“Not everybody can be as socially blessed as you, Sarah,” Drew chimes in. “It’s a gift being related to me.”

“No, it’s a curse,” she says and it’s genuine.

“Right. As if you’d have half as many friends or go on half as many dates if I weren’t your brother.” I think Drew is joking but it sets her off, and when I hear what she says, I don’t blame her. I feel sorry for her instead.

“You’re absolutely right! That’s the f**king problem, Drew! Girls all want to be friends with me because they think it’s a free pass to you. Guys want to go out with me because they figure I’m a cheap slut like you. You want to take credit for my social life? Go ahead. You are responsible for it.” She pauses because she’s so worked up and I can tell Drew is wishing he never said anything because he didn’t see this coming at all. I don’t even want to be in the room anymore. I wonder if anybody here has an invisibility cloak I could borrow, because that would be awesome.

“I hate being your sister!” Sarah hisses. “I would do anything to not be related to you!”

Drew doesn’t say anything else. No cocky comebacks. No derision. He just walks out and leaves me with Sarah, who starts to cry. I’m seriously hoping they have some ice cream here, because without words, it’s pretty much the only thing I’ve got to work with.

“I hate him,” she says through tears, and I know that she doesn’t, but I can’t tell her that.

***

Later that night, we push all the furniture to the side of the room again and offer to give Mr. and Mrs. Leighton a demonstration of Sarah’s up and coming self-defense skills. I drag Drew back into the room and offer him up as an assailant and then refresh Sarah’s memory on how to cause him bodily harm. And Drew lets her do it as many times as she needs to, even when she doesn’t pull back enough and it’s really starting to hurt. Then the last time he comes at her from behind, he whispers I’m sorry before wrapping his arms around her. There’s a part of me that’s hoping she’ll press her arms up and out before dropping straight down out of his grasp, driving her elbow back into him and then running like I taught her, but I’m glad she doesn’t when he apologizes again and she turns in his arms and hugs him back.

Just as he loosens up, she stomps on his instep for real, then mock knees him in the groin and Mrs. Leighton applauds.

CHAPTER 41

Nastya

“You’re destroying your hands,” Josh tells me, picking them up and turning them over to look at my palms. I pull them back, but I can’t help smiling because it’s a compliment. It’s even better than being called distractingly pretty.

“I like it,” I tell him, examining them myself. “Means they’re doing something.” I may not be able to use them the way I’d like‌—‌unless one-handed piano playing becomes all the rage, I’m SOL‌—‌but at least I can do something. Josh hates sanding. It’s his least favorite thing to do, because according to him, it’s boring. He keeps trying to get me to use a belt sander when it’s feasible but there’s just no satisfaction in that. I like sanding because it’s mindless and repetitive and it lets me think. I can smooth out all the rough edges. And at the end of the night, I can look at what I’ve done and see a pile of sawdust and feel like I’ve accomplished something. When I look at my hands, I don’t see scrapes and scratches; I don’t see injuries; I see healing.

I think I’m still smiling at my hands like an idiot, and when I look back up he’s watching me with something like respect and that look is definitely better than being called distractingly pretty.

“They used to be soft, but the sandpaper is killing them,” he says. “They’re turning into my hands.” I wonder if he thinks that’s an insult. His hands are miracles. I can watch them for hours, transforming wood into something it never dreamed of being.

“So I won’t touch you then and you won’t notice.”

“No need to be rash,” he jokes, picking them up again and running his thumb along one of the scars on my left hand. The plastic surgeons worked miracles, but they still couldn’t get it perfect. You can still see all the wrong about it when you look. “I just like your hands,” he continues, not taking his eyes off them. “Sometimes I think they’re the only real thing about you.”

He says things like that a lot. Like he’s reminding me that just because he doesn’t ask the questions, it doesn’t mean he forgets they exist.

“You want to test that theory?” I ask, smiling at him. He keeps his grip on my hands and pulls me back toward the wall.

“Not with the garage door open.”

***

I spend half of Saturday morning sitting cross-legged on a flatbed at Home Depot with Josh pushing me up and down the lumber aisles, telling me about how every kind of wood varies. I learn which to use for furniture, which are better for floors, which are the best for finishing and so on. Finally he kicks me off the flatbed and I have to walk because he needs it to actually put wood on. I might complain about having to get up if it didn’t mean that I get to spend the next twenty minutes watching him load up lumber, and complaining about that would be wrong on so many levels. It’s worth the standing any day.

When we get home, we plan to spend the afternoon finishing, but it starts to pour and we can’t work with the garage closed and the finish will get cloudy anyway from the humidity. At this point, I could tell you this myself without any prompting. Between Josh and shop class, I’m getting quite an education.

We spend the afternoon in the kitchen and I figure if he can teach me about lumber, I can teach him how to bake a decent cookie. I scold him for packing the flour into a measuring cup, and he keeps doing it just to annoy me until I take it away and do it myself.

