Page 66 of Fresh Start
“You deserved it,” Andy said and ruffled my hair as he got up to put our bowls in the dishwasher.
“I’m not twelve anymore,” I said and tried to straighten my hair.
Andy turned around supporting himself on the counter, and his playful grin turned into a smile, and his face changed to compassionate and understanding.
“You’ll always be my little brother, little lion. And if you need someone to talk to, I’m here,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate that.”
Andy nodded and pushed himself off the counter, bidding me good night.
“I’m sorry, you know,” I said, and he stopped in his tracks.
Maybe it wasn’t the best time to do this, or maybe it was. I didn’t know and didn’t care. But I wanted it out.
Andy turned to look at me from under the arch of the entryway.
“That I never called. Or visited. When Lucy... I just—” his stare was so intense on me that I had to catch my breath. Had someone turned up the heat in here? I unbuttoned more buttons of my shirt, but it did nothing to regulate my body temperature.
“I hadn’t been home in so long and hadn’t spoken to you in so many years that I didn’t know what to say. I was heartbroken and... ashamed. And I didn’t feel I had the right to offer my condolences when I’ve been such a terrible brother to you. To all of you.”
It was really hard to keep the tears in, and my eyes stung from the effort.
“I just want you to know, no matter what happens, I’m not gonna walk out of your lives again.”
Andy stood there, his hands in his pockets looking out the windows instead of at me. Had I ruined our moment by digging up the crap from the past?
“Do you smoke?” he asked and turned to me after a long pause.
“Smoke?” I asked.
“Cigarettes,” he said, and I shook my head. “Me neither. But Yaya does. She thinks no one knows. Do you want one?”
I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I shrugged and took him up on it.
He went to the bread box and lifted the lid, then put his hand on the top and removed a packet. There was blu tack attached to one side, which explained how the packet was stashed on the top of the box.
“She’s an evil genius, isn’t she?” Andy said.
“Yeah, she’s probably got a secret lair and is scheming to take over the world with her yoga and avgolemono soup,” I said.
Andy passed me a cigarette and got himself one. He walked outside to the garden, and I followed him to where he sat down on the bamboo chairs on the porch.
He lit me up and then his and inhaled. We both choked and coughed.
“Lucy was my everything,” he said when we got used to smoking the damned things without coughing to death. “I had the best years of my life with her. But what I’m most annoyed about is that Summer, Maya, and Nathan didn’t get to spend more time with her. And that she didn’t get to see them grow up.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I focused all my energy on the cigarette. It’d been a while since I last smoked. Rehab had done wonders for my addictions, even the ones I didn’t know I had. And I was surprised to find out smoking was doing nothing for me. In fact, it was making the avgolemono soup threaten to come back up.
“She missed you, you know. She kept asking me to call you, to put an end to this. She knew you needed a brother, and she told me I had to stop being stubborn and just call you. She even bought me tickets to fly out to see you,” he said.
“When was that?” That was the first time I’d heard of this.
“When she read online that you were in rehab. She wanted to come herself, but at that point, her cancer was just biting her in the ass, and she was weak as fuck, so she couldn’t.”
Lucy had always been like a big sister to me. Even after I moved away from Cedarwood Beach and I started college.
She’d send me big boxes with all the local foods I couldn’t get in New York or London, even though shipping cost a fortune. And she’d send me letters, like every month, with all the latest family updates and pictures of the kids. Sometimes, we’d Skype, and she’d tell me all her latest news, which helped me keep my sign language from getting rusty. And when she found out she had cancer, I was in rehab for the first time, so I couldn’t talk to her. But she still sent me letters.
