“Jess called while I was at my parents’. She and her boyfriend had a big fight tonight and she was really upset. She gets herself worked up sometimes—” Haley caught herself and shook her head. “What am I talking about? You know how she gets.”
“Yeah. I do.”
I was intimately familiar with Jess’s hysterical crying, her litanies of my failings and the way I’d hurt her, the threats to leave, the threats to tell everyone we knew how horrible I was...
“Mom and Dad are trying to talk her down right now. Mom’s talking about maybe catching the train into New York tomorrow, and I’m wondering if maybe I should offer to go. Mom went last time, when... Well, when you guys broke up, actually. It’s my turn. I’m just not sure about asking for time off when I’ve only just started at the Bean.”
“What do you mean, it’s your turn?” I asked.
“We all do our part,” she said simply.
“To manage Jess, you mean?”
“To keep her safe.” She gave me a searching look. “Did you know about what happened when she was seventeen?”
It took me a moment to answer.
“Yeah, I knew.”
Jess had reminded me of her suicide attempt every time she felt the need for leverage. She’d used it as a cudgel to beat me back into line. Toward the end, she’d used it as a threat to make me stay when I’d finally had enough.
I rubbed the back of my neck, conscious of how stiff it was all of a sudden. After telling Haley I was fine talking about her sister, it turned out that maybe I wasn’t. Dredging up the Jess stuff made me anxious. That’s why I didn’t go there, not even in the privacy of my own mind. That’s why I always avoided talking about her as much as I could.
The twelve months we’d lived together in New York would forever be branded on my psyche as the worst of my life. She’d pushed me to the breaking point and beyond—and I’d stayed because I’d felt absurdly responsible for her happiness and because she’d gaslit me into believing all our problems were my fault.
“None of us saw it coming that time,” Haley said. “So we try to stay vigilant, but it’s hard to know when to hit the panic button.”
Because Jess was always up and down like a roller coaster. Boy, was I familiar with that ride.
I shifted on the couch.
“We don’t have to talk about this,” Haley said, and I knew she’d picked up on my unease.
I moved my tongue around my suddenly dry mouth. “Probably a good idea.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. It’s not your fault.” I was the one who’d insisted on us talking. I was the one who’d thought I could handle it.
But apparently I couldn't. Apparently, I was still a lot more fucked up over her sister than I'd let myself believe.
We were both quiet for a beat, then Haley stood and collected the bowls. “Would you like a cup of coffee? Maybe tea?”
I looked at her standing there, her eyes full of questions, wanting to smooth over the moment. She was so pretty and lovely and funny. And her sister was a manipulative, chaotic force of nature who had cast a blight over several years of my life.
Suddenly, the fact that Jess was a huge part of Haley's world felt like something I couldn’t just keep stepping around because I wanted to keep having fun with Haley. Suddenly, it felt very large and very unavoidable.
If I kept coming here, if Haley and I kept falling into bed and going for walks and cooking each other dinner and all of the other things that people did when they fell for each other, I wasn’t going to be able to pretend Jess and that part of my life didn’t exist.
She was Haley’s sister, her family. If I kept seeing Haley, I'd be inviting Jess back into my life, by extension.
The thought was enough to push me to my feet.
“I might go,” I said. “You’ve had a big day. And I’ve got a delivery due first thing.”
I watched Haley absorb my retreat, saw the way she lifted her chin and took a small, bracing breath before responding.
“Sure. That makes sense.” She stared at the bowls she was holding as though she wasn’t sure why they were in her hands. “Just give me a second to get rid of these.”
She disappeared into the kitchen, and I stood and shoved my hands into my pockets. Now that I’d formed the idea, I just wanted to be gone. Away from temptation, away from all the memories and conflicts. My gaze bounced around the room and landed on Haley’s handbag on the coffee table. The top of a birthday card poked out of the side pocket, along with a scrap of ribbon. I frowned, putting the card together with her pretty dress and fancy shoes, and when Haley returned I turned to her.
“Is today your birthday?” I asked.
“Yep.”
She seemed embarrassed by it, which was very on-brand for Haley. This woman had probably never knowingly hogged the spotlight in her life. No doubt she’d learned early on that there was room for only one prima donna in her family.
“You should have told me,” I said.
“Only jerks advertise their birthdays.”
It was supposed to be a joke, but it wasn’t funny. What must it have been like for Haley, growing up with a sister like Jess? The love bombing, the mood swings, the intense, ever-present fear of rejection, the bouts of self-loathing and flagellation, the rages and tantrums and the rash impulses...
Was it any wonder Haley was so sweet and self-effacing and private? I thought about the way she’d hidden her leatherwork from me—not intentionally, I knew, but because it simply hadn’t occurred to her that something she cared about and had invested a great deal of time and energy in would interest me—and it made me feel so fucking sad.
There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that Haley had learned to blend into the background and just get on with shit while her family focused all their energy on her troubled sister.
“It really isn’t a big deal,” Haley said, and I realized the silence had stretched a long time. “Thanks for the ice cream, and for coming over. It was really nice.”
She turned to see me out.
