Page 25 of Silver Linings

Her mouth pops open, and she hesitates. Fuck—did she have a different reaction to Friday night than me?

I mean, I thought that kiss was…good doesn’t even scratch the surface. From her reception of it, I would’ve thought she did too, but I’ve been out of the dating game long enough to doubt myself now.

“Actually…”

My stomach sinks. I don’t know how, but I must have misinterpreted everything wrong, and I’m suddenly feeling very stupid.

The front door opens. “ Hello , brother wife.” Kena saunters into Respect the Drip with the confidence of a king, dressed head to toe in vibrant floral brocade.

A smile spreads across my face at the sight of Silver’s best friend.

“Could you, for once , not make me look like a bum in this coffee shop?” Silver throws up her arms in exasperation before looking at me. “He always comes in here looking like a Disney prince when I look like this.” She points from her messy top knot down to her sweatpants and cropped tee.

“I think you look beautiful.” I sip my coffee.

Kena’s head whips to me with a smile that can only be described as maniacal.

“Oh?” There’s a lilt to his voice as it raises several octaves, and he looks between Silver and me.

“And on that note,” Silver grabs Kena by his shoulder and twists him towards the door, “we’re going to Drag brunch in a bit.”

“Unhand me, you goblin,” Kena says while I chuckle from where I’m standing. They’re basically siblings, and it makes me think of mine and how we used to act the same way.

She starts walking towards the door, dragging Kena with her as she goes. “I’ll see you tomorrow night though?”

She’s almost fully out the door when I nod my head in their direction and salute them with my coffee. “See you then.”

Something changed, I can see it in her face, hear it in her voice. I just don’t know what.

“I’m telling you, the koala population in Australia is in danger because they’re all getting chlamydia. It’s an epidemic, and you all should really care more.”

The three of us stare blankly at Sam as he takes an irritated pull from his IPA, indignant that we didn’t know about the burgeoning threat to marsupials in the farthest reaches of the eastern hemisphere.

“How did we get here?” Jae’s eyes dart around, looking at each of us in confusion.

“I asked where the new beer on draft was imported from.” Faye rubs circles into her temples. “Apparently, it’s from Australia, and now, I’m full of regret.”

“This is a serious problem. Depending on the region of the country, up to ninety percent of the koala population is affected.” You would think he’s on trial with how serious he is.

I take a bite of the wings I ordered as I sit and watch the chaos of my friend group unfold.

Faye is telling Sam he should get fixed until his frontal lobe develops, Sam is looking at Faye with hearts in his eyes, and Jae is singing along to the song playing over the speakers—loudly.

This is pretty much what all our nights consisted of when we were all in school together. We spent our days running around the city, going to different classes for different majors, but we always found our way back here by nightfall, at The Blackbird, together.

Some nights, we drank ourselves under the table playing whatever drinking game the others had come up with that made absolutely no sense, and some nights, we covered our table in textbooks with notes and highlighters everywhere.

It was the memory of these nights that I missed the most, that I longed for once I moved back to Seattle.

I wanted to stay here, open my own business with the degree I earned from NYU.

But when I shared that with my dad, even showing him business plans I had drafted, he said it was time to come back home and work under him like I had agreed before I left for college. There was no room left to argue.

When I left for school, it didn’t seem like such a bad compromise—a small price for four years of freedom from his constant scrutiny.

I loved the work at the shop, especially when I was designing my own pieces, but I didn’t expect to feel so at home in New York.

After my four years were up, my pride saw me back on a flight to Seattle.

It had been drilled into me from adolescence that a man was only as good as his word. For a while that kept me in line.

Until a few weeks ago.

Ever since, I’ve been avoiding my family’s calls—well, Mom and Laurel’s calls. Dad stopped speaking to me altogether, but that silence started long before I left.

I need to stop being a coward and face the music of their disappointment.

I’m just not sure what good the argument will do when I don’t want to leave New York again.

I shouldn’t have the first time, but a niggling voice in the back of my head says if I hadn’t, I would’ve missed those last few years with my brother. That alone was worth it all.

My friends are now in a heated argument about who would survive the longest in the Australian outback, and I’m going to have to settle this for them the rational way.

“Jae would be out the second he saw a Huntsman spider, and Sam would probably get too friendly with a kangaroo, and it would beat the shit out of him. Obviously, Faye would last the longest.”

Both guys look affronted while Faye does a happy shimmy in her seat.

“I’m gonna go get another drink. Does anyone want anything?” I look around the table.

“I’ll take anything that isn’t from Australia,” Jae requests at the same time the others request refills of their current drinks.

