Page 18 of Love Unexpected
“Oh, don’t even hand me that shit. Stassia is a smoke show and that is a fact.”
“I’m fucking warning you. She’s my stepdaughter.” I feel the anger welling up inside of me. Anger that isn’t only directed at my brother, but also at myself. We’d smoked last night and I’m just now remembering a little piece of information I hadn’t been privy to.
She had a crush on me when she was younger?
I hadn’t been angry at that fact. She was ten and I was sweet to her while I courted her mother. I suppose there’s some understanding to that.
No, I’m angry at myself for the thought that flashed through my stoned mind no more than a moment later.
Does she still have a crush on me? Does she feel anything for me now that she’s older? Has that crush developed into something else over the years?
“Actually, ex-stepdaughter if you want to get technical?”
“I have to go,” I tell him. I don’t have time to get hung up on ‘technicalities.’ Stassia is off limits. Indefinitely. And I hate myself for even having to voice that unwritten rule. It should have been a given. A line in the sand I shouldn’t even be getting close to crossing. “Don’t come here because now I have to worry about you pushing up on the very vulnerable young woman that lives here, and I won’t have it.”
“Relax, D. I wouldn’t do anything to Stassi, mostly out of fear for my life.” He chuckles. “I’m more concerned with you, big bro. Men do interesting, and at times questionable, things in times of grief.”
“You forget I know how this works.”
“You forget you slept with Elle’s best friend in a coat closet at Elle’s birthday party and subsequently ended their friendship.”
My hand clenches around my phone as I recall the drunken blow up that happened that night. My sister definitely overreacted and she was angrier at her friend than she was at me, but I never fully understood why Elle cut her off after that.
“Come on, let me come up. Maybe next month?”
“No.”
“Okay, think about it and get back to me. I gotta run,” he says before he’s gone. I let out a sigh as I walk back into the quiet house trying to ignore my brother’s words, and yet I’m unable to escape them. I decide to make Stassi a cup of coffee and take it upstairs mostly so I can wake her up and force her out of my bed so I can stop thinking about the fact that she’s there in the first place. I hear Seth’s words in my head and as much as I want to say he has no idea what he’s talking about, I hate that maybe he’s not completely clueless.
The sound of sniffles breaks me out of my thoughts just as I pass Stassi’s door and a fleeting feeling of disappointment ripples through me as I realize she’s not in my room, contradictory to how I felt just moments before.
I am losing my fucking mind.
“Stassi?” I knock lightly on her door. “You want some coffee?” The sound that moves through the door vibrates through me.A sniffle.
I don’t think twice before I’m moving through the door into her bedroom. She’s sitting on her bed, her body facing away from me as her tiny shoulders shake up and down. Her head is lowered and I see her hands covering her face. I set the coffee on her nightstand and move quickly towards her, my long legs eating the distance between us until I’m lowering myself slowly onto her bed. “Stassi?”
She doesn’t say anything at first, but then I hear her voice, choppy and broken and full of emotion. I can see the tears cascading down her cheeks rapidly before she wipes her face once. “Go…away…” She’d shed the sweatshirt and sweatpants she’d worn last night, leaving her only in a tiny t-shirt and a pair of shorts. She shifts away from me and hides her face and I feel as if someone is standing on my chest as I watch my sweet girl break down. I can still see her eyelashes that are wet with her tears, and I watch as one lone tear drips down her chin and into her lap. “Stassi, look at me, sweetheart.”
She shifts again slowly towards me and what I see knocks the rest of the wind out of me. I let out a shaky breath as I see her brown eyes that are so bright that it stuns me. For a moment, I’m so captivated by the beautiful color of her eyes, I forgetwhythey’re that color. “Your eyes…they’re so clear and bright. I’ve never seen them this color before.” I press a hand to her cheek and rub a thumb under her eyes. “They’re like honey.”
“Sometimes…” Her bottom lip trembles and she traps it between her teeth, “…when I cry, they get lighter.”
“Stassi,” I whisper her name like it’s a plea as I prepare to beg her to open up to me and not to shut me out. She needs me and I refuse to let her down. “Why didn’t you come get me?”
“I…I didn’t need to. It just hit me all at once.” Her nose scrunches slightly highlighting the few freckles she has on the bridge. She purses her lips and the faint dimple she has on one side shows itself. I pull her into my arms on instinct. “I miss her,” she mumbles into my shirt. “Fuck, I miss her so much.” I rub her back in slow methodical circles, hugging her tighter each time she sniffles or hiccups. She continues to sob into my shirt and her tears feel like tiny knives stabbing my chest as I do my best to console her.
“I know, sweetheart. I know. So do I.” Her wild curls are pulled into a bun on top of her head, made messier after our night of sleep, but a few of the tendrils framing her face tickle my chin. I pull away and push them back slowly before I press a kiss to her forehead. A short intake of breath falls from her lips and for a second, I regret what I’ve done, but I push my thoughts to the side because I’m just consoling her.Nothing about that kiss felt intimate, I tell myself. Even as I think the words though, I don’t believe them.
“Why?” Her voice breaks again. “She was a good person. The best. Why her?”
Hearing this question destroys me because it’s one I’ve asked a million times over the past two months. Having gone through this once before, I came to the conclusion a little quicker this time, but it’s just as difficult nonetheless. The conclusion that life is hard and dark and sometimes it fuckingsucks.
That sometimes living is harder than dying.
But Stassi is eighteen and I refuse to contribute to her having such a morose outlook on the world. She has so much life to live and I want her to thrive in spite of this tragedy. I want her to live for both herself and the woman that can’t any longer. So, I say the most positive thing I can think of in the moment.
“You know I’m not very religious, Stass, but your Mom would say because it was her time. Because God was ready for her.”