I could live with the ribbing. But I’m not sure I’ll survive Sloane’s attitude about the whole thing, because she’s getting texts about it too. And even though she knows there’s nothing to it—even though she was there for most of it—she’s absolutely livid.
We arrive at Diamond Head with Sloane’s considerable intellect focused entirely on the question of whether I’m aware of my brother’s girlfriend. It seems a little unfair, as Drew currently comprises twenty percent of the people on this trip. It would be almost sociopathic for me to not notice, but apparently if Drew is surrounded by a crowd of jackals pulling at her clothes and her hair and commenting on her weight, I’m just supposed to ignore it. Someone can say aren’t you going to rehab and someone else can say I thought you’d be thinner and I’m supposed to be sitting there on my damn phone, reading an article about the Greek debt crisis or checking out reviews of the restaurant we’re eating at tonight.
I did almost nothing to extricate Drew from the situation, but Sloane was still irritated.
Look who’s suddenly Sir Lancelot, she said under her breath.
So for ten minutes I have marched forward, determined to salvage a situation I didn’t put myself in in the first place, and when I finally stop I find my parents approaching.
Alone.
“Where’s Drew?” I bark, and I know I sound far too angry and invested, but I can’t help it.
My mother blinks. Just once. A tiny processing of something and discarding it. “Poor thing,” she says. “She saw those crowds coming down and panicked. She said she couldn’t do this.”
“And you just let her go?” I ask.
My father raises his brow. He’s a quiet man, but I know what that look means: Watch your tone. As if he has a leg to stand on where treatment of my mother is concerned.
“She said she was fine,” my mom argues.
What am I supposed to do at this point? I’ve got three adults who think I’m overreacting, and maybe I am. But if it was up to me, I’d be going right down the path after her.
We finish the miserable climb—the summit is closed so there’s really only one decent view to speak of—and return to the hotel.
I shower and leave for the pool, praying I find Drew there since she wasn’t in her room. I’m approaching the elevator when the doors open and a woman walks off, the kind of woman who makes the whole world go silent for a half second. She’s got the cheekbones of a supermodel, curves, and a body made up of at least 70% long bare legs, encased in tiny shorts.
It’s only when her face lifts up from her phone and I see her eyes—the softest, most luminous brown God ever created—that I realize it’s Drew.
Her hair reaches her collarbone now, and it’s a darker blonde. She was beautiful before—in the way of a priceless object you’d stand in line to see. Now she’s beautiful in the way of something you didn’t expect to find, something you’ve chanced upon and know will change your life. “You cut your hair.”
Her smile has a brittle, uncertain edge. “Your keen powers of observation never fail to astonish.”
“It’s nice,” I tell her, and it seems like too much and not enough all at once. “You look…I mean…it suits you.”
“Oh,” she says, and she swallows as if she’s about to cry. “Thank you.”
It’s only as she turns to walk away that I realize she expected me to say something shitty. That she was already hunching her shoulders like a boxer entering a ring, because she fully expects the world to hurt her all the fucking time.
I’d probably have panic attacks, too, if I had to live like that.
16
DREW
I stare in the mirror for a long time after I see Josh in the hall.
I barely recognize myself, yet I also look like me again, like the girl I once knew, the one who had plans for herself before they all got co-opted. Davis is going to have a fit. Everyone will have a fit. I care, but not as much as I thought.
I think about the look on Josh’s face, the way he said I like it, and feel the oddest thing in my chest unfurling. I look in the mirror to discover I’m crying and smiling at the same time.
I’m getting ready to meet the Baileys to watch the sunset when Sandra calls. She is married to my stepbrother, Richard, and has a stick up her ass even larger and longer than his.
“I’m hosting a small dinner to celebrate Steven and Maria’s anniversary,” she tells me. She sounds fatigued, as if the words are being dragged from her unwillingly. “Can you be in New York the weekend of February 18th?”
I want to say no, because I don’t want to celebrate their fucking anniversary and because every visit with my family winds up hurting. But every visit also offers a chance at redemption. The childish part of me thinks Maybe this will be the time they’re okay with me, when I’m not the brunt of the joke, not the part of the family they look on with distaste. And it never works, which is probably why it always hurts in the end.
“I’ll have to check with my team, but I’ll try.”
“Great,” she says, though her tone implies the opposite. “I’d really appreciate it if you’d try to stay sober this time.”
Her words flip a switch inside me, one I’m always about to flip when dealing with my family. The fury is almost instantaneous. “And I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t act like a raging cunt,” I reply, “but we can’t always get our way.”
I enjoy her shocked silence for only half a second before my stomach sinks. I took it too far, the way I always do. My family keeps a bucket labeled terrible things Drew has done and I’ve just added to it. I can’t seem to stop.
“You know,” she says between her teeth, in that voice she uses when her rage is glittering and lethal, “I try so hard for your family while you don’t lift a finger and yet when I try to include you, this is how you behave. You push everyone away. Don’t be surprised if we just stop trying, Drew.”
She hangs up—to go complain to Richard, I’m sure—and I sit here with the phone, feeling ashamed and pissed off at once.
