Felix
The next morning, I’m making coffee on this ancient coffeemaker Gabby has inexplicably named Bertrude. Bertrude is loud and always appears on the very brink of appliance death, and yet every morning she manages to keep sputtering out a substance just close enough to coffee to justify her continued existence. In Gabby’s eyes, at least.
It’s undoubtedly Bertrude’s obnoxious squealing that drags Gabby out of bed. Her hair is half falling out of its ponytail, and she’s wearing Cookie Monster pajamas. “Hey,” she says. “How’d you sleep?”
There’s a hint of suggestion in her tone that makes me look over at her. “Fine. Why?”
She stares at me with a look of horror on her face, and I know exactly why.
“No,” I say.
She covers her face. “I got up to go to the bathroom—”
I step back against the counter. “No! What did you hear?”
She winces. “There was moaning—”
I cover my face and emit a guttural yell that spills over her next statement.
“—and narration.”
“Oh god.” This feels far more violating than my sister hearing me having actual sex, because the auditory component is the only part Jenna could experience as well. It’s like I was getting it on with a girl and accidentally stuck it in my sister.
Gabby cringes. “And I couldn’t get it out of my head, so I woke up Will and told him about it, too.”
“Ahhhhhhh!” I drop my hands and stare at her. “What? Why?”
“I had to tell someone! But don’t worry. He doesn’t think you’re seeing anyone, so he assumed you were calling a hotline.”
I choke. “Gah! Is that supposed to make it better? That your boyfriend thinks I’m some kind of perv?”
Gabby raises an eyebrow. “Well, it was pretty specific narration.”
I shove a cup of coffee at her and it sloshes onto the counter. “This is what it feels like to die of mortification.”
“You’re mortified,” Gabby says. “I’m the one who has to keep sitting on that couch after this.”
It’s my turn to cringe. “I’ll wash the blanket.”
“Thank you.”
“I need to get an apartment. But if I keep couch surfing, I’ll be able to pay Dad back . . .” I groan. “Would it make it up to you if I bought your couch?”
Gabby takes a long sip of her coffee, and perks up. “I won’t turn that down.”
“And maybe a new coffeemaker?”
“That I will turn down. Bertrude is great.” Gabby looks offended on her coffeemaker’s behalf, and I decide not to push it.
I run my hands through my hair, which needs to be washed. “Between the horror show that is my sister hearing anything from last night and the cello case debacle, I’m starting to feel like I’ve somehow taken over your ability to stumble into embarrassing situations.”
“That’s what Anna-Marie said when she fell in love with Josh,” Gabby says. “Though she got attacked by a moose, and a bat, and some Boy Scouts. So you’re doing better than her.”
“Boy Scouts?”
“Yeah, that ended in a video of her nude on the internet. At least there’s not a recording of you ejaculating in my living room.”
“Oh, god.” I cover my eyes again. “I will definitely buy your couch.”
“It was a lot like that music you used to play in high school to bother Mom. Where the orchestra is playing and the chorus is making all those ohs and ahs and basically having a collective orgasm?”
“Daphnis and Chloe. I did do that to bother Mom, but it’s a legitimately good piece of music.” I peek at her through my fingers. “You’re never going to let this go, are you?”
“I’ll let you off the hook,” she says, “the day I forget the words my baby brother uses to describe his own climax.”
“Ahhhh,” I say.
“Yeah, that was part of it.”
I chug my coffee in an effort to disappear. “On the internet or not, my humiliation is complete.”
Gabby takes another sip of her coffee. “Does that make this a good time to ask if your band will play Anna-Marie’s wedding?”
“Oh, yeah,” I say, grateful as hell for the change in subject. “They said that’s fine. I put it on the calendar and everything.”
Gabby squeals. “I have officially won the wedding.”
“Hopefully Anna-Marie wins the wedding.”
Gabby rolls her eyes. “So?” she says. “I’m guessing things with Jenna are progressing?”
Um. You could say that. “We talked for hours.”
“And somewhere in the middle of that she verbally jumped you?”
I have to laugh at that. “Something like that. There were some politics and religion in between. If this keeps up, I’m never going to sleep again.”
Gabby gives me a look.
“And I’ll be staying at Dad’s.”
“Yeah, you will,” she says. “So she’s okay with you being in recovery and all?”
My stomach drops. I tip back my coffee mug, even though there’s only a little left, and the dregs of this coffee are even worse than the rest of it. “I told her I used to do drugs. And that I did heroin. But that’s it.”
Gabby raises her eyebrows. “She doesn’t know you were in rehab? Or how recently?”
I don’t know why I’m telling Gabby this. Maybe it’s the embarrassment, but my relief from last night is gone and replaced with overwhelming guilt. “No,” I say. “I’ll tell her. I just—” I sit on Gabby’s counter. “I want to tell her everything, but I’m scared.”
