Aside from the fact I depended on alcohol and weed to forget that Nina existed, I was pretty much perfect.
The perfect CEO.
The perfect businessman.
The perfect son.
The perfect lover.
I could probably go on, but what would be the point in that? I was also proficient with great time-management skills.
“Your sandwich, honey, with that special mustard you like from the farmers’ market.” My mom, Helen, pressed her lips to my forehead before she took a seat beside me at the kitchen table. My dad, Eli, sat across from me, a proud smirk on his lips.
We talked work, politics, and local gossip for a while, before Mom looked down and started playing with her pearl necklace over her lemon-hued cardigan.
“Sweetheart, I need to tell you something, and I don’t want you to be mad.”
Naturally, I was already irritated.
I looked up from my sandwich, chewing, as her movements grew more nervous and her throat bobbed.
“Recently…we’ve been in touch with Nina.” Mom smoothed the fabric of her cardigan nervously. I shouldn’t have been surprised that Nina had called Mom, but somehow, I was. Dad took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“You can’t turn your back on her, Dean. It’s time we talk about it,” he said.
“There’s nothing to talk about. She’s my business, not yours. What did she want?”
“She’s asked me to convince you to see her.” Mom’s heartrending eyes begged.
“She’s fucking nuts.”
“Dean, language,” my dad scolded me like I was four. Whatever. I’d like to see how his ass would have handled someone like Nina. He had Helen fucking Cole. Someone wonderful and supportive and fucking human. Judging is easy. Dealing with complicated shit, however, not so much.
“Well?” I slouched back in my chair. “Say it, Helen.” I used her first name, which always got to my mom, and she winced.
You’re a grade-A asshole, Ruckus.
“I need to give her a chance, right? She has the right to explain herself. It’s time you meet him. Think of the potential bond. C’mon, I’ve heard it all, but I’m always up for the repeat.”
“It’s not fair to put this all on your mom.” Dad placed his hand over hers. I blinked once.
“Is this fair to me?”
“You’ll have to face her at some point,” Mom argued.
“I beg to fucking differ. I’ll never see her face ever again. Try me. Really, you should.”
“We need to sort this situation out. This is not how Coles conduct themselves.” My dad started in his authoritative voice. Eli Cole almighty was the definition of a good person. Always wanting to do the right thing. “You know why she is calling you. It’s time you face what she has to say.”
“If she wants me to meet him, I gladly will, but not for money.”
“That could be arranged.” He scratched his stubble with the frame of his glasses. He had no idea what he was talking about. I wasn’t going to drag Nina to court and battle her for years over this.
I stood up and leaned across the table.
“Do you love me?” I asked both my parents.
“Of course.” Dad scoffed.
“Then trust me when I say it’s better I don’t meet him. I’m not ready to deal with this right now. Respect it. Let it go.”
Feeling like shit—I certainly acted like a little one—I climbed up the stairs to my old room, preparing to get in the shower. My phone pinged. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone, but took a peek anyway.
Rosie
I need you to pick me up. No car + dinner from hell = desperate times call for desperate measures.
Trying to collect my fucking jaw from the floor, I chuckled. Oh, it was on.
Dean
Be there in 10.
Rosie
Promise not to hit on me.
Dean
Yeah…no.
I gave her a second to process this before I fired another text.
Dean
I will come. I will see. I will conquer (and then I will come again).
Rosie
I can’t believe I’m desperate enough to put up with you. Promise to at least not to tell anyone we’re meeting.
Dean
Yeah, whatever.
As if anyone gave half a fuck. At this point, Rosie and I were two loose cannons in an otherwise smoothly operated machine. Vicious and Millie were settling down. Jaime and Melody were married with a kid. Even bad boy Trent was wearing his big boy pants and doing the whole modern family gig, sharing joint custody over his daughter, Luna, with his baby mama, Val. Everyone was setting down roots and playing grown-ups.
Everyone but us.
