by Zara Rivas
"I know exactly what you mean," Dominic said, and we all finally reached the bottom of the staircase and stopped.
"Are we seriously eating in the formal dining room?" I asked, and was disgusted to hear that my voice was almost a whine.
"Yes, we are. You know Logan would never stand for eating around the kitchen island," Nic hissed.
"Where's Blake, anyway? I thought he said he would be here for this."
"It's the middle of the week, he couldn't get away from work," Nic explained.
We made our way through the labyrinth of our house, carefully closing doors behind us and making sure not to make any noise, although this was less out of courtesy for the current other occupant of the house, and more for our own stealth and reluctance to actually go to dinner. I was surprised Nic was going along with this looney tunes-esque method of creeping around, considering he was usually the mature one about things like this. I reminded myself that he was just as disgusted with Logan as I was, and probably more so.
We reached the final door and pushed it open, and Logan sat at the head of the long dining table with a dignified expression on his face. He rose when the door opened, and to his credit when he took in our appearances his expression did not change one bit. He simply waved a hand at the empty seats at the table, laden with dishes, and welcomed us.
"Hello," he said.
"Creative," I muttered, and Nic elbowed me in the ribs.
Chapter Fourteen
Logan sat down again, obviously uncomfortable. Nic steered us towards the empty seats closest to Logan, and Finn jokingly tried to sit at the far opposite end but Nic grabbed hold of his collar and dragged him back. I snorted and sat down next to Finn, who sat next to Logan. I think Nic arranged our seating that way so Finn could act as a buffer between me and my father.
Nic settled in across from us and we all avoided looking at each other. Even Logan seemed to be doing it. He pulled at his tie, loosening it a bit and then picked up a dish, doling some food out onto his plate. He offered it to Finn, who shook his head curtly, and then to me. I stared at him for a second, meeting him eye-to-eye, and finally took it. I carefully spooned some of the green beans onto my plate and passed it back to Finn. Logan noticed the blatant snub Finn had made, but decided to tactfully ignore it.
Logan made a noise in the back of his throat as if he were clearing it, and said, "So, have any of you seen Penelope lately?"
I dropped my head onto the table loudly and groaned. Nic kicked my shin under the table, but I didn't acknowledge it. Of all the things Logan could have asked, he picked that one. Asking about Penelope, our mother, was right up there with him jumping up and down on the table and announcing that he wanted to move back into the house with us.
"No, Logan, we haven't," I said brightly, picking my head up. "Have you?"
He frowned at my tone, picking listlessly at the food on his plate. "Perhaps that wasn't the best question to ask."
"You think?" Finn said.
We toyed uncertainly with our food. Logan cleared his throat again and zeroed in on Finn and me.
"How is all the art coming?"
"It goes."
He sighed, clearly realizing we were going to cut him no slack. The tension in the room was palpable, and I made no move to help. My phone buzzed in my boot (where I'd stored it for safekeeping—the jeans were too tight for them) but I ignored it. I might not give Logan the time of day, but I wasn't going to completely tune out. I wouldn't leave my brothers to fend for themselves when confronted with our father.
Deciding the night wasn't going to get more comfortable anyway, I asked a rather sensitive question of Logan himself.
"Where's Daphne?"
Nic and Finn both looked at him, eyes boring into his. With the three of us giving him our complete attention for the first time all night he seemed disconcerted. My phone buzzed again, but this time it barely even registered in my attention.
"Your sister is fine," Logan said, trying to placate us.
"That wasn't the question," Nic said quietly.
"You know exactly where she is," he sighed.
"Yeah," I said, voice dead. "Not here."
"I thought it would be better for me to visit alone," he tried to explain. "To see you all by myself, and then perhaps bring her at a later time."
"Why wait?" I picked at a noodle with my fork, miserable. "It's clear that this isn't going anywhere good."
"Is this the best I can hope for?" he asked sadly. "I wanted to come see my children, and here you all are, and it's obvious you hate me."
"We don't hate you, Logan," Nic said, although the noise Finn made at this suggested he felt otherwise. I dropped all pretenses of being hungry and tossed my fork in my bowl. It made a noise louder than I'd intended but no one flinched.
"Then what do we do?" Logan said.
"What do you want from us?" I asked, shaking my head.
"I want my family back," he said, "my whole family."
The anger slapped across my gut in a series of hard waves, and I was powerless to hold it back. I didn't want to hold it back.
"Family," I laughed sardonically. "Family doesn't break apart. People in a family don't leave each other when things get tough, Logan. You apparently never got that concept down, though you sure learned the running-away lesson quite well."
