“You look like shit.”
I think about slamming the door in Lizzie’s face for that comment, but instead I just leave it open and walk over to collapse on my couch. I hear the door close and watch as she walks toward me in her cute leggings and tank top combo. She looks perky and fresh while I’m in pajama pants and an oversized t-shirt.
“Welcome to my home,” I say once I’m situated with my head back on the pillows and burrowed under my blanket. Soon this won’t be my home anymore—soon as in later today. The blanket and pillows are some of the last things left I need to pack. I slept on the couch last night because I already packed my sheets and took apart my bed frame.
I think of the card that fell out of a notebook when I was packing my desk yesterday. I brush it off, though Gram’s words reverberate through my mind. Another second apart from the man you belong with is one more second you don’t get to share with each other, and that’s a downright shame.
She perches on the chair across from me. “What’s with the boxes?” she asks.
“I’m moving.”
She looks surprised. “When?”
“Tonight, actually.”
“Oh,” she says, her face falling. “So you won’t make it to dinner tonight?”
I shake my head. I could probably swing it in terms of time, but it’s too hard. I didn’t have fun last night, and I know it’ll be another night on the Strip with Mark’s condo looming large just down the street.
“Where are you moving?”
“I’m staying with a friend until I figure out what I want to do. Indefinitely for now.”
“Why?”
“Jill’s moving in with Becker and our lease is up.”
“You don’t just want to stay here?” she asks.
“Of course I do. I love this house. But I can’t afford the rent.” It seems like something she can’t understand. Whether or not she makes good money at her own job, she has a very generous brother with far more money than he can spend on his own. Surely money is something no one in the Fox family ever has to worry about.
“Get your ass up,” she says as she stands.
“No thanks. I’m not buying whatever you’re selling.”
She rolls her eyes. “I didn’t come all this way for you to ignore me.”
“Then why did you come?”
“Well, for one thing, I still want you to come to the wedding.”
“I can’t.” My response is immediate.
“Why not?”
“Crazy thing called airfare. I can’t just fly out to Chicago. I can’t afford a hotel.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“I’m not your charity case.”
“Don’t be a bitch.” She narrows her eyes at me.
I love her for giving it to me straight as much as I hate her for the same reason.
“I care about you, Reese. You were there when Pops died. You held my hand as we prayed together. A bond born from tragedy lasts forever, so you’re stuck with me.”
“Great,” I mutter, and she giggles.
“I know we don’t know each other that well, but leaving both my brothers out of it for a minute, I care about you. I feel like you’re the sister I always wanted and never had.”
“That’s a sweet thing to say, Liz, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.” I clutch the blanket tightly against me, my only security as I think about who else will be at her wedding.
She changes the subject. “Have you been like this since you got home from Chicago?”
I sit up and shrug. “I’ve felt a little lonely.”
“You have me.” She gives me a big smile.
“You’re leaving me to go back home tomorrow night.”
“You have Jill.”
I roll my eyes. “She’s always at Becker’s or working.”
“You have your job.”
“Which sucks. It’s like whoever’s in charge of kids’ schedules said, ‘Let’s fuck with Reese this year and put all the bad kids in the same class.’ I hate my job.”
“Do you really hate your job?” she asks. “Or do you have a broken heart and you’re not allowing yourself to enjoy anything because of the misery?”
I sigh heavily. “I don’t know,” I mutter.
“We’ve got to snap you out of this. What about a puppy? Puppies don’t let you down.”
“I don’t want a puppy unless it’s Max.”
“You met Max?”
I nod.
“When?”
“Mark took me to LA. That’s where we were when he got the call from your mom that Pops had a heart attack. Brian was calling me at the same time.”
She furrows a brow. “I didn’t know that.”
“Which part?”
“Any of it. And with Max, well, Mark just...” She shakes her head. “He doesn’t do that. He doesn’t introduce women to Max. That’s his baby.”
“Who takes care of Max when Mark’s away?”
“He has a dog sitter. He usually texts to let her know when he’ll be in town and she drops Max at the house, or sometimes she’ll stay at Mark’s place to take care of the dog there.”
“She?” I ask as I realize I’m jealous of a fucking dog sitter.
Lizzie giggles. “Yeah, she. Our seventeen-year-old cousin Abby.”
“Fine. I’ll let that one slide.” We’re both quiet for a beat, and then I finally ask the question that’s been weighing on me since she mentioned it last night. “Why are you worried about him?”
“He was in Chicago last week. I hadn’t seen him since the funeral, but he looked like shit. He lost weight. He looked like he hasn’t slept in weeks. He was withdrawn and quiet, but not quiet like in a peaceful way, quiet in like a cagey way.”
“Cagey?”
She lifts a shoulder. “I don’t know how else to explain it. Something’s going on with him.”
“Was Brian there when you saw him?”
She shakes her head. “He was here in Vegas. He’s kept himself busy with work.”
