Page 90 of Near Miss

I take a sip of coffee, head against the window, and I watch him round the truck, throw the door open, and take one step up with one of those long, muscled legs. He did it all unassisted, and I think he does most things like that—all alone—but sometimes I wish I could hold his hand and lift him up, too.

One hand finds the wheel, and his fingers tense there before he drums them against the leather. He turns to look at me as he puts the car in drive. “Greer?”

“Beckett?” I answer, but my eyes are already closing against the window, edges of my usually screaming brain fuzzy with sleep.

His voice is low—and even though I can’t see him, I know a muscle in his jaw ticks, that his right thumb taps the steering wheel, and he tenses his kicking leg. “I don’t think we’re friends.”

There they are, those words out there in the ether.

But I shake my head. He’s wrong. He’s the most important person in the world to me. I know it’s not what he wants to hear, but it’s all I have.

My brain can barely whir to life in warning, it’s so tired, hardly tipping upwards towards the sound of his voice, hardly able to stamp down on the too-big beats of my heart that push against its lines. But one tiny alarm bell sounds from a distant shore, and I tell him the truth as I know it, what’s still keeping me safe. For now. “No. I think you’re my best friend.”

Beckett laughs—deep and real and magical and wonderful and maybe sort of sad.

I feel one hand reach over and tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “If that’s your story. Go to sleep. Dream of faeries.”

I’ll dream of you, I think.

Greer

Sunlight slips further along the wrought-iron table between my sister and me, steam rising off matching cups of coffee, bags laden down with books strewn across the surface.

It’s become something of a ritual between us. Whenever the end of my longest call shift of the month happens, she moves her schedule around and we go to the bookstore together, find a coffee shop, and try to spend the afternoon in relative silence, reading, until Stella inevitably gets bored.

She’s been quieter for longer than usual today, and I don’t know if it’s because I still look exhausted—she made me ice roll my face for ten minutes before we left the house—or if she can feel the way each beat of my heart strains against its borders, the way these empty spaces in me bloom with Beckett and my brain can’t help but trample over the freshly tilled soil and beautiful sprouting things that happen to be the exact same shade as his eyes.

She’s many things, but she’s perceptive.

I shift in my seat, debating which book to start, and I absentmindedly run my fingers along the strap of my earmuffs where they hang around my neck, tracing the stitching that spells out Beckett’s number.

“You’ve grown quite attached to those.” Stella’s eyes flick up to me from behind the pages of her book, voice bemused.

I shrug. “They’re practical. It’s October in Toronto. The grass frosts more mornings than not.”

The corners of her lips furl upwards into a smile that looks more catlike than anything, and she blinks at me. “So that wasn’t a grainy photo of you I saw on that Instagram account dedicated to the WAGS of all Toronto sports teams?”

“I’m neither a wife nor a girlfriend.” I pick up the book closest to me—I’ve been waiting for this one where a human girl touches an ancient sword, and she gets transported to a fae realm and held captive—before leaning back in my chair. “So, you must be mistaken.”

She tips her head, and a wave of auburn hair, brighter than usual in the afternoon sun, escapes her bun. “Could have fooled me.”

“You sound like Beckett,” I say absentmindedly, opening the book to the first page. “He says he doesn’t think we’re friends.”

“Because you’re not.” She snorts, looking back down at her book.

I think she’s right, my heart stumbles.

But I think of our father—or maybe my brain sends the memory of him in the hospital bed, all ashen skin and crackling lungs, to the forefront so I can never, ever forget what’s at stake.

“We have to be.”

Stella drops her book and folds her hands together over top of it. She angles her head to the side and asks me a question that should have a simple answer, and maybe it sort of does. But it’s still the one thing I don’t think I can tell her.

“Okay, but you’ve never told me why. You’ve made these grand speeches and soliloquies—” She holds up a hand when my lips part, indignant, and she continues. “I’m not saying that to be cruel. I’m saying that to make a point. You have these firm convictions about needing to be alone because you give too much, but you’ve only ever made loose references to your job. How much that takes from you, how draining it is. Give me something real, Greer. No deflection. No evasion. No bullshit.”

“Do you talk to your clients like this?” I try, but Stella’s lips pull into a flat line, and she makes a carry-on gesture. She’s going to wait me out.

My fingers feather uselessly in space, and I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to tell my sister that even though I love her—I love our father—I like to think there’s another world out there where I didn’t say yes, and that maybe, in that world, someone else died for him.

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