"Sloane—"
"No," I bit, "stop. You ran away and you weren't around, so you get to sit here and listen to me now." I stood up, putting my palms flat on the table and staring at him. "Family doesn't leave, Logan, and yeah, you fucked up big. Do you have any idea how many nights we all sat around, trying to convince ourselves that oh, it's just a fluke, he'll walk back in the door with a suitcase and say he had to meet with a doctor or lawyer or something and had to be gone for a while?"
I felt tears burn my eyes but refused to let them fall. Nic and Finn were silent, gravely watching my tirade and probably silently agreeing with every single word of it. Logan sadly kept his eyes on my face, his posture defeated.
"You never came back," I said, and my voice infuriatingly cracked on the last word. "You made your decision. Everything went to shit and you panicked and you left us and that's all there is to it. We were kids, Logan, or at least Finn and I fucking were. Nic's barely older than we are. And you had to go and take Daphne with you. My baby sister. Because oh, the best thing you could have done was take her away from me," I laughed hysterically.
"Blake had to leave this house," I continued, "because he couldn't stand the sight of it. He couldn't stand to be around the house you built for mum, couldn't stand to remember what you did to us. And you know what? We didn't blame him like we blame you, because he still visited. Wrote. Called. If I wanted to find him right now, I could in about thirty seconds. You? You're the invisible-fucking-man."
He knew every word I said was true, and he didn't refute any of it. I was wearing down, running out of things to say, because I wasn't going to repeat myself and I wanted him to think about it.
"Sloane," he repeated quietly. "I know it's probably not conventional of me to say this—we're Lexingtons, so I suppose conventional doesn't run in the family anyway—but I know I fucked up."
I stopped short at that. I didn't even try to interrupt him. Finn looked at Logan in blatant shock.
"I know I've been gone for years, and really have no right to just show up unexpectedly, but…I want to be here." His inflection didn't change but some force surged up behind them, and it sounded a hell of a lot like regret.
I shook my head. "If you want to be here, Logan, you can't do it like this. You can't just sit here and expect hugs and tears and reconciliations in a split second."
"What do you want me to do?" he spread his hands wide.
"You have to start listening," I said softly.
"I am listening."
"No, you're not," I sighed. "You already know what I want, Logan, you just can't see it."
"Anything."
"Daphne, Logan. Bring Daphne here.
"
"I don't think that's—"
I wound my way around the chair and walked straight out of the room. I didn't care if anyone followed me—I didn't care if it was Logan, or one of my brothers trying to comfort me. I was angry enough that I didn't need comforting, and had enough blood boiling in my veins that I had to keep moving, so I pulled my phone out of my boot on my way up the stairs and flicked it open.
The messages were both from Sinclair.
beat poet night at savant, you in?
and right after it,
oh right, family dinner. never mind.
I quickly texted him back; the messages were only about twenty minutes old so there was still a chance I might be able to go with him.
Nope, all free now. Early dinner. You left yet?
I tucked my phone into my fist and tossed my bedroom door open, rummaging around quickly on my desk for my car keys. Snatching up my purse and making sure I had my wallet, I didn't bother to look at anything else in my room as I flicked the light back off and shut my door again. I met Finn on the way down the stairs, and he looked completely unsurprised to see the keys jingling in my hands.
"I'm going out," I said abruptly, and he nodded.
I climbed in my car and jiggled my keys with the extra energy coursing through me, and even though I'd only been to my destination once, I still executed every turn perfectly. I hadn't bothered checking my phone to see if he'd replied to my message.
I pulled up in front of Sinclair's house and he was already out front, leaning against one of the columns and grinning at me.
"Nice shirt, Lexington," he drawled, looking me over.
"Glad you like it, I wore it just for you," I said, smirking at him.
oOoOo
Savant was completely different that night than the first time we'd been there together. Instead of the completely quiet, relaxed atmosphere, there was a hum of energy in the air and the entire place had been transformed. Christmas lights lit up the entire place, the normal lights were down low, and couches, big chairs and bean bag chairs were brought in and were arranged randomly across the ground floor. Upstairs it sounded like some sort of party was going on, and I could feel the beat through the floors.
Sinclair managed to maneuver us to where we could have one of the smaller couches to ourselves, despite the crowd spilling out of the place.
A few of the poets really rocked, but some were mediocre, and during one of those performances we started wandering around the place and eventually went to investigate the source of the noise upstairs. It turned out to be a birthday party for some chick, and they were being very lax about carding, so we grabbed a couple of drinks and just worked our way through the room.
"No one seems to care that they don't know us," I said into Sinclair's ear.
