Chapter 7 | Liz

Chapter 7

Liz

S even. Eight. Nine. Ten. Downward dog extended into pigeon. Ouch . I readjust my front leg, and the stretch feels less like death. I lean forward, but my hip protests, and I straighten. When did I get so old?

“That is the worst pigeon I’ve ever seen.” Zoey stands in front of me, her arms crossed. She examines the pose with the careful eye of someone who knows what she’s talking about when it comes to yoga. “It is supposed to be pigeon, right?”

“Yes.” I narrow my eyes at her. “You do yoga?”

Why does everyone in my life do yoga? It’s not even fun. And it hurts. But both my mother and Cecilia go to classes at least once a week. Jane goes three times a week. Even Julian does a short flow each morning.

Zoey sits down in front of me, her eyes still critical. She stacks her legs in a pose called fire log, her knees resting flat against her feet. “I’m a runner. Of course I practice yoga.”

I stare at her, the resemblance to Cecilia in both appearance and word choice making me momentarily forget the tangled knot I’m in. Wistfulness slams into me. I wish I wasn’t the only connection between the two. I want to capture this moment, send it to Cecilia, post it with some cheesy hashtag and a picture of both of them doing the same thing. But Cecilia will not appreciate any mention of Zoey. And to do that to Zoey is cruel. It’s not her fault our sister has held this grudge her whole life.

Zoey’s face relaxes, and the resemblance fades. “Do you need help getting out of that?”

I glare at her before lifting up and uncurling my leg from under me. I pray to all the gods that I do not fall before I make it back to downward dog and stand up. But no such luck. I roll onto my back, my hands flat at my sides.

“This is definitely more my style,” I say, staring at the ceiling. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Zoey smile and switch her left leg to the top, her knees still easily sitting on top of her ankles. “Show-off.”

She grins. “You’re supposed to close your eyes.”

I grumble but close them regardless. I take stock of my body, and my hips do feel better, so bad or not, the yoga worked. Hopefully, it keeps working if I’m going to be spending my days in the office again. It’s been years since I had to regularly visit the office. I don’t even have an assigned cubicle. When I do go in, I generally squat in a conference room for the day. But this morning, my skin literally itched with anxiety. I had to get out after too many days sitting in my father’s house, worrying over my life decisions, including the one that led me to even be staying with my dad.

For the last seventeen years, there’s been a divide in my family—in my life, really—between Reid Family A and Reid Family B. Family A is my mom and Cecilia, my core unit, the family that survived after my dad’s affair. Family B is my dad and Zoey. The lines only blur at my life events. And even though I’m part of both families, I’ve never felt fully part of my dad and Zoey’s unit. A fact that becomes more glaring after an extended period of time with them. They understand each other, their whims and tics and nuances. Zoey doesn’t push his buttons. Our dad allows her to grow with only gentle oversight. His oversight was far more heavy-handed when Cecilia and I were teens—the arguments over boys and curfews reaching ear-bursting levels in Cecilia’s case. I wonder if that would’ve been the case for me had he not screwed up so monumentally. Zoey and Dad seem to glide past each other, and in doing so these last few days, they’ve glided past me.

“Do you need something?” I ask with my eyes still closed. “Or are you here to mock me? Because you are seriously killing my flow.”

“You can’t flow in savasana,” she mutters. “And you are the one sprawled out on the living room floor.”

I laugh at the affronted tone of her voice. “This is the only room besides the kitchen with enough space.”

The guest room I currently inhabit is a cluttered office space where I can barely find the floor.

“Dad called,” Zoey says, as if it’s natural to mention this. As if we cohabitate all the time. “He’s going to be holed up in the library most of the night.”

“So, like normal,” I say.

Zoey doesn’t smile at the joke. Apparently, our teasing doesn’t extend to our dad. “I was going to get takeout,” she says, her jaw still tight. “Do you want anything?”

I force myself not to roll my eyes. The two of them are awful about cooking. Zoey is capable of making the basics. She and Becca were cooking grilled-cheese sandwiches on Saturday night, well after midnight. They both smelled like beer, but at least she wasn’t with Andrew. I took it as a win.

