by Sophie Swift
That sounds innocent, right?
That doesn’t imply anything, right?
I’m suddenly distrustful of every word that comes out of my mouth, convinced that each one will be dripping with subtext and innuendo and she’ll immediately be able to hear it. Be able to see the disloyalty on my face. Smell it on my body.
Oh fuck, I didn’t shower last night.
Is it possible? Could the scent of Lia still linger on my skin? On my fingertips? In my mouth?
I immediately start scrubbing my teeth harder. So fast and vigorously that when I spit a few moments later, I see blood in the sink. I lunge for the faucet and wash it down with a blast of cold water.
God, this is stressful. How do all those cheaters do this?
No, I scold myself.
You are not a cheater. It was one time. It won’t happen again.
You are not one of those men.
“Why didn’t you sleep well?” Alex garbles through her toothbrush.
I rinse my mouth with water and dry it with a towel. My head is spinning. My heart is hammering. I didn’t think talking to her this morning would be so difficult. I force out a shrug, hoping it looks natural and not like the freakish shoulder spasm that I feel.
Be cool.
Stay calm.
“Don’t know,” I say. “Guess I just have a lot on my mind.”
Like Lia’s round breasts. Lia’s soft, perfect skin.. The warm inside of Lia’s mouth.
STOP!
I glance in the mirror and notice that one eyebrow is twitching. I rub it furiously.
“I know what you mean,” she mumbles, seemingly oblivious to my face spasms. She spits into the sink. “This wedding shit is complicated.”
She rinses, dries her mouth, and then wraps her arms around my waist. Her touch feels foreign. Wrong. Like the awkwardness of a lap dance you didn’t want but that your friends insisted on buying for you.
I force myself to reciprocate. Encircling her slender body and kissing the top of her head as she rests it on my bare chest.
“You know,” she goes on, “I always thought I’d be one of those brides who didn’t care. Who was just like, whatever, do what you want, just make sure there’s good lighting on me.” She laughs.
I laugh, too. It sounds like a fucking stuttering chipmunk.
“But now that I’m in it—like actually planning it—I realize what all those brides make such a big fuss over. You really just want it to be perfect. And after all we’ve been through, I feel like we deserve the perfect wedding. Don’t you?”
“Mmm hmm,” I agree, trying my best to sound earnest.
“We have been through a lot.”
“Mmm hmm.”
“I mean, high school and college, what a roller-coaster, right?” she chuckles into my chest, her breath tickling my skin.
“Right.” I agree, mustering up a chuckle of my own.
She tilts her chin so that she can peer up at me. I don’t want to look into her eyes. I don’t want to see those beautiful blue irises that I’ve fallen in love with over and over again. It’s too intimate. I can’t do it, knowing that I betrayed her only a few hours ago. Knowing that I liked it.
Yes. There it is.
The truth.
The nervous, fluttering energy bouncing around inside me right now is more than just guilt. It’s something else.
Something I can’t identify.
But I know I have to look at her. I can’t avoid her face for the rest of my life.
So I gaze down and our eyes lock. The connection is made. The one that’s kept us together for so many years.
It’s that spell that Alex has over me. It’s housed in her eyes. It radiates from her pupils. A thin wisp of magic that spins and twirls in the air, wrapping itself around me, pulling me in, holding me there, making me forget everything else but her.
I’ve never been able to resist it.
I’ve never wanted to.
Alex is the kind of girl who makes you feel like life is an amusement park ride. A series of thrills that only get bigger and better as time goes on. She has the kind of sexiness that men lust after in magazines. That turns heads in the subway. That inspires other women to diet and go to the gym. And every head she turns, every lusting glance she invites, makes me feel like fucking James Bond.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” she says to me, her mouth inches away from mine.
You can’t kiss her. You can’t kiss her.
Not when your lips were wrapped around her sister’s nipple less than ten hours ago.
I swallow. “What is?”
