My Brother's Girl

by Sienna Blake

  I saw his devilish grin, imagined him leaning against the back wall with his muscular arms crossed over his charcoal-grey Henley. My heart clenched painfully as I imagined a smear of grease across his cheek, just below those stormy blue eyes. I imagined those eyes soften as I tried to communicate to him across the room: I wouldn’t be doing this if it hadn’t been for you. I imagined him nodding in approval as he watched me grab the overflowing shot glass and lift it to Andy.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, here’s to my asshole, pig of a boss. I quit!”

  As the crowd cheered, I pushed the line of shots toward the first row of people at the bar and handed the bottle of whiskey to the first person in front of me. I slipped past the other girls working at the bar and patted them on the shoulder. They all just stared at me with wide eyes.

  Darren was gone. Well, of course Darren was gone. Darren was never there. But his impression on my heart was. I could feel the grooves of his fingerprints on my skin; I could trace them when I closed my eyes alone in the dark. Darren would never be here, but he would also never not be here with me.

  The DJ, confused as everyone else, blasted the music to try to salvage the night while the bottle of very expensive whiskey worked its way through the crowd, tipped up and poured haphazardly into open mouths, spilling down cheeks and onto the beer-stained floor.

  I elbowed my way to the door and stumbled outside into the cold. Gasping like I’d just run a marathon, I bent over and rested my hands on my knees while sucking in big deep breaths. There on the sidewalk, I waited for the guilt to crash over me. I waited for the regret over making a scene, anxiety about paying my bills without an income, embarrassment over raising my voice to my employer in front of a packed bar.

  But none of those emotions came. None.

  I guess I was just too busy smiling. I suppose it’s hard to feel anxious when there is a smile so big across your face that it makes your cheeks ache. I was just too fucking happy.

  I laughed as I stood and dragged my hands through my hair. Next to the crosswalk, beneath the traffic lights, I realised this was the exact spot where I’d stood after escaping Andy’s advances out of the back alley. That panicked, uncertain, frightening moment was only weeks ago, but it felt like years to me.

  Back then I stared at the ice-slick street stretching out in both directions with fear of the future: where was I going to go? What was I going to do? Each direction seemed a dead end. But now I sucked that frigid air into my lungs and saw nothing but opportunity. When I ran instead of confronting Andy in his office a few weeks ago, I literally collided with my future in the form of a six-foot-two giant of a man. But here, in this moment, I decided my future.

  I decided my next step.

  I decided where I was to go, what I was to do, who I was to be.

  My cheeks burned rosy and hot, and my heart cartwheeled and galloped in my chest. I felt like a crazy woman there alone on the sidewalk in the middle of the night, but I’d never felt more…more free.

  On that night I escaped from Andy, Eoin quite literally trapped me. His big, strong arms held me on top of him on the ice. And even if they hadn’t, the curious eyes of the gathering crowd around us would have held me in place nonetheless. I was swept up into his life, carried off in his arms, entangled in his family. And I allowed all of this without a single peep.

  But now it was just me. There was no one to pull me this way or that. No one to push me toward this direction or away from that. I didn’t have a job to fall into, an apartment given to me, a family ready-made for me to simply insert myself into. I was all alone with the path before me entirely unclear.

  And I’d never felt more alive.

  If I wanted a job, I was going to have to get it. If I wanted an apartment, I was going to have to hunt one down, earn the money myself, and lug whatever futon I could find up the stairs myself. I was going to have to struggle and work and fall down and get back up again. If I wanted to lead the life I wanted, I was going to have to fight for it.

  I was not going to be quiet any longer.

  I was not going to let myself get dragged along with whichever current was strongest like a piece of driftwood carried along without a choice.

  I was going to fight.

  I was going to be loud.

  I was going to go after the life I wanted, the life I deserved.

