What's Broken Between Us (18 page)

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HarperCollins Publishers

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I
text Henry to meet me at Hal’s Diner. He’s there before me, sitting in a booth near the back and away from the windows. It’s relatively empty for a Friday night.

“What’s happened?” he says, scrambling to his feet when he sees me. He takes me by my shoulders. I know what he’s thinking; he left me in the park with my brother, and now this is how I look—disheveled and tearstained. This is how we see things now. Our first instinct is to wonder who’s to blame. Our second instinct is to blame ourselves.

“It’s nothing,” I tell him, shrugging my left shoulder so his hand presses into my cheek and he can feel me smile. He
hesitantly sinks back into his seat.

“Is Sutton all right?” I ask.

He nods. “She just needed to vomit and sleep it off, it turns out.”

The waitress comes, bringing two pink lemonades. We tell her we’re not ready when she asks to take our food order.

“How’s your brother’s face?”

“Terrible,” I say.

Henry bunches his lips together to hide that he wants to smile. When he moves his hand from where it was resting in his lap to scratch his opposite wrist, I notice his knuckles are bandaged. He doesn’t look at me when he asks, “And how are you?”

“I don’t know,” I answer honestly.

“It
was
Sutton who brought the vodka,” Henry tells me.

“I guess, I don’t blame her.”

“I do.”

I wish I could be glad for this—there was nothing we did wrong, nothing we could have helped. Henry rubs his eyes. I want to take his hand, hold it in mine, say, “We’ll get through this together.” It’s such a damn lovely thought.

“Henry.” I pause, working up courage even though I feel like I don’t have any left. “I’m never going to be okay with the way you hate my brother.”

“I’m trying not to hate him, I swear.” He shakes his head. “He makes it so difficult.”

I try to think of something to say to that. I come up short.

“It’s too hard for you, isn’t it?” he asks. “Pretending certain obstacles don’t exist; pretending his downward spiral isn’t coming at a cost to the people around him, including us. Pretending there aren’t real reasons for people to be livid.”

“It’s too hard for you, too,” I declare, but Henry hears it the way I meant it, as a question.

“Maybe,” he says.

We sit there in silence for a while, just the sound of nineties pop playing in the background, and preteen girls laughing at the next table over.

I decide to bite the bullet and ask exactly what I’m thinking; exactly what I’m afraid of: “Do you think of her when you’re with me?”

We had our first kiss the night she died. And Henry got the news about her when he was lying next to me in bed. Whenever I look at Henry, I’m hoping he doesn’t remember the dark conditions under which we found our way to each other. And I wish I could forget sometimes, too. I feel terrible for thinking this way.

“Honestly, Amanda, I think of breakfast.”

At that, I can’t help but smile.

“What?” he says. There’s suspicion in his voice and in the way he’s staring at my ridiculous grin. “Is that what you think of?”

“All I know is,” I say, “it’s much worse being without you.”

“Wow. How romantic. You really know how to sweep a bloke off his feet.” But a smile is budding on his face.

“It’s the truth, isn’t it?”

He leans forward, crossing his arms in front of him on the table. “Is that your way of telling me that you can’t resist me?”

“Henry . . .” I let out a small laugh.

“It’s okay, I understand. You’re pretty hard to resist yourself.”

Can we do this? Switch to laughter? Pick up with our old jokes and just breeze over the last few horrible hours? “Plus,” he starts, scratching his head, looking away, suddenly getting more fidgety than I’ve ever seen him before. If it’s my presence that’s making him like this, it’s too late for him. “I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you,” he says. He stops fidgeting and stares at me.

It’s too late for me, too.

“I sort of love you, too.”

“Sort of?” he says, but he’s smiling.

“Nope,” I admit.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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T
he house is quiet and dark when I get home, except for a low murmur coming from the den. I trudge in slowly, unsure of what I’ll find. It’s just Jonathan, sitting in sweats with a blanket draped around his shoulders and his feet up. A sitcom is muted on the television. Jonathan’s on his phone.

“They always said I had a killer smile.” He laughs. “And a fondness for killer whales.” He pauses again, giving a soft chuckle. “What’s that? Killer instinct?”

I step in front of him, and his smile falters.

