I push down on the door handle, lifting at the same time so that it won’t make that ungodly creaking it tends to make when it’s cool at night. The house is dark and quiet as I toe my shoes off, but my body is amped. I’m excited, like I’ve just come home from a winning game and I want to wake up the whole house and tell them about it.
“Where have you been?” Amy yells from an armchair as she flicks on a lamp in the living room. I jump so high I almost hit my head on the ceiling.
“Holy balls, Amy.” I hold my hand over my pounding heart. “You scared the crap out of me.”
She rises from the chair, an old quilt wrapped around her shoulders and her polka-dot fleece pajamas peeking out underneath. “I asked you a question.”
She sounds so much like Mom it sends a shiver down my spine.
“Have you been waiting up for me?”
She comes to a stop in the entranceway. “Yes. I got home from work and you weren’t here. I was worried!”
“Okay. Well...sorry. I was at Corrine’s.” I scratch the back of my head and look toward the stairs, anywhere that’s not at her.
“It’s almost one o’clock in the morning,” Amy hisses. “What were you doing there for so long? Did you fall asleep? Were you going to sleep over?” Her voice rises an octave with each question.
“No, we just lost track of time.” I jog up the stairs. Amy thumps up the hardwood behind me.
“Are you, like, in an affair now?”
“I think you’re sensationalizing things a little.”
I shoulder open our shared bathroom door and pull my toothbrush out of the holder. After unscrewing the cap on the tube of toothpaste with my teeth, I spit it back onto the counter, squeezing the tube and getting toothpaste all over my hands.
“Why are you so upset about this?” I try to keep my voice low and shove the toothbrush in my mouth, missing my teeth completely and almost choking myself on it.
Amy watches me in the mirror as I gag and splutter and finally, like nothing happened, begin to brush my teeth.
“I get home at half past eleven, Wes. And you weren’t here. You’re always here. You’re dependable like that. I can set my watch to you. This thing you’re doing? It’s not dependable and it’s not like you.”
She steps into the bathroom, standing just behind me, meeting my eyes in the mirror as I brush, spit, repeat. Her tone softens, turns questioning. “A few weeks ago you hated this woman.”
“I never hated her,” I mumble around the foam in my mouth. “I strongly disliked.”
It’s only a little bit of a lie. I hated the things she made me do, and sometimes I felt a deep sense of resentment. I don’t know if hindsight is clouding my judgement or not but I’m certain that I never hated.
“Well, you never made that clear to me.” She points to her chest. “You made me hate her, too. And now I’m supposed to accept that you’re, you’re...”
Her mouth crinkles until she spits out, “Fucking. This is a huge risk. For you and her. I just... I think you’re making a bad decision.”
The way she says this, with her arms crossed over her chest, the finality in her tone, it makes me feel like she’s made a decision for me. If she doesn’t like it, then I can’t like it either.
Most of our relationship has gone this way. Wherever Amy leads, I follow, because she’s never steered me wrong and it’s usually the direction I want to go anyway.
But not this time. Resentment falls like a rockslide, for my sister and all those other decisions I let her make for me.
I rinse my toothbrush and my mouth, wash the toothpaste off my hands to give myself some time. “Last time I checked I never asked you what you thought.” The way my voice sounds—I’ve never talked to my sister like this before. But I can’t have this conversation with her right now. Not when I can still smell Corrine on me. Not when my skin still burns from her touch. I take a deep breath as I dry my hands on the towel, taking care to wipe both palms and each finger.
“I know, we know, it’s a risk. And I’m sorry that I never told you enough good things about her. That’s on me. But right or wrong, it’s not your decision to make, Amy.”
I turn to face her. “You’re right about one thing, though. I’ve always been dependable. I’ve always taken the safe route. And look where it’s got me.” I fling my arms out to my sides.
“I’m twenty-five years old. All our friends are moving on with their lives. Every other intern in this program is younger than me. I’m living in my mom’s house with my sister. You’re starting a business and I just get coffee.” She flinches and even though I’m mad at her for meddling, my heart aches to know I’ve hurt her. I blow all the air out of my lungs, grab my hair and pull.
