I slump deeper into the bucket seat, letting the dark interior of the muscle car envelope me. “There was another girl.”
“Motherfucker,” he growls. “You need someone to go kick Jayson’s balls in?”
No ‘cause someone already beat the shit out of him and threatened his balls with a knife.
“I’m fine, Rowan. I’m a big girl, I can take care of myself.”
“You’re still my kid sister, you know.”
I sigh again, smiling this time. “It’s really fine.”
“That guy was a fucking asshole. Wait didn’t he spell his name with a fucking ‘Y’?”
“Yep.”
“I think we’re calling you guys splitting a net win.”
I laugh.
“So what else is going on with you?”
“Nothing.”
He clears his throat. “Sierra, you’re not exactly the ‘just calling’ type.”
“Sure, I am.”
“Oh yeah? When in the last, like, six months have you ‘just called’?”
I frown. “I’ve had a lot of stuff going on.”
“Which I’d love to hear about, you know.”
“I know, I know.” I sigh, that feeling of being the new family screw up coming bubbling up inside. “I’ve been off the grid a little, I know.”
This feels good, even if I’m not saying anything. It feels cathartic, opening up a little to family, even though there’s so much I haven’t and can’t tell him or any of my siblings.
Not now. Not yet.
“What’s going on with you, Si-Si? Just the Jayson thing, or something else?”
“It’s… school. I dunno.”
“What about school.”
“I don’t know, Row. You didn’t go to college and you’re doing fine, Ivy dropped out and is killing it. Stella dropped out and is kicking ass as a nurse-”
“Okay, stop, seriously. I own a dive bar, Sierra.”
“Well, but don’t you like owning a dive bar?”
“Love it.”
“Well?”
“But that’s not you and you know it. And Ivy took a fuckin’ gamble with that lifestyle blog. She got lucky with that. In a million other scenarios, she’s living at home in her old bedroom at Mom and Dad’s waitressing for cash. And Stella had help, in case you forget Mom and Dad basically half-parenting Carter while Stella got her shit together.”
Rowan sighs, and I can picture him in whatever hotel the whole family is shacked up in out west, pinching his brow. Maybe a beer in his hand as he stands by the pool.
“You’re the standard Si-Si. You’re what the rest of us try and be. You and Kyle, obviously.”
I groan. “I don’t want to be that, though.”
“I know. No one chooses that. Well, maybe Kyle.”
I grin.
“So you’re confused? Having a midlife crisis?”
“Maybe a quarter-life one,” I say glumly, toying with the phone cord before running my hands over the leather wheel of the car. For a minute, even though it’s true that I don’t know a thing about driving stick, I wonder what it would feel like to just turn on the engine, put the car in drive, and just go.
“Join the club, dude. That’s like every Tuesday for me.”
I smile.
“The thing is, you power through it. It gets better. It always does.”
“Thanks, Row,” I say quietly in the stillness of the car, the last of the driving-into-the-sunset daydream fading away.
“Any time. So what else is going on with you?”
“Oh, complexities galore.”
My mind goes to Connor, and my body tingles all over again at the very recent memory of the things he does to me. The way he talks to me. The way he stirs some sort of darkness inside of me that makes me shiver.
“Feel like sharing?”
Not in a million years.
“Nah. You go have fun with everyone.”
“Eh, early night over here. Dad’s pretending he’s not sleeping down by the pool again, Mom’s had one glass of wine, so, you know, she’s half in the bag.”
I laugh, grinning, but also feeling the pang of something like sadness.
“Look, whatever it is, I’ve got some advice.”
“Shoot.”
“Stop thinking so much, Sierra.”
I frown, and I can hear my brother chuckle over the phone.
“I’m serious, and you know what I’m talking about. You think too much. You analyze the fuck out of everything until you’ve seen every angle, but while you’ve been weighing how best to approach it, whatever it is passes on.”
I scowl in the darkness of the car.
“C’mon,” Rowan says, as if reading my mind through the phone. “Spill it. What else is going on with you?”