Do You Take This Man (84)
Caitlin: If you don’t pick up your phone so I know you’re alive, I’m asking Gretchen to check on you.
Lear: I’m alive. Go away.
Caitlin: PICK UP YOUR DAMN PHONE.
It buzzed again in my hand, this time with a phone call, and I considered ignoring it and going back to sleep. Shutting my eyes didn’t help, and my head still swam in an attempt to quell the churning in my stomach. I tapped the green icon. “I’m too hungover for this.”
“Then you should have answered a single message from me in the last week.” Her voice was louder than normal, and I winced. “I was worried about you, jackass.”
“I’m a grown man.” I rolled to my side, where a cool spot on the pillow was a welcome sensation against my skin.
“Debatable.”
I had a high tolerance for my sister, even in the worst of times, but it was in short supply right now. It had been two weeks since I’d turned RJ down, and a week since she’d told me to forget I knew her and stormed out. I’d watched her go in shock, but also with righteous indignation firmly in place. Standing in the alcove, I’d reminded myself that she wasn’t that different from Sarah, and that I didn’t need the hassle. I’d tried to hang on to that feeling, but even after a bottle of Jack, the sinking sense that I missed her was still there. “What do you want, Cait? I’m alive. I’m fine.”
“You’re hungover on a Monday morning.”
“I work weekends and today is my day off. Don’t make it sound like I skipped work.”
“Why are you hungover on a Monday? Penny said you haven’t been around all week.”
Penny and Kelly, along with baby Connor, were finally home and settling into their new life. Coming back to work didn’t mean catching up on anything, since she’d been all over me about every event she’d missed.
“Penny has a big mouth,” I grumbled.
Caitlin’s voice softened. “I knew I should have come out there on his birthday. You’re not okay.”
I sat up, legs hanging off the side of the bed, and regretted it as my head spun, countering the relief of being upright. “I’m fine. It’s just been a long week. It’s not that.”
“Well, what is it?”
RJ. It’s RJ. “Nothing.”
“I swear to God, Lear.” She used the same tone our mom had growing up. It was uncanny, and I would have teased her about it normally. “I’m not letting this go. You’re the only brother I have, and you had a hard year, but you’re drinking a lot, and you need to let me in because you won’t let anyone else in.”
“I did, okay?” I fell back against the pillows.
“You did what?” Her voice returned to normal. “You let someone in? Who?”
I let my eyelids fall closed again and saw RJ’s smile in the murky darkness: the smile she flashed me over waffles; the shy smile when she handed me that envelope, the one I hadn’t opened yet; the smile she gave me after she came down from a powerful orgasm. I saw all her smiles. “It doesn’t matter. It was something and now it’s nothing.”
“A woman?”
I rested my hand over my heart. “Yeah.”
Caitlin was quiet for a few moments. “She broke up with you?”
“Do we need to talk about this?”
“No, we don’t have to.” In a very Caitlin way, she let her statement hang in the air until I spoke.
“We weren’t really dating. It’s complicated.”
“Hm.” She drank something on the other end of the phone, probably coffee. The slurping grated on me, and I glanced at the clock. It was only six in the morning her time, so I forgave the coffee. “But you were in love with her.”
“What?” My eyes popped open at her assertion. “No. What makes you say that?”
“Probably just the hiding and moping and being hungover on a Monday thing. And you’re a guy who falls in love.”
“I don’t love her. I don’t even know if I like her. She makes it impossible to love her. We’re completely wrong for each other, which I should have seen from the beginning.”
Again, my sister was quiet. “What did you see in the end?”
The question threw me in unexpected ways. What had I seen? I’d been furious with RJ, on top of being annoyed with all the problems at that wedding. She’d avoided me all week and then gotten mad when I didn’t spoon-feed her some information I’d sent her via email. I wanted to say that, but when I closed my eyes, all I could see was her expression, the hurt in her eyes. I couldn’t shake from my head the way her eyes looked afterward, when it seemed she might cry after I told her she was heartless. I remembered the way she hid the hurt in the twitch of her eyebrow, the tiny movement of her mouth. When she asked me if it was too hard to care about her and I didn’t respond. Truth was, I hadn’t regretted something more than when we met and I told her to smile. I’d been a split second away from reaching for her, from pulling her into my arms and laying myself bare. “I didn’t see anything.”
I’d felt bad after refusing her offer. I’d thought about calling her and turning back a hundred times, but I’d second-guessed myself. I’d wondered when she’d go cold again, and then I’d gotten angry when she said she expected me to apologize. My body tensed as I lay back down on my bed, thinking about it all over again. “I didn’t see anything,” I repeated. “The best advice you ever gave me was to date nice people who don’t bring drama to my doorstep.”