“Bro, what the hell is your deal?” my sister, Megan’s voice cuts through the phone line, waking me out of a deep slumber.
I scrub my hands over my face and check the time on my phone. “Jeez, why are you awake? It’s 6:30 in the morning. My alarm hasn’t even gone off yet.”
“I thought you worked for a living,” she retorts.
“I don’t leave my house until 7:15. I had a good thirty minutes before I had to get up, you brat.”
She sighs heavily. “Mom’s worried about you.”
I stretch my arms wide and throw my feet off the side of the bed to make my way to the bathroom. “Why?” I ask, pulling myself out of my boxers.
“Because you haven’t sent her an email in two weeks. Are you peeing?”
“No,” I lie.
“Liar.”
“I’m not peeing. It’s just the creek by my house. It runs really fast and hard in the morning.”
“You’re disgusting. Have the decency to mute the phone line next time.”
“But then you wouldn’t be able to hear me pee.” A lazy grin spreads across my face as I tuck the phone against my shoulder to wash my hands. “What’s Mom’s deal?”
“You go from emailing her on Sunday nights like clockwork to radio silence on all of us for two weeks. We talked about this, Miles. One email a week means you get to avoid the two-hour phone calls with her where she threatens to come stay with you for a week. Why are you slacking?”
I exhale heavily and make my way down the hall out into my kitchen. My timed coffee pot has finished brewing, and I pour myself a cup. “I’ve been busy.”
“Bullshit,” she snaps as I open my front door and step outside onto the porch. The sky is a mixture of blue and golden sunrise, illuminating the treetops in front of my house.
“I haven’t felt like talking, Meg.”
She groans loudly. “Don’t tell me you got back together with Jocelyn. I’m telling you, Miles, our family will not be able to stand this again. I thought she was married and had a kid anyway.”
“It’s not Joce,” I snap, rolling my eyes and taking a sip. “It’s that…author girl,” I admit because I know my sister, and she won’t quit until I fess up.
“The one you called me from the bar about?”
I clear my throat and reply through clenched teeth. “Yes.”
“Oh man! I didn’t know you were seeing her!”
“I’m not…I mean, I was. But it’s over now.”
“Why?”
“Because she lied to me about some shit, and I’m not bringing noise like that back into my life again. Been there, done that.”
Megan’s little growl on the other line surprises me. “Don’t think every girl who isn’t perfect is like Jocelyn, all right? I don’t know this author chick, but I do know you, and you sounded so crazy happy that night you called me to talk about her, Miles. Happier than I’d heard you in like…forever. I’d say since Joce, but honestly, you were never happy with that girl. Not a day in your life. I know I haven’t met this author, but I called Mom the very next day to tell her about how you sounded because it was so night and day different. We were excited.”
“Seriously?” I state, my jaw dropping. I knew my family had issues with Jocelyn, but they rarely ever voiced them to me. They were always blindly supportive of my decisions. “You guys never said anything.”
“Miles, Joce was the worst, and she made you miserable. You were moody for years because of that girl. God, every time you guys broke up, we all prayed it’d be the last time.”
“Why wouldn’t you say something to me about that?” I exclaim, wrapping my hand around the railing of my porch and squeezing it in frustration.
“Because we never knew when you might get back together with her! And if we admitted how we really felt, and you stuck with her, it could ruin our relationship with you. We actually used Grandpa to tell you she was a massive bitch because we knew you couldn’t hate him.”
“Oh my God,” I exclaim with a shake of my head. “Grandpa was in on it?”
“Oh yeah,” she replies with a giggle. “I remember him saying to Mom one time…‘If you guys are too weak to tell Miles to drop that girl, then I’ll do it.’ Mom was super insulted, but it was Gramps…ya know.”
I laugh loudly at that. “God, I can picture him saying that.”
“Needless to say, I’m glad your silence isn’t because of her. So what’s going on with the author girl then? What’s her name again?”
I shake my head and reply, “Kate.” It feels weird to say out loud when she’s been Mercedes in my mind for so long, but honestly, it suits her a hell of a lot better than Mercedes Lee Loveletter.
“What did she lie to you about?”
“A couple of different things,” I reply, really not wanting to get into the details because it makes me feel pathetic.
“So what happened when you found out?”
My brows lift. “I punched a guy.”
I’m met with silence on the other end.
“Megan?” I ask. “Megan!” I say a little louder.
“Sorry, I was processing. So you actually punched a guy?”
I nod. “Yeah. I’m not proud.”
“Jesus, I am…impressed. Dad always said the only woman who would ever make you violent to another person was me. You’re sort of one of those ‘all bark, no bite’ guys. Your bark is usually scary enough because you’re basically a giant. So the fact that you punched a guy over this girl makes me think you must really care about her.”
This is a concept I have been pondering for the past couple of weeks. “I think I was really starting to,” I admit. “But it’s over now. She lied, and I’m not doing the Joce bullshit again.”
“There’s one big difference here that I think you’re not considering, Miles.”
“What’s that?”
“Joce made you miserable, and this girl makes you happy, true or false?”
I swallow around a knot in my throat. “True.”
“So you’re going to let one bad night discredit several moments of happiness?”
“I don’t know if it’s that simple, Meg.”
“It’s only as complicated as you make it, bro. I think you’re overreacting because you’ve been burned. And that’s understandable. But don’t throw away a good thing because of your past. It’s already taken enough from you.”
I run a hand over my head and sigh heavily. “How did you get so fucking insightful?”
“I’m wise beyond my years.” She giggles, and I hear a rustling in the background. “I’m just getting to my kickboxing class. I gotta go. Call me after you quit being an idiot and make up with that girl!”
She hangs up without another word, and I can’t help but smile. And part of my smile is because for the first time in two weeks, I think maybe I was wrong. Not about being upset with Kate for lying to me about some pretty major shit, but about the fact that I never really let her explain her side of things. I never fought with her. I shut her down like I chose to shut down drama in my life after being burned so badly with Joce.
But the fact that I’d never punched another man until that night with Kate says something.
It says that Kate Smith is a woman worth fighting for.