"Wait. I don't have to go. We can still watch that movie," I said, feeling bad.
I'd come over to make things better, not worse.
"You don't have to stay because it's my birthday."
"I want to stay," I said, because part of me did. A large part of me.
"So I totally imagined you checking out and running for the hills after I brought up my sister just now?" she asked.
I tried to find the words to explain the conflict raging inside me. Only a person who has survived emotional abuse can understand how hard it is to reclaim yourself when you finally make the decision to leave. How much effort it takes to forgive yourself and understand that it's never your fault. I thought I'd reached that place a while ago, but tonight had shown me that the ground I was standing on was shakier than I'd imagined, and I'd be lying if I pretended that didn't freak me out. I didn't want to go backwards.
I didn't want to invite that darkness back into my life.
"Don't worry, you don't have to answer that," Haley said.
She turned and headed for the front door, leaving me with no choice but to follow her. When she opened the door to the warm night air, I moved past her and hesitated on the threshold.
“Happy birthday,” I said. “For what it’s worth, you deserve to be spoiled.”
She blinked rapidly a couple of times then dropped her gaze to her feet.
“Thanks.”
She was so damned lovely. I could only imagine the shit she’d swallowed over the years. And here I was, serving her up another portion.
"I'm so fucking sorry." I pulled her into my arms, wrapping myself around her. Her head rested against my chest, her arms circling my waist, and I had to exert real self-control not to squeeze too hard.
She was such an amazing person. I really, really liked her.
But the Jess issue... the Jess issue was big.
I’d been dancing around it, avoiding thinking about it,
losing myself in how good I felt when I was with Haley. But you could only avoid your truths for so long, and tonight reality had come crashing in, forcing me to face up to what was happening between me and Haley and what that would mean for my future.
The thought made me tighten my grip on her. Then I forced myself to let go and step back.
"I'll call you tomorrow," I said.
“Drive safe,” she said, her gaze infinitely sad.
“I will.”
There was nothing else to say, so I pressed a single, firm kiss to her lips and turned to go. Two steps to cross the porch, three steps to the front gate, then I was striding up the street to my van, hating that even though I felt sad and guilty, I also felt as though I’d escaped something.
27
Haley
I wasn’t surprised when Beck called me the next morning to cancel our date. He checked to make sure everything was okay with Jess first, and I passed on what my mother had texted me first thing—they’d successfully talked her down and she’d gone back to her apartment and reconciled with her boyfriend.
Beck told me he was glad it had all worked out. Then he’d canceled our date for that night. To his credit, he was brutally honest with me.
“I really like you, Haley. But the thought of having Jess back in my life, even in a small way... It’s pretty much my worst nightmare. So I’m going to take a step back, get my head on straight, if that’s okay with you?”
I was so proud of how clear and calm my voice sounded when I responded, because inside I was gnashing my teeth and wailing, shaking a fist at the sky.
I’d sensed this was coming last night, when he’d withdrawn from me. When he’d hugged me goodbye on the doorstep, it had felt like just that—goodbye. I could feel how far away he already was, even though he'd been standing right there.
“I understand,” I said. “I’m really sorry for upsetting you last night.”
“You didn’t do a single thing wrong,” he said. “It's just that when your sister and I broke up, I promised myself I would never let myself get sucked back into her orbit again. It got very intense between us. Especially at the end. It's not something I like to think about much. If we keep seeing each other, I've got to work a few things out for myself. And it's better to do it now, I think. Before this thing between you and me takes on a life of its own."
“Sure. I get it,” I said, as though I hadn’t passed that point days ago. As though I wasn’t head over heels for him already, and it didn't hollow out my chest to know he was essentially asking me to give him space to work out if I was worth the pain and hassle of having Jess in his life again.
“We’ll speak soon, though, okay?”
“Look after yourself,” I said.
Then I ended the call and went and sat on the back steps and had a quiet, pathetic cry all on my own. I didn’t even bother wiping the tears off my cheeks, just sat there and let them drip from my chin onto my pajama pants.
That saying, be careful what you wish for? Tailor-made for this situation. Once upon a time Beck had been the secret wish of my heart, and for a few brief days he’d been mine and I’d had a glimpse of how good we could be together.
And now it was starting to look as though those few days were all I was going to get—and there wasn’t a thing in hell I could do about it. It’s not like I could divorce my sister or cut her out of my life. Apart from what that would do to my parents, I loved Jess, and even though she had hurt me terribly over the years, I didn’t doubt her love for me. I wanted her to be happy, and I saw her struggles and pain. Mental illness wasn't something anyone ever chose for themselves, and I knew that at heart she was a deeply, deeply afraid person who desperately craved love and security. The great tragedy was that her desperation and fear actually pushed away the very people she most wanted in her life.
Even if by some miracle she suddenly did a one-eighty and agreed to therapy, Jess was always going to have her ups and downs, and she was always going to need us to have her back.
As much as I couldn’t change my family, I couldn’t change whatever had happened between Jess and Beck, either. I couldn’t undo the wounds my sister had inflicted on him. All I could do was give Beck the space to decide whether being with me was more important to him than who my sister was and what she'd done to him.
