Bishop
I’d been waiting for fifteen minutes. Bridge was a genius, but not when it came to punctuality.
My classes and game days clashed with hers so I was glad that finally we could agree on a day to have lunch with each other.
I could have picked her up, but she wanted to just meet with me here so I obliged.
It was another way of asserting her independence and any time I could give it to her, I did.
A hand slapped me on my right shoulder making me stand up from my chair.
“Bridge,” I said, and hugged her.
Unlike me, Bridge was tiny. She had our Nana Tina’s build, a fact that my sister couldn’t be happier about.
It felt good to have her within reach. I missed her.
She returned my hug and gave me a sheepish smile, “Sorry I’m late. My alarm went off, but I hit snooze a couple of times.”
“I know I’m that important to you,” I said, rolling my eyes and pulling a chair out for her.
She responded with an eye roll too. “You’re playing great.”
It buoyed my heart that she watched my games. Bridge wasn’t into violence and she’d almost thrown up the first time she watched me play in an exhibition game back in New York. It was a game where I’d gotten three ribs broken by a hit from McDonnell. He now played for Stanford and whenever SDU and Stanford met up, we’d run into each other after the games and joke about that hit.
I’d seen the walls of the ER and Urgent Care as many times as I’d hit goals. It’s the hazard of playing sports. While Bridge couldn’t stand being on the sidelines during my games, she was always there for me by the side of my hospital bed.
“Did you actually finish watching my games?” My brows were raised. I was teasing her. It was an older brother’s mission in life to make younger sister annoyed.
She harrumphed, “No. Well yes, I watched the games but I muted them.”
“Gotcha.” I smiled, shrugging my right shoulder that was still sore from the hit I took from O’Doul the other night. “It’s alright, sis.”
She shook her head and grinned, reminding me of Mom. While I was being groomed by my father to follow in his footsteps, my mother was busy doing the same thing for my sister.
Before Bridge was a year-old, her smile had been plastered all over baby products – organic toothpaste, baby wipes, baby clothes, you name it and it had my sister’s toothy grin. My sister had been acquainted to cameras flashing at her more than our mother’s hugs.
By the time Bridge was three, she had a TV sitcom waiting for her. It never panned out, to my parents’ dismay, because Bridge refused to say a word in front of the cameras.
“I try, but I can’t take it when someone pushes you.” She said, her brown eyes reflecting sadness, “Rugby is so brutal.”
“So’s football, boxing, basketball…” I reasoned but I knew that I couldn’t change her mind. Bridge’s heart was softer than jet-puffed marshmallows and that’s what made her special.
“Why can’t you play golf? Or tennis? Or I dunno – bowling?” Her eyes sparkled, she was goading me.
“No.” I laughed. “There’s no way I’d be caught dead in a golf costume.”
My high school buddy, Charles, played golf and that dude wore slacks and preppy shit for golf.
It was enough that I wore a preppy uniform at boarding school. There was no way in hell I’d be playing a sport where I couldn’t wear clothes that I couldn’t run in.
Bridge’s eyes lifted towards the back of the restaurant, looking for our server.
I said, “I ordered the Chicken and Waffles Benedict for you and asked them for extra hollandaise on the side.”
“Awww, what a great brother you are.” She mock-laughed but her tone was grateful.
“Hey, I had to order because a turtle’s faster than you in the morning and I’m hungry,” I said, chomping on the waffle that I’d ordered as soon as I got there.
“Is that your pre-brunch snack?” She asked but she already knew the answer.
I ate tons of carbs and packed on the protein because my body needed it. I burned the calories faster than I could produce them especially during the season.
“Yep.” The waffles at this place were delicious and if the aroma wafting throughout the restaurant was indicative of the rest of their dishes, I was banking on my Huevos Rancheros tasting just as good.
“How’s school and how are the girls?” Bridge chided. She and I were close enough to be truthful to each other. When you’d been left to watch out for each other since you were kids, there was an innate amount of trust you obtained.
“School’s great and there are no girls,” I said honestly. “So far, I’m handling all the exams and papers between practice and games.”
“Ah.” A syllable came from her.
“What?” I mumbled as I dipped the waffle in the maple syrup.
“So there’s a girl.” Bridge’s mouth was turned up.
“No,” I denied. There were no girls but there was a girl. How Bridge knew that there was one was a boggler.
“What does she look like? Is she kind?” I’d never introduced a girl to my sister. Sure, I had girlfriends, but they were so casual that I never bothered to have them meet Bridge. I figured that one day, I’d introduce someone I wanted to be in the long haul with to Bridge.
“There’s no girl…” I said, my chest slowly tightening because there was but she was not mine. We’d been texting back and forth but aside from the one-time flirty message, our texts have been friendly at the most.