“Felix,” Gabby says. “If she can’t handle it, don’t you think it would be better to know sooner rather than later?”
I don’t, but it takes me a minute to figure out why. “Did I ever tell you why I went back to rehab? The last time?”
Gabby shakes her head. I don’t know why I phrased it that way—I already know she doesn’t know about it. I haven’t told anyone but my therapist outside of a meeting.
“I’d been couch surfing for a while,” I say. “Staying with friends, mostly, after Mom and Dad each finally told me I couldn’t crash with them anymore.”
“I remember. Mom cried.”
My chest aches. “At the time, I was pissed, but now I see they must have agonized over it. Dad caught me shooting up in his bathroom, and that was the last straw, but with Mom it was kind of out of the blue.”
“She wanted to let you stay,” Gabby says. “Just so she’d know you weren’t lying dead somewhere. But she thought maybe if you didn’t have anyone covering for you anymore, you’d be more likely to get help.”
“I didn’t get help,” I say. “I burned out every last one of my friends, and then I started picking up girls and going home with them, just to have somewhere to stay.” Gabby looks at me like I’m a wounded puppy, which is wrong. I’m the monster in this story, not the victim. “I didn’t always have sex with them. Sometimes we just did drugs.”
“Yes,” Gabby says. “I remember the sad tale of your flaccid penis.”
I close my eyes.
“Sorry,” Gabby says. “That was funny in my head.”
It would be funny. If it wasn’t true.
“I did have sex with the last one. And then we shot up after. Neither was great—I thought I had enough for her to take some and still get a good high, but the dose I’d been taking was starting to ebb, and I needed more.” I shake my head. “Or maybe I gave her more than I thought I did. I can’t be sure.”
Gabby holds still, like she senses what I’m going to tell her.
“When I woke up in the morning, she was dead.”
Gabby looks like she’s going to cry. “She overdosed.”
I rub my hands together. “Yeah. So I called 911. I mean, she was cold. Stiff. But I didn’t know what else to do, so I called, and they asked me for her name, and her address. I didn’t know either, so I found some mail in the kitchen and I read it off to them.” I can’t look at her and tell her this last part. “It was her roommate’s mail. I gave them her name, because I didn’t know any better.”
Gabby puts a hand on my arm. “Oh, Felix.”
I still can’t look at her. “So then I got to explain that to the police. And of course I hid the drugs, told them I didn’t know she was high. They knew I was lying, but they didn’t have cause to test me, so they let me go.”
I swallow. “I went straight to Dad and begged him to send me back to rehab. I was shaking, crying. I didn’t tell him what happened. I just told him I had to get clean and I didn’t know how to do it without help. At first he refused. Something about the hundred grand he’d already sunk into my first two stints.” My voice breaks. “But eventually he agreed.”
Gabby’s hand slides down my arm, and she squeezes my fingers. “Because he loves you.”
“I know.” I take a deep breath. “Later, I looked her up online. I remembered her address, and her roommate’s name. The girl who died—her name was Katy. She played tennis and rode horses. She was an economics major at UCLA, before she dropped out because of drugs.”
“She was an addict,” Gabby says.
“I killed her.”
“No.” Gabby squeezes my hand so hard my fingers ache. “You didn’t. You said she did drugs before you met her. It was just happenstance that you were there.”
“I’ve asked myself a hundred times if that’s true, but I don’t know.” I shake my head. “And you’re right. I have to tell Jenna. But if I tell her that story and it’s over, I will damn well go buy some heroin and shoot up into oblivion.”
Gabby looks terrified, and I take a deep, steadying breath.
“And that’s why I’m not going to tell her. Not until I’m sure I can handle the rejection without putting a needle in my vein.”
Gabby is quiet for a moment, and I regret dumping this on her. I wonder if, deep down, I’m doing this as a kind of trial run. Gabby is my sister, and she’s loved me through all the shit I’ve done.
I need to know if this is the thing that convinces her I’m not worthy of forgiveness.
“I love you,” she says finally.
Tears creep into my eyes. “Am I doing the wrong thing?” Keeping this huge thing from the woman I love. The woman who trusts me. The guilt gnaws at me, and yet—
“No,” Gabby says. “No, that actually makes sense. You have to put your sobriety first, right?”
“Yeah. But I’ll tell her. I will,” I say, assuring myself as much as Gabby. “I just need a little more time.”
Gabby puts her arms around me, and I squeeze her back. Somehow I know she’s thinking the same thing I’ve thought so many times. It could have been me someone found lying cold and dead.
“I’m not going back to the drugs,” I say.
“You better not.”
“I won’t.” I take another deep breath. “I have practice today. Do you want to come and meet Jenna?”
Her face brightens. “Can I?”
“Sure. Just don’t give away to the rest of the band that you know about us.”
“I think I can handle that.”
We both smile. I’ve done so much stupid, hurtful stuff in my life. I don’t deserve to have a sister like her, but I’ll take it.