"What?" he asked loudly over the noise. I repeated it. An extremely drunk girl sauntered up to Sinclair and tried to dance with him, and he shook her off but she didn't get the hint. He disentangled himself with a grimace, gestured towards a sliding-glass door at the end of the room, and we stepped outside. There were a few people here and there at wrought-iron high-topped tables, and we sat down at one of them and watched the traffic slowly drive by.
"Why did you do it?" I asked abruptly. I deliberately cut off after that, wanting him to ask me what I meant.
He glanced at me sideways, lighting a cigarette, but asked the obvious question nonetheless.
"Do what?"
"Spend the night."
"Why did you freak out at a small almost-accident?" he countered, blowing smoke out of his mouth. The small breeze caught it and blew it in my face. Xavier noticed this and angled his chair so it was closer to mine, but less likely to end up with cigarette smoke in my face.
"Touche," I said. I didn't feel like answering that one just yet.
"No answer?"
"Not yet."
"But you have one." He watched me.
"Of course." I inclined my head.
"I don't know what was wrong, Lexington, but I wouldn't have left you there. You were terrified."
A waitress came out and asked us if we wanted anything. I asked for a soda and Sinclair ordered some appetizers, and she breezed off again. We sat in silence for a while, watching the last of the dusk disappear and the city lights come to life.
"I woke up sometime this morning," I started, and stopped. I didn't quite know how to continue.
"Yes, I know. Your brothers were in rare form when I got up after you."
"No, I meant last-night this morning. That sounded confusing. I mean, I woke up in the early hours of the morning. Maybe around three or four or something."
"And?" Xavier leaned back in his chair, tapping the cigarette ashes on the ground but careful to keep them away from my boots.
I rested my forearms on the table. It was a cool touch, and I relaxed a little bit. I ducked my head to look at him and he still looked curious but unconcerned.
"You were talking. Murmuring. You were running your fingers through my hair like you did when you tried to get me to sleep. All I remember you saying, though, is 'other end of this'." I scrutinized him for a reaction. He stilled a little bit, but quickly brushed off the reaction and looked me dead in the eye.
"I must've been tired," he said nonchalantly, taking a drag of his cigarette.
I hid my disappointment well, or so I thought. "Right."
The waitress came by just then and set our drinks down on the table, along with the first appetizer. I grabbed a cheese stick and pulled a piece off daintily, staring at it before popping it in my mouth.
"Believe me, Lexington. You wouldn't want to know what that was about," Sinclair said finally.
"What if I did?" I said, slightly annoyed that he would judge for me what I would and wouldn't want to hear.
"Then I would tell you."
"Just like that?" I asked, surprised. I brushed the crumbs off my hand with a napkin and set it down, not really hungry. Parental dinners tended to drain my appetite. Sinclair looked acutely uncomfortable.
"Not right away. But I would tell you eventually."
"Okay," I said. "I want to know."
"Just like I want to know what your whole deal is. I don't know what you're afraid of," he said softly, "but it's not going to scare me away."
"That's a dangerous thing to say, Sinclair," I warned. "I could dig up a few things about me that might freak you out."
"Not likely," he muttered darkly. I raised a curious eyebrow. He grinned at me and didn't say anything. Somebody slid open the glass door to the upper level and the raucous party sounds followed them out. They slowly disappeared again as the door shut, and I glanced over at the door.
"Some drunk girl is dancing on a table," I remarked.
"Is she now," Sinclair said, lazily blowing smoke.
"She's not very good," I said. "I've done better drunken tabledances than that."
"Now that," he said, "would have been something I would liked to have seen."
oOoOo
Xavier texted Emma before he and Sloane left Savant, and she said she was going out with Dominic that night, so they both decided to go back to his house and hang out.
"Where are your parents?" Sloane asked, as she hopped off the motorcycle and patted her own car affectionately. Xavier took the motorcycle helmet from her and attached it to the bike while she watched intently.
"They're out on business again, I think. I don't really know."
"You don't know?" she asked, surprised. "How could you—" A strange look crossed her face and she shook her head before shutting up. Xavier decided not to comment.
He unlocked the front door and flicked on the foyer light, closing the door behind them. The lock, when it clicked, echoed across the space and he frowned.
"Well that was reminiscent of a horror movie," Sloane joked. She set her coat down on a side table and Xavier started winding his way through the house, headed for his room.
"Yeah, it really was. So what do you want to do?
"
"I don't know," Sloane said vaguely. She got a text message and glanced at her phone. She shook her head at it, nearly running headlong into a protruding light fixture because she wasn't paying attention to where she was going. Sinclair's hand wrapped around her upper arm and he jerked her out of the way just in time.