The Art of Losing(66)

With shaking fingers, I wrote just two letters: OK. And I hated myself when I hit send. Because I should have stood up to him. I should have told him how angry I was. How betrayed I felt by his drinking. And how wrong it felt that he’d come to me, of all people, when he knew what I’d been through with Mike. And with Audrey.

I had relied on him so much for the last few weeks. More than I had realized. And now that trust was shattered, and I didn’t think we could put it back together. Apparently, he didn’t want to, anyway.





Three Years Ago



The highway streaked by outside the car as I stared at my reflection in the window. There wasn’t much to see outside anyway; everything was dark beyond the dim light the lampposts cast on the shoulder. Mom and Dad had been singing along to one of the four playlists Dad had on his phone. We’d basically been listening to the same fifty songs for the last ten years.

Audrey was watching a TV show on Dad’s iPad, and Mom was using hers. My phone wasn’t getting enough service to do anything that required data, and Cassidy wasn’t responding to my text messages.

I couldn’t stand the sound of Mom’s and Dad’s slightly off-key voices for one minute longer.

I poked Audrey in the side and she pulled out one earbud.

“What?” she said.

“Can I watch that with you?”

She frowned. “No,” she said. Whined, really. “I don’t want to listen with one ear. Mom and Dad are singing too loud. Read a book or something. Isn’t that, like, your favorite thing to do?”

“It’s dark, genius,” I spat back. “Just let me watch with you.”

She stuck the earbud back in her ear. “No.”

So I ripped the tablet from her fingers, yanking her earbuds out in the process. It didn’t hurt, but she wailed like a baby anyway.

“Goddammit!” Dad yelled from the driver’s seat. “Stop fighting! You’re sisters; you should try harder to get along. I’m tired of this shit.”

“Henry,” Mom said, admonishing him. For the cursing, not for yelling at us.

It didn’t take much to set Dad off in those days. We were high-energy kids—or Audrey was, anyway—and he’d been driving for almost six hours. I would have yelled at us, too. But his solution was to take the iPad from both of us, leaving us in the dark back seat seething as we tried to ignore each other.

When he and Mom started singing again, though, I couldn’t help glancing at Audrey. There was a point in one song where Dad always tried to hit the high note. Always. And he sounded like Beaker from The Muppets. We hadn’t ever made it through that song without at least a shared eye roll. So when it came on, I had to look at her. And she had to look at me. And we had to laugh.

We didn’t get the iPad back after we stopped fighting, but Audrey and I eventually started singing along with Mom and Dad. Not too loudly, though. We couldn’t let them know we were enjoying it. But we made it to Charleston a couple of hours later without fighting again, at least.





Chapter Sixteen



The therapist’s office was in a residential neighborhood, in a two-story Tudor home with a separate entrance around the side. I couldn’t help thinking how nice it must be to have your commute consist of a walk down some stairs and I added it to my short list of career goals.

The inside was as quaint as the outside. There was a tiny reception area, without a receptionist. Just a light switch that I flicked on to say I’d arrived. Dr. Talia opened the door almost immediately, as if she had been waiting for me. She ushered me into her office and pointed at a chair to sit in.

She was young, maybe midthirties, but with enough small worry lines and stray gray hairs to make me believe she’d been doing this a while. She gave me a soft smile and picked up a legal pad and a pen.

“So, Harley, what brings you to me today?” she asked.

I physically slumped at the weight of what I’d have to tell her. There was so much, I wasn’t sure where to begin. And I wasn’t exactly excited about discussing all my issues. But Raf was right: I’d been avoiding talking for too long.

“I guess the biggest reason is my sister,” I said. “She’s recovering from a traumatic brain injury because my boyfriend drove drunk and got into a car accident. And Audrey was in the car with him.” I shrugged uncomfortably. “So there’s that.”

Dr. Talia nodded while she jotted notes and then glanced up at me. “That’s quite a lot to deal with,” she said.

“You could say that.” I shifted in my chair. “But that night of the accident, they were both drinking. And my boyfriend cheated on me with her.”

“With your sister?” Dr. Talia said. Her dark eyebrows were raised in surprise.

“Yep, my little sister.”

“That must have really hurt,” she said.

I snorted. “Yeah, to put it mildly.”

She was quiet for a minute, waiting for me to continue.

“I think I’ve forgiven Audrey,” I said. “She doesn’t even remember doing it.”

Dr. Talia’s eyebrows raised again. “Interesting.”

“But a lot of guilt has built up. And I can’t seem to stop being mad at Mike. He’s the one who cheated on me, and he’s the one who drove drunk, but I can’t stop feeling like I have to shoulder some of the blame. If I had just broken up with him, or if I had taken Audrey home with me even though I was mad, she would be fine.”