by Brianna Cash
I take a deep breath, prepare for the worst, man-up, and fucking say it.
“I didn’t rate him in most of the categories. I have no idea what Owen’s score is.”
“Oh my God,” she whispers, her wide eyes never leaving mine. “You’re giving up on the system! You know what this means, don’t you?”
“Be quiet!”
I push past her once more, finally getting to the room where the bride is, praying Roxy keeps her mouth shut and lets this day be about Alena. But Roxy slams the door behind us, leaning on it to keep everyone else out as she makes her unwelcome announcement.
“Sadie finally believes in love!”
♦ ♦ ♦
We got through it.
The vows are said.
Alena and Rob are husband and wife.
The rice was thrown, the pictures were taken, the first dance is over, the speeches were given, the cake was cut and we’re all currently eating it.
It’s delicious, of course. Probably not as good as Owen’s, but I don’t know for sure yet.
I met Owen’s parents and his niece last night. Lizzy is adorable and the perfect flower girl. Meeting his parents, though…? Adorable isn’t quite the right word. If that wasn’t weird, I don’t know what was. It wasn’t a this-is-the-girl-I’m-walking-down-the-aisle-with greeting. It was a this-is-the-girl-I’m-walking-down-the-aisle-with-and-also-the-girl-I’m-dating greeting.
I wanted to elbow him in the side and remind him we’ve never been on an actual date. I have some tact, though, so I kept my mouth shut and my elbow firmly attached to my own side.
Today, I also got to meet Owen’s sister, Christine. Who’s also Lizzy’s mom. They’re all different with her. Everyone except his mom. The rest of them watch her like a hawk. They never leave her alone in a room. They laugh at her jokes, but it’s strained. Forced. Alena avoids her altogether.
I almost asked why, but then remembered one tiny little detail: it’s her wedding day. She has enough bullshit to worry about today.
So, whatever. Not my problem.
I’ve got enough issues making sure Alena has everything she needs. There’s no need for me to be dredging up family drama. My best friend has gone through more tissues than a funeral service for the pope. She almost passed out because she didn’t eat anything all day and is taking full advantage of the open bar. And can I complain one more time about the whole helping-the-bride-to-the-bathroom thing? Who started that tradition? I want to go back in time and murder that person in their sleep.
Everything is finally slowing down and people are starting to leave. I pull Owen onto the dance floor for a slow song because…well, because I can. We’re sort of unofficially a couple, and I’ve spent way too much time ogling him from afar today. It’s time I ogle him up close and personal, with a little bit of roaming hands thrown in to make the package deal an even better steal.
“What’s this song?” I ask, laying my head on his chest as he holds me close and leads me around the room. Owen’s a good dancer. I’m a good dancer when it comes to the fast stuff, but this slow stuff I usually have a problem with. Slow dancing is kind of…intimate.
I’m not used to being intimate with people.
Sure, some people argue that sex is intimate, but they’re wrong. At least when it comes to any sex I had before Owen. It was a means to an end. A test for a score. A way to find my release, even though I was in my head judging everything they did the entire time.
Owen got me out of my head. Owen made me want him so badly I couldn’t think straight. Owen made me want to help him lose his inhibitions, and in helping him be comfortable enough to do that, I lost my own as well. Owen led me down a road of emotional self-discovery, just as easily as he’s leading me around the dance floor right now.
“I have no idea,” he murmurs, his hands trailing down the open back of my dress to linger at its edge, right above my ass. Inappropriate in the here and now? Perhaps. But the lights are low, the song is slow and seductive, he knows the only thought in my mind is getting him back to his now empty hotel room, and his erection pressing into my stomach is only encouraging my state of mind.
Fuck appropriate.
He ducks his head down to my ear, his voice low. “We’ll have to be quiet at the hotel. My family will be on the other side of the wall.”
“Three days in a row? Tomorrow, can we go to your apartment before you drop me off, so I can be as loud as I like?”
