Page 7 of A Fine Line

My eyes rolled, despite the smile I was sporting. Back in high school Lottie once took professional poker lessons from one of our uncles sketchy friends. She dragged a couple mutual girl friends with us and two of our other cousins along. We all found it amusing, learned mostly some small basics but never cared to know more. But Lottie never did anything half way. She studied it like an athlete would study footage. Over and over until she was good enough to drain all of our wallets.

I did try to pick it up but my boyfriend at the time was not a fan. And anything he didn’t like I wasn’t able to like either.

I snorted. “I’m the worst at poker, Lot.”

“Which is why I said just me and you.” She hummed. “You can be my pretty little arm candy.”

“You have a problem.”

“It’s only a problem if you lose, Winnie girl. And I never lose.”

I took a couple steps back and when the back of my knees hit the stiff couch, I fell into it with a sigh. “I don’t even care, actually. You take me wherever you want whenever you want as soon as I’m back.”

As long as I wasn’t here.

“You’re gaining your life back, Win. I’m so proud of you.”

I nodded, knowing she couldn’t see me and not caring anyway. “I really am. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna come right back home.”

Because, mark my words: I, Winnifred Meadows, would never be tied down again. Especially not for a man.

Iloved my family. I really did.

It was just that I had to remind myself of it…often.

They meant well, all of them. Even my oldest brother, Adam, and all of his grumpy grumbles. But while they paired off one by one, it became glaringly obvious I was the odd man out. They tried not to make me feel that way, I realized. My therapist told me once that in everyone’s life they are the main character. Some people had to be regularly reminded that others exist, and that their importance was the same level as anyone else’s. So I kept that in mind when the couples paired off one by one and I became the ninth wheel.

Luke and Layla.

Nathan and Calla.

Liam and Marigold.

Adam and Rachel.

Crew and a bag of salt and vinegar chips.

That was the way the world worked. Or the cookie crumbled. Or whatever phrase you’d want to plug in here. At the end of the day, I knew it wasn’t the fact that I was the only single sibling left that separated us.

It was my diagnosis.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, the psychologist said after my first full break down only a year prior. ADHD. I’d heard it before a million times, but it never meant much to me.

‘Ugh, my ADHD is terrible.’ I remembered a girl I was dating a few years ago say. But she would say it when she jumped from one topic to the next, or like if she wanted to be watching one movie one second and then an entirely different genre the next. I shrugged it off, never thought much of it. She hadn’t actually been diagnosed with ADHD, of course. It was like a thrown around term that meant quirky or something. Like it made her cuter. I never considered how unattractive that was until my diagnosis.

Until all of the blank part of the equations that made me who I was finally got plugged in and I could look myself in a mirror and say this, this is why you are the way you are.

Of course, a diagnosis in itself really didn’t change much. Got some meds for some mild mood swings I was having. Started therapy, which realistically everyone needed, and took myself a little less seriously in some areas of life. All it did mostly though was back up what I already knew about myself: I wasn’t anything like the rest of my family.

None of them had trouble just functioning. None of their brains overworked itself so hard that hours after hitting a speed bump you’d fully convinced yourself that you actually ran someone over and never looked back and that the cops would be after you any minute now. To the point where you said screw it and drove right back to the speed bump at 2 am just to look at it and show your brain, see, I told you I’m no murderer.

‘Crew’s just Crew.’ my family always joked. And I joked right back with them, so there was no need to really get upset. You couldn’t be mad if you were the one making the jokes, right? Still though, I watched from the couch as all of my family mergedtogether and I knew it was glaringly obvious that I was always going to be the odd man out.

Layla and Luke just recently announced they’re pregnant with a little star wars baby. They claimed they were going to name it Anakin if it was a boy, or ‘Annie’ if it was a girl.

Nathan and Calla eloped and just got back from their honeymoon, all love drunk smiles and butt pinches that were not subtle at all.

Liam is racing around as Marigold is about to pop out their baby girl any day now.