Page 65 of His Hot Mess

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” I said. Only a few minutes ago I wanted her to say this. I needed her to. But not now. I knew, seeing her in that chair, that all Lucy had wanted to do was take care of me. She wanted to make sure I was safe, that I was loved and cared for. It’s what she’d been doing our whole lives.

“You’ve always looked out for me,” I said. “My big sister. I didn’t always want your help, but you were always there with it.”

“Shoving it down your throat!” she said, choking back a sob.

“I knew how to say no if I really meant it.”

At that, she let out what might almost be a laugh. “Well. That’s true. You did always know how to tell me where to stick it.”

I grinned. “See?”

Lucy grew serious again. “Sadie, I’ve been treating you like a child. Like you didn’t know how to take care of yourself. But seeing you at that warehouse today, hearing Sal talk about you, I realized you know a hell of a lot more about a lot of things than I do. Sal was right,yougot yourself that store. Yougot people to help you when you needed it, but you made it happen. Sal. Your landlord. Chris.”

At the mention of Chris’s name, I looked down, my blood running hot. This was what the crux of it was. “I messed up with Chris,” I said, simply. “I did that old Sadie thing and fell for the wrong guy.”

“Is he the wrong guy though, Sadie? Really?”

I shot a glance up at her. “Of course he is.”

“Why?”

“Because…” I hesitated. He was wrong for so many reasons. All of them. Most of all because he was still hung up on his ex.

Anyway, that wasn’t the worst thing. What was worse was that I let it happen in the first place.

“Because I wasn’t supposed to be with anyone while I figured my life out,” I said. “I didn’t want to be.”

That was the truth. I truly hadn’t wanted to let my shitty luck with men get in the way of the rest of it. Then something occurred to me.

“Lucy,” I began, already regretting what I was about to ask. “Do you know what happened with Chris and his ex? Has Graydon ever told you?”

Lucy looked down and my stomach jumped. She knew something.

When she looked back up, she said, “I don’t know much. Chris isn’t exactly loose lipped about anything, least of all his past. But Graydon did tell me that he was with someone forever, his high school sweetheart or something. And that she left him on their wedding day.”

I sucked in a breath. No wonder he didn’t like to talk about it. I thought about the album, how he’d turned to stone when he saw me holding it.

“God,” I said, lost for words.

My chest hurt. It ached, actually, like something dying inside of me.

Any last shred of hope at being with Chris.

I’d tried not to want him, I really had. But learning this about him just made me want to wrap him up in my arms. To tell him he didn’t deserve that, that he was a good man. The kind of man who was furious at wrecking a working relationship with a tryst.

“Sadie?” Lucy said.

I turned to her.

“Not everything is going to go perfectly smoothly from the beginning. It’s okay to make mistakes. I trust you to figure this one out. To figure your whole life out. You don’t need me to tell you anything.”

I squeezed my big sister’s hand again. “But you’ll help me if I ask, right?”

“Always,” she said.

I flung my arms around her.

At least I knew how to love Lucy.

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