“Hey, I’ll call you tomorrow, okay? Okay, bye.”

I lean on the arm of the love seat, so I’m facing him.

“What’s up?” he says.

There are dark bags under Jonathan’s eyes, and his skin is bruised from the side of his nose to his cheekbone. But he seems to be finished swelling. There’s a cut across his bottom lip, slick and fresh, like it could start bleeding any second.

“Who were you talking to?”

“Who do you think?” He continues quickly, like he sees that I’m not in the mood to joke. “Just Wren.”

“Was that supposed to be funny? Why would you say those things to her?”
Or to anyone
—is what I’m thinking.

He licks his lips, and for a second I think he really is going to laugh. “I was only trying to shock her. It’s harder than you might think.”

“But . . . why?”

He shrugs. “Because girls like her are effortlessly impressed, but not easily stunned.”

“I don’t understand you lately.” I can’t look at him when I say it.

“Come on, I’m an open book. I quite literally went on TV and spilled my guts.”

“Why did you agree to that interview? Give me a real answer, for once.”

“It was for
her
, so . . .” He shrugs again. “And besides, they’re always telling you it looks good in your case file to be involved in the community. I went the extra mile.”

I’m shaking my head, still unable to meet his gaze. It’s too flat; there’s no concern, no conscience.

“If you have something to say, baby sister, just say it.”

“Tell me what happened with Sutton. Why did you—”

“Get stinking drunk in the middle of the day? Because day drinking is our favorite pastime, and I had no idea she was no longer equipped to handle it.”

“What made you finally decide to see her?” Really:
What the hell took you so long?

Jonathan scratches his side as he shifts on the couch, wincing like he has bruises that I can’t see. “Odds,” he says.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Odds,”
he repeats. “The odds that if someone calls you around twenty times a day, for several days in a row, you’ll end up answering, and fulfilling their requests in order to get said phone calls to cease.”

“What did she want from you?”

“Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.”

“Seriously, Jonathan.”

“Oh, what do you think? She wanted her drinking buddy back, her fuck buddy back—now stop asking questions you really don’t want the answers to.”

But he’s stringing me along, trying to put me off the conversation, like he did at the diner. He can’t get away with it this time.

“She didn’t want to talk about Grace?”

“No.” He rubs his forehead, looking away from me like I’m as bad as a hangover right now.

“I don’t believe you,” I say, and he shrugs. But I keep going.
“There’s more to you than the life of the party, a good lay, a good laugh. I don’t believe you’re going to keep passing up every opportunity to do the right thing.”

“And tell me, baby sister, what’s the right thing?”

“Talk to Sutton when she calls; listen to her—”

“I already told you,
she
brought the vodka.”

“Take your probation seriously—”

“I’m speaking for Chicago Cares, aren’t I?”

“Say you’re sorry, to someone, anyone! Act like you care at all about what you’ve done—”

“You want a hero.”

“I want you to act like a
human
.”

“No, you want a martyr. You want me to sit there looking respectable in a tie, sobbing over Grace, recapping everything I did wrong, from that first toast of champagne to that last shot of whiskey, while I go on and on and on about regret as if hating what I did and wishing my best friend was still alive is somehow
noble
. Everyone already knows how I irreversibly fucked up—she’s dead. I think that says enough!”

“You owe it to us, to everyone,” I say, though I see his point. A girl died at sixteen—what else matters? “It’s not for you, it’s for them.” As the last word chokes out, I suddenly feel dizzy with the memory of Henry and me outside Ludwig’s.
That was some performance, Amanda.
It’s a blurry line, us and them, perception and the truth; what you express and what you feel.

“It’s not my job to restore anyone’s faith in humanity. ‘Look how someone awful can turn their life around; look how he
learned from his mistakes, look how we can
all
learn.’ It’s such shit. People shouldn’t need me to tell them that murder is wrong and jail is awful.”

“What about Wren, who liked you because you told the truth about the party, and Sutton, who wanted so badly to see you even after everything you guys have been through? And what about me? I couldn’t wait to have my big brother back. You don’t have anything but witty repartee for us, even though we’re the ones who still have hope for you?”

