping—like she would read her parents’ sex books and get into their birth control. We found the keys to my dad’s briefcase. There was a phone in there I’d never seen, and all these financial documents for banks I’d never heard of. I was only twelve, but I kind of knew—the way you know?”
I nod.
“I begged Paulina to keep it to herself. I begged.”
Twelve-year-old Lucy, just wanting to protect the people she loved from a truth that was coming for her no matter what she did. My heart hurts like fuck. “But she didn’t.”
She shakes her head. “I mean, it wasn’t Paulina’s fault. She had to tell her parents what she’d seen. But to me, it felt like a betrayal, like if she’d kept my secret, my life wouldn’t have fallen apart. And once the investigation started, everyone knew. That was the part that wrecked my mom. People would stop her on the street and basically tell her she should have known what he was doing or imply that she did know and hadn’t put a stop to his stealing from basically every charitable organization in town. We had to leave. We moved to Boston. For years, my mom railed against ‘people who can’t keep their opinions to themselves’ and ‘people who don’t mind their own business.’”
It all makes sense. How much she hates small towns. How much she hates talking about herself. What Amanda said offhandedly about Lucy resisting every gesture of friendship.
“That’s why you don’t talk much about yourself.”
She nods.
“Where’s your dad now?”
“He died in prison. Had a heart attack.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was hard to even know what to feel about it. I mean, I was sad. Of course I was. And it’s hard not to have closure. Not that I think I would really have been able to forgive him. But maybe I would have been able to at least tell him how angry and hurt I was, and maybe that would have helped.”
“I bet it would have.”
“Who knows, right? Anyway, yeah, I’m sure that’s a big part of why I’m not very good with people.”
“That’s not true,” I say, before I can stop myself, and I’m pretty outraged, too. I’ve seen her with people. With my people, winning them over, making them laugh, stretching out of her comfort zone just to be part of their world.
“No, it kinda is. You don’t know why I left New York.”
And then she tells me the story. How she slept with a guy she met, how it turned out he was her boss’s on-again, off-again boyfriend. And how the thing that made her boss so mad was that Lucy was a shitty friend and didn’t make the effort to know her co-workers.
I know how hard it is for Lucy to open up. I know how much she doesn’t like to talk about herself. And yet, she’s just told me about her deepest fears, and how what happened with her boss tapped into them.
The only word I can think of is honored. I feel honored that she’s telling me her stories. So even though I want to fix what’s hurting her, I don’t try this time. Because I know there’s nothing I can say to make it better.
Instead, I pull her closer and hold her tighter, and we stay like that a long time.