WINTER

Finn’s words haunted me through the rest of my shift and driving home. What did he want from me? That night he evidently needed comfort. I wasn’t saying the whole night was spent with me comforting him with my body, but I’d known it was a one-time deal.

Him coming after me like that was beyond confusing. I’d thrown out Ivy’s name like she was a wall that could keep my feelings on one side and Finn on the other. It was cleaner, neater that way. I coped that way. Plus, a one-time thing I could keep from Ivy. A relationship or whatever it was that Finn wanted, I wouldn’t be able to. She wasn’t in a place where she could take many blows. I needed her to get well.

She was awake when I got home, sitting on our mom's red and gold chenille sofa, flipping through the late night channels which consisted of infomercials and reruns.

"How did it go?" She turned the television off and threw the remote on the coffee table.

"Fine, but you look terrible."

Her face was drawn and pale. She had bags under her eyes, and her mouth was pinched together in an unhappy frown. If I didn't know better, I would swear she had been on a week long drinking binge. But there wasn't a scent of alcohol about her when I joined her on the sofa, just the sour smell of vomit.

"I couldn't sleep. Every time I lay down, the room spun and I'd feel sick again. I can't even keep water down." She pointed to the half-full glass on the table.

"I'm really worried about you, Ivy. Maybe we should just bite the bullet and take you to the hospital."

"And use our savings on that? Haven't I wasted enough of our money? No thanks." The bitter tone wasn't directed toward me, but herself. One of the worst parts of recovery was facing the harm done while addicted. A lot of Ivy's use was because she wanted to forget—her flunking out, her argument with Mom and Dad, their deaths, and every other bad thing that followed.

"It'd be a savings in the short term if you end up so sick that you need an extended stay in the hospital. That wouldn't be good for our bank account either."

Bills were a constant state of concern for us. We were slowly digging our way out, but it would be a while before we would be able to move into a nicer place or buy a better car. For now we drove the ten-year-old Honda my parents had given Ivy when she graduated from high school. For me, the money thing was a non-issue. No sense in rehashing the past. I was glad she was alive. I was glad I was alive. And I was glad we were together.

She twisted her lips into a not impressed with your logic face but didn't have a response.

"Come on." I stood and offered my hand. "Let's try to get some sleep. You can sleep with me."

She heaved herself off the sofa and tugged an oversized T-shirt down around her thighs. It said “West Central High,” and by the size and age, I wondered if it belonged to Finn at one time. I refused to ask, though. I would feel better not knowing.

In my bedroom, Ivy climbed into the twin bed and laid on her side while I stripped off the Riskie's clothes and pulled out sleep shirt and shorts. She looked about ten years old with her blond hair framing her heart-shaped face.

"Was it terrible at Riskie's? Did anyone try to make you do a table dance?"

Because the walls were so thin in our apartment, it was easy to hear her when I went into the bathroom to wash off the smoke and sweat of the night.

"Not at all. I made about three hundred in tips. I had only one person grab me. And the guys from Atra showed up to hassle me." I left out any mention of Finn and him dragging me back to the VIP room.

"And Jimmy?"

"He was kind of in a bad mood. He stomped around, huffed and puffed like the bad wolf he likes to think he is, and then left us alone."

"Did he leave by himself?" She tried to sound like she didn't care, but it was obvious she did.

"I wasn't paying attention," I admitted. I had been too discombobulated by Finn. "I thought he had that no sleeping with the help rule." I wiped my hands dry and returned to the bedroom. Ivy scooted over and I climbed into bed with her.

She snorted. "He has a lot of rules that he likes to apply to the staff that don't apply to him. He's Jimmy Risk, you know. Rules are for peons."

Yeah, there was something there, but if she didn't want to tell me then I wasn't going to press I had my own crush and my own secrets I didn't want to talk about. Besides, Jimmy was bad news in my book and the last guy I'd want for Ivy—not just because he was a strip club owner, but because that was all he owned: nightclubs and strip clubs. For a recovering alcoholic like Ivy, it didn't make good sense for her to be shackled to a guy who had access to thousands of gallons of liquor. It wasn’t ideal that she worked there either, but she needed a job and Jimmy provided the only one since she got out of prison.

"I never saw him hit on any of the girls. He was in a really growly mood." I’d have to tell her about the VIP room thing. Jimmy or someone else was bound to bring it up. Hey your sister went in the back and gave a private dance to a customer! I didn’t want her to hear it from anyone else. Taking a deep breath to calm my suddenly racing heart, I said, "You know who else was there?"

"Everyone? I mean, at some point it seems like every male in this city ends up there."

