Lex and Lu (20 page)

When Pete had gone and Nina was in bed, Lu went to talk to Willa. Willa had changed into her pajamas and sat, curled up with her Nook, in the corner of the couch. Lu watched her for a moment before approaching. They resembled each other. When they were children, people often mistook them for twins. But puberty had wrought different changes in them. Willa grew. She’d inherited their father’s height and towered over Lu’s tiny frame. Will’s eyes had changed too, to a dark blue. She kept her dark hair cut short, in a pixie that not everyone could pull off. Her demeanor made her features look harsher than Lu’s. If they had been paintings, Lu would have been a watercolor with soft, smudged edges, while Willa would have been an oil with strong, well-defined lines.

Sitting on the couch, Lu reached out and touched Willa’s leg. Looking up, Willa impaled her with a glare.

“I’m sorry,” Lu said candidly.

“You should be,” Willa said. “How could you set me up like that?”

Lu smiled guiltily. “I thought you would be overcome with joy and would leap into his arms.”

“I don’t believe in fairy tales like you do, Lu,” she said pointedly.

“Ouch,” Lu said, drawing her hand away.

“Sorry,” Willa muttered. “Look, Pete and I were never anything. You don’t need to feel guilty about it.”

“But you could be something. You’ve both held back because of Lex and me. And it’s not fair. You would both be so good for each other.”

“Right. Like we’ve been so far,” she said sarcastically.

“Look, Willa. I’ve never tried to give you advice on anything because my shit was so fucked up that I didn’t think anything I had to say would mean anything.”

“That’s pretty sad, Lu.”

“I know, but it’s true. Pete’s the best there is. He loves you. You being mad at him is killing him.”

“He’ll survive. He hasn’t even tried to talk to me. I think he’s doing just fine.”

“Willa, who really tries to talk to you when you’re mad?” Lu pointed out. “And I think you’re wrong to be mad at him.”

“How am I wrong?” she asked, genuinely perplexed.

“You’re mad at him for not wanting to get in the middle of Lex and me. You essentially asked him to choose. Not even Lex did that to him.”

Willa thought about that crazy time six months ago. “I didn’t ask him to choose!” she said, defending her position wholeheartedly.

“Tell me what made you mad enough at him that you haven’t spoken to him in six months.”

“I wanted him to be with me when I told you what Lex wanted. I thought it would be better coming from him.”

“Not even Lex put him in that position.”

“But …”

“No buts, Will. Lex knew that if he asked Pete to go to me with his plan he’d be shifting the responsibility of representing Lex to me. He didn’t want to do that because he knew how Pete felt about you. He knew you’d be pissed as hell at Pete for going along with Lex’s plan. He was trying to give you guys a chance.”

“Oh, I get it now,” Willa said, laughing harshly. “This is about you trying to make Lex into the good guy.”

“Ugh!” Lu groaned in frustration. “Do I look like I’m trying to hold on to Lex? Shit, Willa, you are
wrong
! I know it’s hard for you to see that, but you are. You put Pete in an impossible situation of choosing between you and Lex right after he lost his father. What did you expect him to do?”

Willa suddenly looked as if she’d been hit. It finally sank in. “I didn’t do that.”

“You most certainly did.”

Willa sat in stunned silence, trying to figure out if she’d truly put him in that position. She tried to explain. “I just thought it would be better coming from Pete. His delivery is so much more appropriate.”

“No. That’s not what happened. You wanted him on your side. You wanted him to agree with you that Lex was making an outrageous demand. Had you come in there with Pete behind you, you assumed I would assume that he agreed with you. You were testing him.”

Willa shook her head, trying to make that statement not true.

“Willa, I love you dearly. But you love hard. It’s all or nothing with you. You think that if you’re with Pete you’ll be giving up part of you. I think my history has tainted your view of things. You wanted to make sure that he would love you as much. It was your way of pushing him away before you let him in. I get it. And I think Pete gets it. But you were wrong. And you need to forgive him, because he’s the only person in the world that gets you like you need to be understood.”

Willa looked at her little sister for the first time in a long time and thought, Holy shit, my girl is all grown up. “You think you’re so damn smart!” she said without any rancor.

“So my IQ says,” Lu responded with flair as she got up and started toward her room.

“Lu,” Willa called out to her. When Lu turned around she said, “I love you.”

Lu shrugged with a smile. “I know,” she said.

Pete unlocked Lex’s door and jumped in surprise when he found Lex standing on the other side of it.

“Shit! What are you doing here?”

“Last I checked, I lived here,” Lex said drolly.

“I know, but you weren’t supposed to be back until tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I came straight home.”

Pete followed him into the kitchen. Feeling uncomfortable about where he had been, he blurted out, “I just came from Lu’s.”

If Lex was surprised or angry, he didn’t show it. “Nina will be here tomorrow. You didn’t have to go see her,” he said, explaining his lack of a response.

“Well, I wanted to see Lu too.”

“Yeah,” Lex replied, waving him off. “So how was the night?”

Pete felt trapped. He’d completely avoided any discussion of Lu whenever he talked with Lex. He’d tried for months to get Lex to talk to him and had finally thrown in the towel when he noticed Lex calling less frequently, trying to avoid any unpleasant discussions. “It was interesting. Nina’s amazing.”

Lex smiled that trademark smile. “Yes, she is.”

“How’s it going with you two?”

He ran his hands through his longer hair. “Slow.” He walked over to a bar stool and sat down. “We have fun together, but I don’t necessarily feel like her father. I mean, I don’t know what to say all the time, and I feel like she sees me as a fun uncle rather than her dad. Which should be lots of fun when we get to the teenage years.”