“Oh brother.” My sister sighed in exasperation and I was relieved to see our server carrying our order and placed them on our table.
After thanking him, Bridge dug into her eggs and mumbled, “These are good – they remind me of Sarabeth’s.”
Sarabeth’s was our favorite Midtown breakfast/brunch place in New York. It was the place where my sister and I spent an hour or two chatting about life. We’d ask Lincoln, our family driver, also our best friend, to drop us off when we got picked up from school on the weekends. Mom didn’t even have the time to come with Lincoln and pick us up. She was too busy managing her beauty empire.
“Sometimes I miss New York,” I voiced out, I loved the city, but I didn’t like what it stood for. To others, it was the symbol of freedom and opportunities. To me, it was where life became too suffocating and I felt caged in. “But mostly I missed it because you were still there. I wish I could have done something sooner.”
My sister’s eyes filled with unshed tears, “Bishop, stop. It’s not your fault. We were kids.”
“You were.” I said, trying to dislodge the frustration building up in my chest, “I wish you didn’t have to go through that, Bridge.”
A big fat tear fell on the tissue she’d held to her eyes, “It’s okay…I’m better now.”
I nodded, not wanting to dredge up the past, but also hating the fact that she had to go through what she did.
“I’m not the only one, Bishop.” She eyed me somberly. “You also suffered.”
I shook my head, “Not as much as you, Bridge.”
We were quiet for a beat and then she said, “So, who’s the girl?”
She didn’t even try to hide the fact that she was changing the topic but I didn’t object.
“What girl?” I smirked, biting into the tasty concoction of eggs, beans, chilies, and avocado. Bridge was right, whoever the chef was knew how to make food taste good. When Bridge suggested Wilde at Westwood for brunch, I just went with it. I didn’t even complain about the drive from San Diego to here because any time I could hang out with my sister was a great time.
“Is she kind?” Bridge pressed, wiping the side of her face with a napkin. She’d lost some weight since she’d arrived in L.A. She’d said it was because of her classes, but knowing Bridge, it was because of the pressure that she was putting on herself which meant less time for food and all the time for school. Giving my sister a lecture never worked for either one of us so I had started sending her weekly deliveries of ready-to-eat meals to which she’d sent me a huge “THANK YOU” and a happy face emoji.
“Who’s kind?” Still trying to evade her question.
“The girl you like?” Her face looked funny, as if she was trying to guess if she was right and at the same time, knew that she was right on the mark with me. “Is she kind?”
Bridge never cared for physical beauty. Mom had taught her that. In a reverse psychology kind of way. Our mother was beautiful. She’d been in the top ten of People’s Most Beautiful Women in the World for six years. Bridge and I weren’t born yet when she’d garnered those titles, but she often reminded us when we were kids, and just in case we missed it, the massive framed pictures around our house served as big reminders of her glory days.
But what People Magazine never featured was how our mother treated other people, including us. To her, Bridge and I were inconveniences and our household staff were nothing but low-class, hired workers. From an early age, Bridge and I learned that our nannies had our best interests. After all, they were the ones who hugged us and wiped our tears when our parents screamed at us. Linc was the one who drove me to hockey practices and he was also the one who told me to hold my head up high after my father shouted at me inside the car after a grueling day.
“She’s kind.” I answered, taking a gulp of the tall glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice I’d paired with my order, “She walks dogs for seniors who are unable to walk their dogs. She doesn’t seem stuck up and she doesn’t look down on people.”
I’d seen Kara walk around the halls of the Science Building and she always greeted everyone with a smile. She’d been unaware, but I saw how she interacted with our classmates and I got the impression that at first, people judged her for her looks and thought she was snobbish, but she never acted like she was better than anyone else. In Quantum, she often sat in the front with Colton who looked like a fourteen-year-old geek, and I’d often hear them laugh at something during in-class exercises.
One time, Rikko had mentioned that Kara’s roommate was a Muslim girl to which Rikko had smiled and shook his head with a, “Only my sister could room with a girl from another planet and make her the new BFF.”
“I think you’ll relate well with her,” I said, Bridge still had problems meeting new people but only because she didn’t have a lot of public exposure. And often people judged Bridge on her looks and her introvert tendencies that made others not give her a chance.
“You have a picture of her?” Bridge asked, her demeanor completely fascinated by my non-existent love life. It was nice to see that even with our parents’ messed up lives, my sister still held that happy-ever-after outlook.
“I don’t,” I replied, it was true because I didn’t have the opportunity to take pics of Kara. The fact that she wasn’t mine was the big X that made everything blurry. “She’s got a boyfriend.”
Bridge’s eyes widened, “Bishop!”