He chuckles, the vibrations in his chest making my head buzz with how deliciously close to him I am right now. “You can come to my apartment to be loud for me anytime you want, Sadie.”
My lips twist into a smile. Anytime I want? He’s going to be seeing a lot more of me.
“Owen?” his dad asks from somewhere behind me. He then clears his throat. Owen grips me a little tighter but stops our hips swaying to the music.
“Dad, what’s wrong?”
I turn in Owen’s arms. His dad is frowning, his brows drawn tight together. “We can’t find Christine. Have you seen you her?”
Owen curses softly, closing his eyes and pulling me off the dance floor. “Not in the last half hour. Lizzy wasn’t with her, was she?”
“Afraid so,” his dad confirms, and Owen’s shoulders immediately tense up. “She told me she was taking Lizzy to the bathroom. It’s been a while though, and she’s not there. Your mother checked.”
“Dammit.” Looking around the reception hall, Owen tells his dad, “I’ll take the hall on the left, you take the one on the right.”
What the fuck is this, a search and rescue?
Owen’s eyes probe mine for a long second, and I briefly wonder if Christine has some sort of medical condition. “You remember what my sister looks like?”
“Yeah…” I don’t want to get stuck in the middle of his family’s drama, but I do want to help erase the stress lines on his face.
“Stay here and stop her if you see her, ok?”
“How?”
“Just talk to her. Stall her. Or bring her down the hall to me. If she puts up any sort of fight, let her go, but keep Lizzy with you, ok? Don’t let her go anywhere with Lizzy.”
What the fuck? Lizzy is her daughter! Why can’t she go anywhere with her daughter? “Owen, I don’t know how comfortable I am with—”
“Sadie, do you trust me?”
Blinking at his sudden, very serious question, I answer without hesitation. “Yes.”
“Then do this for me. Please. I’ll explain everything later.”
That’s enough for me. If Owen has a reason, it’s a good one. “Ok.”
“Thank you.” He pulls me in for a quick kiss, then hurries down the hallway.
My attention is divided. I watch from a short distance away, where I can see the hallway Owen’s in, the entrance to the one his dad disappeared down, and the clearing reception hall. Owen is opening every door, carefully scanning every room.
“Sadie! Sadie, come here! Hurry!” Owen yells.
I run to him, not having any idea what the urgency is. He’s standing in an open doorway, holding onto Lizzy, his hands gentle on her upper arms as he blocks her view of the room.
“Lizzy.” He kneels on the ground, forcing her eyes to his. “You’re going to go with Sadie and meet up with Grampa, ok?”
“I don’t wanna,” she cries. Dirt is smudged around her shiny, wet cheeks. Owen pulls her close, crushing her to his chest, and she clings to him, sobbing at his words, but holding onto him for dear life.
What the hell is going on?
Looking at me, he passes out more instructions, taking control and being the leader I didn’t know he was. “Take Lizzy to my dad and tell him I found Christine. He’ll know what to do.”
“Owen, what’s going o—”
“Sadie, I don’t have time right now. I’ll explain later. Promise.”
He gently forces Lizzy into my arms. She cries harder, reaching for him, not wanting some stranger. I stand in the hallway, unsure of what to do
as he leaves me with his niece and walks into the room.
Lizzy calls out to him. “Don’t hurt her! Don’t hurt Momma!”
My whole body freezes and bile rises in my throat.
I can barely see through the crack in the door, where Owen walks stiffly toward Christine. She’s sitting on the floor, her back against the wall, her eyes closed.
Owen yells quietly, one of his hands on her wrist, the other on her neck, but his voice harder than I’ve ever heard it. “Christ, Chris! With Lizzy in the same damn room?”
Her eyes blink open and she flinches, cringing as he drags her to her feet.
“Don’t do it!” she cries weakly, her voice full of…fear.
Lizzy trembles and I hug her so tight she whimpers. A memory blindsides me, one of violence and tears and so much yelling. One from my childhood, when my dad still lived with us.
