Heart Thaw (23 page)

Something fierce and possessive wells up inside me. I want to rip the door off its hinges, run barefoot in the snow, grab him by the arm, and scream,
“Mine!”
so the whole world hears it.

What I do instead is watch him walk to the passenger side, get in, and leave with the mystery girl.

Is she one whose helmet I wore on our long bike ride home?

The one whose bra I found stuffed in the couch cushions?

The one Georgia hopes Trent ends up with?

The one he calls whenever he needs a ride?

The one who’s not me.

I don’t really know anything about her for sure, except she’s smart enough to come rescue the amazing guy I keep leaving out in the cold.

I bite my knuckles and fight back tears.

What the hell have I done?
 

Chapter Fifteen

I sleep a fragmented, bleary kind of sleep that doesn’t make me feel rested at all. I’d stay in bed and mope all day, but the smell of Mom’s buttermilk pancakes bathed in real maple syrup have me on my feet and up the stairs. I come into the living room just as Ella trips down the last step.

Any pity I feel for myself disappears when I look at my sister.

“You okay?” I ask.

“My head,” she croaks, holding her temples. “I need...a lobotomy. Or some morphine.”

I lead her to the powder room, fill the dancing elf cup on the sink with cold tap water, and shake a few aspirins into her palm. She throws them back and drinks the water, then moans.

“Last night…” She squints at me and peeks out the crack in the door. “What the hell happened?” she whispers.

I clear my throat. Occupy my attention popping the cap back on the aspirin bottle and replacing it in the medicine cabinet. Grab the cup from Ella’s hand and rinse it. Keep busy, because I’m not sure how much her liquor-soaked brain actually remembers.

Her mouth crumples and she starts to sob so hard her cowlicked bangs shake.

“Antonia?” she gasps, her lips wet with tears. “We broke up, didn’t we?”

“Oh, Ella. I’m so sorry. I’m so—”

But I don’t say anything else because she throws her tiny body into my arms, and I just hold her tight, the way I used to when we were little girls. The way Trent did last night. I smooth her hair and murmur sweet things to try to take the edge of how it hurts.

Shit, I know how it hurts.

“There wasn’t even a r-r-reason!” she wails, nuzzling against my arm. “It was all amazing. We were—we found a room…” Her head bends down, chin to chest, like her neck isn’t up to the task of supporting it anymore. “And then she just said we needed to see other people. What the fuck?”

Ella’s eyes are bloodshot and caked with last night’s makeup. I take her by the shoulders, sit her on the toilet seat and fish under the cabinet for a washcloth. I wet it and rub it with some soap.

“Close your eyes,” I command. She does, and I wipe her face slowly. “Maybe that’s not such a bad idea,” I say carefully.

I watch Ella’s body bristle, but she’s trapped. There’s soap all over her face, so she can’t see to run. She just has to hear me out until I rinse it off for her.

“I...I talked to her,” I confess, not sure I should be sharing my strange, intensely cold conversation with Ella’s beautiful ex. “She cares about you. It isn’t that. But she thinks you guys need time, experiences. That’s smart.”

Ella’s mouth is a thin line. She waits until I rinse the soap away before her eyes fly open. She’s glaring. At me.

“Did you talk her into that fucking stupid idea?” she asks.

“No! Why the hell would I tell her to break up with you?” I fire back. “You think I
like
seeing you this way?”

“I think you don’t think Antonia’s any good for me.
And
I think you love being right.”

I feel my ears burn.

“Trust me, El, I fuck things up all the time, okay? I’m not about to give advice,
especially
romantic advice, to anyone.”

Ella narrows her eyes at me.

“Hmm. You’re telling me what I saw wasn’t a hallucination then?”

“What?” I squeak, my face instantly hot, my eyes refusing to meet hers. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Damnit. Even I don’t believe me.

“You. Trent. A dark hallway. I lot of moaning...”

She watches me, head crooked, like she’s waiting for me to deny it all. When I don’t, her eyes bug wide.

“Sadie, what the hell?” she hisses. “What are you thinking?”

