Page 18 of Breakdown
Peter finished off the martini with a picture-perfect twist of lemon and handed it to her. He raised his own glass. “To staying positive and testing negative,” he said, knocking her martini glass roughly and then beckoning her into the living room.
He was effusively charming and brilliantly biting as they caught up, talking shit about just about everyone in LA. Peter had always been her best friend, and it felt so good to have him back, even if just for an evening. Liv couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed so hard.
At some point, when it became too much effort to go back and forth to the kitchen, she and Peter had just started trading slugs of the vodka straight out of the bottle. At last, Peter waved the vanquished Cîroc at her, sinking into the cushions of the sofa. “Another?”
She pushed herself unsteadily to her feet, the floor pitching slightly beneath her. “I think maybe we should switch to soda.”
“I’d love a vodka soda.”
“I was thinking more like a coke.”
“Mmm, I was never much for coke but I guess it’ll do if that’s all you’ve got.” He cracked an eye open to wink at her. “Kidding.”
“You better be.” Her journey to the kitchen took longer than it should have, and by the time she got back with the cola, Peter’s eyes were closed, his long limbs spilled out over her sofa. She set the can quietly on the coffee table, watching him.
“I missed this,” he said after a moment.
“Me too,” she admitted. Liv tugged a blanket free from the back of the loveseat and laid it over him.
“You’re a good...Liv,” he said, yawning and nuzzling into it.
Now that he had gone quiet, Liv couldn’t help but see again what his charisma had hidden for the last few hours: the labored rise and fall of his chest, the air of sickness that radiated off him. Tomorrow, the work of fixing this began. It was likely doomed. She pointed herself toward the door, feeling a little too full of regret and vodka as she decided to call it a night.
“Y’ever think about mom?”
Liv had just made it to the doorway, and Peter’s sudden, mumbled question left her flat-footed. His recent disappearance had left her thinking about almost nothing else, his absence stoking the same helplessness that made her feel eleven years old again.
“Sometimes,” she said carefully.
Liv had purchased a plot for their mother last month. She’d hoped it would make her feel like she had some closure, since she was the only one in the family who admitted the loss and lived with it. It was permission to mourn, not just her mother, but the parts of herself that had died with her.
She went out there too often to talk to that empty place and its plain grey grave marker. Sometimes Liv cried over it, bitterly and without restraint. Sometimes she yelled at it, though it rarely made her feel better. Sometimes she asked it if she was doing the right thing: for Peter, for Cynthia’s memory—as if some lifeless granite block could reassure her that she wasn’t fucking it all up. It was pathetic and futile. Liv hated herself for it but she didn’t stop going.
“Where do you think she is?” Peter asked her, his voice slurry and low.
Liv’s best guess was somewhere off the edge of the Long Beach Fuel Pier; it was where Dad preferred to dump his bodies. She wondered, not for the first time, if it would be kinder to force Peter to face the truth of their mother’s disappearance. But it never seemed like the right moment. It certainly wouldn’t help him to pull out of this current nosedive.
“Somewhere nice, I bet,” she answered.
“I hope she’s happy, wherever she is.”
Dad had long ago convinced Peter that Mom had just walked out on them—walked out onhim—because of something Peter did. The fact that Peter believed that lie and still wanted their mom to be happy was almost too much for Liv to bear. She was filled with an overwhelming love and profound despair for her brother. Dad underestimated him. He thought Peter was weak, but Peter was so fucking strong it made her heart hurt.
Liv hadn’t been strong enough when they were teenagers, she knew that. She wasn’t strong enough now either, but she was a hell of a lot closer. She’d spent her entire adulthood watching Erik closely and she learned how to play his game.She was a fucking survivor. She and Peter both were. She was going to get Peter out even if he fucking hated her for it. She had her plan.All she needed was time.
“I’m sure she hopes you’re happy too, wherever she is,” Liv said, flicking off the light so he couldn’t see the look on her face. “You go to sleep now, okay?”
“’Kay,” he said. “Night, Liv.”
“Night, Peter.”
Liv stumbled to her bedroom and sprawled on top of her sheets, planting a foot on the floor to stop the room from spinning. Peter was back, and she was going to make sure he stayed okay. She was so close to making sure they were both okay.Liv repeated that to herself, not feeling any better, until she finally drifted off into an uneasy sleep.
When she awoke, Peter was long gone, and so was half of the seventy grand from the office. It was classic Peter, his betrayals all the worse for their half-heartedness. Liv sighed, and then, brutally hungover and terribly heartbroken, she began cleaning up her brother’s mess.
