“Going back up.”
“Oh. Me too.” His eyes bounce from me to the elevator, back to me, then the floor, and when they land on me, silence stretches between us for a moment too long.
“I’m gonna take the stairs,” we both call out at the same time, bumping into each other as we turn toward the stair exit.
“You’re gonna walk up twenty-one floors?”
I prop a fist on my hip. “It’s called exercise. And you’re twenty-five floors up. What’s your excuse, big guy?”
“I’m scared of elevators,” he blurts, then flushes.
I hike a brow. “Really?”
“Yeah. Terrified.” He swallows, looking down the hall toward the stairs, and then does the oddest thing. “Oh, but actually…Ahhh.” He grabs his knee and groans. “I hurt my knee. Banged it when I was getting coffee.”
“Wow. Maybe you should take the elevator, then.”
“Might be for the best.” He rubs his knee and hisses in fake pain. “Think I could put my fear aside for one day.”
Is this really happening? Does he know he’s a shit actor?
The elevator opens when I press the button, and I shove him inside. “Thanks for the coffee. And Garrett?”
“Yeah?”
“Stick to your day job, big guy.”
The package in my hand feels insignificant next to the extravagant bouquet and extensive breakfast spread on the small table, signs that Carter’s already been here. I know Hank will appreciate the gesture anyway.
“Is that my favorite girl?”
I follow his tired voice, finding him in his rocking chair by the window.
“Just me.” I pop a kiss on his smiling cheek before taking a seat next to him. He’s got a great view, towering trees and green space, the peaks of the mountains not far off in the distance, decorating the North Vancouver skyline, even in the middle of this bleak fall.
“You are my favorite. And your mom. And Olivia. Love me some Cara too.”
“Hate to tell you, Hank, but favorite requires you to put one of us above the rest.”
He frowns. “You know I can’t. I love you all.”
“And we all love you.” I set the small box on the table, lifting the lid, and sweet cinnamon sugar infiltrates the air. “I brought you a cinnamon bun.”
His eyes glitter as I cut the sticky mess and lead one hand to the plate, the other to a fork. “You are my favorite.” He gestures behind us. “Carter made you a cappuccino before he left.”
I find the warm mug and wrap my hands around it, inhaling eagerly. I smile down at the cinnamon heart dusted over the foam. Carter’s all about big, loud gestures, but sometimes it’s these tiny, silent ones that warm me the most.
Mindless chatter fills the next few minutes, and when we take a moment to let the silence linger, Hank murmurs, “Eight years today.”
I sip my cappuccino, trying to drown the tightness in my throat. “Fifteen for you.”
He turns something between his fingers, and my heart lurches when I see the dainty gold band, the solitaire diamond set in the middle. “Miss my sweet Ireland every damn day.”
Hank entered our lives on the worst day of ours, and the anniversary of his. His wife, Ireland, had passed seven years to the day Dad died, and we have Hank—and Ireland—to thank for saving Carter’s life.
My brother was tasked with the onerous job of taking care of me and my mom that day. Impossible as it was, he did it effortlessly. My only memories revolve around the food he forced on us, the way he held us for hours on end while we thought our world was ending, carried Mom to bed when exhaustion finally took her, and laid with me until my eyes shut.
The next morning, I found him passed out on the living room couch, Hank and Dublin—who we didn’t know—sitting in the corner of the room. Hank told us how he’d dreamt of his late wife, urging him out of the house, and hours later came across Carter at a bar, a drunk, incoherent mess, and stopped him from driving home, the very action that had stolen our dad in the first place.
In stopping us from losing another piece of our family, Hank became part of it.
“Too long,” is the whisper that finally tumbles from my lips.
“But then every day without them is too long, isn’t it?”
My chest squeezes as I imagine my mom right now. I know what she’s doing: the same thing she does every year on this day. Wearing Dad’s favorite sweater because the smell of his cologne still clings to it, clutching the teddy bear he won her at the fair on their first date. Crying and alone, until her heart allows her to open a space big enough to let us back in. She’ll laugh and smile later today when we watch old home movies and tell stories, but she needs her space to grieve first.
“Living without your soul mate is something no one should ever have to do,” Hank murmurs. He pats my hand. “I know there’s something extra special waiting for you, Jennie. A love above all the rest. That’s what a soul mate is. Someone with smooth edges to soften our sharp ones. Someone who fits us so perfectly, vibrates on the same frequency, makes all our best parts shine. And together? Together, everything is exactly the way it’s meant to be.”
I force an eye roll, laughing off his promise. “I’m in no rush. I like being independent.”
“You can be independent and still share a life with someone. Your brother didn’t think he wanted to share his life, and now look at him. He has a wife with a beautiful soul, a baby on the way, and the man couldn’t be happier.”
“I know what you’re doing, old man, but I don’t need a boyfriend to make me happy.”
“I don’t think you do either. You make yourself happy all on your own. Now, do I think finding that person who makes all the dark spots a little bit brighter when they help you hold them might open you up to a side of this world you haven’t seen?” He shrugs. “Maybe.” A broad grin. “Do I think you’re a lot more like your brother than you let on to be, and you’re scared to let someone in because love can hurt? Absolutely.”
“Get outta here. I’m not scared.”
I am terrified.
It’s not that I don’t crave the intimacy, the person who’s always in your corner, who sees you with all your walls down and likes you even then. God, how I wouldn’t love to find someone who saw everything, accepted it all. Someone all my own to share the hard things with. Maybe then all those hard things would feel manageable.
Thing is, though, when your older brother is the captain of an NHL team, when everyone wants a slice of him, it’s impossible to separate the real from the fake. You wind up trudging too deep, left all on your own when you find you were merely a stepping stone, that nothing was ever real. And the ones you thought cared? When they blow your world up, they don’t even glance back at the rubble and chaos left by the explosion.
It’s safer to have a tight-knit circle, a few people you can trust wholeheartedly, than to recklessly let in anyone who asks, even if it is a little lonely sometimes.
Besides, who needs a boyfriend when you’ve got a drawer full of battery-powered ones? Men don’t vibrate, but dildos do.
When I make it back to the condo after lunch, I’m exhausted. I’ve fielded messages from Carter, Olivia, Cara, and Simon all morning, constantly checking up on me. It’s nice, but a lot.
I lock the door behind me. the sound of the dead bolt sliding into place echoing through my apartment before filling it with silence.
Silence makes my skin crawl. It leaves too much room for questions, for wandering thoughts, overthinking, and second-guessing.