“I wasn’t!” I snap. “Clearly. And you can stuff the lecture up your ass, because I already had to hear it from you last night, just in case all the vodka made
that
memory fuzzy for you.”

Ella slumps against the wall and stares at me, her little mouth hanging open in shock.

“Is this some kind of
Freaky Friday
bullshit?” She runs her hands over her body and hair dramatically, and I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “We didn’t wake up in each other’s bodies right? Because—correct me if I’m wrong—it seems like
you
were the idiot last night and
I
was the one who stuck my nose in, and now
you’re
telling me to back off exactly the way
I’ve
told you to back off at least a thousand times during our long sisterhood. Did I get that all right?”

“Half right,” I growl. “You forgot to mention you also broke up with your girlfriend, got plastered, and made out with some random redhead.”

She was teasing me. I, as usual, go straight to the asshole route. Why do I
do
that?

“Sorry—” I start, but she waves her hand.

“Forget it, Sadie.” She stands tall and puts her hand on the doorknob. “It’s a done deal then. We’re both fuckups. Just…” She clears her throat. “I love you, and I love him. Please don’t make me take sides.”

“I’d never—”

“Mean to?” she cuts me off. “Right. But things don’t always work out the way you mean for them to.”

“El, I swear—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she says, clapping her hands over her ears. “Let’s just go eat pancakes and put on a good show for Mom’s sake. And Georgia’s. Let me live in denial for a little bit, okay?”

I nod miserably and trudge to the dining room behind my little sister, who always had a way better poker face than me. I step into the dinging room and smile at Mom and Georgia. Hug them, grab a plate, eat, but it’s all mechanical.

In my brain, I’m at the window, watching as Trent gets in the car with some girl I don’t know but is clearly a big enough part of his life that he calls her when he’s in a bind. He doesn’t owe it to me to tell me about every person in his life, but I guess I feel like I always made my boyfriends public knowledge.

Like a total narcissist asshole
, I think to myself as I drizzle maple syrup over another pancake I’m not hungry for and can barely taste.
Every time you brought a guy home, you saw how it affected Trent. But you thought you were doing him a favor, letting him know there was no future for the two of you. So, how’s your own medicine tasting, Sadie?

“—would be fun, right?” Georgia nudges my arm, and I look up from my pitiful thoughts.

“Sorry, what was that, George?”

She grins and rolls her eyes as she sips her orange juice. I notice she’s still looking pretty green around the gills, but she’s putting on a good face too. Mom already has a full face of makeup on, but I can see the bags under her eyes. Concealor can only do so much to hide the kind of sadness my mother’s been carrying around for too long.

How long can we all keep this up? Pretending to be happy when you aren’t is incredibly draining.

“Jesus, you guys must have partied hard last night. You’re like zombies this morning.” Georgia grins at us.

Ella grins back like her heart isn’t broken and she doesn’t have a Godzilla-sized hangover.

I stare like a lemming, guilt rushing so fast and hard through me, I can’t believe Georgia doesn’t see it plain on my face and know—just from looking at me—what I’ve been doing with her brother.

“I, uh, we did, um—”

“You wanted Sadie to do what?” Ella interrupts, putting me out of my misery with one quick, vicious glare.

I can read my sister’s mind easily enough:
Shut your idiot mouth, Sadie!

“The baby registry! I wanted to know if you wanted to go to the stores with me and register. I can do it online, but that’s not as fun, you know. Plus you can’t actually see the stuff. I want a carriage that’s tall enough for me to push without giving me scoliosis.”

“Do you have to, um, know the baby’s gender first?” I ask, holding my fork so tight the metal snowflake handle bites into my palm. “Maybe you don’t? I have no idea, I should shut up now.”

“I mean, for final decisions about color and clothes, yes, but we could pick the basic stuff first. And I was actually going to mention the gender test.” Georgia’s eyes shine. It’s like she’s the Virgin Mary in some lit plastic nativity set, glowing from the inside out. “You don’t head back to college until mid-January right? Because I was thinking, that’s almost the time for the gender ultrasound. I think I could get the doctor to agree to move it up a week or two.”