I used to yell the same thing Lizzy did. Except I called my mother Mommy.
I squeeze Lizzy again, running down the hallway, away from Owen and all those memories I never wanted.
♦ ♦ ♦
“Sadie, honey. I’m not saying I don’t believe you. I’m saying you need to hear his side of the story.”
“How can you, of all people, be on his side?” I ask my mother. She came right away when I called her crying from the reception. She didn’t question anything; she didn’t need to know why. She simply asked where, and ten minutes later, I was getting in her car, bawling my eyes out, my hands shaking so badly I could barely grasp the door handle.
We’re home now. She sat me on the couch, gave me a box of tissues and listened to my hiccupping, sobbing story of the moster Owen turned into right before my eyes.
Her eyes narrow and her lips press into a thin, white line. “Why do you say it like that? Why am I ‘of all people?’”
“Because of what Dad did to you.”
“Oh, Sadie.” She sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “What do you think your dad did to me?”
“What do you mean what do I think he did do to you? He beat you!”
She moves to the coffee table, forcing me to look at her. She grabs my hands, connecting us physically, like she’s trying to hold me together. Like she’s preparing me for a massive blow. “No, Sadie. He didn’t.”
“Ok,” I concede sarcastically, yanking out of her grasp, sitting back against the couch, and crossing my arms over my chest. “What do you call it then?”
“Your dad never laid a hand on me.”
“Yes, he did! I heard—”
“You heard. You didn’t see anything. I swear to you, your dad never hit me, never pushed me, never put his hands on me in anger. Your dad was not that kind of man.”
My mother just sucked all the oxygen out of the atmosphere. “Then why… What…”
“Why am I not with him?”
I nod, feeling like my entire childhood was a lie.
When we moved out, the distance kept us apart from my dad. But when I was about ten, he started coming around again, and I was afraid of him. I didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to spend time with him. I pushed him out of my life, thinking he did something my mother is now telling me he never did!
“I don’t really know how to say this. Your dad…well, he didn’t love me. Not like I loved him. He stayed with me because of you, but he had affairs. Lots of them. What you heard was us fighting about that.”
“But it sounded like—”
“I hit him, Sadie.”
“You…what?”
Lowering her eyes, she says it again. “I hit him. He never hit me. It was the other way around.”
“No. That can’t be right. You would never…” Shaking my head, I picture the inside of her last car, where I sat during all her therapy sessions. And the way she would escape to her reading anytime she was home. The way, years later, she would tell me she didn’t need a man, she had me, and that’s all she’d ever need. “You would never hit someone.”
“I would never hit you. I hope I would never hit anyone now, but I went through a lot of counseling to get to this point. Your dad never hit me, Sadie. And I’m not saying what you heard tonight wasn’t terrifying, but you need to hear Owen’s side of the story. Things aren’t always what you think they are.”
“Why did you let me believe it?” I ask, totally dumbfounded by this new revelation.
She looks around, at this new life she made for us, the one I’m finding out was based on a lie. At least in my mind. “I didn’t know what you thought, Sadie. I asked you about it when we moved, but you always said you couldn’t remember.”
“Why didn’t you make me keep seeing my dad?”
“It made you so upset. You would cry for hours when it was time to see him. And you kept telling your friends he was dead. We did a test run where you didn’t have to see him, and…well. He decided to let you be happy. It was the hardest thing he’s ever done. I email him, though, to tell him how you’re doing.”
“You do?” Something is stabbing me in the chest. Probably my betrayal to a man who loved me and did what he thought was best for me while I hated him. “He still wants to know about me? After all the things I said? After everything I did?”
“He loves you, Sadie. He always has. That’s why he stayed away, even when it broke his heart to do it.”
“Oh my God,” I whisper to no one in particular, uncertain which way is up or down, or right or wrong. “I don’t…I can’t…I need…”
“Focus on right now, Sadie.” Her voice is soothing as she tries to help me come to terms with everything. “I learned a long time ago, you take the hard things one day at a time. What’s going to help you get through tonight?”
