Page 73 of Sexting the Coach
The memory comes back to me crystal clear and well-preserved, though I haven’t visited it in a while. The day he came back from surgery, Dad under his arm, practically holding him up as they walked him to the guest room. Drew couldn’t even goto this own bedroom, because he couldn’t make it up the stairs. And despite the absurdity of our house, we at least had the presence not to have an elevator.
Mom and Dad had doted over him, hovering around him and barking orders at me. Ice, food, water. Run out and get him a smoothie. And I did it all, thinking that if I just blindly gave in to the demands, I could work off my debt. I could make up for it by being the world’s best nurse.
It was like when we were kids, and one of us would lose a bet, becoming the other’s servant for a day. Except now I’d done something much worse than losing a bet.
Three days after his return, I’d been going to the bathroom in the middle of the night when I heard something from the guest room. Without thinking, I’d peeked in through the crack in the door, realizing it was Drew.
Crying.
The sight of it—of my big brother, who hadn’t cried in years—made my body feel impossibly cold. I’d gone to the kitchen and returned with a cool cloth and mug of tea for him, pushing open the door without thinking.
“Here,” I’d whispered, startling him, which startled me and made me jump, some of the tea sloshing out of the mug and onto my hand, already leaving an angry red welt. “I brought you?—”
“Getout,” he said, his voice not like an ax, not like something drawn back and applied with force, but more like something wielded with precision. An X-ACTO knife, razer blade. A scalpel. Going on, his eyes-tinged red with a sadness that quickly hardened into hatred, he spat, “Do you really think I want to see you right now, Elsie?”
“It was an accident?—”
“No.” His voice was hard. “It was careless. Just like you. Always careless, not thinking about other people. The onlyperson you care about is yourself, which is whyyourfuture is still intact. I told you to stop fucking around.”
I set down the tea with shaking fingers, the amber liquid sloshing up around the rim of the mug and puddling on the dresser when I did. I knew better than to leave a wet cloth on the wood, but I couldn’t stand to hold it in my hands.
“I didn’t think?—”
“No. You never do. You let everyone else around you do the thinking for you.”
“Drew,” I’d taken a deep breath, steadied myself. This was my brother, and no matter how angry he was with me, it would eventually get better. I would find a way to make it up to him. “I know you’re angry?—”
“You have no idea what I’m feeling.” He was staring at me like he could burn a hole through my face. “And you never will. You want to make this up to me, Elsie? Leave me the fuckalone. Goaway. You can’t give hockey back to me. You can’t go back in time and change this, and even if you could, I doubt that you would be able to. You’re too fucking selfish to ever make a different decision.”
I knew he was trying to hurt me. And it was working.
The thing about being so close to someone else is that you know exactly what to say, exactly what will hurt them the most.
“Elsie,” Hattie says gently, pulling me out of the memory, reaching over, and putting her hand on my arm. The San Francisco apartment comes rushing back to me, my childhood home fading away into the background. Even though I’m not actively thinking about it, I can still feel the weight of Drew’s stare.
“Can we just—can we slow down for a second?” Hattie goes on, dipping her head to catch my gaze. “Maybe it would be a good idea for you to talk to?—”
But she doesn’t get to finish that thought, because at that moment, there’s an insistent knock on the door.
“Ugh,” Mabel says, unfolding herself from her spot in the corner of the room. The introduction of a new person seems to strike straight through my nervous system, calming me. “I told the guy to leave it at the door.”
“Leave what?” Hattie asks.
“Curry,” Mabel says, glancing at me. “Figured we should try and get some food in her.”
My stomach growls loudly, and when I laugh, Hattie and Mabel look like they’ve managed to diffuse a bomb. Hattie takes my hand and pulls me up to my feet, walking with me into the kitchen as Mabel goes to the door.
“I’mcoming!” Mabel calls in response to another rapid-fire knock. “Don’t you people read the?—”
But when she opens the door, it’s not a disgruntled Doordasher standing there.
It’s Weston Wolfe, his chest heaving, his wild eyes landing right on me.
Chapter 32
Weston
“Elsie.”
