Page 31 of The Grumpy Side of Paradise

Then another voice joins the cacophony, shouting, “Shut up! Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!” And I realize that voice is coming from me, but I don’t stop until I’m the only one left shouting.

The truck rolls to a stop, and I open my eyes. Adam and Zach are both staring at me. Zach’s eyes are wide with terror, but Adam...

Adam is...

smiling?

I think that’s what his lips are doing. There’s definitely some upward curvature happening.

“Feels good to get mad sometimes, doesn’t it?” His smile may only be at half mast, but his face is lit up like my mom’s when I sang my first solo with the church choir.

“I’m not mad.” I shove the words past my clenched teeth.

“Oh, you’re definitely mad.” Zach is smiling too, and if I didn’t know which of the twins was sitting where, I wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

I cross my arms, then quickly uncross them to keep from proving their point. “I don’t get mad. There’s no point in it. Anger doesn’t fix anything.”

“Depends on how you use it,” Adam says. “It worked for you. You got us to quit arguing. At least for the moment.”

Zach’s smile drops. “Dude, come on.”

“Only because I can yell louder than the two of you. But that was just to get your attention, not because I was mad. You’d still be fighting if I hadn’t yelled.”

Adam pulls back onto the road. “That’s how we work things out.”

“Yelling at each other? Seems to work really well.” I roll my eyes, knowing he’s watching me in the rearview mirror.

“We weren’t just yelling,” Zach says. “We were telling each other how we feel. That’s what families do. Sometimes we get a little loud doing it.”

“And how’s that working out for you? Are you done being mad at each other?” I have a hard time believing yelling at each other for a few minutes is going to fix all their problems. That’s not how things work.

“Do you feel better?” Zach asks Adam.

He responds with a noncommittal, almost imperceptible, tip of his head that could be a yes. More likely a maybe, but not a no. “I’m not done being mad,” he says over his shoulder to me. “But I’m working through it and letting off some steam helps.” Then he glances at Zach. “I haven’t forgiven you.”

“That’s okay. I haven’t forgiven you either.”

Adam whips his head toward his brother, and I brace myself for more yelling. But the words that come out are more confused than angry “What’s there to forgive?”

“You want the complete list? Or just the top ten?” Zach’s smile grows and there’s an easiness in it I haven’t seen before. Like a weight has lifted.

Adam, on the other hand, is still tense with hurt. “Is breaking up your relationship on there? Oh, wait. No, that’s on my list for you.” The words aren’t kind, and he’s not returning Zach’s teasing, but there’s not the same anger in his voice there was before.

Zach laughs. A cautious, quiet laugh, like he’s trying to slip past a sleeping guard dog. “Dakota was my girlfriend before she was yours.”

“We were fifteen, and she thought you were me.” Adam glances at his brother, then back at the road. There’s still tension between them, but it’s a comfortably uncomfortable tension.

In design, we define this state as a balanced relation between strongly opposing elements. Like black and white. Put them together, and the eye doesn’t know which to look at because they’re both vying for attention, but that’s what makes them interesting.

Adam and Zach are black and white. They complement each other. They need each other to be their best, even when they’re at their worst. And, subconsciously, they must know that. Because they’re fighting to find balance with each other again.

I’m vaguely aware of the rolling hills to my left and the lake to my right. I should pretend to enjoy the view, but there’s nothing that can draw my attention away from the what’s happening right in front of me.

Forgiveness. Reconciliation. Reparation.

Those words are all familiar to me. I heard them a million times as a kid in Sunday School. When I still believed.

But I’ve neverseenthem until now. And, for the first time, I realize each is a process, not a one-time thing.

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