Not two seconds later, my stepbrother’s text arrives. They’re so unbelievably predictable.
Richard: Did you seriously just call my wife a cunt because she invited you to dinner?
Of course that’s how the conversation was relayed. I invited Drew to your parents’ dinner and she called me a raging cunt. Like that’s a normal order of events—polite invitation met with profanity and nothing occurring between the two.
Me: No, I asked if she could not act like one DURING the dinner. Very different.
I laugh at my response, knowing I’m only making things worse. But honestly, how much worse could they be?
Richard: If you ever use that word with my wife again, we’re done.
Me: Done with what? All those heartfelt talks we have? I can live without the humblebrag Christmas card your wife sends every year, believe me.
Richard: You know what? Don’t come to the party. You’d just ruin it anyway.
I wish that it would all just end here, but it won’t. Richard will complain to my stepfather, Steven, who will complain to my mother, who will call me to tell me how wrong I was. This has been the pattern since we moved into Steven’s upper east side apartment when I was nine. Richard was in college at that point but would come home on weekends, seething over nothing at all—because he thought I’d looked at his phone, or drunk his Gatorade, or swiped his charge cord. And my mother always took their side. Never once did she suggest that Richard was a spoiled, petty asshole who’d gotten a far better deal than I had. Never, not once, did she say I’m sorry I ruined our family. I’m sorry I did this to you. But why would she? She wasn’t sorry, and it was so much easier just to blame it all on me.
It still is. That’s how I know she’ll call, and I’m already bracing myself for how much it will hurt when she does.
17
DREW
January 26th
“Tell me something real, Drew,” Josh says quietly, staring straight
ahead.
The Baileys leave tomorrow for Lanai, and since Six promised last night he’d have his passport back today, I guess I’ll be going with them. I’m not sure what happens to our morning runs and cappuccinos at sunrise once Six is around. Maybe it would have stopped anyway, but I doubt it. Josh and I have both adjusted to the time change and yet here we are, after all.
I turn to look at him, at that perfect, sharp jawline, that luscious lower lip. God, he could really have anyone he wanted.
“Something real…The sky is blue?” I reply. “This sunrise is okay? I’m not sure what you’re looking for from me here.”
“Tell me something no one else knows,” he says. “You could tell me how you got that scar on your nose, for instance.”
I nod. “There was this hurricane, and sharks were whipped up into the air, so suddenly it’s raining sharks and…”
His smile is soft. “Fine, you choose the thing.” And then he looks at me in a way that makes it impossible to lie and evade, difficult to breathe. I reflexively reach toward my pocket to make sure my inhaler is still there. It’s as if, in this moment, he’s capable of peering beyond my skin, past corneas and what everyone else sees, and finding my soul.
“I hate Naked,” I tell him. He raises a brow, forcing me to remember that Josh is a robot and probably only listens to classical music, and only then because he’s heard it’s associated with improved limbic activity or similar boring bullshit. “It’s my best known song. I—”
He laughs. A real laugh. “I’ve heard your song. You don’t need to explain it to me. Sometimes it’s like you think I live in a cave.”
“Morgue,” I correct. “Or robot storage facility. So anyway, there’s my thing no one else knows, my deep dark secret. I fucking hate that song. I didn’t want it on the first album, but I let it go because I didn’t want to piss off the label, and it turns out they were right and I was wrong. So maybe I don’t know anything. I have to sing it at the encore and every time it’s a little harder.”
And occasionally I have to sing it and I have a panic attack instead.
“If it’s any consolation,” he offers, “I hate that song too.”
I laugh. “God, you’re such a dick. Now you tell me something. Something no one else knows.”
His mouth quirks up. “I’m a robot, remember? It’s all on the surface.”
I suspect that none of it, not a single thing, is on the surface. I’d like to pry his brain open and look at the contents if it wasn’t going to be one hundred percent fatal. “Fine, see if I tell you anything from now on.”
He’s silent for a moment. He takes a sip of his cappuccino, swallows, and turns to me. “I didn’t want to come on this trip. In fact, a part of me didn’t want to come home at all.”
“Why?”
He tugs his lush lower lip between his teeth. “It’s hard for me to be around my father…he doesn’t treat my mother the way he should.”
I glance at him, waiting for more, but it doesn’t come. I assume Jim is cheating, and it’s easy enough to believe, probably because there’s something restless in him that reminds me a bit of his son—not Josh but the one I’m ostensibly here to reunite with.
“Just being home is hard too,” he says instead. “It’s hard seeing how much better life is for everyone. All the stuff…” He waves his hands.
“The American excess?” I ask, mocking Sloane’s disdainful tone.
He laughs. “Jesus, you can hold a grudge. But yes, the excess. Not just America, but everywhere. All the food and the services and the stores and the money everywhere you look, and how oblivious people are to it. But then it stops being so shocking after a few days. And I get used to the food and good internet and having five hundred channels and a soft bed. I get used to life being so easy. And that’s right around the time I have to go back and get used to not having it.”
I sigh. “I’m sorry. Why haven’t you told your mom?”
His head turns, resting against the back of the chaise lounge to face me. His lips curve into a wistful smile. “Because she’s my mom. She wants to make me happy. She wants to baby me. I can’t take that away from her.”