  Right there on the sidewalk with numb fingers and a burning heart, I pulled out my phone and searched for mechanic shops looking for immediate apprentices. Not caring where it was or what it paid or how messy the shop may be, I clicked on the very first want ad I found online. Within a minute, an email was sent telling the hiring manager I could be at the shop on Monday. It was only then that I even bothered to glance at the address. For all I knew, I’d just applied to a place in Louth or Belfast or Limerick.

  But no.

  The shop was in Dublin.

  Darren

  The bar was empty on that Tuesday afternoon, save for the drunk passed out with his hand still clinging to half a lukewarm pint of Guinness and the bored bartender who circled his dirty rag over a clean counter between exacerbated sighs and desperate glances at the clock on the wall behind me.

  The wail of the jukebox drowned out the incessant tapping of my toe against the barstool as my nervous fingers peeled away the label on my bottle of beer. I wondered why I hadn’t ordered something stronger. I was lifting my hand to grab the attention of the weary-faced bartender when a shaft of light from the front door spread across my face, blinding me and illuminating the dust particles that hung suspended in the air. The door swung shut, and in the dim light my eyes adjusted once more in time to see her eyes scan the empty bar and fall on me.

  I swallowed nervously and winced at the shriek my barstool made as I pushed it back to stand. I greeted her with a timid kiss on the cheek.

  “Sophie.”

  My high school love tucked a strand of her golden-blonde hair that was still as lustrous as the day I first saw her in the sun and smiled, clearly just as nervous as I.

  “I still can’t believe you called,” she said as she slipped into the barstool next to mine. “How’d you even find my number after all these years?”

  “Um, through a friend,” I answered hesitantly, hoping she wouldn’t pry further.

  “Well, I’m glad for your friend,” Sophie said with a sweet smile as she placed her hand gently over mine, which covered the torn pieces of label.

  Her hazel eyes searched mine as I tried not to flinch away from her touch. I hadn’t seen Sophie since I abruptly ended things with her after Jaime’s death. She came to my house in a black lace dress for the funeral. I remembered the exact pattern of the lace, delicate and intricate and fragile. There were tiny flowers, like the ones that filled the house from neighbours and friends and family. I hated those tiny flowers. I remembered her red-rimmed eyes. I remembered the way her fingers shook as she gripped her little black purse just a little too tightly.

  I didn’t even let her inside the house as I told her that I wouldn’t be going.

  I wouldn’t be going to the funeral with her.

  I wouldn’t be going to the funeral at all.

  I wouldn’t be going away with her.

  I wouldn’t be going anywhere at all.

  I wouldn’t be going out with her.

  I wouldn’t be going out with anyone, anyone at all.

  I remembered the confusion on her face. I remembered the hurt, the pain, the guilt, too. I remembered her tears. I remembered her petite, shaking fingers reaching out for me. I remembered her bottom lip quivering, because she was just as afraid as I was.

  I remembered not caring.

  I remembered not caring one goddamn bit.

  The bartender poured Sophie a glass of white wine. I ordered a whiskey, partly because I needed something stronger and partly so that I didn’t have another beer label to anxiously peel off bit by bit.

  Sophie filled the empty silence between us with idle chitchat about her job in t
he city, her father’s retirement, her vacation to the south of France over the past summer. When I’d practically worn out my neck nodding along over-emphatically to everything she said, Sophie finally sighed and slipped her fingers into mine to squeeze my hand.

  “Darren,” she said softly, kindly, “why did you call me here today? Today after all this time?”

  This was the part I was dreading. I didn’t have an answer, at least not a good one. I wasn’t sure why I reached out to Sophie; I wasn’t sure what I wanted from her.

  “If I’m being honest, Sophie,” I said while staring into my nearly empty glass of whiskey, “I don’t really know. I… I…”

  Sophie’s thumb ran alongside the side of my hand as she waited patiently.

  I swallowed heavily and wished it was more whiskey that was traveling down my tightened throat. “I guess I just—it’s just…do you ever, you know…do you ever wonder?”

  I was too ashamed to fully lift my face to her. I expected her to respond with a question of her own: “Do I ever wonder what?” I hadn’t exactly been crystal clear.

