I thought our kinship would be obvious when we were together. I didn’t know if I was expecting a big bear hug or a brotherly smile, but I surely hadn’t been expecting what I got. The distance and the cold silence only reminded me of one thing: the house where we’d grown up, together but apart.
“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” Vic growled at me.
“Vic!” Lennox scolded.
I blinked, not realizing I’d been staring at Vic. Heat rushed to my cheeks. I felt like a fool to have ever believed we could be brother and sister. Nothing good came out of that house. Nothing at all.
“Sorry.” I fumbled through my words. “I should go. I shouldn’t have come.” As I was standing to leave, words tumbling out of my mouth like a mudslide, I felt a hand grab my own.
“No way,” Lennox said, smiling at me. She pulled me back into my seat. “We still haven’t ordered and I refuse to be the only one tasting these fries. Ignore Vic; he sometimes forgets how to talk to people. Vic”—Lennox turned to him, her face deadly saccharine—“you say ‘hello’ and then they say ‘hello’ and then you ask how their day was. Need any more tips?” Her sweet voice had an edge to it that I feared to get near, lest I be cut.
Vic smiled back at Lennox, sitting down. There was some kind of energy between them, like a crackling, fatal wire left unattended in the water now pouring down outside. If I reached out and touched it, I’d be electrocuted.
The storm around us was getting stronger and the water was pouring down. Soon I’d be surrounded by water, and there’d be nowhere to go that wouldn’t be twitching with their dangerous current. Still standing, I watched their silent, snapping energy. My mind told me to leave, to run back to my apartment and forget I’d ever known Vic. My body said otherwise.
I felt pulled into them. My gut wrenched and tugged. I sat down, expelling a breath.
Turning to Lennox, I adopted my own fake smile. “So the lobster?”
Dinner had been ordered and placed. I’d gotten the lobster at Lennox’s behest. It was really good. So good that I spent about five minutes wondering how I could have spent my li
fe without lobster. Then I spent the next five minutes remembering that most of my life hadn’t been my choice. Most of my life had been forced on me. If I’d wanted lobster before moving to California, I wouldn’t have been able to eat it.
So that was kind of a downer.
I quickly shoved those memories back and took another bite of lobster. Other than the delicious crustacean, dinner was a disappointment. Lennox was doing all the talking. My brother might as well have been a decoration on the wall. He sat in the seat opposite me, only moving to crack open his lobster.
Despite the raging storm around us, we still ate outside. The restaurant manager even came outside to beg us to move inside, but Vic just shot him a look and he walked away with his metaphorical tail between his legs. We weren’t getting too wet, but the occasional spray of rain splashed against my face. Eating outside in the storm was beautiful in a rebellious way.
“So Grace, are you enjoying California?” Lennox asked, taking a sip of her third drink.
“What is your problem?” I spat, glaring at Vic. Setting her drink down carefully, Lennox coughed. “Sorry, Lennox,” I continued, still looking at Vic. “I was talking to my brother.”
Vic looked up from his meal for the first time all night. “Excuse me?” His eyes were darker than the bruised sky around us. He hadn’t looked at me straight the entire time I’d been there, and their intensity nearly floored me. I gripped the table, holding myself firm. I had handled much worse in my life than Vic Wall’s attitude.
“What is your problem?” I repeated, emphasizing each word. Lightning swept the entire sky. Its intensity crackled momentarily, changing the night from black to a yellow-white shock.
Lennox laughed, unperturbed. “Well that question would take all night to conquer properly. Maybe even a few months.”
Vic shot her a look, and then went back to eating. “I don’t have a problem.”
What am I thinking? Vic and I were separated in age by more than a decade. It would already be hard to connect if we were normal, and we weren’t normal. We had about zero point zero things in common. Lennox said some nice sounding things, but I just had to accept that family wasn’t in the cards for me.
Thunder boomed as I placed my napkin on the table, making the whole ordeal feel a bit more dramatic than it was. My lobster was woefully unfinished, but I couldn’t take it any longer. With thunder and lightning as my accomplices, I stood to leave.
“This was a mistake. Thank you for dinner, Lennox.”
“No wait!” Lennox grabbed my arm. “You’ll still come to the baby shower, right?”
“I…” The question caught me off guard. Couldn’t she see what a disaster this was? My manners got in the way of my sense though. “Of course, thank you.”
Vic continued eating as I left. He hadn’t been bothered by Zeus having a hissy fit around him, so of course he wasn’t bothered that I left.
I was nearing the parking lot, thinking about catching a bus in the rain, when I heard my name being called.
“Grace! Grace wait!” I turned around to see Lennox chasing after me frantically. It was all very surreal, the rain pouring around us, Lennox running. I felt like a character in one of the many books I’d read. “What’s wrong?”
Lennox shook her head. “Nothing is wrong, I just wanted to give you something.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a key. “This is a key to our apartment.”