“News?” Grace asked, taken aback, almost seeming hurt that she didn’t already know. “What news?”
Lucy was beaming despite her older brother’s trepidation and her twin’s wounded feelings.
“I didn’t want to say anything until we were all together,” she began hesitantly, turning to smile at Ricky.
What, is she pregnant?I thought, swallowing hard.Fuck, if she’s pregnant, I might puke.
I downed the rest of my glass to hopefully steady my nerves.
“We’re getting married,” she announced as I was mid-swallow.
I coughed on the gulp of wine and choked out, “Married?”
I sounded horrified while Grace squealed with glee from beside me, my hearing aids buzzing with interference from the high-pitched sound.
“Oh my God!” She clapped with delight, jumped from the table, and wrapped her arms around both Ricky’sand Lucy’s shoulders, squeezing them in tight to form a Grace sandwich. “Finally! Ahh! I’m so excited!”
I turned to Sid, who was no longer glaring at me suspiciously, but his eyes met mine as he gave a shrug, as if to say,Could be worse, right?
And I guessed he was right. Someone could’ve been sick, someone could’ve been dying … butmarried? Why did I feel like it was so sudden when it wasn’t? They’d been together foryears, and they’d been living together for nearly one of them. They were happy together, so didn’t marriage make sense? Wasn’t that what people did?
So, why the hell did it settle in my gut like a hot ball of lead? Why the hell did I feel as though they should’ve prepared me?
I looked back at Lucy, who met my eye, and she smiled.
“Ricky’s gonna be, like, your brother.”
I forced a chuckle as I glanced at him. “Yeah. Brother.”
He tipped his mouth in an awkward grin. “I wanted to tell you, man, but … with everything …”
Everything. He meant the war. He meant the accident, my ears, my constant struggle with the battle in my head …
He hadn’t thought I could handle this on top of everything else, and he was right.
I forced another strangled chuckle. “It’s all good.”
Hope lit within his eyes. “Yeah? You sure?”
There was nothing else I could do but nod profusely. “Of course it is. Come on.” I huffed like it was all ridiculous, like they didn’t have a single reason on theplanet to believe I was going to go back home and drown this despair with the bottle of Jack I had waiting for me.
“I was, uh … kinda hoping you’d be my best man. If you want to be. I mean, you don’t have to feel pressured or anything, but—"
“No, no,” I cut him off, shaking my head. “I would, um … yeah, I would love to. Thanks … for, um … thinking of me.”
How uncomfortable. How absolutely fucking awkward.
This was the guy who had given me a reprieve from my hellish upbringing. This was the guy who’d starred in every decent memory I had from high school. I still considered him a friend—a good one even—but this wholesleeping with my sisterthing had dug in too deep, and the unease it had brought was so damn hard to shake. And maybe I was an asshole for that—I didn’t know—but it wasn’t that easy to get around, even after all these years. Andwhy? I could talk to Ricky, we hung out occasionally—our friendship had mended that much, and it was good—but when it came to matters with Lucy, I just couldn’t handle it.
Was I like that with Sid? I glanced at him to find his eyes were now on Grace. The look on his face told me everything I needed to know. Their relationship might’ve been new—only a handful of months old or so—but that guy was going to be in love with my sister for the rest of his life. I justknewit. And, yeah, it bothered me. Maybe not to the same degree as it bothered me with Ricky. Sid had asked for my blessing, he’d given me a heads-upbefore taking the leap, but … no, fuck, his relationship with Grace bothered mea lot.
Butwhy?
***
I asked myself that question for another year as I drank myself through the days until Ricky and Lucy’s wedding. I coaxed my way down the aisle with Grace—Lucy’s maid of honor—on my arm. Then I stood beside Ricky as the rest of the bridesmaids and groomsmen walked down the aisle, paving the way for my asshole of a father to escort the beautiful bride to her jovial groom.
I hadn’t seen my father since coming home. He hadn’t shown up for the rehearsal dinner, claimed he didn’t need to rehearse something that people had been doing for years, and now my stomach was in knots at the thought of seeing him again after all this time. What would he think of me? Would he say anything about the hearing aids that were just visible enough to notice if you knew to look for them?