“The calm,” she clarifies, her voice unusually sweet and demure. “The peace and quiet. I mean, we used to be…” her eyes widen as she makes an explosion sound with her mouth, “like two tornadoes colliding.”
I want to correct her. To tell her that she was the tornado. I was just the innocent house—cemented to the ground—that couldn’t get out of the way.
But I just laugh and nod.
“But now, I don’t know. We’ve both changed so much. We’ve both grown up. It’s like we were meant to be apart for those four years. So we could find ourselves and then find our way back to each other. You know?”
A lump forms in my throat.
I do know.
It’s exactly how I felt when I saw her on the street that day in New York. She was wearing a white sundress that showed off her long, shapely legs and billowed around her as she walked. She glided breezily down the sidewalk like some kind of commercial for women’s razors. Her skin glowed. Her eyes twinkled. Her hair bounced and glistened in the sun.
She looked radiant.
I remember watching how willingly people stepped aside for her. A queen in everything but title. I remember marveling at the how easily her luminosity transferred. From high school hallways to college quads to the mean, gritty streets of New York City. She brightened all of them. And still, four years later, perfect strangers were in awe of her.
Then she saw me, her eyes found mine. And she slowed to a stop.
Everything did.
The sun, the crowd, the planets.
They all sputtered and stalled. Like tiny wind-up toys that had simply run out of rotations.
And when her lips curved into that coy smile—the very one that melted me the first time I saw her—I was done. It was over.
The four years we had put between us shriveled up into nothing.
The spark that had kept us bound together through so many battles shot across that New York sidewalk like a bullet. It entered my chest. It zapped the life right out of me and replaced it with a new one.
A better one.
A life with Alex in it.
“Yes,” I tell her now, in the small shared bathroom of her childhood home. “I know.”
She breathes out a sigh. “I’m so glad to be done with all that high school drama.” Then she stands on her tiptoes and presses her lips lightly against mine.
At first I freeze, afraid of her kiss. Of what her mouth will find.
Remnants of her sister? Traces of something unfamiliar?
But it doesn’t.
And the kiss is so light, so tender, it’s almost as though it’s not Alex at all. But some strange, alien version of her. Alex doesn’t do light. She doesn’t do tender.
Alex does fierce. She does passionate. She does lustful.
I wrap my arms tighter around her waist, pulling her into me. She moans softly and the kiss intensifies.
She pulls away long enough to drag a fingertip down my chest, her demure eyes never leaving mine. Her fingers play at the hem of my pajamas, pulling, circling, teasing.
“Alex,” I warn, glancing toward the closed door that leads into Lia’s room. “Not in here—”
But then her hand slips beneath my waistband and she takes me into her palm, gripping the words right out of me.
My thoughts ping-pong back and forth.
If you stop it, she’ll grow suspicious.
If
you don’t stop it, you’re an asshole.
Her warm, confident touch instantly hardens me. Her gentle strokes make it impossible to think. Impossible to breathe. I tip my head back and let out a quiet sigh.
I can’t do this.
I have to pull away.
This is wrong.
No.
No.
NO.
But as she sinks to her knees, drawing my pants down with her, and wraps her mouth around me, I have only one thought left in my brain.
Oh fuck yes.
I wake up Sunday morning feeling determined. Today will be a good day. Today will be the day I finally move on from Grayson Walker. Because let’s face it, what other choice do I have? The man is going to be my brother-in-law. I can’t realistically go on pining after him forever. Talk about a wasted life.
La Bella Vita isn’t open until dinner so I have the whole day to myself. I’m going to take a nice hot shower, make myself a big cup of coffee, get out my sketchbook, and just enjoy a nice leisurely morning of drawing.
Then later this afternoon I’m going to practice making some of the dishes on the menu that I can’t seem to get right. No matter what I do, they never quite taste like my mother’s. Even though I follow her recipes to the letter. I thought today I’d compare her recipes to some popular ones online and see if I can’t figure out what’s missing. Perhaps she left out secret ingredients so no one would copy them.
