“Oh my God! Charlie’s Pizza? How did you get this?”
My sister had surprised me with a visit on this rainy Friday night. I looked over at her now; she was leaning over the counter from her perch on a barstool on the other side of the island. The one I’d come to think of as Larkin’s seat.
I let out a frustrated sigh. Not Larkin’s seat, because she wasn’t my girlfriend – wasn’t even my friend. She wasn’t anything to me. Not anymore. I’d fucked it up too badly.
“But they’ve been closed for years! Did they reopen? What did I miss? God, it sucks, living in the city.” Ellie seemed to realize what she’d said as she took a plate from the stack I’d set out, because she fixed me with as stern a look as she could muster. “You didn’t hear that. The city is amazing, and you need to move there immediately so you can be close to me.”
I chuckled, but my heart wasn’t in it.
Which of course she picked up on immediately, because she had whatever the scientifically-plausible version of ESP was.
Or she just knew me really well. One of those.
“What’s wrong, big brother?”
I tried to smile, but I’m sure it looked wonky.
Ellie narrowed her eyes at me as she took a bite of pepperoni and cheese. But then her whole face lit up, and her shoulders shimmied happily.
“Oh my God!” She swallowed quickly, beaming at me. “It tastes exactly the same! How did you get this?” she repeated.
My smile was more genuine this time. Few things made me happier than seeing my sister happy.
“It’s like this secret club. I got an invite on Facebook, and I have to text them to order, but only during certain hours on certain days. I don’t know who runs it, or where they make it, or anything. I just order, and they deliver it.”
“Oooh, how very cloak and dagger!” Her eyes were bright, and her cheeks were flushed with the thrill of the mystery. “That is so cool!”
I hummed in agreement, taking a few bites of my own slice. It did indeed taste just the same as it had when we were kids.
“Hey, remember how we used to dig around in the junk drawer to see if we had enough coupons for a free pizza?”
I nodded, remembering the Charlie’s Pizza of old, and their buy twelve, get the thirteenth free program. Ellie and I would cut out the small squares that were printed on the box so carefully, and we got so excited when we finally had twelve of them. Our parents were old school, having grown up in an era when people didn’t eat out often. Pizza was a special treat, reserved for things like birthdays, dance recitals, straight-A report cards, football championships. It would often take us a whole year to earn enough of the little loyalty vouchers to get a free pie.
My sister gave me a sad smile, and I knew we were thinking the same thing. Things like this, these memories of our happy childhood, made us miss our parents more than usual.
“So tell me why you’re so quiet tonight, big brother.”
I swallowed a bite of my pizza. “I’m eating, Ellie Belly,” I teased. “And Mom taught us not eat with our mouths open.”
She made a face. “Why do you call me that silly nickname?”
“Because it annoys you, of course,” I answered immediately.
She shook her head. “No, I mean, where did that even come from?” She looked down at her stomach, which was flat from years of distance running. “Was I a chubby baby or something?”
I briefly closed my eyes, taking a deep, steadying breath. No, she hadn’t been chubby, at least not as a baby.
You needed parents who loved you, who were invested enough in your welfare to actually feed you, in order to get chubby. You needed more than a big brother who occasionally stole food from the kitchen for you. When he was recovered enough from the last beating to risk another, anyway.
It wasn’t until we’d moved in with the Morrises that Ellie and I’d had enough to eat. But by then, she was already undersized from almost two years of malnourishment. Part of me had always wondered if that was why she was still so tiny, though the logical part of me knew it was more genetics than anything. Our birth mother had been petite, too.
But my logical side didn’t always prevail when it came to thinking about those fucking people.
“You never told me the story there. You and Dad just always called me Ellie Belly.”
I studied her for a long moment, finishing my slice in an effort to stall. Recent experiences had made me extremely wary of telling sad stories.
But at least this one had a happy ending. So I figured a modified version wouldn’t hurt.
“Well, you were too little to remember when we first met Mom and Dad.”
Ellie nodded. She knew we were adopted, and she knew our birth parents had died. But I’d never told her the story of what had happened. She’d never asked me, and I’d definitely never offered.
And I never would. She would never know about those fucking scumbags, if I could possibly help it.
“Well,” I repeated, thinking about how I wanted to word it. “You had been crying all morning.”
She smiled. “Surely not,” she drawled.
I smiled. “You were a total crybaby,” I teased.
She rolled her eyes, reaching for another slice of pizza.