She was the foul-mouthed, up-to-no-good lesser sister, and I was the stoner drunk whose most serious relationship was with his drug dealer. Nobody cared if we fucked each other’s brains out to pass the time as long as we kept quiet and didn’t mess up our lines or stain our bridesmaid and best man uniform.
That was what Baby LeBlanc hadn’t realized, because she was too busy protecting the precious feelings of her beloved sister. Feelings that weren’t even there. I tucked my cell phone into my back pocket and walked over to the closet in my room to change into a clean shirt. Grabbing my keys from the nightstand, my phone dinged again.
Rosie
Do U have weed on U?
Trying—and failing—not to laugh, my fingers glided on my touch screen.
Dean
What about your lungs? Aren’t they broken or some shit?
Rosie
Bring your stash, funny guy.
Indulging her was the only way to go. Rosie wanted to test boundaries. Didn’t she know I had none? Well, that was a lesson she was going to learn soon.
The fun way.
What makes you feel alive?
Playing with a different kind of fire. Making mistakes. Owning up to them. Owning up to me. Taking what I want and calling it mine. Even if it isn’t. Even if I know it never could be.
War prisoners should be sent to be tortured in the arms and by the tongues of my parents. That was the conclusion I came to after spending eight hours with Mama and Daddy.
I was a tough girl. Dealing with a long-term, life-threatening disease gave you that extra layer of durability. Like that colorless, finishing coat of nail polish no one sees. So the fact that I was on the verge of tears caught me off guard.
I didn’t have a car, so I sat on the front steps leading to the mansion and waited for Dean to pick me up, my head slung between my legs.
Dinner’s events played in my head, making me gulp hard and fight the tears that threatened to spill over. We were all sitting at the table, served by Vicious’s staff, eating wine-tossed Coffin Bay King oysters from Australia (apparently, American oysters didn’t make the cut anymore, now that my parents were rich by association), talking about the final wedding arrangements.
Everything was relatively tolerable…until it wasn’t.
“Alrighty, I think it is time we address the elephant in the room.” Daddy put his wine glass on the table and raised his eyes to meet mine. “When are you planning to move back here, Rosie? We were very supportive of you experiencing New York. You were young and needed an adventure, but it is time you move on. You’re not a kid anymore, and your sister is no longer there to hold your hand.”
“Daddy, Rosie is her own person. You can’t tell her what to do,” Millie interfered, her voice like a soothing balm on my red-hot nerves. Mama sighed. Silverware clattered. I wet my lips, too taken aback to utter a word.
“You guys are always on her case, Daddy. Rosie is a grown-up.”
“She’s not like you, sweetheart. She’s a little reckless. We love our Rosie-bug exactly as she is, but things are changing. She gets weaker every year.”
“She is sick!” Mama bellowed, patting her nose with a linen napkin before bringing it to her eyes to do the same. I flinched. She kicked th
e conversation from first gear to fifth. “Look at her.” She pointed at me. “All skin and bones. Doesn’t she look thin to you?”
Millie sighed at me, apologetic, and shot Mama a look. “She’s always been thin.”
“Too thin,” Mama enunciated.
“Everyone is too thin in your opinion, Mama. Our family cat looked like a raccoon because you overfed it.” The same cat they had to give away when they found out I had cystic fibrosis. Jesus, I was as fun as having leprosy.
“That’s okay, guys.” I sniffed, hating that Vicious saw this exchange. “It’s not like I’m here or anything. Don’t let me get in your way of discussing my future.”
“We’re buying you a ticket back home. You should be spending your time with us, not running around in a big city looking for trouble.” Mama’s voice was dancing on the verge of panic.
“I’m staying in New York.”
“Paul,” she wailed. “Tell her.”
“Yes, Daddy.” I smiled. “Tell me.”
Paul LeBlanc wasn’t going to betray me. You could always count on Daddy to shut Mama up when it came to me. Millie tried to protect me, but didn’t have that kind of authority.
