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The night’s got that kind of heavy wet to it that says summer’s in full swing, the kind of warm weight that sits across the lips and the cheeks and threatens to suffocate and sticks clothes to the skin; it’s got that kind of thick quiet that muffles the sounds of the city enough that anything further out than the treeline over the high privacy fence gets lost like white noise. What’s loud, what’s audible, is the soundtrack of backyard suburbia on a Saturday night; it’s the local station’s country-rock turned up just loud enough to mouth along to, and the crickets being louder than that; it’s the buzz of flies that zip too close when they go to inspect the crumbs someone didn’t sweep off the picnic table, and the hushed shake of the leaves in the trees when the wind whispers through the branches like a secret.
She’s slumped in the cheap plastic chair, the legs twisted where they’re planted in the grass; she’s got her head thrown over the back of the chair, her hair twisted up behind her head in a sloppy ponytail that says more than her posture how much she cares about any of this. Her ankles, crossed and perched on the edge of the picnic bench, bounce with impatience that isn’t characteristic of her but should tell anyone who’s looking that she’s not comfortable with this and that she’s counting the minutes til she’s done here; it’s so obvious she might as well have been screaming it.
“Hey, you’re sticking around for cake right, Charlie?”
Ignorance is bliss.
Danny’s leaning around the sliding glass door on the patio, body only halfway out like he’s just checking in real quick, like he’s lazy; like he’s not sure he wants to brave coming out there with her. It could have been the former, sure, but Charlie’s not stupid and the hesitant way he meets her eyes, the way his smile fits awkwardly on his face, it tells her it’s really the latter. Danny’s no good at lying, never has been and it shows everytime he looks at her.
It doesn’t get to her the way it used to, but there’s still a wrench in the region of her heart that tells her she’s not over it the way she wishes she was. She does this for him, for Danny; she does this to herself and she does it for him but she’s still not sure if she hates him for making her feel like she owes it to him.
She tries for an easy smile and it slips into place the way it always does; practiced.
“Sure thing. Cut me a big piece.”
She doesn’t volunteer to come in and get it herself, doesn’t go in to crowd into the frame behind Danny while their father snaps a photo of a yet another birthday that once upon a time they thought Danny wouldn’t live to see. It’s supposed to be commemorative but what she finds it is morbid, and she can’t stomach it.
Maybe that’s ironic, given everything else.
Danny bobs his head and looks down like he’s fascinated by the way his sneaker scuffs over the door’s floor track. “Want something to drink?”
Whiskey, is her first answer by force of habit and her smile tightens a fraction at the corner, enough that she can feel it. Because whiskey’s what she’d order at home, or out with Miles and Bass, or with Connor; it’s half-tradition that the first drink of the night be whiskey. She’s always thought it was kinda cool, for a family thing.
Except that Danny is their father’s son, is Ben’s son, and he doesn’t drink because their father doesn’t drink and when she’s there visiting, she’s expected to be Ben’s daughter too.
It gets a little harder every year; she chafes at the fit of a life she’s outgrown.
But even though she wants whiskey, she broadens her smile and says, “Grab me a soda.”
Danny bobs his head again and disappears back inside, tugging the door closed behind him. Her smile dissolves the moment he’s gone.
She drops her head back over the edge of the chair, then lifts it again when her phone buzzes where she has it tucked beneath her bra strap, one solid vibration. She waits a heartbeat, but it doesn’t alert a second time. Not a phone call then. Phone calls she’s obligated to answer, always, but anything else she’s ignores when she’s here. For Danny. Because he gets that look in his face, every time, like she’s already got one foot out the door when she promised to stay til midnight.
No working while you’re here, right?
That’s the thing about Danny; he doesn’t ask a lot except for when he does.
She always promises him til midnight, and usually even keeps that promise.
But she’s never not-working, and that’s something she’ll never be able to tell him. Not if there’s gonna be a birthday for him next year, or the year after; not if she wants him to keep breathing. Their mother might love Danny enough to let him live with that secret, but Miles and Bass are practical and accidents have been known to happen.
Funny, how contemplating Danny’s death never feels as morbid to her as celebrating his life.
She tugs the phone out from under her brastrap and unlocks it by rote with quick fingers.
The text is from Connor.
>> Almost done over there?