“Have they spoken?” I know I’m asking a lot of questions, but I need the answers. I need to know if they’ve made up, if they’re talking to each other, if the fact that Mark forced me to leave opened up any doors for two brothers to mend fences. I’m close with my sister, and I can’t imagine my life without her in it. I don’t want to. They may have an unhealthy competition, but I hate to see a family torn apart, and I hate even more that I’m at the root of the issue.
“Not since the funeral. At least not to my knowledge.”
“What happened at the funeral?” I ask.
“It was afterward. We were at my parents’ house and my dad forced them to talk to each other.”
“Oh, God.”
She nods. “It got pretty ugly.”
“Has he been with other women?” I ask. I know better than to believe what I’ve seen on Twitter.
She lifts a shoulder. “I don’t honestly know. But if you’ve seen the pictures, don’t worry about them. Penny’s just making sure he maintains his status as a womanizer. She had a lot of work to do after he was spotted with his arm around Gram, you know. Can’t make him look too sensitive or too sweet.” She shakes her finger at me like she’s scolding a child.
“But he is,” I say.
She tilts her head. “You know that and I know that, but the general public sees him as a tough bad boy who sleeps around for sport. If Penny didn’t throw out some old pictures of him canoodling the ladies, people might get the wrong idea.”
“Canoodling?”
She laughs. “You have a better word for it?”
“Fondling?”
“Gross.” She makes a face. “That’s my brother.”
“Sexing?”
“Might be even worse than fondling.” She waves a hand in the air. “The point is those are old images, at least as far as I know.”
“What about the snap?”
She looks at me like I’m crazy.
“He sent a Snapchat a few weeks ago with him and another woman. They looked awfully cozy, and snaps are current images. You can’t send one of an old picture.”
“Mark doesn’t know how to use Snapchat,” she says, rolling her eyes and waving her hand dismissively.
I nod. “Yeah, he does. I taught him.”
Her brows furrow. “You did? How long did that take?”
I giggle and sit up, feeling a little lighter as I reminisce about one of my favorite memories of my time with Mark. “Nearly a five-hour car ride from Phoenix to Vegas.”
She laughs, too. “He’s not the most adept at technology.”
“He didn’t understand the filters. I had to show him all the different ones and then I had to explain what happens when you post to My Story instead of just sending it to individuals.” I ignore the twinge of regret I feel that we’ll never recapture that moment.
“He probably messed up and meant to send whatever it was just to his friends.”
“Regardless, I can’t help but wonder who it was.”
She squints at me as she thinks. “When did you say it was?”
“It was the day I got back home from visiting my parents in Phoenix. He didn’t waste any time finding someone new.”
“I doubt that, Reese. He was pretty broken up that day between you, Brian, Gramps, and Steve.”
“Steve?”
She shakes her head. “Never mind. What did she look like?”
“Tell me,” I demand.
She averts her eyes to the window. “There’s some stuff going on with the band. It’s personal and I can’t talk about it.”
“Is everything okay?”
She lifts a shoulder. “I don’t know.” Her voice is soft, but she’s got me on high alert. “Tell me what the girl in the snap looked like.”
I blow out a breath, pissed she won’t tell me more and worried about Mark. “She had this long, straight, copper-colored hair and brown eyes. That’s all I remember. Oh, they were cheek to cheek and they both looked a little drunk.”
Lizzie thinks for a few beats. She pulls out her phone, taps some buttons, and scrolls around. Then she turns her screen around and passes her phone to me. “Is that her?”
One quick glance at the image makes me nauseous. It’s Lizzie and the same girl. I nod.
She laughs. “That’s Penny. Mark’s publicist.”
“Penny? As in the woman who releases all the pictures of Mark canoodling women?”
She nods. “Yeah. And I promise, there’s nothing sexual between them.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Uh, yeah, I do.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “How?”
“She’s related.”
“Oh.”
She laughs. “She’s my dad’s cousin’s daughter. Does that make her a second cousin?” She furrows her brow then shakes her head like it doesn’t matter when she just blew my whole world apart. “I don’t know,” she says, waving her hand in the air again. “We grew up with her, and when the band first started, she did free publicity for them as part of her intern project for school. They started getting popular about the same time she finished her degree. She moved to LA, gained some other clients, and the rest is history.”
“Thanks for clearing that up.”
“I wish I could tell you more, but he didn’t open up to me when I saw him. All I know is he looked like shit. He’s not doing well. And,” she nods to the blanket I’m burrowed under, “neither are you. He needs you as much as you need him.”
“Everyone keeps saying that, but I don’t have any options.”
“There are always options, Reese.”
“But he’s the one who asked me to leave. Am I supposed to beg him to take me back when he told me love isn’t enough? I have to protect myself.”
“Protect yourself all you want.” She stands up and sticks her clutch under her arm. She motions to me with her other hand. “Look where it’s getting you.” She walks toward my front door. “I need to go pay a visit to my idiot brother Butt-head. I’ll see you in October.” She wiggles her fingers in a little wave and disappears out my door before I have the chance to protest.