Daddy looked between Mama and me.
“I’m sorry, Rosie-bug.” He shook his head, and at first, I thought he was apologizing on behalf of his wife.
“But your mama is right. I worry for you out there, too.” He shifted in his seat. “But then, maybe we need to take into consideration you have Darren now.” Daddy scratched the ghost of his stubble, mulling this in his head. “He seems to be taking good care of her. Don’t you reckon, Charlene?”
Your father is not a misogynist, I tried to convince myself. He just sounded like one a second ago.
“About that.” I coughed, feeling my palms grow sweaty and my heart twirling like a hopeless drunk, stumbling its way out of my body to the nearest plate. Maybe someone would be kind enough to stab it. “Darren and I broke up.”
“What?!” Daddy roared, shooting up from his seat and slapping his palm on the hardwood table. He looked as shocked as I’d felt. Had he forgotten my love life was ultimately my business? I frowned, watching as Millie placed her hand over Mama’s, asking her wordlessly to stop. When I looked up, I realized that she was crying so hard her whole body was heaving.
“She has no one there. No one. And she is wasting away, dying.”
Yup. My family was kind of a bunch of drama llamas.
Daddy’s eyes still blazed, threatening to sear my skin with ugly scars.
“He moved out a few weeks ago.” I kept my voice neutral, flattening a palm over the white cloth napkin I didn’t even get to use yet. “He wanted to get married. Even went as far as proposing, with a ring and all. But as you know, I’m not interested in marriage. Especially considering my recent complications.” They knew exactly what Dr. Hasting, the expert Vicious had hired, told me last year, after she ran some thorough tests on me. “He will bounce back.” I found myself comforting them instead of the other way around. “I will, too. He deserved better than this life.”
There was silence. The kind that drips into your body and nibbles at your bones. I held my breath, ready for a physical blow that would send me flying to the other side of the room.
Vicious leaned back in his chair and played with Emilia’s hair. “We should excuse ourselves. Looks like your parents and sister have a lot to talk about.”
Millie’s inquiring eyes found mine from across the table. I shook my head.
“It’s our only family dinner before the rehearsal. Everyone stays.”
Mama cried harder and kept saying that her baby was dying. Fun time in the LeBlanc household. Stay tuned for the after-party.
“Mama.” I chuckled, feeling my face heating with embarrassment. “I’m not dying. I take very good care of myself.”
“Jesus Christ, Rose, what a load of baloney.” Daddy snorted, slapping the table again. It also didn’t escape me that he no longer referred to me as Rosie-bug. He pointed at me, his face twisting in disgust. “You talk about our family time like you give a damn about your sister. This was your chance to not be a burden on your mama and me. Your chance to finally excuse your sister of taking care of you. And, in classic Rosie fashion, you blew it,” he rebuked.
My fork dropped to the floor and my eyes flared, a mixture of surprise and rage dilating my pupils. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Daddy never spoke to me this way before. Hell, he hardly ever told me no, even when I wanted a goddamn pony. That was where he drew the line, but only because he couldn’t afford it. Other than the pony—and staying away from boys, of course—I was pretty much gold.
He was the one telling Mama she should let me go to New York, even going as far as buying me the one-way ticket.
He was the one who’d told me to chase my dreams, even if they took me in the opposite direction from where he wanted me to go.
He was the parent who truly believed I could do it. Live life as a normal person.
And he was lying. All along.
“I’m not dumping my health issues on anyone at this table,” I gritted out. “I live on the other side of the freaking country. Where is this coming from?”
“You need to come back. You have to come back, you’re not well.” Mama snuffled, throwing her napkin over her entrée, the plate still overflowing with food. “Your sister broke her back working two jobs so you could live in New York. Before she’d left the city, she cushioned your life with a top-notch apartment that’s been paid for and even covered the tuition fee for your nursing school. And what do you do with all this goodness? Making coffee!”
