Best Friend’s Brother: Best Friend's Brother Romance (2 page)

Something caught Lauryn’s eye by one of the CDs.  There was the corner of a piece of paper sticking out in between a pile.  She lifted up a Natalie Cole CD-at least this she knew-and pulled out the paper.

“To my beautiful Zooey…” it started.  Lauryn gasped and let go of the paper like it had bit her.  She sucked in a breath and started shaking.  Lauryn bent down and picked up the paper again.  She didn’t read it.  She didn’t want to know more.  She ran as fast as she could up the stairs to Zooey.

*

Lauryn was weeping by the time she was all the way up the stairs.  Zooey was running a comb through her thick curly hair when her friend burst in.

Zooey didn’t have time to ask what was wrong.  Lauryn was blubbering and wheezing too much to speak.  She pushed the note toward Zooey and started pacing back and forth in the room.  She didn’t look up to watch Zooey read the note.  She started to chew on her pinky fingernail.

“Where did you find this?” Zooey broke the silence finally.  Her face was contorted in a grimace.

“I-It was stuffed between a bunch of old CDs,” Lauryn sputtered.

“Did you read it?”

Lauryn shook her head.  Zooey crumpled the letter into a ball, put it in her jeans pocket, and walked out of the room.  Lauryn followed her silently.  Zooey walked into her mother’s room, and then into her bathroom.  She flipped the light switch, and a row of round bulbs above the bathroom mirror flickered on.

Zooey opened a medicine cabinet.  She rummaged through it and took out every pill bottle inside it.  She walked over to the toilet and opened the lid.  One by one she opened the pill bottles and poured the contents down the toilet.  Lauryn watched without a word.  Zooey didn’t speak either.  Her focus was on the pill bottles before her.  Her expression was almost calm.

Zooey put the bottles back into the cabinet and left her mother’s room.  She flicked off the light switch before she left.  The two young girls walked silently down the stairs.  Zooey made it to the kitchen, and was starting to remove the sharp knives that were around.

“Take these,” were the first words she said.  She handed Lauryn a few large knives by the handle.

“What do I do with them?”

“Who cares?  Toss ‘em,” Zooey said.  That was when the front door opened.

“Zoe?  Zooey?  Helloooo.  Anybody home?  Oh, Lauryn is here.  Hi Laur...What are you doing with all those knives?” Kady Adler stepped into the kitchen.  She had a large eco-friendly bag full of fruits.  She was smiling until she saw the look on her daughter’s face.

“What is this?” Zooey put her hands in her pocket and brought out the crumpled note.  Kady knew right away what it was.  She looked at her daughter, and then at Lauryn.  She hung her head, embarrassed.  She put down the eco-friendly bag and took a step toward Zooey.  In return, Zooey took a step back.

“I didn’t remember that…”

“You didn’t remember what?  That you have a kid?  That you woke up one morning, decided to write this, then just changed your mind?  How the hell do you forget this?” Zooey shrieked.  She was fuming.  She knew her mother had depression.  It had spiked around the end of her parents’ marriage.

Kady walked about like a zombie for weeks.  Nothing inspired her.  She sulked or cried for sometimes days at a time.  The night she signed the final paperwork for her divorce, Zooey crawled into bed with her mother and played with her curly hair while Kady cried herself to sleep.

Zooey had to turn into an adult from a young age.  Taking care of who she felt needed it most.

“I’m sorry.  It’s not like that…”

Zooey shook with anger but said nothing.  Lauryn walked over to her and put her arms on her shoulders.  She inhaled and exhaled deeply, keeping a firm grip on Zooey’s shoulders to steady her breathing.  Zooey was on the brink of a panic attack.

“Baby...You know you mean everything to me…” Kady started to cry too.  She took another step forward, but Lauryn shot her a glare.  Kady stopped mid-stride and stayed put.  “I have some things to work out.  You know I love you.  It’s just so hard being sad.”

Lauryn’s expression softened.  She wanted to protect her friend, but Kady looked so hurt.  She was in pain too.  Lauryn didn’t know what she must have been going through.  Kady was embarrassed and found out, and Lauryn didn’t want to make her feel worse because of it.

“Kady,” Lauryn spoke.  Her voice was low.  Zooey was still shaking, but her breathing had returned to normal.  Lauryn didn’t let her go.  “Zooey’s gonna stay with me a few days.  You should call someone.  Talk to someone.  I’ll make sure Zooey calls you every day.”

Kady smiled weakly at Lauryn.  She admired how together she was for a 12 year old, not knowing that just a half an hour before, Lauryn herself was a blubbering mess.

Lauryn sat down in the kitchen and spoke to Kady while a shivering Zooey went upstairs to pack some things.

Lauryn never told Zooey what she and her mom talked about, but even after a decade of friendship, Kady Adler never had a bad thing to say about Lauryn Snow Savage.

*

“That boring at Zooey’s house?” Jakob opened the front door of the Savage house.  There were voices coming from the living room.  All of his friends were already there.

“Shut up jerk,” Lauryn walked inside.  She took Zooey’s bag from her, and headed upstairs with it.

“You ok?” Jakob looked concerned.  Zooey was quiet, and her gaze was down.  This wasn’t how she was acting just over an hour ago when she was at the house.

“Fine.”

“You sure?”

