Page 103 of Send It
“But I couldn’t control my temper,” I whisper. “Had I not jumped on the track after Landon wrecked her, none of this would’ve happened. I planned to talk to you about Lincoln when we got back.”
“You jumped on the track because you care about my sister, you always have, and I do trust you when it comes to her. I just don’t know if I can trust you when it comes to us.”
“I promise that you can. Nothing like that will ever happen again. I should’ve come to you the second I started noticing a shift in mine and Lincoln’s relationship, but I was too scared. I didn’t want it to affect our friendship.”
He runs his hands down his face, “I just don’t know how to do this… be friends with my best friend who is also dating my sister. It’s weird.”
I shrug, “I don’t know. It’s new for all of us but I can promise you that it won’t be weird forever. It will eventually be just like it was before.”
“Yeah,” he sighs. “Except you will be having sex with my sister.”
“When you put it like that, it does seem weird for you,” I laugh. “Maybe there needs to be rules.”
He nods, “I think so.”
51
Lincoln
The waiting rooms for the ICU are cold and almost damp as I wrap myself up in a blanket in the seat next to my brother.
“Why is he in the ICU?” Reiss asks my mom. “And why the fuck won’t they let us back there yet?”
She sighs, “You need to calm down. He’s in ICU because it was a complex surgery. It's normal for them to put him there for monitoring. He’ll be in a great deal of pain when he wakes up.”
Brian and Nana sit a few seats down and when I ask about Kim, I’m told that Colson asked her to leave. That doesn’t really surprise me, but I can tell that it infuriates my mom. I think it’s a tie between the shitty parenting and the carelessness. She just isn’t a fan of the woman anymore.
“What’s that?” I ask Reiss, nodding to the folder in his hand.
He grins holding it up, the words “Rules for Dating My Sister” written across the front.
I groan, yanking the folder from his hand and flipping through it. “You’re really going to give this to him while he’s in the hospital?”
“Yeah?” Reiss says, like it wouldn’t be weird or inappropriate at all. “You guys didn’t pick the best time to hard launch your relationship. This isn’t any different.”
I rip a page out of the folder, crinkling it up to toss it in the trash. “This is different. He’s on drugs and in pain. I think your demand sheet can wait until he’s out of the hospital, don’t you think?”
My dad laughs at us, “Man, what a weird week.”
“I know,” Brian says. “But can’t really say we didn’t all see it coming.”
Reiss grabs the wadded up paper out of my hand and flattens it out, “Oh no. This is a definite rule. This has to go back in there.”
Stas yanks the paper from his hand and reads it aloud, “Colson must spend a minimum of thirty minutes per date night with Lincoln playing XBOX with Reiss.”
Both of our dads laugh, my mom grabs the paper from Stas and wads it back up, “You have lost it, son. If he’s on a date with Lincoln you need to leave them alone. It’s no different than if he was on a date with someone else.”
“It’s totally different,” he whines. “What am I supposed to do while he’s over at the house and it’s for her? How will I know when he’s there for me or there for her?”
Mom laughs, “You are really overthinking this.”
“I know,” I say. “He acts like he won’t have Stassie to pass his time with. I’m not giving her a rulebook.”
Stas smiles at me softly but Reiss isn’t having it.
“She’ll also be there to hang out with you,” he groans. “You stole everyone.”
Stas cuddles up to support Reiss when she sees Dr. Marlow entering the room.