Georgia reaches across the table for my hand. I drop my fork and grab her hand like it’s a life preserver and I’m drowning.

“I’d love that,” I say, blinking back tears. “I really would.”

And there it is.

There’s no turning back now.

I can forget running back to college early. I can forget scrapping my plans to stay here and find myself. It doesn’t matter if I screwed things up with Trent, if my mother is going to watch me like a judgmental hawk, if my sister is going to be a moody, scowly reluctant keeper of my secrets.

Georgia needs me, and I won’t let her down this time.

She’s already hugging me tight, like old times. “I love you,” she says, her voice thick. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” I say.

If Trent and I got married, Georgia would be my sister-in-law. We’d finally get our secret wish to be sisters.

The thought shoots through my brain and makes me petrified.

This.
This is exactly why I have to pull back no matter how intensely amazing things feel with Trent. We aren’t the only two people swept up in all this. Not by a longshot.

Georgia hums as we clean the kitchen. Mom comes in, takes the dish from her hand, and orders her upstairs for a nap. When Georgia leaves the kitchen, Mom whirls around and glares at Ella and me.

“You look like death warmed over, parts one and two. You both need to take a long shower and get a few winks. No more drinking,
period
, until New Year’s. I find out either one of you had so much as a single drop, and you’ll be sorry, mark my words.”

We’re meek as lambs, kissing her cheek, swearing our sobriety, not arguing over who gets to shower first. I let Ella go ahead, lying on her bed with my eyes locked open so I don’t drift off before I get cleaned up. I don’t need another reason to piss my mother off, even if she’s being an overbearing tyrant. I’d say she needs to treat us like adults, but we sure as hell have been acting like two stupid kids.

Ella finally comes in with a snowflake towel wrapped tight around her body, her wet hair plastered to her head.

“You need to give it twenty minutes,” she says.

I consider reminding her that I lived in this house for eighteen years before I moved to the dorms, so I’m well aware it takes the water heater twenty minutes to warm up enough for a second shower.

But I’ve caused enough of a riff between me and my sister since I got home. I keep my mouth shut and wait as she towels off, drops her damp towel on the floor, and slips on pajamas.

“Are you wearing my pajamas?” she demands.

“I didn’t want to bother George last night,” I half lie.

There’s no reason to talk about Trent now. Or maybe it hurts too much to even think about him, so I can’t even consider talking about him.

“Oh.” Her argument deflates. George is a barrier neither one of us consider crossing. “I know I said I didn’t want to hear about it before…”

A few awkward seconds tick by while I try to assemble what to say. Nothing makes sense or feels good.

“It’s been just kind of a thing that happens when I come home since last year,” I finally admit, my eyes on Ella’s ceiling, covered in those glow in the dark stars she was obsessed with in junior high. “I thought we should stop, and I talked to Trent about it, but...It was probably just all the emotions, you know, Christmas and all? Anyway, um,
after
, we kind of got into an argument. I told him he couldn’t stay around last night. He got picked up by some curly haired twit, and that’s pretty much it.”

Bitter, party of one, your permanent table is ready.

“So what’s your plan?”

Ella crawls into her bed with me, nudging me over and pulling the covers up to both our chins. I forgot how freezing her bedroom gets. It has two exposed walls and a bank of windows that probably need to be reinsulated. But Ella loves the light more than she hates the cold, so she makes the sacrifice.

“My plan?”

I turn to look at her, her skin so rosy and gorgeous scrubbed clean of any makeup. She rolls her eyes at me.

“You’re an idiot, but you’re not
that much
of an idiot. Are you?” She gives a disgusted snort when I just stare. “You need to fix things. You can’t leave it all smashed. You can’t run away again. You owe it to all of us to fix this.” She takes a deep breath and lets it hiss out between her teeth. “You owe it to Trent especially.”

“I don’t know what to do,” I confess.

“You need to decide what you want, and then you need to commit, no fucking waffling.” She flops on her belly and leans her chin on her hand.