Then don’t go back, I think. Let someone else go. But I don’t say it aloud, because it would sound like the plea of someone who cares and I really don’t. I’ll have forgotten all about Josh in a week.
Our cappuccinos are gone, the warmth has seeped out of the towels, the sun is full in the sky, and the first guests have started to filter downstairs toward the buffet, but neither of us move to go anywhere. My eyes close and I don’t realize I’m humming until Josh asks what it is.
I shrug. “I don’t know. Just a song I’m working out in my head.”
“I didn’t realize you wrote your own stuff.”
“I don’t,” I reply. “Well, I don’t record it. I started off wanting to go in a different direction, but then I discovered that it’s more fun to be able to eat and pay rent.”
“I like it,” he says. “Better than Naked, even, symphonic masterpiece that it is.”
I laugh, unwillingly. Maybe I won’t have forgotten him in a week, after all.
We turn to walk back to the elevators. My eyes drift to the displays, to the white dress, and Josh elbows me.
“You stare at that every morning,” he says softly. There’s a sweetness to his voice. “Why don’t you get it?”
I didn’t entirely realize I’d been staring at the dress, which is long and loose and has delicate little ties at the shoulders to hold it up, and I guess I do like it, but I shake my head. It’s way too innocent for me. Too virginal, too girlish. I’d feel like I was playing a part. Here I am dressed as a girl Josh would date. I have a medical degree but I’m not a shrew like Sloane. I’ll probably quit my practice to give birth to all his children sometime soon. I would never call my sister-in-law a raging cunt.
I guess I’ve thought about this dress more than I realized.
“It’s just not me,” I tell him. “I’d feel silly.”
His teeth sink into his lip. “It looks like you to me.”
I smile at him and my heart gives a weird little kick when he smiles back. Josh sometimes makes me feel like I still have the ability to change everything.
I am strangely ebullient, practically floating, as I enter my room—where a pile of luggage and two guitars sit in the middle of the floor.
“Surprise!” says Six, crossing the room and pulling me into his heavily-tattooed arms.
“Wow,” I say. “You’re here!” Somehow I can’t quite inject enough volume, enough joy, into my voice.
He pulls back, holding my face in his hands, observing me. “Babe, what the fuck did you do to your hair?” he asks.
And I fall from that cloud I was on and land right back on earth with a sharp, unpleasant splat.
“Come here,” he says, lying across the bed and holding out his arms. I’ve always liked how easy it is for Six to be affectionate, but now I think it’s simply that it’s so meaningless for him. I feel awkward as I slide onto the bed and put my head on his chest.
His lips press to my forehead and then he pulls back just enough to seek my mouth. “I’ve missed you,” he says. “I’m so glad you stayed.”
He kisses me and then rolls me onto my back, using a knee to push one of my thighs out of the way. There was a time when I’d have gone along with it, but today it feels as if my limbs have turned to metal, as if there’s a cage encircling my chest. I don’t want this. The moment I think it, I panic a little, as if it’s already gone too far. “Six,” I say, pushing against his chest. “Stop.”
His laughter is silent, a huff of air against my neck. “Babe, come on. Is this about the stupid rule?”
No, but also…it’s not not about the rule. I mean, he agreed willingly when he was trying to get me on this trip. I told him I wasn’t coming along as his fuck buddy. “You agreed,” I say, trying to push him off me. He’s impossibly heavy and doesn’t budge. “Are you already reneging th
e minute you get here?”
He gives an exasperated exhale and rolls off me. “It’s five days into the trip,” he argues, “and you said we’d see how it went.”
“You haven’t been here,” I reply stiffly, climbing from the bed. “Three FaceTime calls aren’t what I meant when I said we’d spend time together and reassess.”
He climbs off the bed. “Fine,” he says a little sullenly. “Whatever. We’ll spend time together.”
He’s only been here a few minutes and I’m starting to wish he hadn’t come.
The entire family takes a pool day at last. Beth is so thrilled to see Six she can hardly remain in her seat. She keeps tearing up and saying I’m so happy you made it, as if this is the only vacation they’ve ever had together. But every time Josh looks at his brother I see signs of strain, and Sloane—watching it happen—is just as unhappy. I still don’t understand what Josh meant the other day about me being the glue, but it’s clear Six isn’t. If the Bailey family was spinning out a little, Six’s arrival has only increased the speed of it.
Once the excitement diminishes, Jim goes back to talking exclusively to Josh, and Beth’s conversation with Six takes on a frenzied quality, as if she’s trying to distract a toddler from crying for a lost toy and knows she can’t quite succeed.
Josh finally gets up and goes to the pool alone. I suspect it’s simply to get a break from his father. I’m still watching as he climbs the ladder to get back out, sun glinting off those nice broad shoulders, dripping over his perfectly flat stomach. His swim trunks are hanging low and I find myself riveted by that trail of hair below his belly button, by the pale skin beneath his tan line and the hint of a tattoo just to the left of his hip. I picture dragging the trunks slightly lower to get a better view and suddenly I have goosebumps in eighty-degree weather.
The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea Page 7