I stretch and get out of bed. I eye my powered-down phone on the dresser, wondering if Grayson ever texted me back last night.
No, I tell myself.
No Grayson.
I leave the phone where it is and, yawning, walk to the bathroom. I yank on the handle and pull it toward me.
I hear the gasp first. Followed by the jostling of fabric. And then a deep, slightly-accented voice yelling, “Oh, shit.”
There’s still sleep in my eyes and cobwebs in my brain so it takes a moment to compute what I’m seeing. But then my vision clears. And my heart leaps into my throat.
Alex is on her knees, wiping her mouth daintily with her fingertip. Grayson has his back turned to me, hunched over slightly, struggling to pull his pajama bottoms over his perfectly sculpted ass.
I let out an involuntary yelp.
I can’t help it. It just flies from my mouth all on its own. I’m partly blinded by what’s going on before me. And completely paralyzed. Which is unfortunate because all I really want to do is bolt. Run and never stop running. But my feet are cemented to the floor.
Alex lets out a soft giggle and pulls herself to her feet. “You’re supposed to knock, Lia,” she says, looking only slightly embarrassed.
My tongue feels heavy and swollen in my mouth but I manage to babble out, “And you’re supposed to lock this side of the door!”
Alex smiles coyly. “Oops.”
She smoothes down the top of her hair which has obviously been tousled by Grayson’s grappling hands.
Grayson has finally managed to get his pants back on. When he turns around, there’s a stricken look on his face. A panic in his eyes. And then, when our gazes meet, it’s quickly replaced by a flash of remorse.
The sickness hits me next. It rises up in my stomach, threatening to spill over. I eye the toilet but obviously it’s inside the bathroom. And I’m certainly not going in there. I stumble backward, slamming the door behind me. I collapse onto my bed, forcing myself to take deep breaths.
In. Out. In. Out.
The nausea eventually subsides.
I can hear voices behind the door.
“How was I supposed to know she would walk in?” That was Alex. She sounds aggravated.
Grayson speaks next. His voice is more subdued. Quieter. It doesn’t penetrate the wood so I can’t make out what he’s saying. It’s just soft incomprehensible mumbles.
“Well, it’s not like I planned to give you head,” Alex replies. “If you remember, it was kind of a spontaneous thing.”
A pause. More low rumbles from Grayson.
Then Alex bellows, “Don’t tell me to be quiet! I’m not like you! I can’t turn off my emotions or have silent, controlled orgasms. I don’t come like a robot. I feel things.”
I can’t take this. I can’t listen anymore.
I slide my feet into my flip-flops, throw open my bedroom door, and hurry down the stairs. My dad is sipping coffee at the kitchen counter, reading the newspaper. I stop and turn my ear toward the stairs, praying he can’t hear what Alex is shouting.
Fortunately, it’s all clear down here.
I pour myself a cup of coffee, stir in some cream and sugar, and sit down at the table next to my dad.
“Morning,” he says, looking up from his paper to give me a smile. I pull my knees to my chest and lean back in the chair, sipping the coffee slowly. It takes a moment, but eventually the aroma and caffeine and silence start to calm my throbbing chest. My tightly bound nerves unravel and I feel myself relax.
Now, if only I can erase that image from my mind.
Alex on her knees, dabbing at her mouth. Grayson fumbling to cover himself, looking at me with those soulful eyes. Like he was sorry.
Pshh.
Yeah, right.
Sorry I walked in on it. Sorry I had to see my sister pleasuring him only a few hours after we practically tore each other’s clothes off in this very kitchen. I glance over my shoulder at the kitchen island, still able to feel the cold marble against my bare back and Grayson’s hungry palm, chilled from the ice cubes, gliding down my chest.
Ugh.
My legs begin to grow hot and I force myself to turn back around. It’s starting to feel like no room in this house is safe anymore.