Pete studied his brother. “Gotta be the first time in your life that you’ve been unsure of how to act around a female.”

Lex chuckled. “Yeah. Most important one. Go figure.”

Pete let that thought linger between them. It dawned on him that he was worried about Lex. He just didn’t seem to be himself. Even when he watched his brother play soccer, he seemed to be lacking that luster that had made him so much fun to follow. “You OK?” Pete asked.

Lex didn’t say anything at first. He scrubbed his hands over his face again. He sat for such a long time without responding that Pete thought he wouldn’t.

Finally, he said, “I’m not really sure.” No longer able to sit, he got up. This was familiar to Pete, more like the Lex he knew, with the frenetic energy and the need to move constantly.

“Everything feels off. There have been so many changes that I don’t know what to blame it on. Is it Dad dying? Is it suddenly having a child? I can’t pinpoint it. But it’s starting to affect my play. For the first time in my life, soccer is not helping me find my balance.”

Pete wanted to respond, but he didn’t know what to say.

“I thought having Nina close by would be a good thing, but I can’t seem to find my footing with her. She hasn’t done anything to warrant it yet, but what happens when she does something and I need to discipline her? I don’t feel like I have the right. It’s totally frustrating. Or what if something happens at school? I have no idea if Lu would include me in the discussion. Sometimes I wonder if it’s just too late.”

“You really think that? That it’s too late to be a father to her?”

“Yeah, most of the time I do.” He looked at Pete then and said, “And you know what happens when I think about that? I get mad at Lu all over again.” Frustrated, he walked to the window, leaning his hands on the ledge. “So how’s that for some shit?”

“That’s some shit,” Pete agreed, having no idea how to help his brother work through all this. But he had a small opening and so he tried to push the advantage. “Maybe if you and Lu could talk. Maybe then you could work through this together.”

Lex turned slowly to face his brother, incredulity written all over his face. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Look, I have no idea how to even think about what you must be going through, but I think Lu could help. I know you are angry at her, but if you were able to forgive her, maybe it would be easier to see yourself as Nina’s father.” Pete knew he was treading on sacred ground, but he also knew that Lex needed help. It was the only way he could think of to help him get his equilibrium back. But as he watched Lex take it in, he knew he’d made a mistake. Lex moved like lightning and got right in Pete’s face.

“I can’t fucking believe you can stand in my house and take her side. What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you defending her after what she did?”

Pete, suddenly fearful of the damage he might be doing to his relationship with Lex, wanted to change direction, but it was too late. So he plunged forward.

“I’m not defending her. I just think that if you are ever going to be a father to Nina, you are going to have to learn to parent with Lu.”

“You don’t know shit about being a parent, so you should stop while you’re ahead.”

“You don’t know either,” Pete said before he could stop himself. Before he could react, Lex slammed him up against the wall.

“Don’t fucking mention her name to me. Don’t try to fix this with your thoughtful logic. I’m well past logic on this.” Rage was making Lex shake, and Pete could feel the anger vibrating through him. He’d never been afraid of his brother, but now, he was afraid of the person in front of him. “If you want to have a relationship with me, you are going to have to make a choice. Do you understand me?”

“There’s no choice to be made, Lex. You’re my brother.”

Lex released him, turned away, and left Pete standing there.

Pissed at his brother and himself, Lex needed to get out of his apartment. He slid his feet into his running shoes and slammed his way out the door. The leftover adrenaline from the fight with Pete had his hands shaking. He’d never raised his hand to his brother. Even as kids, he couldn’t ever remember fighting with him. Their differences had made them the best of friends.

He started running at a grueling pace, hoping to chase away all of demons that had been haunting him over the last couple of months, that had disguised themselves in questions of what ifs and hopes of if only. This anger that beat at him constantly was such an odd emotion for him that it constantly threw him off kilter. His mother had once asked him why he didn’t get mad at another player on the field who had targeted him. He’d said to his mother, “It’s a wasted emotion. Why be angry when I can just beat him down the field next time? Being mad throws me off my game.”

So this torrential anger that dug its claws into him, that pulled him around like the dizzy bat game and left him unfocused and unsure, felt wrong. But no matter what he did to try to combat it, something would kick up the dirt again. In the end it all came down to Lu. It was the conclusion he drew every morning when he woke up and every night before he went to bed. If he could let it go, or figure out a way to not be mad at her, he felt he could somehow get his control back.

Smiling in irony over the discussion he’d just had with his brother, he allowed himself the leeway to forget that he’d just physically harmed his brother for saying the same thing. The problem, though, came down to how he could try to talk to her. Just the thought of seeing her made his blood boil. He broke into a sweat when he thought of being in the same room with her. And since he was being so honest with himself, he had to admit that it was more than just keeping Nina away from him. Although that was enough to convict her in and of itself, it wasn’t enough to keep the flame of his anger from extinguishing itself. Because when he thought about those decisions made so long ago, he knew she didn’t have the wherewithal to fight their combined sets of parents without him. And he’d left, even though he knew she was pregnant. For that, he could probably find it in his heart to exonerate her.

Her claim to have held them all hostage if they told him about Nina—he knew that was bullshit. She’d been convincing and, at the time, he wanted to believe that. But he knew she wouldn’t do that. They had all made a decision to protect the secret because they didn’t know how to tell him. They all withheld the knowledge of his daughter to protect themselves. He thought it sucked, but he got it. When is there a good time to tell someone he has a child who’s been concealed from him?

So why was he really mad at her?

It was the sex. How did she open herself up to him when she kept the most important thing in her life from him? How did she let him inside her body while blocking off her heart? Was it just his ego that was hurt? Could he be that much of a dickhead? The Lu he thought he knew was genuine and sweet. So who had he been with six months ago?