Chapter 28 | Liz

Chapter 28

Liz

I flop back onto my couch, kick off my shoes, and toe at my socks. After four hours in the car tonight, it feels good to be free. I flex my feet and wiggle my toes. Some of my stress falls away as the tension in my feet releases. Zoey’s tucked into the guest room. Cecilia’s rifling through the fridge, although she’s not likely to find much. All I want is to sleep until Zoey wakes up, begging for nourishment and her phone back. She is not getting the latter. Tomorrow will be a long day—the day after is always worse. Sleep offers peace, peace that crashes into reality seven seconds after you open your eyes.

“Here.” Cecilia waves a plate over me. “You need to eat something.”

“It’s not healthy to eat after midnight,” I say around my small bite of sandwich—peanut butter and jelly, my favorite. “Especially something with this much sugar.”

“Would you eat the sandwich?”

I take an extra big bite. The sugar is a jolt to my system. When I finally swallow, Cecilia hands me a glass of milk. Big sisters can be a splendid thing.

“Thank you for coming with me tonight.”

She waves this away. “You’re going to call Dad in the morning?”

“Yes, I’ll need him to change her number.”

She sits down across from me, leaning forward, elbows on knees. “That’s not what I mean.”

“I’m going to let her stay, Cee, if that’s what she wants.” And a part of me selfishly hopes she’ll stay. The nights are long when you live alone. “I’m not going to hand her off to Dad and throw her right back to Ardena. She needs time away from all of it.”

“I believe she has a job.”

“Cee.”

“I think you’re overreacting a bit.” She bites into her bottom lip. “Projecting your frustrations with Julian onto her.”

“I’m not—”

“She made a stupid decision, Liz. If she drove herself, this wouldn’t even have been a thing. Andrew would’ve been a complete jackass, and she would’ve gotten in her car and driven home to cry it out over ice cream and sad movies. Like the rest of us.”

I roll my eyes. It’s similar to what Jane said, in its way. “The rest of us weren’t still sleeping with our exes.”

“Listen, if you need to ask her to stay, ask. But she is not your responsibility, sister or not,” she adds when I start to protest. “She picked wrong, and it sucks any way you look at it, but she’s nineteen. She’ll rebound.”

“I know.” I put the now-empty plate down on the coffee table. “But I want to give her a safe space to do that in. Dad is not equipped to handle this level of heartbreak. Do you remember what he was like when Julian broke up with me the first time?”

That is, of course, the wrong example because Cecilia has no idea what our father has been like for the past seventeen years. She doesn’t know how my dad took me to the mall for ice cream and retail therapy three days after the prom debacle. Zoey was strapped into her stroller and begging for every princess doll at the Disney Store. I cried over sundaes at Johnny Rockets because of how many dates Julian and I had at the mall. My dad went misty-eyed talking about how men, no matter what age, didn’t know a good thing until it was gone. And then he said words I have never forgotten—“I miss her every day, Lizzie. Some mornings I wake up, and I think I hear you and Cee down in the kitchen, or I roll over and expect your mother to be there. I’d give almost anything to have not hurt you.” I didn’t have to ask why it was almost anything. He had instinctively reached for Zoey, ruffling her hair and handing her a slice of grilled cheese. My dad would give anything to have his family back, anything except his daughter. It wasn’t even a choice.

“No,” Cecilia says stonily. “But you’re right. He’s much better at causing heartache than coping with it.”

“Cee.”

She holds up her hands in supplication. “You’re going through something big, Liz. I don’t want you to get so caught up in Zoey’s drama that you neglect your own.”

I snicker. “My own drama?”

“Hey, you are the one who has a way with words.”

But apparently not tonight. “I appreciate your concern, and I promise I’m not shoving my potential divorce in a corner. But there’s no easy answer. Do I miss Jules? Yes. Do I want to go home and talk his infidelity and character flaws to death? Not at the moment. I didn’t realize this at first, but this”—I wave around the apartment—“is about me. I get to be the one to choose now. I always thought I did whenever I took him back, but not really. Now, I get to go back or move on, to feel or not whatever Jules felt whenever he left, to understand the pull that always drove us back together.”

“And you are going to start this exploration of your feelings by taking up with a heartbroken nineteen-year-old?”

I slip my wedding ring off for the second time today. It’s easier this time but barely. My pulse quickens, but I steadily place the ring down on top of the copy of Humans of New York my mom gave me as an apartment-warming gift. The card had been blank with a kitten on the front. Inside, in my mom’s big looping handwriting, it read: There’s more to life than fairy tales and heartbreak. Find it. And a postscript demanding an invitation to see my new place. Classic Mom.

I run my hands down the tops of my legs and grip my knees to keep my hands from shaking and my toes from tapping. Jane’s words run through my mind. What made her think I made any decisions? Jane knows me so well that I wonder if I did decide and don’t know it. All I do know is I have to embrace this moment in my life because, either way, it’s going to change everything.

I look into my sister’s worried and tired eyes. “And by signing up for speed dating.”