“Why do I have to learn how to make them when I have you here to do it for me?”

“You know,” I say, pushing a bag of brown sugar and another measuring cup at him since he wants to pack things so badly, “one day I may not be here, and then you’ll be cookieless and sad.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I regret them. I mentally kick the thought in the groin, and when it doubles over, I knee it in the face so it will never rear its ugly head again. Unfortunately, it’s too late for that.

“It’s okay,” he says gently, with just a whisper of a smile. “I’m not that sensitive about it. Everyone just assumes I am. Don’t be everyone, okay?”

“Why aren’t you angry about it?”

“What’s the point?”

“So you’re just okay with it?”

“I said I wasn’t angry. I didn’t say I was okay with it. I understand all the crap people say. It’s natural. It’s inevitable. It’s a part of life. Still doesn’t make it okay that someone can just disappear like they never existed. But being pissed all the time doesn’t make it okay, either. I know. I used to be pissed all the time. It gets old.”

“If I were you I’d be the angriest person in the world.”

“I think you already are.”

There isn’t any point in arguing with that, so I step over to show him how hard to pack down the brown sugar, but I still feel shitty.

“After we’re done with this, maybe you can help me move the coffee table over from the wall. I think I’m going to get rid of the piece of crap in front of the couch,” he says, changing the subject and letting me off the hook.

“You’re going to move the love of your life into the middle of the room where Drew can violate it with his shoes any time he likes?” This is genuinely surprising because I know how Josh feels about that table.

“Since when did it become the love of my life?” He sounds bemused.

“You talk about it like it’s a girl.”

“What can I say?” He shrugs. “That table makes me want to be a better man. Jealous?”

“You know it’ll kill Drew not to be able to put his feet on it. Unless you’ve decided to allow that.”

He looks mildly horrified. I think he’s imagining it happening.

“Maybe it’s fine where it is.”

“Just so you know,” I inform him, “one day, I’m going to get tired of sharing your affection with that coffee table and I’m going to make you choose.”

“Just so you know,” he mimics me, “I would chop that table up and use it for firewood before I would ever choose anything over you.” It’s a ridiculous thing to say, but he nails me with those eyes, making sure I know he’s serious and I wish he wouldn’t do that.

“That would be a waste.” I take the bag of brown sugar he’s still holding and put it back so I can have an excuse to turn away, because I’m not in the mood for serious, and for some reason, this conversation keeps veering back toward places I don’t want to go. “You don’t even have a fireplace.”

“You make it impossible to say anything nice to you.”

“Not impossible. Just difficult,” I say lightly, hoping he’ll change his tone, too. I figure maybe I can distract him and I lift myself up on my tiptoes to kiss him. I can tell he knows what I’m doing and he hesitates just a second before lifting his hand to the back of my neck and leaning into me; his mouth moving against mine, soft and searching, coaxing out my secrets. I pull away and walk over to turn on the mixer, hoping the noise of it will effectively kill any conversation.

“Tell me where you got the scar.” It comes out of nowhere and from everywhere.

“No,” I whisper. He can’t hear it over the mixer, but he knows I said it. The worst thing is that there’s a part of me that’s starting to want to tell him, and that scares the living crap out of me. Josh makes me feel safe and safe is something I never thought I’d feel again.

He pulls me back against him and holds me there. I can feel the warmth of his fingers imprinting the skin at my waist. His mouth is next to my ear, and for just one second I expect him to call me a Russian whore.

“Please.”

“I don’t even know which one you’re asking about,” I say and I’m thankful not to have to see his face. There’s something in the way he says please that won’t let me laugh this off or lie to him. There’s a desperation in it that I don’t want to acknowledge.

“Any. Just one. Just something. Tell me something true.” His arms are solid, wrapping around me, pressing my back against his chest, and it feels more like truth than anything has in such a long time. But I still have nothing to give him.

“I don’t even know what that is anymore.”

***

“Do you live here anymore?” Margot asks me one afternoon when I get back from school. I wish I could say it’s not a valid question, but I’m at Josh’s more often than not. I come home in the mornings before she gets back from work just so I can shower and change for school. Sometimes not even that. Little by little, my clothes seem to be making it to his house, also.

I can shrug or shake my head or play dumb and act like I don’t know what she’s saying, but I owe her more than that. There’s a part of me that almost opens my mouth, but I just can’t make myself do it. If I say something, I’ll have to say everything and that isn’t happening today. I pull some notebook paper out of one of my school folders and write.

If I say no will you make me come back?

“Sit, Em.” She pulls out a chair at the kitchen table and I do the same, keeping the pencil and paper in my hand.

“I know you’re an adult now,” she puts the word adult in air quotes and I want to shake my head at her and beg her not to make me lose respect. “But you’re not all grown up,” she continues. She’s not telling me anything I don’t know.