“I cooked, actually.” I pull myself up into a seated position. “It’s simple Crock-Pot chicken tacos, but it should last a few days.”

Zoey lights up—I have seriously never seen her not hungry—and makes for the kitchen. She glances at the old and flowery Crock-Pot, straight out of a grandma’s house. “So that’s what that is.”

I roll my eyes. Teenager.

“I used to hide bad report cards there.”

“They were still there.” I motion toward the yellowed stack of papers in the corner. “On what level do those count as bad report cards?”

If she hears me, she doesn’t respond. Her head is practically in the slow cooker.

We sit down to a dinner of tacos, instant rice, and fresh avocado. Zoey chatters the whole time about her day, her friends, her freshman year—always skirting around Andrew and Claire. I’ve always felt like I knew Zoey well. While we aren’t the closest of sisters, that’s not unexpected with the age gap and family drama, but we have our own type of bond. I make a point to be around and to include her in all my life events, which isn’t always easy, but Zoey is my sister. My dad claimed her, kept her, loved her. So I did too, without question. But listening to her talk now, I realize how distant I’ve been since she went to college.

Zoey is reaching for her third taco when her phone buzzes on the table next to her. Her eyes narrow at the text. Andrew. It’s obvious. Zoey reacts hyperbolically to most texts from her friends. When it’s her mom or our dad, she often answers out loud in sarcastic tones—much more with her mom. She leaves her phone lying around. She texts openly. But sometimes, like now, she goes quiet. Her phone stays angled toward her, her face goes all hard, and she worries at her bottom lip.

“Becca wants me to meet her for coffee.” She lies so easily that it makes me wonder what else she’s lying about. “She probably wants to talk about Ben. Again.” She rolls her eyes. “They need to do it already.”

I laugh loudly, her honesty catching me off guard. Adults don’t talk about virginity and sex lives much, at least not the married variety.

“If you need a save,” I say after her face scrunches at another message, “you can tell Becca I’m forcing you to spend time with me.” Please don’t go to him, I send silently and hope she hears me anyway. “We could watch Jules’s latest movie?”

The offer slips out before I even think about it. I’ve barely said Julian’s name since arriving. But the night feels so normal, like this is some summer vacation and not my life falling apart. Neither Zoey nor my dad even know why I’m here, not fully. But saying Julian’s name didn’t elicit the awful ache in my chest I expected. I’m not apathetic, but I should feel something beyond weariness that my sister might now inquire why I’m really staying at her house.

Zoey smiles, though her eyes remain on her phone. “That actually sounds really fun. Can we do that tomorrow night? If I don’t talk Becca through the losing-her-virginity panic, she might explode.”

“Right, well, have fun,” I say, a bit disappointed to lose my companion for the evening. “Be safe and all that.”

“Yes, there’s sure to be lots of danger at Ardena Café,” she says with an eye roll before bringing her plate to the sink. “Can you tell Dad I’ll be home late and that I’ll text him if I decide to sleep over?”

I haven’t even finished cleaning the table before Zoey’s slipping on sneakers and rummaging through her tote bag for her keys. My eyes stay trained on the task at hand. If I stop moving, I might be tempted to tie her to a chair until she listens to some sense. But I know girls like Zoey—I was a girl like Zoey—and she isn’t ready for sense. When she is, I hope it’s not too late for her heart.

Slipping a plate for my dad into the fridge, I retreat to the living room. What does late mean to my dad now? When I was young, he could get lost for days working on a paper. I would steal downstairs to wheedle a late-night snack out of him when I was a kid, get him to help me with social studies homework in middle school, and join him working until all hours in high school. His dedication is impressive, but it’s also always worried me. Everyone needs sleep. My mother is ambitious, but my dad is passionate. By twenty-five, he’d graduated law school, passed the bar, and been hired as an associate. After five years, he stepped into academia and never looked back, not even when he had to raise a third child on his own. Maintaining this house and raising Zoey couldn’t have been easy on a professor’s salary.