I slide out of the booth and head over to the bar to put in an order for another round when I feel my phone vibrating in my back pocket. I pull it out, and it’s like my subconscious summoned this call.

Laurel.

It’s do or die. I can’t keep putting off my family forever, and it’s probably better to do it now when I have a plausible reason to hang up if things go south quickly. The buzz from the alcohol helps too.

“Hey, Laur.”

“ What the fuck, dickweed? Mom’s called you like…a billion times, and you won’t answer her, but you answer me?”

“Mom’s called me twice…”

“That’s basically a billion times for a mom. She asked me if I thought you’d already joined a gang yesterday.”

“I did. Questionable job description, but really good benefits.”

I can hear her huff on the other end of the line. She may be mad, but she’s also a secret softy.

“She’s worried, and so am I. When are you going to come home?”

I scratch a hand down my face in frustration as I turn my back to the bar. I see Jae from our booth giving me an are you okay look. I nod and signal I’m going to slip outside.

I step out into the cool early October air, passing through a group of people and a cloud of cigarette smoke to sit on the stoop of the building next to the bar.

“I am home, Laurel.” There’s a pang in my chest at the resulting silence, loud and thick and suffocating despite the noise of the city surrounding me.

“You’re never coming back?” She’s shell shocked, I can hear it lacing her tone.

“I don’t know… I’m sure Dad’s happy I’m gone.”

“He was just hurt. He didn’t mean what he said when you told us you were leaving.”

“He did, and we both know it.”

Vicious, ugly words were thrown around that night. They haunt me before I close my eyes, like a specter waiting until I’m asleep to descend and feast on my misery.

It’s your fault he’s gone. You might as well leave too.

Laurel sighs deep. “Are you happy there?”

“I–” I want to say yes and immediately ease her worries, but I go for honesty, or at least as honest as I can be. “I’m getting there. I like my job, and I’ve made some new friends you would like.”

I think of Silver and how quickly she and Laurel would take to each other.

“Well, anything’s better than the riffraff you already call friends,” she sneers in sarcasm.

At that exact moment, Jae steps out to check on me, mouthing to ask who’s on the phone. When I mouth back that it’s Laurel, a look of unfiltered glee fills his eyes, and his smile beams from ear to ear.

He launches himself over the railing of the stoop to sit next to me and grabs the phone out of my hand while I’m distracted by the fact that he parkoured over a stone fence like he was an Olympic pole vaulter.

“Hey, baby, have you missed me?” His voice is deep and seductive.

I can’t hear anything happening on the other end of the line, but I would put money on Laurel laying into him. But Jae takes everything in stride, and his grin never wanes while he hangs on her every word.

There were years Laurel would come to visit while I was in school, and the one off year Jae came to Seattle to visit for the summer while apprenticing with an artist based out of Capitol Hill.

Jae took to Laurel’s prickly nature quickly, but the same can’t be said for her taking to his happy-go-lucky disposition, but even knowing this, he’s never backed down.

“I hear what you’re saying, beautiful, I do. I just don’t believe you.”

“Must you always hit on my sister in front of me?” I groan.

“Plug your ears then.” He pats my knee like one would to comfort an irrational child.

He listens raptly to whatever she’s saying. “Nah, you just both haven’t come to accept that you and I are endgame. It’s okay, I’m a patient man.”

A few purring mhmms and deep chuckles from his end and what sounds like violent sarcasm coming from the other. “Alright, love, whatever you need to tell yourself. Do you want to talk to Hen before we hang up?”

He pulls the phone away from his ear, and hear what sounds like of course I do asshole I called to talk to him not you through the speaker, and through it all, Jae remains unphased.

“She wants to speak to you.” He holds the phone out to me.

“How benevolent of you.”

I put the phone to my ear and can’t even get a word out. “Your friend’s a fucking idiot.”

“Yeah.” I hear Jae murmur I’m your fucking idiot next to me.

“I gotta go, but we’re not done with this talk. I’ll call you back. Make sure you answer.”

“Hey Laur?”

“Yeah?” she snaps, a lot frustrated and a little impatient.

“I love you.” A small weight lifts off my shoulders..

A brief pause before she exhales her anger. “I love you too, dickface. Call Mom.”

We both hang up, and I feel not necessarily lighter, because there’s still a lot that needs to be said, but there’s a relief in hearing my sister’s voice for the first time in weeks.

Jae puts his tattooed arm around my shoulders. “You good, man?”

I nod. “Yeah, I’m good.”

“Great, because I think we’ve left Faye and Sam alone together for too long, and she’s either killed him or has talked him into investing in Koalas for a Kure while we were gone.”