He breaks out in a laugh, crude and loud. “Oh come on,
Amanda
!” He shakes his head—I’m ridiculous; I’m the epitome of a baby sister. “It’s Sutton who’s afraid no one will see anything good about her ever again, and Wren, who is only attracted to toxic things, and you—you’re just as bad; seeing potential in me that doesn’t exist, waiting for me to give you an excuse to forgive me.” He leans back, his expression darkening. “I killed Grace Marlamount, Sutton will never walk on her own again, and, here you all are, still giving me the benefit of the doubt.” He throws his hands in the air, shrugging.

My nose is running, tears are starting to leak, and I know my next breath is going to come out as a sob. He’s right; I can see the good in him, like they can, but I haven’t lost sight of the footprints he’s left dancing on the wrong side either.

“You sure do punish us for it.”

He flinches, like the sight of me falling apart is too much for him. But he’s still frowning, still writhing in his seat as if his skin is binding.

“You want to know what Sutton wants, why she wants to see me?” Jonathan looks at me, his expression hollow, his eyes vacant. “You won’t like it,” he warns, but I still say, “Tell me.”

“When we got into the accident, Grace and Sutton were fighting,” he says. “About me.” He leans forward, all determination. “I’d told Grace I wished she was coming with me to Chicago for college next year. And that’s how I said it.
Me.
Not us. I left Sutton out, because it wasn’t about her. I wanted Grace to know . . . how I felt—she was more than just Sutton’s friend, more than just someone to party with.” He swallows hard—his indifferent expression slipping up, but only for a second. “Sutton heard. Didn’t say anything about it until we were all alone, just the three of us in the car, though Grace had been asking her what was wrong all night. Grace could always tell. I thought it was that we’d graduated—I thought she was sad about leaving Grace, too.” He shakes his head. “I should have known better. She started screaming at Grace; like this had been Grace’s plan all along, getting close to Sutton to get close to me. I tried to stick up for her—tried to tell Sutton it wasn’t like that. Grace told me to stop, I was making it worse. I didn’t care. Sutton was attacking Grace—she was drunk and emotional and paranoid. That was my fault, I guess, for giving her so many reasons to doubt me.” He stares down and is quiet for a long time.

“Jonathan,” I say. I’m hoping that if he looks at me, he’ll turn into my brother again.

But he’s still lifeless. “I never would’ve tried to hook up with Grace. Sutton was her best friend. I’d never come between her
and her best friend.” He swipes under his nose, then stares at his fingers like he’s checking for blood. “And contrary to popular belief, I’d never do that to Sutton either.” His voice softens as he adds, “I did love her, you know.”

I nod. Through his blank eyes, I’m not sure he can see me.

“I was the only conscious one, after we crashed.” He looks to the floor, hiding from me, the way we were taught to hide, to avoid. “That, I deserved.”

I say the only thing I can, the only thing that might bring him back. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop you from driving.”

Jonathan’s head snaps up. “No,” he says. “Don’t ever fucking say that. Not you, too.” He’s at the edge of his seat, eyes ablaze, his hands balled up against the cushion. “Sutton wanted to see me so she could apologize—to me—the way you just did. The way you’ll never do again. She blames herself, thinks it was her fault, as if the argument in the car was the reason we . . .
please
. It wasn’t the fight, it wasn’t the wind, it wasn’t the rain, it wasn’t the missing sign. It was the whiskey. And me.”

“Why didn’t you say that? When Patricia asked you,” I shout. “For Sutton, at least. You had to know she’d be watching. I promise you, nobody will think you’re a martyr just because you’re sorry.”

He sneers at me. “No one listens when you tell them it’s not their fault. It’s
my
fault.
I
did this. And I’ve tried to make sure”—he gestures to the TV—“that everyone knows.” He stares at me, hard, directly, and his expression dims. “Really, the most devastating part of what I did isn’t what happened on
Lifeline
. It’s
that I wrapped my car around the pole, instead of crashing into it head-on.”

He doesn’t wait for me to figure out what to say next. He’s up, walking quickly toward the door.

“Wait.” I get up, too, but I can’t bring myself to come any closer to where he’s standing frozen in the doorway. “What’s going to happen to you?”

Jonathan shakes his head. “Nothing.”

He leaves, and I don’t go after him.