I balked. “No way!”
A quick look out of the window told me Hadley was right. My sister was there, lost and forlorn, just as I was.
“Since when did you start smoking?” I asked as I stepped outside.
Breanna just hitched a shoulder.
Summer was losing its grasp, as the sun set the evening air grew cooler. I fought a shiver and sat on the concrete step beside her. “You’re so beautiful.” I sighed. “My sister. So, beautiful and always so angry.”
“I’m not angry.” She cut her gaze at me.
“Your eyes give you away.” I wrapped my arms around my knees and rocked back and forth rhythmically. Though the storm on her face didn’t seem to be directed at me, I readied myself for the blowback.
Instead, she just quietly stated, “I talked to Jordan.”
I fought the flutter of my heart in my chest at the sound of his name. “You did?”
“Yeah.” She took a final drag off the cigarette and flicked it out into the small yard in front of the building. It smoldered there for a long time, the smoke twirling up to the sky. “He came by the shop yesterday.”
I hadn’t been to work in days. Essentially, I’d quit my job. I didn’t let myself believe he’d come by to see me, I knew better. There had been finality in our last conversation. The words and pained emotions played again in those devastating black and white stop action, slow motion frames and everything sank to the bottom of my stomach like lead.
“He actually wanted to talk to me.” She laughed and the sound echoed hollow against the building. It was a sad, empty sound. “I was ready to let him have it, tell him what I really thought of him. I’d been saving it up for a while.”
“I bet you were.” I fought the half-hearted smile that twisted my lips.
“I didn’t though, he never gave me a chance. I took one look at him and couldn’t.” Breanna pulled out another cigarette and lit it.
What surprised me the most was that I couldn’t see the little girl that used to run barefoot through our yard. Or the long dark hair that flowed behind her as she peddled faster and faster to keep up with us on our bikes. Breanna was a woman grown, no longer a little girl, with as much of the world on her shoulders as I had on mine.
“He told me some things…things you should have told me,” she whispered so quietly I barely heard her. “Things that changed you so much you couldn’t be what you were before.”
I shouldn’t have had enough emotion left to be angry with Jordan, but I did. It boiled up like bile in the back of my throat and panic clawed at my chest.
“No”—she gestured at me—“he had his reasons.
He said that you’d be mad at him, but that I needed to hear it. To know your truth. So that I didn’t create one for you, myself. I’m sorry, Raelynn.”
“It’s not for you to be sorry about.” “Yeah, all those things I said—”
“You said them because they were, are, true.” I stopped her with a self-deprecating smile.
“They are not. Jordan was right, you aren’t that person, Raelynn. You would never hurt someone you loved to make yourself happy. That’s why you stood there and let me say those awful things to you, because you love me.”
Quiet, gentle reminders of all the pain rolled down my cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Raelynn.”
“Don’t be.” I squeezed the hand she’d put in mine. “I know what it is to love someone, even when they don’t love you back. I’m sorry that Devin thought he was in love with me.”
“No.” Breanna laughed with little humor. “That’s not something you can take the blame for, no matter how much I wanted you to.”
We sat there until the sun sank behind the horizon and the streetlights flickered on with an electric hum. In the distance, a race car hit a lick. With my sister beside me instead of against me, life seemed…close to normal. “Why didn’t you tell any of us?” she asked without animosity. Something I’d gotten my fair share of from
her recently.
“I didn’t want to play the victim. I was scared. I was isolated inside myself. It wasn’t something I was comfortable talking about to anyone.”
“But we’re family, if you had told me then I wouldn’t—”
“Have been angry with me for sleeping with Jordan? For choosing to be happy, for choosing to love someone? No, Breanna, you’d have pitied me. I didn’t want that either.” She stared straight ahead, saying nothing so I went on. “What happened to me, doesn’t change anything. It never has, not between us.”
“It did, because it changed you,” she argued with a toss of her hair. “You’ve been distant since you came home.”
“I wasn’t distant, Bree. You were barely around, always keeping things to yourself.”
She spoke to her feet. “We used to tell each other everything. You didn’t tell me about Jordan. Devin did.”
“I didn’t have a chance. I would have. But, when you’d already been pissed at me for even thinking about it? I just needed more time.”
“I wasn’t pissed I was—I wanted Devin to be happy.”
There was a wistfulness to the way she said his name and a sadness in her eyes that couldn’t be denied. My heart ached for her, so I reached out and brushed a long tendril of dark hair behind her ear.
“Even if it meant you couldn’t have him yourself?” I twirled the end of the lock of hair around my finger.
This time she didn’t completely deny it. “I guess.
Maybe. I don’t know.”
“You would have hated me, Breanna.”
“Maybe, but Devin was so upset, and I was already mad because I didn’t know, but I should have known. I felt—I don’t know what I felt.” She took a drag off another cigarette. “Mom is so wrapped up in the kids. Aiden is so wrapped up in Wendy and all her drama. Dad’s at work picking up the slack for Aiden. And you weren’t…you. It was like I didn’t belong anymore, like my family had forgotten I existed.”
My sister took a shaky breath before she continued. I was pretty sure she hadn’t talked that much all at once since she’d been little. Dad had told me she kept things bottled up. Well, this evening, the bottle uncorked and her words were pouring like wine. “I’m not making excuses. But, it all built up. Then Devin told me about you and Jordan. I was mad you didn’t tell me, and I was angry you turned them against each other. I wanted to believe you were some sort of Jezebel. It was so easy to blame everything on you.”
I took the verbal blow that I rightfully deserved, even if she didn’t mean to deal it. She sounded so young, so lost, and so ashamed, that I wrapped my arms around her and held her. Even though Breanna was a head taller than me, I rocked back and forth on the steps. I certainly hadn’t been there for my little sister like I should have.
“I’m sorry, Bree.” I tried to keep the tears on my cheeks from leaking into my voice. “I’m sorry if I made you feel like you didn’t matter to me.”
“I’m sorry too, for all of it. For everything. But, mostly for believing you would hurt any of us on purpose.”
“Can we drink wine and eat pizza now?” Hadley was standing behind us with big tears in her green eyes. “I’m sorry for eavesdropping, I saw y’all weren’t killing each other, so I came out to ask about the wine. When I got out here you two were hugging, and I just thought about how happy I was.” Bree stood and hugged the petite blonde, I joined them.
“No, really.” Hadley’s relief was resounding. “You both don’t understand how much easier my life is now. I’ve been a ping pong ball bouncing between you two for weeks.”
My sister and I weren’t whole again, but we were far closer to it than we had been before. We understood each other.