Sometimes, I wonder if that’s what drew me to Julian. Julian is as passionate about filmmaking as my dad is about law and as frenetic. I’m drawn to that energy, maybe because I don’t have a passion of my own. I love my job as a creative project manager at a marketing firm. I’m good at it. But it’s not a passion or a craft. Yes, I come home some days flush with excitement at an ad slogan I nailed or a client meeting I rocked, but nothing at my job has ever captivated me the way a folder of film dailies captivates Julian. Nothing has motivated me to train the way Zoey did to become the most formidable track star Ardena had seen in a decade. Nothing has inspired me to regularly stay late at work the way my father does. He still isn’t home despite the darkening summer sky.

Against my better judgment, I open my laptop and navigate to Julian’s website, where our whole life is laid out in short vignettes. Will this summer be here one day? Will his shorts paint a bigger story that eventually becomes a movie? Could I be forced to watch myself fall in and out of love with Julian Madden alongside a global audience? Who sits next to me in that future?

My phone buzzes, and I know without even looking it’s another text from Julian. I haven’t told him where I am, only that I’m fine. He has yet to contact my mom or sister, thankfully. I haven’t shared the news with either of them yet. He must realize he’s truly on thin ice, though I can’t imagine he’ll wait much longer if I don’t answer at least one of his recent messages. I’m not ready to see him or even talk to him yet. He’ll rush over here and try to declare his undying love for me. And he’ll mean it. If anything, I believe that he loves me. But I also know that despite that love, I’m not enough for him. He’ll always be on the lookout for the next thing, the better thing—at work, with friends, and yes, with me. But I deserve to be enough, and I’m done pretending otherwise.

I ’m still in the living room when my dad comes home. His sounds are familiar—his briefcase hitting the ground, his keys clanging in the bowl, his feet shuffling across the floor in only socks—even though it’s been so long since we’ve shared space.

I glance back at my dad, who leans against the couch with a tired-but-genuine smile. He ruffles my hair like I’m ten. “Fancy meeting you here.”

A million memories come back to me. Cecilia and me eating breakfast, Dad strolling in in his bathrobe and slippers, me at the dining room table, doing homework long after everyone else is in bed. How many times has he said those words to me?

“There’s a plate for you in the fridge,” I say.

A yawn overtakes him, and he slides down onto the couch next to me. “It’s nice having you here, Lizzie.”

“I like being here.” The words come out before I can consider them. Consider how I would never be here for a long period of time if I wasn’t avoiding my husband.

My dad gives me a smile so full of melancholy that I feel the depth of his pain as if it’s my own. His eyes search mine. “What’s going on, honey?”

“It’s Jules,” I say and immediately feel stupid, because of course, it’s Julian.

He puts his hand over mine. “It’s not usually you who leaves.”

Ouch.

Even with his clear invitation to unburden myself, the words elude me. How many chances does Julian get? From me? From my family? It’s what has kept me from telling my mother or Cecilia. But my dad... My dad had an extramarital affair. Will he sympathize with Julian? Try to explain how you can do such a thing and still love your family? The answers can break everything.

“Lizzie?” he prods when I don’t respond.

“He was talking to another woman.” My stomach roils. “They kissed.”

Saying the words out loud is like heaving a boulder off my chest, except that boulder had already shattered my sternum. I’m heartbroken and raw. It’s real now. Very, very real. And it hurts. Everywhere. Worst of all, it’s not the first time Julian has caused this pain, the kind that shatters your soul and makes you feel as if you are being torn apart bit by bit until the only thing left is a shell of who you used to be.

I swipe at my eyes, banishing the tears threatening to fall. “And it seems so fucking inevitable.”

“I’m sorry, honey.”

What he doesn’t say echoes in the space between us. That my family hoped that Julian had grown out of this phase, that they all held their words and their breath for my sake. Because I wanted Julian despite everything. There was no talking me out of loving him. Not then. And now... I’m not even sure they’ll try.