Page 100 of Drowning Erin

“Yes, I can. Why did I dance around the whole thing? I should have made him stop drinking. I should have forced him to go to rehab. Instead I did everything I could to smooth the way.”

“You did try to get him to rehab, remember?” he asks. “He’s a grown man. There’s nothing you could have done, especially without your mother’s support. Don't start finding ways to blame yourself, Erin. This was your father's problem, and you about killed yourself trying to be a good daughter to him."

“He thinks Sean’s coming. He asked if Rob and I could get married here, and I lied and said maybe. What am I going to say when he wakes up?” I start crying again.

Right now I’m hardly better than my mom, with her constant flow of tears. In a single swift move, Brendan picks me and deposits me in his lap.

“Tell me what to do,” he says. “I hate seeing you like this. Anything. Name anything.”

If I were my mother, I’d keep crying and ask him to fix this. To make it go away. To find my brother, to make my father not care about seeing me married, to make it all better.

You could stay, Brendan. You could be the person I lean on, and you could never leave. That’s what you could do.

Perhaps I’m more like my mother than I thought. No matter how many times I’m rebuffed, I can’t stop hoping for things another person can’t give.

68

Brendan

Present

Erin is in my lap, as fragile as a child.

I tell her I’ll do anything, and I mean it, but she doesn’t reply.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I destroyed your shirt."

"You can destroy all of my shirts, Erin. Every last one."

She removes herself from me and returns to her chair. I wish she hadn’t. I miss her weight and her smell and the feel of her, the way her cheek rests just about my collarbone, the way her lashes brush my neck when she opens her eyes. I miss everything. I’ve been missing all of it for a very long time.

* * *

Rob arrives mid-afternoon, in a fresh suit. Did the douchebag actually drive home and change to come here? He looks distinctly displeased when he sees me sitting beside Erin. I think he already suspects something happened between us—even that girl I brought to the vineyard, whatever her name was, accused me of it on the way home that night. And if she could figure it out, anyone could.

I stabbed him in the back, but I can’t bring myself to regret it. Those weeks with Erin were the best of my life, and Rob and I were never going to be friends again anyway. Not after I realized how he’d bullied her into giving up the things she loved. I left for Italy because I couldn’t stand seeing them together, but I left believing she’d be better off with him, and I was wrong.

Erin stands and walks over to him. It seems to me that she rises reluctantly, but perhaps that’s wishful thinking. He hugs her, a hug that lasts way too fucking long.

Rob turns to me. "I'll walk you out," he says.

It’s impossible to miss his meaning. Time for you to leave, asshole.

I want to stay, but I no longer have a place here. I wish I did. I wish it was my job to be the one comforting her.

Once we're halfway down the hall, he stops walking. His hands are in his pockets, and he’s staring at the floor.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” he asks. “You’re the one she was with while I was gone.”

He isn’t actually asking. For Erin’s sake, I’d have denied it, but it’s clear he already knows.

I meet his eye. “Yeah. It was me. It was a shitty thing to do, but I don’t regret it. I walked away a long time ago because I thought she was better off with you, and she wasn’t.”

“Oh, but you think she’d be better off with you?” he demands. “You can’t stay with any girl for more than an hour, and that’s about how long you can keep a job. All those years you spent trying to talk me out of shit—telling me I shouldn’t ask her out, telling me we shouldn’t move in together, and I shouldn’t propose—that was all just you wanting to take your shot.”

“I didn’t want you with her because you don’t deserve her. You never deserved her, and I knew you couldn’t make her happy. You still can’t. And you proved me right when you started fucking around with Christina over there. I don’t care if Erin believes your little story about how innocent it was. I know there was more to it than that.”

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, so what? Even if there was, I’m not going to take shit about it from you. Let’s see you date someone for even a week before you start criticizing me.”