Whatever that was. At this point, I was almost afraid to ask, because Beck had clearly been profoundly affected by whatever had taken place between them.
Thank God I had Zara’s birthday boots to distract me.
Dave dropped by my place on Sunday and I took measurements from Zara’s favorite shoes, noting where the rub marks were inside the leather and where the pressure marks were on the insole. We talked colors and themes, and I showed him a few ideas I’d been working on. He enthusiastically endorsed all of them, which was very sweet but not nearly as helpful as he thought it was, but he did offer one tiny bit of guidance.
“I’d really like for there to be a mountain goat somewhere, if that won’t ruin the overall aesthetic,” he said. “We first met at the Mountain Goat, so I’d like to pay homage.”
“I can definitely squeeze a mountain goat in there,” I said.
We ended the visit with him helping me select a beautiful whiskey-colored leather and deciding on oiled bronze eyelets and hardware, and that night I cut the uppers from the leather, taking my time with the task to make sure I got it exactly right.
As I worked, I rehearsed what it was going to be like seeing Beck the following day at the Bean when he arrived with his delivery. How crazy that I’d gone from being worried everyone would know we were dating to being terrified I’d break down in tears at the sight of him, all within a space of a few weeks.
I was jumpy and nervous all morning, burning myself not once but twice on the steaming wand.
“You are on a mission to cook yourself today, girl,” Roddy said when, during a lull in business, he applied burn cream to the worst of my injuries.
“Stupid,” I said.
His gaze was searching as he looked at me. “Anything you want to get off your chest?”
I forced a smile and shook my head. “Thanks, but I’m good.”
There was too much to unpack, and I’d long ago formed the habit of keeping my family’s business private. Jess had pulled some stunts in her time when she was living in Colebury, and after she’d tried to hurt herself, there had been talk in the community. She’d hated it, and so had I. So nice as it was for Roddy to offer, it was best to keep my own counsel, even if a part of me wanted to howl on his shoulder and beg for reassurance.
I returned to the counter and wiped away the coffee grounds around the grinder. Some sixth sense drew my gaze to the staff entrance, and sure enough, Beck was pushing the door wide, wheeling in our first delivery for the week.
I was almost afraid to look at him, worried how I’d react, and what he’d do. But I did, and he made eye contact with me, tilting his head in acknowledgement. I could see the warmth in his eyes alongside the wariness, and, weirdly, it gave me hope.
We had something special. I knew we did. Right there and then, I decided I was going to allow myself to hope. I was going to believe in us, in the way I felt when he held me, in the tenderness I felt in his touch. If I was wrong, if he opted for safety and keeping me and, by extension, my sister out of his life, I would be heartbroken. But pretending that I didn’t want to be with him wasn’t going to lessen that pain.
The only person I’d be fooling was myself.
28
Beck
It was really fucking tough seeing Haley when I made deliveries at the Bean. Every time I looked into her pretty face, I remembered all the good times we’d had together, in and out of bed.
Then I recalled the discussion we’d had at her place that night, and I remembered all over again why being with her was complicated. To put it mildly.
The eighteen months I’d spent with Jess Elliot had messed me up, no lie. I’d had girlfriends before her, but nothi
ng had prepared me for the off-the-hook intensity and unpredictability of my relationship with her.
She’d dazzled me from the moment I’d seen her across a bar in Burlington. She’d easily been the most beautiful girl in the room with her long, wavy blond hair and perfect features. And her body... She’d been every Sports Illustrated cover come to life in a tiny minidress that molded her incredible figure. I’d pinched myself when she’d started paying attention to me, and when she took me outside and insisted I fuck her against the wall in the alley, I’d been so turned on I’d done it, even though I’d been waiting for someone to bust us the whole time. I’d soon learned that Jess got off on that kind of excitement, and I’d told myself she was passionate and bold and had gotten sucked all the way in.
I’d been just twenty-four when we moved to New York together with nothing but my car and a trunk full of her shoes and clothes. She’d had dreams of being a model, and I’d been so besotted I’d believed it was inevitable she’d hit the big time. In the meantime, it would be my job to support us tending bar at night and working as a barista during the day while she made the connections she needed to fly high.
I had been utterly unprepared for the way Jess had unraveled in the ensuing months. She’d expected the city to embrace her with open arms, but there were thousands of beautiful girls like her with the same dream of finding fame and fortune on the runway. Every rejection had sent her into days of tears and anger, and navigating her changing moods became my biggest challenge.
Then suddenly I became the problem. I wasn’t supportive enough. I didn’t believe in her enough. I didn’t make enough money to pay for the best photographer so her portfolio could blow everyone else’s out of the water. She accused me of not loving her anymore. Thought I was flirting with other women. Disrespecting her. Lying to her. Cheating on her.
To say I was dizzy with the switch from being the center of her world to being the root of all her unhappiness was an understatement. I reached out to my parents back home in Vermont, needing guidance, and my mother had seen what I couldn’t. “She’s not well, Danny. Those kinds of mood swings aren’t normal. She needs help.”
Sweetheart (The Busy Bean) Page 16