I take a deep breath and another sip of coffee.
Dad glances up, peering at me over the top of his reading glasses. “You okay, Li?”
I grumble out a yes.
“Trouble at the restaurant?” he guesses.
I almost smile. My sweet, old dad. So naïve. So oblivious. Thank God I’ve been able to keep this drama from him all these years. All he needs is to know that his precious little girl has been having secret sex fantasies about his future son-in-law for almost half of her life.
I nod. “Yes. I just can’t seem to figure out why no one shows up anymore. When Mom ran it, it was booming. I haven’t changed a thing!”
He smiles hurriedly and then looks back down at his newspaper. I immediately feel bad. I know better than to mention my mom. I shouldn’t have done that. Especially now that’s he just starting to get over her. Nearly a year later.
And when I say “over her” I mean, I no longer come home from the restaurant to find him sitting at the dining room table, staring at her empty chair. He no longer scours the credit card statements, searching for clues as to what she might be doing.
No longer cries himself to sleep at night.
Maybe someday I’ll actually be able to convince him to pack the clothes she left behind into boxes. Or cancel her magazine subscriptions. Or erase her username from the computer.
But I’ve learned that recovery is relative. There’s no timetable for something like this. People don’t move on until they move on.
With my dad, I take what I can get.
Of course, Alex wasn’t around for any of it. She couldn’t even be inside this house after it happened. So I was forced to take care of our father by myself while Alex hid out in the Big Apple, going to her glamorous parties, dressing in her designer outfits, drinking her one-hundred-dollar-a-bottle glasses of champagne.
I lean forward and flip through the pile of newspaper sections that my dad has removed and stacked neatly to the side. Entertainment. Food. The Arts.
My hand slows as I realize that these are all the sections my mom used to read.
He’s still separating them into a pile for her, just like he used to.
I glance uneasily at my father, who’s engrossed in the sports section, wondering if he’s been doing it on purpose or just out of habit. I suppose
some habits are pretty hard to break after twenty-seven years of marriage.
I wipe the pitying look off my face before he sees it and push the newspaper stack away from me. I’m about to stand up to take my coffee outside when I hear footsteps on the stairs.
Alex emerges from the hallway, looking stunning in a strapless brown-and-white-striped romper and wedge heels. Her long golden brown hair is still slightly damp, ready to dry in perfect silky waves down her back after only a few quick scrunches of her fingertips.
When I see that Grayson is not following her, I let out a breath that I didn’t even know I was holding.
“Lia,” she says, pouring herself a cup of coffee and leaning against the counter. “Can I ask you a favor?”
I almost do a double take.
Ask me a favor?
Since when does Alex ask for anything? She usually just demands. And it’s never considered a “favor” on Planet Alex. It’s always a duty.
“Uh, sure?” I respond uncertainly.
She casts a hesitant glance toward our father, and then back at me. “I was hoping you would go with me today.”
“For what?”
My dad looks up interestedly from his newspaper.
Alex sips. “Um, you know, just wedding dress shopping.”
The knot forms almost instantly in my stomach.
Shit.
I really don’t think I can do that. I know I should do that. After all, it’s my sisterly obligation and everything, but seriously? Wedding dress shopping? After her fiancé’s tongue was in my mouth?
But of course, Alex doesn’t know that.
And so therefore, I have to act like it never happened.
Just like I promised I would do.
“Uh, I don’t know,” I fumble, trying to come up with a good excuse without sounding unsupportive. “I have…you know…things to do today.”
She bites her lip, looking very uncharacteristically anxious. Then her gaze sinks to her feet. “Right. Okay.”
Wait. WHAT?
This is not Alex. This is someone else. Alex doesn’t take no for an answer. But then again, Alex never gives you a choice in the first place.
“Why are you shopping for dresses here?” My dad asks, sliding his reading glasses onto his head. “Wouldn’t there be a better selection in the city?”