Chapter 27 | Liz

Chapter 27

Liz

Z oey’s voice fades out. I lean my head back against the porch rail, my knees bent, my hands hanging loosely between them. She doesn’t deserve this. People are callous with their words sometimes. Don’t they realize the power and pain that words hold? Words dig in, burrowing deep into the subconscious, only to reemerge at your weakest moment. I blink back tears. Tears won’t help anyone, but they fall regardless. My sister’s pain is my pain. You never forget your first love, for better or worse. I married mine, and yet every time I hear the song that was playing when Julian broke up with me at prom all those years ago, it hurts. We were slow dancing, wrapped in each other. I was in love, and he said goodbye. It was another two years before we reconciled. Two years of that song being in popular rotation. Of wanting to vomit every time that damned Lifehouse track played. That loss of innocence, that last moment of being your whole self—it’s soul altering.

Zoey had to lose that piece of her heart twice. I want to go down to the beach and shake some sense into that kid. What gives Andrew the right to play with anyone’s heart like this, but especially Zoey’s? Zoey, who loves him completely. Even now, it’s tangible how much she loves him.

“Why didn’t you have your car?” Cecilia’s voice clashes against the quiet of the night.

With the silence broken, sounds come back to me—unseen crickets and tree frogs, horse hooves clomping on the next street over, the scratch and squeak of the rocking chair against the worn wooden porch. The question’s been on the tip of my tongue since Zoey started her story, but after that ending, it doesn’t seem particularly important. But then, Cecilia’s always been more pointed than me.

“Oh,” Zoey says, pulling her feet onto the seat of the chair. “I thought it was weird too. I offered to drive so that he could hitch a ride back with the guys, but he insisted on driving us. It didn’t seem important to argue at the time.”

“Hindsight’s a real bitch.” Cecilia smirks.

I palm my face. What is wrong with my older sister? I open my mouth to smooth out the comment, though I have no idea how, but then Zoey laughs. A small hiccup at first, but then a giggle escapes, and soon she is laughing hard, her hands grasping at her sides. She is bent over herself, hair covering her face. When she sits up, her cheeks are wet and red enough to be seen in the porch light. The smallest bit of fight has returned to her eyes.

Maybe bringing Cecilia isn’t the worst idea I’ve ever had.

“Well,” I say, pushing to my feet, “I’m going to thank your hosts, and then we’ll be on our way.”

“Should I come too?” Zoey asks, her voice hoarse.

It’s probably the more polite thing to do, but I want to see Jane so badly, my body aches.

“No, I got it.”

Walking inside the house is like entering another time and not because it’s a Victorian with at least one known ghost. So much of my life is here. The Maddens have rented this house for this week for longer than I’ve known Julian. When their mother decided she didn’t want to come anymore after their father’s passing, Jane picked up the mantle. Jane and her husband, Michael, and Julian and I always split the week or came together. Then when Jane had her own family, they came for the week. Every year. It’s how I knew to call Jane in the first place.

Jane. My best friend. If I leave Julian indefinitely, our friendship may be collateral damage. Jane and I made it through all the other breakups. What an abnormal thing to be able to say about your husband—all the other breakups. It always felt like perseverance, like Julian and I won something that others couldn’t quite grasp. Our love was special and so real that we couldn’t stay apart. If we weren’t together, a part of ourselves was fundamentally missing. But listening to Zoey’s story tonight, feeling her pain, it compounded my emotions surrounding the Sheila situation. I could’ve been Zoey if Julian were a crueler person, if I were weaker. But distance gave me space to make what I thought was a sound decision each time I took Julian back. Zoey went from small college campus to small hometown, both swirling with memories of a love gone wrong and a best friend lost forever.

I can’t lose Jane. The thought alone leaves me feeling hollow. But I can’t stay with Julian because of the fallout. I knew going in that I was risking my friendship with Jane, and I chose Julian. Jane and I survived his high school idiocy and went on to be college roommates. She saved me when he left in graduate school. But there were never legally binding documents to untangle and assets to divide. There wasn’t Jane’s pre-engagement warning to not marry her brother or her declaration that if things went south, Julian had to have her allegiance, no matter the circumstances. And we both knew with Julian, there would be circumstances. There wasn’t an email log of conversations with another woman or a six-month lease on an extramarital apartment. Life became significantly more complicated in the last five years.

“Hey,” Jane says before I’ve even kicked my shoes off, per the house rules. The sight of her alone is a balm—messy bun, slippers, beach loungewear, and a book tucked under her arm. My Jane. She pulls me into a one-armed hug, and it’s like coming home. “I was coming to find you.”

“We’re heading out in a minute.” I step back even though I want to hold on forever.

“She’ll be okay.” Jane’s expression softens. “We all survived our first loves.”

“I know, but it shouldn’t be this hard.”

She meets my gaze. A whole lifetime of unspoken words passes between us because it’s always this hard. We just don’t remember it that way.

“Maybe for Zoey, it has to be. Maybe this is the only way she’ll ever be able to move on.” She smiles lightly, her eyes glossed over in a memory of her own. I can guess at it. I was there for the end of Jane’s first love, for the tears and the cocktails and the rebounds. How can these moments feel equally close and like they were lived in another life by another person? A Julian-less life.

“I’m going to have to call in reinforcements,” I say, letting out a sigh, “and change her number.”

“It’s that bad?”

I nod, hating that this is my sister’s truth. “If he texts her again, she won’t be able to resist. Because—”

“That can’t be their ending.” Jane shakes her head, her lips pressed into a thin line. “We let her spend too much time in the editing room with Julian.”

“Yes, we did,” I say with a laugh.

Outside, I can hear Zoey and Cecilia’s low tones. I’m not sure where Julian went, but I haven’t seen him since I arrived, and his shoes aren’t by the door. Maybe this is his way of giving me the space I asked for. He helped, but he doesn’t need to be here when I am. A part of me wants to wait it out, to hug him and thank him. But if he wanted that, he would be here.

Instead, I give Jane another hug and then turn to go. She stops me with a hand on my shoulder. I can’t read her expression, which is a first.

“When you leave him,” she says, a shadow passing over her face, “be kind about it, okay?”

“I haven’t decided anything.” I twirl my wedding ring, which I remembered to slip back on before leaving.

Jane gives me a sad smile. “Yes, you have.”