I ran my tongue over my lower lip, remembering the taste of him. "Finn O'Malley."

She barked out a surprised laugh. "You're shitting me? What the hell was he doing there? His latest girlfriend not putting out enough?"

"He was there with some guys I didn't know and Adam Rees."

"Nice. How'd he look?"

"Good." I paused, and the silence lengthened between us as I discarded several adjectives that would give away how much I felt for him. How could I describe him without talking about how piercing his blue eyes looked even in the dark light and how hard his body felt when it pressed against me? Or how soft his hair looked, and how I wanted to drag my fingers through it and then pull his lush mouth to mine and kiss him until there was no air left in either of us.

"I saw him right after his dad died, did I tell you that?"

I shook my head and tried not to pay attention to the way my heart was squeezing. “Right after or later?”

A sick feeling roiled in my stomach. Had they hooked up? Talked about getting back together? Was this before or after Finn and I had sex at the trailer?

“Right after.”

Relief rushed through me so fast I felt dizzy. I wished he’d said at least one word about this the other night. But then, would it have really made a difference? I hadn’t thought about Ivy before that night and sure as hell not during. I squirmed beside her, but she didn’t notice.

She was lost in her own memory. "I ran into him at the Walgreens on 48th and University. I'd run out of tampons and peanut M&Ms. He was buying bottles of Everclear. I asked him what he was doing and he said ‘getting shitfaced.’ Anyway, he looked good then. Of course, he'd always looked good. That wasn't the problem with us,” she finished with a slight curl of her lip. Was that disgust or dismay?

It was an opening, a tiny one, but I dove through it and kicked the door open. "What ever happened between the two of you?"

As if there was something she could say that would make my own actions okay. Yes, they'd been broken up since she was twenty and that was five years ago, but Finn was still her ex. And it felt wrong. Even when it was so good.

"Oh, God." She flung an arm over her eyes. "That was a shit time in my life, Winter, and I did a lot of things I'm ashamed of."

"Sorry, you don't have to tell me."

Losing a parent was like receiving blunt force trauma to the side of the head. You never really fully recover, but you could move on. When our parents died in a car wreck on New Year's Eve when I was sixteen and Ivy was nineteen, there was a time there I thought we'd died too.

Ivy’d already had a bad drinking problem. She'd flunked out of her first semester at college and had come home defiant and unapologetic. They'd argued, and then the accident happened. After that, Ivy couldn't pull herself out of the tailspin. She was sober just enough to fight for my guardianship so I wouldn't have to stay in foster care for two years. But after the petition was granted, she let go, as if the court battle had sucked out every atom of her self-control.

We'd had the life insurance policies, so it seemed we'd make it financially. Ivy paid off the house and set aside money for my college. Or so I thought.

But Ivy's drinking turned into drugs, and the money from the insurance ran through her fingers like water through a sieve. I didn't learn the full extent of the damage until I tried to pay for my first semester at Central. The check bounced, my admission got denied, and I had a long screaming match with Ivy that ended with bitter tears on both sides.

I mortgaged the house to pay for her first stay at rehab and sold the house to pay for the second. But once an addiction had a hold, its grip was so tight you couldn't pry that person loose with a bulldozer. She had to crawl out on her own. That was the lesson I had to learn. Margo, Ivy's sponsor, said I still hadn't learned it. Margo thought I should move out, but until Ivy could stand for herself, I wasn’t leaving.

"No, it's good for me. That's what recovery is all about, right? Asking for forgiveness from the ones I've hurt. Step eight, right?"

Step eight: Make a list of all persons harmed, and when wrong, promptly admit it. I’d learned those steps in the Al-Anon meetings.

She sighed so deeply and so long that I wondered where she got the oxygen. "I cheated on him. Several times."

"On Finn?" I didn't mean to sound so incredulous, but that was inexplicable to me. If she had Finn, why look elsewhere?

"I was drinking. I would get drunk, and I would hook up. Finn wasn't into the party scene like I was. He played intramural sports and he went out, but even then he didn't drink hard. He started leaving me behind because I'd refuse to leave a party even if I had a test the next day."

"Did you break up with him?"

"No, he finally broke up with me after some chick in his chem lab started making noise that she'd love to be in his pants."

"Do you miss him?"

She was silent for a few too many heartbeats, and the guilt of the one night eight weeks ago made me hot and cold. Was it shame or something else? The memory of that night was filled with contradictory emotions. There was the bliss of being held by Finn and the glory of having his big, strong body rub against mine. There was his shocking lack of inhibitions and the mind-numbing pleasure he brought forth because he knew what to do with his body and was constantly listening to mine. But underneath it was the thought—like sand in the bottom of your shoe that you can't find but knew was there abrading your foot with each step—that I shouldn't have done it. The best time in Ivy's life was when Finn was her boyfriend. Post-Finn, her life was a disaster.

