Page 70 of Off Limits

We don’t make scenes in our family.

Autumn brings me over a mug of tea, and I sit up straighter, pulling my arms out of my cocoon to accept it. “I added honey,” she says softly. “It’s chamomile. It’ll help.” She settles on the other end of the couch with her own mug, because apparently we’re now the living embodiment of the phrasetea and sympathy.

I manage a weak, “Thank you,” and sip my tea. Chamomile’s never been my favorite, but she added enough honey to make it tolerable, and whether it’s the warm drink or the drink itself, I do feel somewhat calmer by the time half of it’s inside me.

“What happened?” Autumn asks softly, clearly picking up on the fact that I’m less distraught.

But just thinking of an answer to that question has fresh tears flowing. I shake my head. “I fucked everything up.”

She tilts her head to one side and hides her burgeoning smile behind her mug. “I kinda picked up on that.” Despite her finding some twisted sense of humor in the situation, her voice is full of kindness. “How, though? What did you do?”

“I implied that he wasn’t important,” I choke out, tears flowing more freely.

Autumn freezes, her face a picture of shock and disgust. “You did what? Why? What the hell, Ellie? Why would you do something like that?”

Miserable, I shake my head again and sip my tea, hoping for some of its miraculous calming powers right now, but either a sip isn’t enough for it to work, or it’s not a miracle tea after all. “I didn’t mean to,” I say, my voice matching Autumn’s in volume as I leap to my own defense. “That’s not what I meant at all. But that’s how he took it, and I said it all wrong, so I can’t even blame him, but he left before I could figure out how to put what I really meant into words.”

Autumn takes a deep breath and a long drink of her tea before setting the mug aside, pulling her legs up so she’s sitting cross legged and facing me, straightening her spine, and looking me in the eye. “Okay. Tell me everything that happened. Maybe I can help you figure out how to fix this.”

I try to mimic her, but I don’t have the energy to sit up straight, so instead I just take a few deep breaths, another sip of my tea, and set my mug aside to let my head loll against the couch. “He brought up this past weekend at my parents’ house.”

Even without looking straight at her, I catch Autumn’s wince. That has me lifting my head and examining her face, though she’s already schooled her expression back to sympathetic openness. “Was it really that bad?” I ask.

She sucks in another deep breath, and before she even starts talking, I know she’s going to hedge whatever answer she’s giving. Which means it really was that bad.

I drop my head back on the couch cushion again. “I’m sorry, Autumn. I shouldn’t have invited you. I didn’t mean to make you feel awkward. I just thought it would be fun for us to get away. But going home is always like that for me.”

“I’m sorry,” she says sincerely. “That must suck.”

I lift a shoulder, but because of the blankets, she probably can’t see it. “It is what it is. They are who they are. I can’t change that.”

“So instead you try to change yourself.”

I let out a deep sigh, contemplating that statement. “Not completely,” I say at last. “Just enough to get by.”

She nods, like that makes perfect sense. “What did Simon have to say?”

I relay the gist of our conversation, trying to stick to the bare facts and leave out how much I was bristling on the inside at his criticism. And now I’m getting irritated with him all over again. Who is he to spend five minutes at my house and then think he gets to tell me how to act with my parents? He clearly has no idea what it’s like to have a dad who’s constantly pushing you down a path you don’t want. Every visit feels like when Ralphie goes to see Santa in that old Christmas movie,A Christmas Story, where he asks for the BB gun he’s been wanting for so long, and instead of Santa telling him to be a good boy, he gets told, “You’ll shoot your eye out,” and a boot in his face shoving him down the slide whether he wants to go or not.

The thing I actually want to do is Ralphie’s BB gun. My dad is Santa, his boot in my face shoving me down a slide of his choosing.

“Ellie?” Autumn’s questioning voice draws me out of my strange movie parallels. “I lost you for a second there.”

“Sorry,” I mutter, shaking my head for the umpteenth time. “Anyway, what I meant to say was that it’s easy to tell Simon things because I know he’s not going to think I’m dumb for liking what I like or lecture me on how it’s not appropriate or not good enough or that I’m too smart to do whatever. He’ll just listen and accept me for who I am. But what I actually said was that telling him things doesn’t matter.”

Autumn winces again, and this time I nod. “Yeah. Exactly. You can see how that sounds, and how he obviously took it, and he brought up the fact that we still haven’t told Cal as further proof that I don’t think our relationship matters, and he left before I could organize my thoughts enough to express them clearly. And I think we just broke up.” My voice cracks on the last sentence, a new wave of tears coming with it.

Autumn hands me the mug and encourages me to drink the last of my tea. I do, but it’s lukewarm by now, and doesn’t help. I just lay my head back against the couch and let the tears flow. There’s no point in trying to stop them. They’ll just keep coming regardless.

“I’m sorry, Ellie,” Autumn says quietly. And then she just sits with me, her hand on my foot as she lets me cry for a while, not offering advice or solutions or anything but her presence. And for right now, it’s exactly what I need.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Simon

“Hey, man, where you been?” Cal says when I come home after a long, grueling workout. I don’t normally get sore unless I’ve taken time off, but I’ll probably be sore tomorrow. Which is going to have the entire coaching staff up my ass about poor decision making, but I don’t give a flying fuck right now.

“Gym,” I grunt in response as I pass the living room on my way to my own room. I drop my stuff and head to the shower, ignoring Cal’s frowning face as I pass it in the hall. I don’t have the energy to deal with him right now. Partly because I want to punch him in the face. Because if not for him and his stupid, overprotective, asshole behavior where his sister is concerned, I might not be in this situation.

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