  But Sophie smiled softly and reached over to tuck a strand of my dark hair behind my ear the way she used to when we were young and in love and Jaime wasn’t buried beneath a parched plot of earth.

  “I did for a while,” she answered, understanding exactly what I had been trying to ask her. “I think it’s only natural to think what would have been, what we could have been if Jaime hadn’t died.”

  She averted her eyes as she sipped her wine and stared across the empty bar. I knew that look all too well. She wasn’t seeing a dust-covered row of bottles. She was seeing a long hospital corridor. She was seeing a room with an open door. She was seeing a single empty bed.

  It was my turn to squeeze her hand. She took another healthy drink of wine before looking back over at me with those sweet hazel eyes.

  “For a long time I was heartbroken,” Sophie said. “For a long time I was angry. Angry at you. Angry at myself. But most of all—no, I hate to even admit it. No, no, no. It’s almost too terrible to say aloud. I…” Sophie shook her head as her eyes grew just a little bit misty in the dim light. “I shouldn’t say it.”

  I said it for her: “You were angry at Jaime.”

  Sophie’s hand gripping the stem of her wine glass trembled as a tear slipped down her freckled cheek. “I hated that I felt that way. I hated myself for so long for feeling that way toward…”

  Sophie tried to pull her hand from mine, as if she no longer felt she deserved the comfort of my warm skin against hers. But I only held on tighter; I wasn’t going to close the door on her this time.

  “Sophie,” I whispered.

  “I blamed him,” Sophie gasped, her tear-filled eyes meeting mine, our shared pain colliding. “I blamed him for taking you from me. I blamed him for ripping my heart in two with no way to mend the pieces back together. I blamed him for ending forever, my forever.”

  As Sophie swallowed back a sob, I was flooded with bone-breaking waves of guilt for letting her, no, for making her go through this alone. The sound of the door I’d closed on her as she stood alone on the front steps of Ma’s house echoed again and again in my mind. The thud of my feet on the stairs as I walked away from her forever pounded like a base drum between my ears. I wished my heart would stop pounding so terribly so that I wouldn’t hear it any longer: my shame, my guilt, my embarrassment.

  “But Darren,” Sophie said after sucking in a shaky breath, “I know now that Jaime didn’t take anything from me. It took me a long time, a long, long time, but I came to realise that there was nothing there for Jaime to take.”

  I glanced over at Sophie in surprise. She was clearly expecting this because she choked out a small laugh at the expression on my face and squeezed my hand. “Let’s order another round, alright?”

  With more liquid courage in front of us on the sticky bar top, Sophie and I sipped our drinks in silence before she sighed and continued.

  “Darren, I will never regret what we had together,” she said, her eyes dry once again. “You were my first for so many things and I adored you. I adored you. But what we had wasn’t love.”

  I sat next to her at the bar with my fingers wrapped around my glass of whiskey, and her words sank slowly into my heart like an anchor lowered from a ship. Her words descended deeper and deeper till they buried themselves in the sands of my soul. They hit without a sound, but I could feel their weight, heavy and burdensome.

  I’d always believed that Sophie and I were in love back then, terribly and wildly and madly in love. I’d always believed that we were destined to be together. The story I’d always told myself was that it was fate, and fate alone, that ripped us apart.

  I’d never once considered that we weren’t in love in the first place.

  “What happened with Jaime,” Sophie continued, her voice soft and gentle like the first ray of sunshine after a summer rainstorm, “it terrified us. The hole he left in all of our hearts, yours especially, was filled with fear, the most horrible fear possible, I think. We were, all of us, afraid. Afraid…”

  Sophie hastily grabbed her wine glass and raised it to her lips before they betrayed another emotional quiver. I couldn’t blame her. I myself drank in the burn of the whiskey as it slipped down my throat.