“Anyway, you were just absolutely wailing when the social worker brought Mom and Dad into the room.” I took a sip of my soda – another thing that had been a special treat growing up. “Dad took one look at you standing there, holding onto my leg like a lifeline, and he walked over and picked you up.”
I didn’t tell her that I’d screamed at him not to touch my sister, that I’d kicked him, that I’d tried to fight him off, that the social worker had to hold me back.
None of that seemed to upset him, though. No, Fred Morris had crouched down until we were eye to eye. He’d given me a serious look, telling me not to worry, he wasn’t going to hurt us. I hadn’t really believed him, because experience had taught me that adults were the enemy.
But then he’d smiled at me, a smile that was so kind and sincere that I’d been stunned by the force of it. I vaguely remember him continuing to talk to me, trying to reassure me, probably. But I didn’t need it. His smile alone had calmed me enough to let him hold my sister, to watch what happened next.
I looked up now to see Ellie looking at me expectantly, so I cleared my throat against the emotion clogging it and continued.
“He picked you up and looked you in the eye, and he said, ‘your name is Eloise now.’ And you just stopped crying, just like that.”
“He had such a deep voice,” she said. “I always loved to listen to him talk.”
I nodded, because I’d loved that, too. Dad had told a story like no one else. He wasn’t showy about it. No theatrics, or narrative tricks. Just a plain old story, made magic by the power of his voice.
And now Ellie was looking at me like I had the power of storytelling, too. So I continued on.
“He held you over his head, doing that thing where he’d toss you up, then catch you. And you just laughed and laughed.”
I didn’t tell my sister that the morning we’d met Fred and Millie Morris was the first time I’d ever heard her laugh, after almost two years of her life.
And I didn’t tell her that it was in that moment, watching this old man play with my baby sister, watching him make her giggle and scream in delight, and not terror, that I knew we could trust him. I don’t know how my little seven-year-old brain put it all together, since I’d had virtually no experience with trustworthy adults. But I knew, somehow, that we would be safe with with our new parents.
“And your shirt rode up while he was tossing you up and catching you, and he smiled and said, ‘or maybe we should call you Ellie Belly.’ And he gave you a raspberry on your tummy, which made you squeal.”
And I didn’t tell her that in that moment, her laugh had become my favorite sound in the world. My baby sister, who’d spent over a month in the hospital recovering from the beating she’d taken for me, then another month with me in a cold, unfeeling foster home where we were nothing more than a paycheck – that little girl was alive, and she was laughing.
It wasn’t until Larkin had come along, until I’d heard her throaty chuckle, that I’d found a new favorite sound.
Too bad I’d probably never hear it again.
But at least I still had this. I had my original favorite girl in the world, and good food, and a good life. It would be enough. I would figure out a way for it to be enough.
“I squealed because his beard was tickling me,” Ellie guessed.
I nodded, chuckling. Dad’s beard had been a constant, right up until the day he died. Ellie had complained for years about it tickling her whenever he kissed her cheek, but she’d never really been serious. In fact, after he’d died, she confessed to me that she missed those whiskery kisses most of all.
“But you loved the nickname. So we called you Ellie Belly from then on.”
She smiled sheepishly. “Well, maybe I don’t hate it so much now.”
I leaned over, giving her a whiskery kiss of my own. “Good, because I will never stop calling you that.”
She squealed, wiping her cheek with her napkin. “That tickled!” she complained, exactly like she had a thousand times or more when we were growing up.
I grinned at her, happy in that moment. Happy to be laughing and eating pizza and reminiscing with my baby sister.
But the happiness only lasted a few minutes before she started in with the interrogations again.
“Don’t think any of this has distracted me from talking about your problems,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me.
I sighed. “I’m fine, Eloise. No need to worry about me.”
“Uh huh,” she drawled, making it clear she didn’t believe me. She took a sip of her own drink, watching me with a pensive frown. “Does this have anything to do with a certain South Bay resident with violet eyes?”
I gave her a look that told her to drop it, but she just she rolled her eyes in reply.
“Krista told me a little bit about her.”
I frowned. “You asked about her?”
She gave me a look that practically shouted ‘duh.’
“You couldn’t keep your eyes off her the other day! Of course I needed to know every single thing.”
I shook my head. I don’t know why I expected anything less from the nosiest person I knew.
“Krista said she lost her husband?”
I nodded. “A year and a half ago.”
Ellie nodded. “Grief can do strange things to people,” she observed. “The pain stays with you, no matter how hard you try to move on.”
I stared at my empty plate, wondering where she was going with this.
“Kind of like your grief for what the gene donors did to us.”