Zooey nodded once.  She did it in such a way that Jakob knew to stop asking questions.

“How great my grief, my joys how few,

Since first it was my fate to know thee!

- Have the slow years not brought to view

How great my grief, my joys how few,

Nor memory shaped old times anew,

  Nor loving-kindness helped to show thee

How great my grief, my joys how few,

  Since first it was my fate to know thee?”

Jakob recited.  He put on an English accent when he spoke.

“What?”

“It’s Thomas Hardy.  He’s my favorite poet,” Jakob beamed with pride.

“Maybe don’t admit that to normal people,” Zooey said.

Jakob pretended to be appalled by her statement, and he put a hand to his chest.

“The words though.  Did you even pay attention?”

“I did.  Yeah.  My grief is great and my joys are few, how poetic of you to notice.”

“I’ll recite more of his stuff to you soon,” Jakob said.  He spoke to her like he didn’t have guests in the next room.  Weren’t they wondering where he was?

“How soon?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged.  “I guess when I feel like the words are right for you.”

Zooey smiled at him.  She appreciated that.  He could tell something was wrong, but he didn’t pry.  His way of understanding the situation came from the writings of someone else.  He was so deep for someone just 14.  Zooey would miss him next year.  He’d be in high school, and she and Lauryn would have to wait 2 more years to join him.

“Hey, I got everything set up upstairs already” Lauryn came back down the stairs.  “You wanna come up?”

Zooey could feel tears in her eyes again.  These were happy tears though.  This situation could have been much much worse, but now she knew that she had someone there for her.  Maybe two someones.

Zooey smiled at Jakob, and then at Lauryn.  She nodded, and followed Lauryn up the stairs.  And after that day, there was a small part of Zooey that never came back out.

*

A knock on the door brought Zooey back to the present.  She rolled off of her bed and headed downstairs.

What if it was…

“Lauryn!” Zooey squeaked and practically leapt into her best friend’s arms.  Lauryn wasn’t supposed to be in town for another week.  They hadn’t seen each other in such a long time.  Their colleges were just a half an hour away from each other, but Zooey was usually back home every other weekend to do laundry and to check in on her family.  Lauryn was more the adventurous one, so she was always on a road trip taking pictures under the stars or sleeping on a yoga mat somewhere.

“Where’s that fat face baby?” Lauryn tiptoed and peered over Zooey’s shoulder to see into the house.

“Everyone’s out.  And you know he walks and talks now, right?” Zooey laughed.  Zooey’s mother Kady had remarried when they were almost finished high school.  Zooey didn’t like her mother’s boyfriend at first, but when she noticed how he handled her mother’s mood swings, she knew he was special.  He was like her.  He would sit and watch Kady cry, and just hold her til things were all right.  He didn’t make her feel guilty for being sad, like Zooey remembered her dad doing.  Peter had come into their lives at the right time.  Now Zooey had a three-year-old brother named Isaiah.

“Last time I saw him he was still fat faced.  Why aren’t you out with them?”

“No reason,” Zooey lied.  She was hoping to maybe go for a jog and bump into a certain someone by chance.  Maybe they could relive the night before.

Lauryn walked past Zooey and into the kitchen.  She opened the fridge door and pulled out some chocolate almond milk.

“So, have you seen Jake?  He’s back for good this time, you know?”

Jakob was home from his final tour in Iraq.  He joined the army shortly after he started college.  He always talked about going off to fight.  He was a poet and a romantic, but also a patriot with a mighty heart.  He had fought in Iraq three times.  He told Zooey from the night before that he wouldn’t be going back.

“There are too many ghosts on that battlefield,” she remembered Jakob’s words from yesterday, “and one day, you see the ghost of yourself wandering around...and you know that it’s time to come home.”

Zooey wasn’t exactly sure what he meant, but she didn’t ask him to explain.  The memories he had of war were so sad, and he described them like they were someone else’s experiences.  He even made war seem poetic.

“Jake?  Oh.  Yeah, I bumped into him last night,” Zooey closed the front door, but stayed in the entrance hall.  She remembered how he was the night before.  There was a humility and new charm about him, especially when he brought up Iraq, but Jake was still his silly self.  There were some things that would never change.  Lauryn was busy opening a packet of cookies and stuffing her face.  “Your hair looks like Sarah Barthel’s.”

“Who?” Lauryn said with cookie crumbs falling out of her mouth.

“Lead singer of Phantogram.”

Lauryn nodded.  Her hair was jet black now.  It was normally a dark honey brown.  She had her bangs cut straight, and her hair fell to her shoulders, but rose to meet in the middle of the back of her neck.

“Jake never told me he saw you,” she knew Zooey was stalling.  She knew Zooey better than Zooey knew herself.  “Anyway, enough about my brother.  I told him I was here.  He’s coming by later.”

“What?” Zooey shrieked.

“I’m kidding.  He isn’t.  But that tells me all I need to know now.  Did you know Carla Mennez is here?”

Zooey moved into the kitchen when Lauryn mentioned Carla’s name.  She put a hand on the quartz countertop of the island and sighed.

Carla and Jakob dated a long time ago.  Carla never liked Zooey, and she made sure she knew it.  She only had to endure her on and off for a year and a half though, but every time she saw Carla she’d get on edge.

This was perfect timing.  It was like one big happy reunion.