“Hey.” It was my turn to smack the table, and damn, it hurt. “Since when do you frown upon certain jobs? You were a cook for forty years.”
“I had no choice!” Mama screamed.
“Neither did I! I dropped out of school because Dr. Hasting made me!”
She stood up and stormed out of the dining room, leaving me speechless.
Daddy, Vicious, and Emilia stared at me. The men with disappointment, my sister with pity. Tears stabbed at my eyeballs, begging for me to let them loose. I never cried, and I hated showing weakness. Especially when every single thing I did in life was designed to prove to my family that I could make it on my own. That I didn’t need help. That my petals were falling, but that I was still in blossom.
“Rosie…” Millie said softly. “Give Mama some time.”
“Stop defending your sister.” Daddy dragged a hand over his face. Each syllable he uttered spread like wildfire inside me. He narrowed his eyes at the Juliet balcony behind my back, unable to spare me a glance. “You’re killing your mama and yourself. You had a doctor boyfriend. A man who could give you everything you needed.”
“He was a podiatrist. That’s like half a doctor. It’s no more a doctor than Ross Geller.”
Yeah. I took most of my cultural references from Friends episodes. Sue me.
Daddy didn’t find my remark funny. In fact, he ignored it altogether as he slowly gathered his phone and pack of tobacco he chewed after every dinner, ready to leave, too.
“You broke up with him because you were selfish. Because staying meant facing the music, darlin’. Because you can’t commit to anything, which is why you dropped out of nursing school, live in a paid-for apartment, and work as a waitress at twenty-eight. Your sister is getting married in a week.” He took a deep breath, closing his eyes as if he needed strength to finish the sentence. “And here you are, making us all worried about you again. Your mama doesn’t need time. She needs a healthy daughter.”
“Whatever happened to ‘do what you want to do’, Daddy?” I shot up from my seat, every muscle in my face shaking in anger. I had no one. No one but Millie. No one to appreciate who I was without slapping me with the label ‘sick’ and ‘weak’. “Whatever happened to ‘you can do anything, as long as you put your mind to it’?”
He shook his head. My father was a small man with a lean, muscular body f
rom doing labor work all day, but he looked so big and imposing at that moment.
“You were eighteen when you moved, Rosie. You’re twenty-eight now. Most men want to settle down and have a family by now. How could you throw away one who would not only sacrifice those things to be with you, but could actually take care of you?” He turned to my sister whose mouth was wide open. “She needs to hear it. She can’t afford to be choosy.”
With that, he left the room, too.
“I believe this is my cue to let you collect the pieces,” Vicious’s dark voice muttered, pressing a kiss to Millie’s crown. He followed Daddy out. The doors closed with a soft thud that made my heart rattle.
My sister looked down at her plate, rubbing her thighs as she did when she was nervous. Her beautiful, silver-starred dress riding up and down her legs.
“I’m so sorry,” was all she said. At least she didn’t serve me the usual bullshit and alternative truths people give others to console them.
“Daddy never said a cross word to me before.” I choked on my sentence. I needed my inhaler. I needed my parents. I needed a hug. Millie’s eyes moved up to meet mine. Pain twirled inside them. She thought I was a lost cause, too. She just didn’t want to push me like they did.
Now that we were alone, tears streamed down my face.
“They love you,” she gulped.
“And I love them,” I retorted.
She got up, smoothing the fabric of her dress. “I know that’s the last thing you want to hear, but you need to consider moving back. I need my sister by my side, Rosie-bug. I miss you too much. Plus, Mama and Daddy are crazy worried.”
“For my health, or for their conscience?” I rested my hands on my thighs and offered her a pointed look. “How long have you known about this? About Daddy believing I was a stupid girl and about Mama acting like I was on death row?”
“Rosie…”
“Do you think I’m not a catch, too?” I laughed through my tears. Jesus, crazy was not a good look for me. “Do you also think Darren did me some huge favor by sticking around because I’m oh, so sick?”