My eyes snapped to hers, widening in shock. “What do you know about that?”
She gave me a sad smile. “Mom told me.”
“She-” I spluttered, not understanding. “She told you? When?”
Ellie hesitated. “When I was eight.”
I frowned. “Really?”
She gave me a rueful smile. “Well, did you really think I wouldn’t ask her?”
I huffed. “Yeah, I guess not.” Probably too much to ask for Ellie not to be curious about such a big part of our history.
“Listen to me.” She reached over and grabbed my hand. “What happened to me is not your fault, big brother.”
I took my hand back, using it to push my plate away. I wasn’t hungry anymore.
“It isn’t your fault,” she repeated.
I took her plate, too, even though she wasn’t done. I scraped her half-eaten pizza into the trash, then walked over to the sink.
“It’s not your fault,” she insisted.
I threw the plate in the sink, where it shattered into hundreds of pieces.
“I should have been there, goddamn it!”
There was a ringing silence after my little outburst. I could feel Ellie behind me, but I couldn’t look at her. I took a huge, gulping breath, staring at the shards of ceramic in the sink. Yet another thing broken because of me.
“I never should have left you alone.”
“You were at school, Graham! You were seven years old, for God’s sake. You are not to blame for doing what every second-grader is supposed to do.”
“But I knew what would happen! I knew-” I stopped, unable to finish.
“Graham.” I felt her small hand on my shoulder, and I looked over my shoulder at the green eyes that were a mirror of my own.
Our father’s eyes.
Her green eyes were sad now. “I know you think you have to protect everyone, big brother.” She pulled at my shoulder, trying to turn me. “But you’re not Superman. You have to let people take care of themselves sometimes.”
I let out a heavy sigh as I relented, turning to face her. “I know that.”
She wrapped her arms around me, squeezing me as hard as she could. Which was not hard at all. But I knew it made her feel better to try.
Weirdly, it made me feel better, too. It made me feel better to know that my sister cared about me enough to try to hug the shit out of me.
“Tell me what happened with the pretty lady,” she mumbled into my shirt.
I huffed. “She is really pretty, huh?”
She smiled up at me. “She’s stunning. But that’s not the point.” She gave me a shrewd look. “Tell me.”
I stepped back, needing some space to tell this particular story. I spilled all the beans to my little sister, all about the worst date ever, the escape from South Bay, the sleeping together, but just sleeping. The instant, intense connection we’d made. How it had only taken seven days for me to fall ass over tits in love with her.
“And then we, um.” I stopped, blushing like a freaking virgin. I did not want to talk about my sex life with my sister. Christ.
Her arms flailed. “Okay, okay, I don’t need the details.” She stuck her fingers in her ears. “La la la you did it.” She motioned for me to continue. “And?”
“And,” I echoed, “then she got weird.”
“Weird?” She shook her head like she was exasperated. “God, you are a dummy. The most well-educated dummy I know. But a dummy nonetheless.”
“What?” I crossed to the pantry, grabbing the garbage can. “What did I say?”
She pulled a dish towel from the drawer, wetting it under the tap and using it to pick up the pieces of broken plate. “What did you do to make her act weirdly?”
I set the garbage can next to her, grabbing the towel from her and taking over the broken dish cleanup. “Who says I did anything?”
She looked up at the ceiling like she was trying to find her patience. “Because you are a dummy,” she repeated.
“I wasn’t weird,” I insisted. I tossed the towel in the laundry chute that led down to the basement, then began washing my hands. “All I did was suggest some activities for the day, and she freaked out.”
Ellie laughed. The little twerp actually laughed at me.
“You suggested some activities for the day?” She didn’t use air quotes, but I heard them all the same.
I glared at her, but she just continued to giggle. I decided in that moment to take back what I said earlier. Least favorite sound in the whole fucking world, her laughter.
“It wasn’t like that,” I retorted, my tone way more defensive than I would have liked. “I just said we should get breakfast, maybe get some work done, do some repairs on her house. Nothing major.”
She shook her head as she walked over to the pantry and grabbed the broom. “So, in other words, you planned the whole day in minute detail, overwhelmed her with couple-y stuff, and all but moved into her house in your mind,” she said, sweeping up the last of the plate shards.
“I-” My hands froze under the tap, the bar of soap sliding out of them and falling into the sink with a clunk. “No. I did not do that.”
My sister chuckled like the insufferable little know-it-all she was. “Dude, you had sex with the woman once. And from what I know of her, I’m guessing you’re the only person besides her husband that she’s ever done that with.”