For the first time all night, her smile is real, natural.
>> Why? Am I missing a hot date?
The answer comes back just as quickly.
>> Yep. Your mother is helping Miles make dinner.
Alone in the backyard, she’s not so quick to tamp down on the smile that feels a lot, to her, like baring her teeth. It’s a grin, but one that she usually saves for home, for Connor and Miles, for Bass and her mother, the ones who appreciate it best; she saves it for nights when the whole family makes dinner together.
Another message comes in.
>> If you hurry, you might get some before it goes cold.
He thinks he’s the prince of clever double-speak and she almost loves him for it.
>> I’m stuck for a few more hours. Midnight.
She’s not actually surprised by how much she hates to write it, how unappealing the idea of staying for a few more minutes much less a few more hours is; she’s been wanting to leave since she arrived with the setting sun.
His response takes longer to come through than the others have.
>> Your loss. The meat’s pretty tender.
She sends him a complicated table-flipping emoji that she knows he likes to use himself; right now she uses it for purely comedic relief, and as a sort of apology. Because he loves working with her and she loves watching him work. (She also loves letting him show her how much he likes watching her work, and that’s nothing to turn her nose up at either.)
Somewhere over her shoulder, in the house, she hears a woman’s laugh, hears her father’s a beat behind; Danny’s voice goes rising over all of it, shouting something about the superiority of ice cream cake to any other kind of cake.
She keeps her mouth shut tight for a moment and closes her eyes, something unpleasant burning on her tongue. She counts off breaths silently, long slow breaths, and presses her phone up under her chin like the muzzle of a gun.
It buzzes, one more time.
She ignores another round of laughs in the house and checks it.
>> It won’t be the same without you.
The time at the top of the screen says 9:32 PM.
Abruptly, she drops her feet off the bench. She stands, reaching for her jacket where she’d left it on the table, and shrugging into it, tension uncoiling slowly between her shoulders. Her keys are in one hand and her phone’s in the other as she types a text, rapid fire.
This one doesn’t go to Connor.
>> Happy Birthday, Danny. Sorry.
It’s not an explanation but she doesn’t intend to give him one, wouldn’t know what to say if she was going to. Maybe next year she’ll make it up to Danny.
(But probably not.)
She hits send as she rounds the house and slips out the fence gate.
Her bike is parked at the edge of the driveway, sleek and efficient, black and silver and built for speed. She jiggles her keys, set now. Her next text goes to Connor as she throws a leg over the bike and kicks the stand out from under it.
>> Save me a piece. I’m coming home.
She gets her helmet on as the reply comes through, quick like he was just waiting for her to cave. The idea makes her smile, if only a little. He knows her so well she may have to kill him one day.
(But she probably won’t.)
>> We’re waiting for you.
Familiar warmth blooms sweetly under her sternum and sinks down between her ribs like a warm knife, cutting free the weight that’s been sitting there all evening.
She doesn’t bother replying; she’ll see him soon.
Keys, in; the engine turns over without complaint, purrs to life and stretches into wakefulness as she revs up a little to blow the night air free of the exhaust pipe. Out of the corner of her eye, she thinks she sees the curtains in the front window sway and peel back, spilling a clear swath of light out into the front yard.
She pulls out of the driveway before someone can come out after her and guns the engine down the street loud enough that she sets off a car alarm behind her; two right turns, a left and she sails around a corner and out onto the main road. Free.
She knows it’s not a trick of the motion of the bike or the vibration of the engine that hums between her thighs; her phone just doesn’t buzz at her the whole way home.
Danny doesn’t respond.
She figures that’s par for the course. She’s been a big disappointment longer than she was ever his big sister. It hurts, dimly, the way ripping off a bandaid hurts; for a moment, then more acutely in memory than in practice. But that’s okay, because it’s a hurt she’s familiar with, one she’s lived with before, one she’ll live with again. Next year. And the year after. And the year after that.
Danny is her once a year skinned-knee, and the bandaid that comes with it.
The city, blurring in long streaks around her as she whistles down the highway, is more home than Ben’s house and Danny’s love has ever been, anyway.
She’s not sorry.
She thinks maybe she should be, that it would be decent of her to be sorry.
But she stopped being that girl a long time ago.
(And she's not sorry about that either.)