Chance
“Soph,” I groaned. “I really, really don’t want to talk.”
“You missed dinner yesterday.”
“Because I knew you were going to grill me and like I said, I really—”
“Really don’t want to talk,” Sophie finished for me. “Yeah, I got that.”
“And yet…”
“Forgive me for worrying about you,” she said defensively. “But I care.”
“I know that,” I sighed. “And I love you for it, but…nothing’s going to change at this point and I know the only reason you want to talk is to try and convince me to make it work with Natalie.”
There was a second of silence on the other line and I knew I had guessed right. “You never told me what happened,” Sophie reminded me.
“I don’t want to get into it right now.”
“Why?” she demanded. “Because you have better things to do?”
“Yes.”
“Like what?”
“Like get drunk,” I said. “I have to go.”
“Wait,” Sophie said. “Please, Chance, this isn’t right…”
“People break up all the time, Soph,” I reminded her. “Didn’t you and Tony break up for a while there right before you got married?”
“The point is that we got back together,” she reminded me.
“Uh-huh,” I said, with disinterest. “What happened there?”
“You’re trying to change the subject, aren’t you?”
“I know how much you enjoy talking about yourself.”
“Ha-ha,” Sophie said sarcastically. “You’re funny when you’re depressed.”
“What makes you think I’m depressed?”
“Oh, I don’t know… The fact that you won’t come to dinner or talk about the breakup,” she reeled off. “The fact that you get all prickly every time I mention Natalie’s name. The fact that you sound like a broken man right now.”
“I’m not broken—"
Sophie snorted. “Please… I know you, little brother,” she said. “And I also observed how you were with Natalie. You looked at her like…”
She trailed off, and that piqued my attention more than her words did. “What?” I demanded.
“Nothing.”
“No, tell me,” I insisted.
Sophie sighed. “You looked at Natalie the way Dad used to look at Mom,” she replied.
I remembered that look well. Still, to this day, I maintained that my father always looked the happiest when he was glancing over at Mom. It was like a blind man seeing the sun for the first time; it was transformative, if you paid enough attention to notice.