Chapter 9
Ren
She disappeared down the hallway and I sat there on Neve’s sofa and stared at the empty doorway she had walked through and tried to figure out why I had just lied to her.
I wasn’t going to any restaurant.
I don’t eat after six. Haven’t in years, a habit that stuck sowhere along the way and calcified into routine.
My friends had given up trying to get to change it, they just ordered without now and I sat with them anyway because sotis it was better than being alone in my own head.
Tonight I had been sitting with them at Jerry’s place. All four of us, low music and gas on the screen.
It was the kind of gathering that usually settled sothing restless inside . And it had worked, right up until it hadn’t.
I kept seeing her face.
The way sothing behind her eyes had cracked open, like I had said the exact thing soone else had already said to her today and she had been holding it carefully, trying not to let it break her but, I had knocked it out of her grip without even looking.
I knew the look, because I knew Lumi. I’ve studied her facial expression for years, back then when we were just, Lumi and Ren.
I had excused myself from Marco’s, gotten on my bike and ended up here without fully deciding to co.
And then I had stood at the door and said please, which I could not entirely account for.
And now I had told her I was on my way to dinner as if I ate dinner, as if that was a thing I did.
I pushed a hand over my jaw and exhaled slowly as the mory of the last few days kept playing in my head.
It felt like a long ti ago now, even though it wasn’t. Neve had called while I was finishing up a job, voice careful the way it gets when she’s asking sothing she already knows I’m going to refuse.
She told what had happened. Not everything, just enough. Lumi was back. She was staying at the house.
That she got important place to be and had to leave and she needed soone to check in.
I had said no imdiately, flatly and without apology, because the last thing Lumi needed was showing up at her door and the last thing I needed was to stand in front of her after seven years and try to act like that was a normal thing to do.
But part of had already wanted to go. That was the part I hadn’t said out loud.
It had been seven years since I’d last seen her, I had been eighteen then, still in that uncomfortable space between being a pup and whatever I was supposed to beco next.
I had stood back and watched her leave the country because there was nothing else I could do.
She had promised to return soon and take along with her.
I had wanted to recognized her when she did. So during those years, I deliberately made sure I didn’t forget how she looked.
And it was really not hard. I rembered everything about her.
The way she used to move through those sumrs, the way she laughed, the way she dragged and Neve through long evenings.
Her eyes. She had always had these eyes that caught light differently from other people, it was bright and beautiful.
Multiple boys had chased after her in high school. I rembered that too, watching from a distance with the particular irritation of soone who couldn’t na what he was irritated about.
She hadn’t paid any of them attention. She had just kept moving through life with those eyes, like she hadn’t noticed or hadn’t cared.
I told myself I hadn’t either.
When I finally decided to visit her after much plea from Neve, I told myself I was prepared. But as she opened the door and I saw her standing there, I realized I wasn’t prepared.
She was still pretty. Of course she was. She had always been, and ti hadn’t changed that, if anything it had sharpened her, given her face a kind of definition it hadn’t had at twenty-two. But that wasn’t what stopped .
It was her eyes.
Those eyes that used to gather light and throw it back at you had gone sowhere else.
They were still the sa colour, the sa shape, but whatever had lived behind them, that particular brightness, that easy, unselfconscious warmth, it was gone.
What was there instead was sothing carefully controlled and exhausted underneath the control, like soone who had been keeping a very large thing together for a very long ti and wasn’t sure how much longer her arms could hold.
She recognized , I saw it happen.
But then she looked at like I was part of whatever had hurt her, like I was one more thing to manage and keep at arm’s length, when the truth was the opposite.
When the truth was that I had sat on my bike outside for three minutes before I could make myself co here, because I didn’t know how to face her after those years.
The anger that moved through when she looked at like that was imdiate and irrational, because I understood why she was looking at the world that way right now and it had nothing to do with .
But it still moved through .
I left. And every single ti, I told myself I wouldn’t co back, that she doesn’t need anymore.
But then Neve would call and I would hear sothing in her voice and I would get back on my bike.
And now I was sitting on this sofa having received the first slap of my entire life from a woman who looked like she had shocked herself more than she had shocked .
I had walked out not because I was angry, I wasn’t, not at her, but because I could see what was happening behind her eyes and I knew she needed out of the room before it broke open completely.
I hadn’t gone far. I had sat on my bike at the end of the road for twenty minutes before I drove away.
And now I was here again, lying about going to dinner, and she had gone to get changed.
And I kind of used Neve as an excuse too, maybe not entirely a lie. Because I know my sis doesn’t play with her, and could drop everything just to be here.
The excuse worked, and I knew I already had sothing that’ll make her bend and that was Neve.
I was sitting on the sa sofa looking at the doorway she had disappeared through, when I heard her footsteps.
I looked up.
She was wearing a floral dress, sothing simple, soft fabric falling loosely to her knees.
She had done sothing with her hair, not elaborate, just pulled it back from her face so you could see the line of her jaw and the set of her shoulders.
She was moving toward with that look she had been wearing every ti I saw her this week, careful and uncertain, like she wasn’t sure of the ground beneath her feet.
Sothing in my chest pulled tight.
She looked like herself, almost, just enough like the girl I rembered that it made the distance from that girl to this woman feel like sothing to grieve.
And underneath that was sothing else, sothing that had no business being there, a warmth at the base of my sternum.
I stood up.
*Seems like you forgot who she is.* Rolie’s voice arrived with the ease of soone who had been waiting for the right mont. *She’s Lumi. Your elder sister’s best friend.*
My wolf. My own wolf, fashioned specifically to make my life difficult, delivering the most inconvenient observations at the most inconvenient tis with complete serenity, like he was doing a favour.
*Thanks for the reminder,* I said back, flat and without gratitude.
Rolie said nothing further, which was worse because it ant he was satisfied, which ant he thought he had made his point.
I kept my face exactly as it was and walked toward the door ahead of her.
She was Neve’s best friend. She was going through sothing that had nothing to do with .
She needed dinner and soone to take a photograph that would keep my sister from getting on a plane.
That was the beginning and the end of what this was.
I held the door open and waited.
She walked through it with that careful, uncertain step and I followed her out into the dark.
I told Rolie firmly and without room for argunt to go back to wherever he went when I didn’t need him.
He didn’t answer.
Which ant he wasn’t going anywhere.
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