  We were afraid, all of us. Our worlds had been shaken; everything we thought we knew had been called into question. We were afraid of the future. We were afraid of a life without Jaime. We were afraid of living a happy life without Jaime. We were afraid of every laugh, every smile, every hug and embrace and clap on the back. We were afraid to go to a rugby match on a Friday night, we were afraid to stay up late drinking beers around the fire, we were afraid to go shopping and cook and sit in traffic and live life. We were afraid to love.

  I was afraid to love.

  Sophie smiled gently at me when I finally looked over at her, the beginnings of a realisation churning in my heart. She searched my face and I thought maybe she could see it. Maybe she could see that I was finally putting the pieces together.

  “They say love conquers fear, right?”

  Her smile turned sad and that sadness pierced my soul. “Darren, what we had didn’t conquer the fear of Jaime’s death. It didn’t conquer the fear of the unknown without him. It didn’t conquer the fear that it was somehow your fault, our fault.”

  “Sophie, I—”

  Sophie placed a finger over my lips to stop me. I was going to try to say that wasn’t true. I was going to insist she was wrong. I was going to try to manufacture some sort of reason why what she was saying wasn’t the God’s honest truth. But with her warm finger against my lips and her kind, sad eyes fixed on mine, I saw clear as day that there was nothing to say.

  “The fear won,” she whispered, voice shaking slightly. “The fear won because no matter what we wanted to believe or what we wanted to tell ourselves…” Sophie paused to steady her breathing. “Look, what we had…I’m not saying we didn’t have anything.” Sophie smiled. “We had feelings for each other. We had excitement and adoration and tenderness. We had something, we did.”

  I thought for a moment we each remembered our time together: forbidden touches in the backseat of my car, secret notes passed in crowded hallways, hidden whispers beneath the covers of her bed before I snuck out the window so her father didn’t catch us together. It was exciting. There was adoration. We were tender.

  And I had thought it was love. For so long, I believed it was love between us. I never considered that it could have been something else.

  Not until that moment there in the bar with Sophie almost ten years later.

  Sophie said the words I’d never have brought myself to admit before. “The fear from Jaime’s death won because it wasn’t love, Darren. Not true love, not real love. Not worth fighting for and being brave for and standing up against the world for love.”

  I stared at Sophie without words as she stared back at me.

  “I’m not saying that if
it had been love between us we wouldn’t have felt fear. Of course we were going to feel fear. But the difference is, and here’s the key, true love would have given us courage. And we had no courage, Darren.”

  Sophie’s hand shook a little as she reached over to cup my cheek gently. Her eyes held mine as she whispered, “Not you. Not me. Not us.”

  I took Sophie’s hand by the wrist and pressed my lips to her palm. My eyes closed for just a brief moment. I drank in the memories of us that I held so terribly close that they were almost sacred to me. In that moment, there was a sort of sadness in my heart.

  For all these years I had thought that I had let her go there on the front steps of Ma’s house the day of Jaime’s funeral. But I knew now that I hadn’t. I never let her go. I held onto the image of her, the hope of her, the beautiful lie of Sophie: that we were destined to be together, that we were made for one another, that we were in love.

  I kissed Sophie’s palm once more and then gently rested her hand back on the bar top. I was finally letting go.

  With this realisation came a certain sense of freedom. It was as if the anchor that held the ship was cut loose. I was bound now to only the wild, crashing waves.

  Where would they take me?

  “I think we’ll both find it one day,” Sophie was saying with a hopeful smile toward me. “Love, I mean. The real thing this time.”

  I nodded somewhat distractedly. My mind was consumed with the image of a distant shore, and upon that distant shore was a flash of bright red hair twisting in the wind.

  “How do you think we’ll know?” I asked Sophie with a sudden sense of urgency. I desperately searched those hazel eyes whose warm, comforting flames I prayed would burn for someone else one day. “How do you think we’ll know when we’ve found it? When we’ve found love? When we’ve found the one we love?”

  Sophie shrugged, finger tracing the lip of her now empty wine glass. “I think we tend to complicate that answer,” she said. “But I think it’s really quite simple.”