My dad isn’t the horrible person I thought he was. My mom was, but isn’t now, so how can I be mad at her for something so long in the past? And why is it so easy to forgive her, when I couldn’t even imagine forgiving my dad before tonight?
And what do I do about my dad now that I know the truth? Do I try to get in touch with him? Do I try to see him, tell him I’m sorry for believing the worst about him for all these years? Do I try to form a relationship with him, after I shunned him for most of my life?
And how does all this tie into Owen, and how I feel about him?
Maybe I’m more like my mom than I thought. Tonight, all I want to do is escape and not have to face reality for a little while.
Owen
It’s almost routine how the paramedics leave with my sister on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance. She’ll be admitted overnight for observation. Tomorrow, Dad will give her a ride from the hospital to her favorite rehab center.
Because she’s been to so many, so many times, that she has a favorite.
The building the reception is in is an old warehouse with a parking lot on one side. The parking lot and the side of the building facing the street is lit up like the sky during a Fourth of July fireworks show. With a heavy heart, I walk toward the dark side, the one that will hide my emotions almost as well as I do when I’m at work.
No matter how many times it happens, this will never feel routine. The way my heart races when I first learn she’s missing. The way my whole world tips on its axis when I see her lying somewhere, unmoving, sometimes a needle still stuck between her toes or fingers, because the veins in her arms are so deteriorated she can’t use them anymore. The way my breath gets stuck when I find a pulse and know, without a doubt, I’ll have to go through all this again at some point in the future. How sick I feel when it’s over, because I don’t know which is worse. Hoping she’s still alive while wondering if I’m going to be relieved when I find out she’s not, because this sick, horrible routine will finally be a thing of the past if she’s dead.
The first time Chris was admitted to the hospital for her drug problem, I was in high school. Every time Mom would walk into a room I was in, she would grab my hand and drag me over to a chair, or the couch, or the table. And we would sit and pray. Over and over, always asking for the same thing. Fo
r Chris to get better and come home.
She got better. She came home. And then she left to do the same damn thing again.
Sadie is a pray-er. She made fun of me for only praying occasionally. For those of us that don’t pray routinely, we only remember there’s someone bigger than us running the show when we’re desperate. When things are out of control, and there’s absolutely nothing we can do to alter the outcome, and we’re terrified to find out what that outcome will be. Like when I’m waiting to hear whether my sister is going to come out of her latest binge alive.
My prayers now are vague. I simply pray for it to be over.
I don’t know what I want to be over, though. My sister’s life? My sister’s addiction? The chaos created when we found out she was missing, got a call from the cops or the hospital, or found her ourselves?
Knowing I’m alone, I sink to the ground. Tears sting my eyes. Probably because of the gravel digging into my knees. Instead of cupping the back of my neck, I run my hands through my hair, staring at the cloudless sky, sending up a different prayer than all the others: don’t let Sadie think differently of me because of Chris’s latest episode.
Sadie should be the last thing I’m thinking about. I should be worried about Chris. About Rob and Alena. About my parents. About Lizzy.
Rob, Alena, Mom, and Dad all knew this was a possibility. And Lizzy is young. She goes to regular counseling. She’ll bounce back from this. She always does.
The stars twinkle, telling me I’m not alone, and if I play my cards right, I never will be. Because stars last for millions to trillions of years, and in Sadie’s mind, that’s how long love everlasting is.
If I’ve learned anything about her through our time together and all of our electronic communication, it’s that she’s fair. She won’t judge me—at least not any more harshly than normal—because of my sister’s addiction.
Feeling calmer about my sister, and reassured about Sadie, I walk back into the building. I drop into a misplaced chair and take a long look at the disaster Rob’s reception has become. People are watching now, so my hand cups the back of my neck as I let out a heavy sigh.