Page 74 of Only and Forever

“Why not?” Charlie asks.

I never told my siblings the extent of my loss when Clint kicked me out. He didn’t just take my home; he took what was left of our friends. He told them I’d broken his heart, used him, coldly shut him out.

I never promised him anything more than a friends-with-benefits situation; he never asked me for more. Until he did, at the end, and I told him gently nothing had changed for me, from how things had started. And then he got quiet, sulked around for days. Then asked again. When I said nothattime, he raged at me, threw things, and kicked me out.

That’s what really happened. His lie isn’t even the part that hurts the worst, though. It’s that my “friends” believed his version of the story over mine.

“Oh, you know.” I shrug. “Everyone moved away, moved on. Got jobs, found partners. Even a couple of them are starting families. We’re in different places now. And when they were around... I didn’t realize, didn’t see what I see now.”

Charlie frowns. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay. I’ve been busy,” I tell her. “My career’s had my focus. I haven’t exactly had time to miss friendship. But now I do see that keeping all this to myself hasn’t been for the best. So I figure, this is a good place to start, the two of us, talking. And Harry, too, if he’s ever open to it.”

“It is a good place to start,” Charlie says. But then she goes quiet. The kind of quiet that I know means she’s biting her tongue.

“Just say it,” I tell her.

“Go to therapy!” she blurts so loud it startles the seagulls hovering near us, angling to mooch for the tiniest bit of food that might fall from our hands.

“Had a feeling you were going to say that.”

“You did?”

“I did.” I lick my ice cream. “How did you do it?” I ask her. But my eyes are on the ocean. “Take that leap?”

“On what? Therapy?”

“That and... everything. Reading those books Viggo gave you. Opening your heart to Gigi. Figuring out what you believed, what you wanted?”

Charlie takes a bite of her ice cream, frowning out at the ocean. “Well... it was gradual. But it began when I got mad.”

I turn and look at her. “Mad?”

She nods. “So fucking mad. Ziggy and I, you know how we reconnected when I started at USC.”

“I remember.”

“Well, she invited me to their Sunday family dinner. I came. I was feeling really anxious and emotional, overwhelmed. Lonely. I hoped sitting around a familiar group of people, a happy family, would make me feel better. But it just made me really fucking mad.”

A twinge of recognition echoes inside me. “Why?”

“Because they have something we’llneverhave. Because that lack messed me up so bad, Tallulah. It messed us up, you, me, and Harry. And I felt so... helpless. I didn’t ask to be born to Mom and Dad. I had no choice in how dysfunctional they were and how that fundamentally shaped me.”

I bite my lip as tears prick my eyes. Charlie’s saying everything I never knew how to put into words, never knew how deeply I felt.

“I kept it together until after I left dinner. I went for a run, so fast and long, I puked up dinner, right on the sidewalk. And on the sidewalk nearby was this small tree branch. It had fallen out ofthe tree above me, probably. About the size of a walking stick. I picked it up, lifted it over my head, and just smashed it into the sidewalk, over and over again, screaming at the top of my lungs.”

My eyes widen. “Seriously?”

She laughs. “No one even called the cops on me. Nothing fazes people here. I love it.” Turning, she meets my eyes. “It felt good, Tallulah, to get mad. Because that anger cleared the way for me to feel other things. I released my anger that I couldn’t change my past and focused on the fact that I sure as shit could change my future. Step by very little step.” She shrugs. “Now here I am. In love. Engaged. Ready to get married.”

“That’s quite the journey.”

“Our parents’ journey is not ours, Tallulah. Therapy helped me figure that out—that what they showed us, in what they called ‘love’ and ‘marriage,’ does not define those terms forme. What I have with Gigi... whatever you might want with someone, someday,weget to say what that means. No one else.” She licks her ice cream. “But that’s really only possible after a shit ton of therapy to unlearn all the bullshit we internalized growing up.”

I stare at my little sister and realize how very grown she is, how wise, how brave.

“You’re incredible, you know that, right?” I clutch her hand. “I admire you, Charlie. So much.”

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