“No. She’s not cheating with me.” I wouldn’t allow it. When Kara fired off the flirty text that one time, I knew I was going to put an end to it. I wasn’t going to be a poster boy for cheaters and from what I knew of her, she wasn’t going to go down that path either.
We were friends.
That was it.
And as long as she or Scott didn’t know about the feelings I harbored for her, I was safe. We were safe. In less than a year, I’d be done with college and maybe after, we’d still be friends. As attracted as I was to Kara, there was a limit that my morals would stretch – fantasizing about her was enough.
Cheating was not an option.
“You like her well enough to like her even though she has a boyfriend?” Bridge put in into words for me.
I burrowed my eyes behind the baseball cap that I was wearing, I couldn’t lie to my sister. “Yeah.”
“Oh brother, you’re in trouble.” She let out a big sigh and sipped on the iced chai that I’d also ordered for her. Bridge loved iced chai and iced coffee.
I didn’t answer because she was right, hiding my attraction to Kara was creating havoc in my head and my insides. Every time I saw Scott, I felt the dueling urge to get away from the room and at the same time, hug the dude. He had the girl I wanted yet he didn’t seem to take care of her. I’d heard him talking to her in the living room and the whole time, he was watching football on his laptop. I couldn’t hear Kara’s voice, but I saw his irritated expression on his face, and his answers were curt and distant.
Again, I was no judge of their relationship, but I hadn’t seen Kara come by our frat house.
Usually, our frat brothers brought their girlfriends or hookups to spend the night, but I never saw Kara at our house.
“Is she on social media?” Bridge asked, her tone curious. I’d never really liked a girl enough to discuss it with my sister. Okay, there was this one time I talked to her about Lane, a girl I’d crushed on after meeting her at one of my hockey games, she was cute and I’d asked her out a few times. We never went as far as dating because her family moved to Rhode Island.
“Yeah.”
Bridge grabbed her phone from her purse and asked, “Her name?”
“Kara Chamberlane,” I said, her name bringing life to my insides.
Bridge punched in her name and within a few seconds, “Whoa. She’s gorgeous.”
“Yeah.” I nodded my head, she was even prettier in real life because she hardly wore makeup, but her cheeks held that natural, dewy glow and her lips were pinker, which made her more alive, more breathtaking.
“She’s got a boyfriend?” Bridge asked then without waiting for my answer followed up with, “How long have they been together?” As if that was going to make a difference.
“A long time,” I said, the hollowness in my chest becoming wider now. Kara and I would, could never be more. I had to be content with keeping everything to myself, just like I always had.
Bridge looked at me reflectively, “Sometimes…a long time doesn’t mean anything. I know you’d never do anything with her if she’s involved with someone else.”
“Yep.” I couldn’t forgive myself if I did. I wouldn’t want anyone to do the same thing to me.
“You’re a great guy, Bishop,” Bridge said, somewhat encouragingly. “One day the right girl will be there for you.”
I smiled because my sister still believed in fairy tales. “Bridge, are you watching Disney movies again?”
“Puh-leeaze. I’ve moved on from Disney.” Her brown eyes laughed as she returned, “Now I watch Hallmark movies. On repeat.”
Laughter boomed from my chest, seeing the smile on my sister’s face made life worth it. I knew that one day she’d date and I would make that asshole’s life a living hell. Come to think of it, my sister never mentioned any of the guys she was interested in…
“Bridge, are you dating someone?” I asked in retrospect. I needed to know that she wasn’t being hustled and hassled by college guys.
“What? Me? No. No,” she said in defense. “I don’t even have time to eat, which by the way, thank you for sending me grub all the time.”
I nodded, “No problem. You know you can order your own food? And you can buy groceries.”
“Meh. Takes too much time.” She shrugged her shoulders, Bridge always forgot to eat when she was in the middle of doing something that took up all of her concentration.
She held that intensity and determination that I had for sports to her academics.
She got quiet and then in a soft voice, she said, “One day, you’ll find your princess too, Bishop.”
I laughed again, “I thought you stopped watching Disney.”
“Hallmark Channel has princesses, too.” She scrunched up her nose. “But I’m serious, Bishop. One day, the right one will come along for you and she won’t belong to anyone else. She’ll just be yours.”
I deadpanned because I wasn’t going to launch into fairy-tale, happy-ever-after’s or romance plots with my sister whose stomach was just full of Eggs Benedict.
But her words rang through my ears and my psyche wanted to contradict it.
What if the right one had already come along…?
But she belonged to someone else.
I pushed the empty plate to the side and asked Bridge, “Enough of this mushy, sappy crap…What do you wanna do for the rest of the day?”
Her eyes lit up and she replied, “I could show you around my school, and later we can have dinner at the pier.”
I flagged the server as I said, “Sounds good, Bridge. Sounds good.”