Shit. I hadn’t thought of that. No wonder she’d freaked out. Here she was, still mourning her husband’s death. And after one fumbling, half-asleep encounter, I’d thrown myself at her full throttle. She’d probably just been looking for a rebound fuck with her buddy, and I’d told her I loved her. Well, shouted it at her, really.
That had been nearly a week ago now, and I’d been trying to get ahold of her for days, to no avail. Calls, texts, emails – all unanswered. I’d even gone over to her house, but she didn’t answer the replacement doorbell.
Ellie gave me a warm smile as she opened my freezer, digging around until she found a couple of popsicles. “Look, I love that you are so gung-ho about finding the woman of your dreams.”
I frowned as she handed me one of the fruit bars. “I’m not the one who’s gung-ho. You are. You’re obsessed with finding me a wife.”
“I am obsessed with finding you a wife because you want to be a husband so badly,” she shot back. “You want someone to take care of, Graham. You’ve been looking for her your whole life. It’s just that you didn’t realize it until recently.”
I scowled. That wasn’t true. Was it?
I thought about what Larkin had said that first night here, when she’d teased me about wanting a wife and a brood of green-eyed kiddos to fill the space. I thought of how Ellie had constantly ragged on me for buying this huge house – a family home if ever there was one – with just myself to live in it. Had I been subconsciously setting myself up for marriage, for a family?
And did I want that with Larkin?
The answer to that question was immediate. Fuck yes, I did. I’d had to wake up in my bed without her for days now. I hated it. I never wanted to do it again. I wanted to sleep with her, to fuck her, to laugh with her, to read with her, watch movies with her, cook for her, have kids with her. All of it. I wanted all of it with her.
“Don’t even try to deny it,” Ellie said, bringing me back to the conversation. “I know you. And I get it, big brother. I love that you have such a big heart. But sometimes you go too far, get too overprotective. You need to let her figure things out for herself. She’ll come back when she does.”
I gave my sister a long look. That sounded so smart, in theory. In reality, I feared it was already too late.
“But what if I blew it?” I ask her, hating how desperate I sounded. “What if she won’t want to come back to me once she figures herself out?”
“She will.”
I shook my head. “You can’t know that.”
“I do, though.” She gave me a bright smile. “She couldn’t take her eyes off you, either. She’s got it bad. She just has a whole lot of other stuff in her head she needs to sort out before she can be ready for you.”
I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to, more than I’d ever wanted anything. But I just couldn’t believe it.
“I think…” I huffed. “I think I pushed her too far.” I looked down at my hands. “Which made her push me too far. And then it all blew up in my face.”
“What do you mean, she pushed you too far?” she growled, sounding like a cuddly, but fierce, mama bear.
I cringed. I couldn’t have my sister thinking badly of the woman I loved. So I told her about the argument, and how I’d yelled at Larkin, punished her with the story that no one should ever have to hear. I told my sister the whole sordid tale of how I’d ruined it all with the woman I loved, and by the end of it I was slumped over the counter, my head in my hands.
Ellie sighed. “Oh, big brother.” She reached over and patted my shoulder. “You’ve got to apologize. You obviously scared her with all that lovey-dovey crap.”
I gave her a look. “Funny.”
She grinned. “Well, just go over there and tell her how sorry you are.”
I shook my head. “She won’t answer. I tried.”
“Well, that’s a bummer.” She was thoughtful for a moment. “There’s got to be some way you can get in touch with her.”
I ran my hands through my hair. “I dunno what, though.”
“There’s lots of ways to get through to someone. Carrier pigeon, passing a note in the hall, billboard, personal ad, Craigslist…”
Ellie continued to list alternative methods of contact, only half-serious, judging by her grin. But my mind snagged on one of the things she’d said.
Passing notes in the hall. Granted, Larkin and I were not in high school. We didn’t live in the same town. We didn’t work in the same place. We wouldn’t ever see each other without going out of our way.
But we did have someone in common, someone who could act as a go-between.
“You’re a genius, Eloise.” I gave her a scratchy kiss on the cheek, and she squealed in protest.
“Well, duh.” She gave me a cheeky grin. “Hey, where are you going?”
I ignored her, because I was already on my way upstairs and to my office, where I’d left my cell phone. My hands were shaking as I dialed a number I never thought I’d use again.
She picked up on the third ring. “Graham?”
I mentally crossed my fingers. This had to work. I needed this to work.
“Graham, is that you?”
I took a deep breath. “Hey, Taylor.”