“I’m tired of being the person you can set your watch to, Amy,” I say, quieter. “And I’m tired of you always riding in to save me. Have you ever considered that I want to take a risk? Instead of letting things happen to me all the time, I’m finally making something happen. Besides, this is not an affair. No one is cheating on anyone.”
Amy says nothing for a while, just shakes her head. “You know what I mean, Wes. Not a cheating affair. A love affair. A secret affair. Secrets push people together and they push people apart. I don’t want you to get hurt.” She hugs her arms tighter around herself. “Besides, what would Mom think?”
“Seriously?” I turn toward the toilet and flip up the lid. “I hope Mom would have no opinion whatsoever about my sex life. Now, are you going to shut the door or do you actually want to watch me take a leak?”
Amy’s eyes narrow. “Just think for a second about what you’re doing. Ever since you started working there it’s not just your relationship with your boss that’s been questionable. You’ve been a shitty friend. You’ve been a shitty brother. Where have you been, Wes? You never want to see anyone. You missed your own birthday party.”
I close my eyes as a hammer starts to pound behind them. “You know why I missed that,” I say through gritted teeth. “I said I was sorry.”
She’s quiet long enough that I think maybe I can open my eyes. Maybe this conversation is over.
“What about the house?”
My head falls forward, my chin to my chest. I love my sister but right now her voice is the last thing I want to hear.
“What about it?”
“I think we need to make plans.” My eyes are still closed but I can tell from the change in her tone she’s reached decision-mode. She says “I think,” but Amy knows exactly what she wants to do.
“Don’t think I didn’t notice you changing the topic the other day over breakfast. We need to make an appointment with the lawyer and call a real estate agent to come take a look at the house and—”
“I’m not ready to sell the house, Amy,” I say, but I’m so quiet I’m not sure she hears me.
“I know you don’t want to move but sometimes we have to make sacrifices.”
Maybe it’s her tone. Or the way she says sacrifices like she can proselytize to me about them. Maybe it’s that I’ve reached the end of my patience for this conversation. Or maybe this has been twenty-plus years in the making.
I turn to her. “Stop!” I yell and that one word, the volume, the way it rips from my mouth, seems to send her back into the hall.
“Stop telling me what to do or what’s best for me. You want to talk about sacrifice?” I point to my own chest. “I was Mom’s nurse so that you could work your way up in the restaurant. I cleaned up her puke and held her while she cried and kept track of her medications and you got to come home drunk or sometimes not at all and save for your future and do all the things you wanted to do so you could open this restaurant. And I never questioned you once. I never told you that what you were doing was a bad idea or a risk. I let you live your life, so why can’t you just let me do the same?”
She takes a slow shuddering breath. She doesn’t say another word. She just leaves, closing the door quietly behind her.
I pee, then strip and start the shower, numb to the words echoing off the old beige tiles. The afterglow of Corrine has been doused with a wet blanket. As the shower warms up, I splash some cold water on my face and let the mirror fog over my reflection.
I used to hate looking at myself. I didn’t like the person I saw. A kid who didn’t know what he wanted, who was scared to make a decision without his sister or his mother. I didn’t know what I wanted to be other than whatever my father wasn’t.
I couldn’t see the man I wanted to be. Whoever that man was, he was on hold, in a macabre game of limbo waiting for my mother to die, because she was never going to get better.
But I see him clearly now, the man I’m supposed to be. Corrine might see him, too. A man with goals and intentions, who tries his best, even if he might fail. This man doesn’t have to wait for anyone. I get to make my own decisions for the first time in a long time. I get to decide where I go, what I do, who I do it with. I chose this career, wherever it might take me. And Corrine. I choose her. When I’m with her and she’s touching me, I see the man I can be. I want her to see me, too. All of her. Everything.
So what happened tonight? That can’t be a risk.