“Goodbye, Bristol.” A delightful smile creases Amir’s face.
“Goodbye, Amir.” I can’t help but reciprocate with a wide grin of my own. Amir salutes and makes his way back inside the airport. When I glance back to Grip, he’s leaning against the dilapidated Jeep watching me closely, traces of a smile lingering on his handsome face.
“What?” I quirk an eyebrow as the smile melts from my face.
“Nothing.” His shoulders push up and drop, languid and powerful. “Just thinking those braces worked out well for you.”
“Braces?” My fingers press against my lips. “How’d you know I used to wear braces?”
Grip hands me his phone, and if I didn’t have enough reasons to string Rhyson up, sending “ugly stage” adolescence pictures to his hot friend gives me another. Once I get past embarrassment for my twelve-year-old, frizzy-haired, flat-chested self, I really study the picture more closely. It’s a rare family photo, and I remember the day we took it with absolute clarity. Rhyson was home off the road for a few weeks. We’d known since he was three years old what an extraordinarily talented pianist he would be, but it was only around eleven that he actually started touring all over the world. Music is a family business for us, and my parents went with him on the road as his managers. I, however, had no talent to speak of, so I stayed home with a nanny who made sure I ate, went to school, and had a “normal” childhood. As normal as your childhood can be when your parents barely remember you exist.
“Rhys sent that so I could identify you at the airport.” Grip holds out his hand for his phone.
I study the photo another few seconds. Rhyson looks like he’d rather be anywhere but with the three of us. Just a few years after that picture was taken, he would find a way to leave us. To leave me. As much as I told myself over and over that he emancipated from our parents, not from me, that never made me feel less abandoned or less alone in our sprawling New York home. After he moved to California to live with my father’s twin brother, Grady, I’d sit in the music room at his piano, straining my ears for the memory of him rehearsing in there for hours every day. Eventually, I stopped going in that room. I draped his piano in white cloth, locked the door, and stopped chasing his music. Stopped chasing him. I told myself that if he wanted to be my brother again, he’d call. Except he never did, so I called him. It hurts to feel so connected to someone who obviously doesn’t feel as connected to me.
“You okay, Bristol?”
Grip’s question tugs my mind free of that tumultuous time in my family that felt like a civil war. His hand is still extended, waiting.
“Sorry, yeah.” I drop the phone into his palm, careful to avoid actual skin-to-skin contact. Based on how my body responded to the brush of his fingers when he took my suitcase, I suspect he could easily fry me with another touch. “Just feeling sorry for that geeky little girl in the picture.”
“Oh, don’t cry for her,” he says with a grin. “I have it on good authority when she grows up the braces are gone and she has a beautiful smile.”
I roll my eyes so he won’t think his lines are actually working on me, though he does actually make me feel a little better.
He opens the passenger door and I slide in, catching a whiff of him as I go. It’s fresh and clean and man. No cologne that I can detect. All Grip.
“So where to now?” He starts the old Jeep but lets it idle while he turns radio knobs, searching for a station.
“Food.” I blow out a weary breath as the long trip and lack of food hit me hard. “I hope Grady’s got food at his house.”
Grip’s eyes widen just a bit before sliding away from me.
“Uh, there may not be a ton of food at Grady’s place.” Grip taps long fingers on the steering wheel. “He’s kind of out of town.”
“Out of town?” I snap my head around to stare at his rugged profile. “He knew I was coming, right? How can he be … what?”
My father and his twin brother Grady weren’t close before, but after Rhyson emancipated from my parents to live with him, our relationship with him grew even more strained. My parents resented him “taking” Rhyson away, and I haven’t seen him either. I never had much of a relationship with my uncle, and it doesn’t look like that will change on this particular trip.
“A colleague had a death in the family,” Grip says. “He needed Grady to step in for him at a songwriters’ conference.”
A piece of lead rests heavily on my chest, const
ricting my breath for a second. Why am I even here? It’s obvious I’m the only one looking for any connection, any reconciliation for our family.
“He couldn’t have anticipated this,” Grips adds hastily.
“I get it.” I force a stiff curve to my lips and stare out the passenger side window so Grip doesn’t see the smile never reaches my eyes. “This is gonna be some family reunion. Uncle Grady away and Rhyson … tied up.”
We don’t cry in front of strangers.
My mother’s voice echoes back to me from childhood. We don’t cry in front of anyone, truth be told. I blink furiously and sniff discreetly, hoping a red nose isn’t betraying the stupid emotion swelling in my belly and pushing up into my chest. I must be PMSing. I suckled at my mother’s iron tit. Something this insubstantial after all I’ve been through shouldn’t affect me this way. I know not to wear my emotions in places people can see them. And yet, here I am, against my mother’s wishes and advice, clear across the country, risking parts of my heart with family who apparently don’t give a damn about me.
“Bristol, Grady will be back soon and Rhyson will be around.” I hate the deliberate gentleness of Grip’s tone. It’s as if he sees my cracks and knows that at any minute I might break.
Red nose and teary eyes or not, I’ll show him I won’t break. I’ll make sure he knows I’m stronger that that. That I don’t need my brother or my uncle. That they are the ones who missed out on knowing me.
I whip around to tell him so, to unload my defenses and assurances on him, but all my bravado slams into the compassion of his eyes. More disconcerting than how beautiful his eyes are, is how much they seem to see. How much they seem to know. The bitter words die on my tongue. I swallow the shattered syllables. I swallow the pain. With practice, it goes down easy, lubricated by tears I’ll never shed. I’ve had lots of practice. I’ve had lots of tears, but this stranger, this beautiful stranger, won’t see. I steady my trembling mouth and level my eyes until they meet his stare squarely.