"I miss the idea of Finn more than I miss Finn himself. Having someone there to shoulder your burdens, always having that sure thing. That's really great. But I don't miss him. I mean, let's face it. The moment shit got tough around here, he bailed. He just kind of distanced himself emotionally after Mom and Dad died. I think he thought I was too clingy, and that's half the reason I cheated on him. I was trying to get his attention. The more I cheated, the less he seemed to care. We still occasionally had sex, but he stopped calling and making plans. When we saw each other, it was almost by accident. My grief and problems were an inconvenience for him."

Her bitter words were a surprise to me. It didn't jive with what I knew of Finn. He'd always made time for me when he was dating Ivy. He seemed sincere and loving. Had I built a completely mistaken image of him?

"Who's he dating now?" Ivy pondered.

It was meant to be a rhetorical question, but I answered anyway, unthinkingly. "I don't think he's seeing anyone."

She scoffed. "That's not the Finn O'Malley I know. That boy always has to have a girlfriend. He likes sex too much but has this thing about monogamy. He likes to think of himself as the good guy because he only sleeps with women he has relationships with, but they aren't relationships because that would require him to actually be emotionally vulnerable—which he isn't."

That did sound like Finn, unfortunately. Hadn’t he done that with me? Slept with me for the physical release and then turned me loose? Yes, he’d called after a couple of weeks. He’d texted and asked if we could meet, but I didn’t want to be hurt. Or maybe I wanted to reject him before he had a chance to reject me. I was confused about a lot of things including my desire to see him again.

"It sounds like you have strong feelings for him, still."

"No. Not at all," she protested. "Shit, anyone could date him. I wouldn't even care if you dated him."

It was so quiet in our room after she dropped that bomb that we heard the crickets chirping. It was quiet because I'd stopped breathing. And she noticed.

"Are you kidding me?" She sat up and turned toward me. "Do you want to date Finn?"

"No…I, ah," I stammered awkwardly.

"Holy shit. Do you still have that middle school crush on him?" She was incredulous but after a moment, I realized not angry.

"I was fourteen and in ninth grade," I responded weakly.

She flopped back on the bed and rolled her head from side to side in disbelief. "I knew you had a crush on him. He knew it too, but I thought you grew out of that."

"I just—he’s attractive. I mean, he’s interesting," I got out in an awkward jumble of words. "It doesn't matter anyway. Family first."

When I was ten, my mom took me aside and told me family came first. No matter what was thrown at us, you never, ever turned away from your family.

Ivy had always been good at that.

When I was in second grade, Eli Parsons, a snot-nosed, round-headed kid with a sharp tongue, asked me in the bus line if my face was flat because I'd fallen off the monkey bars and landed on it. I'd been too shocked and hurt to say something back, but when Ivy had seen me sniffling on the bus, I'd spilled my guts. She got on her bike, rode two miles to Eli's house, marched up to his front door and rang the bell. When he came out, she punched him in the nose and then got back on her bike and rode home.

Eli had to apologize, and he never said another mean word to me after that. Ivy's hand had swollen up, and she got grounded for a week because violence never solved anything, according to our mom.

"I'm so sorry," I'd whispered when I crawled into her twin bed that night.

"Nothing to be sorry about," she'd said, cradling her hand on her chest. "Actually I am sorry. Sorry that I didn't punch him in the eyes too."

She'd held me when I came home at thirteen after hearing my big crush Mike Van Elm preferred blondes. Sarah Jorgerson, who apparently also had a crush on Mike, told him I'd liked him. He'd pulled up the corner of his eyes and said he'd never date a chink.

And it was Ivy who gave me the perfect rebuttal to those stupid guys at parties who asked me if my vagina was slanted just like my eyes—an Asian version of whether the carpet matched the drapes. "If you don't know, you never will." I'd used that line more than I should've had to, I reflected. College guys were idiots. No wonder I was still single.

Ivy had taken the family first motto seriously until her addictions pushed her off the tracks. I would never forget how she stood up for me every single time.

She scrunched up her nose. "I don't care if you see him, but Winter, you deserve so much better than Finn O'Malley. He's one of those guys who seems nice on the outside but will tear you apart and won't even look behind him at the carnage. He doesn't have a heart. He's wrapped up in his own life, his own pursuits, and what is going on in your life isn't important. In all the years we dated, he never once said I love you."

She talked for another ten minutes on how Finn O'Malley was the worst guy I could ever date, but all I heard was I don't care if you date him.