Page 93 of I'll Look for You, Everywhere
‘Sorry I don’t like being attacked like this, Lucia. You never want to just talk to me, do you? You want to talk at me. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.’
‘What, I’m not allowed to be concerned about my baby sister?’
‘You just want to know if you’re right! If Mum told you the truth! Don’t play stupid.’
She stays silent but looks at Maio, who finally meets her gaze, and any adrenaline or anger I have leaves when I watch them talk through their eyes. She’s told him.
Lucia turns back to me. ‘How do you know Mum told me?’
‘Because you started watching what you said around me. You used to joke around me all the time and then one day, it just stopped. You were so scared to say anything wrong that you just stopped saying anything at all.’ My throat closes, and I try to swallow down the residual sadness of these memories. This is the most I’ve ever talked about it. My head throbs violently and the gelato sits heavy in my stomach. It feels like someone is scraping my brain with a knife, peeling thin layers off until all that’s left is the smell of oil sizzling on skin. Calm down.
The sliding door opens behind us and I freeze, completely forgetting Theo was in the kitchen.
‘Couldn’t get this fucking cork out of the bottle,’ he says, placing the wine on the table with four glasses.
But Lucia stands up. ‘Sorry,’ she says with a giant smile splayed across her face. It’s so tight her face looks like it’s about to crack. ‘I underestimated how much I drank.’ She begins to gather the empty bottles from the table. ‘You two have at it.’
Maio stands up clumsily from his chair. ‘Sorry, man. We’ll catch up tomorrow morning.’
He pats him on the shoulder and, just as they’re about to walk through the sliding door, Theo speaks up. ‘Wait, Lucia.’ He slides a glass in front of me and begins pouring the wine.
‘Yes?’ Her voice is sharp, like a schoolteacher anticipating a stupid question from one of their students.
‘You called us lovebirds before.’ Lucia’s eyes look from Theo to mine. ‘How did you know that we were...?’
‘Because,’ she responds, her eyes softening, adjusting the bottles in her hands before Maio silently takes three of them from her and walks inside, ‘I’ve never seen her like that before.’
‘Oh,’ Theo says, and my palms sweat from Lucia’s exposing observation. Am I different than I usually am? I feel oddly defensive, like I need to explain my smiles, why I laughed as many times as I have. Knowing how closely Lucia is watching me is surprising. I always assumed I fell just behind her peripheral.
‘And not to mention the fact that you were thirty seconds away from murdering poor Roberto when you saw Maggie talking to him at my engagement dinner.’ Lucia winks at Theo and turns to look at me one final time. ‘Goodnight,’ she nods.
‘Goodnight.’ There’s nothing else to say. As much as I hate her for trying to expose me, part of me will always miss my big sister. If you promise not to ask me any more, you can sit with us here a little longer. It hurts to know that she’s carried this burden with her all these years. She is shackled to my pain simply because she is my sister.
‘See you, Lucia.’
Theo looks at me while he fills his wine glass and I think I see him frown, but it’s gone before I have time to ask.
48
MAGDALEN
Wine is a blessed drink. After three glasses, the anxiety of my conversation with Lucia subdues to a manageable discomfort that I can tuck away behind the peeling label on the wine. Cicadas hum loudly in the hyacinth bushes behind us, and we sit quietly together, breathing in the smell of honeysuckles and snapdragons that grow around us. My head leans on the backing of the wrought-iron garden chair, and I stare peacefully at the stars while my feet rest on Theo’s lap.
‘Are the stars this clear in Oxford?’
When I lift my head, Theo is staring at me. His head tilts lazily, making no effort to conceal his blatant perusal of my body.
‘I don’t look at the stars,’ I say, stretching my ankles on his thighs until they crack. ‘I’m too busy trying not to be the dumbest person there.’
‘Even if half your brain was missing, you’d be smarter than most people there.’
I scoff. ‘That’s something a genius would say.’
‘I’m not a genius.’ Finishing the last sip of his wine, he places the glass on the table, and then squeezes my foot reassuringly. ‘I just knew how to cheat the system.’
‘You went to Yale! And Columbia. And a gifted secondary school. Won every award a student could. Went on an excavation with my father when you were seventeen. And were the only first-year on the varsity football team. Should I keep going?’
‘You keeping tabs on me, Savoy?’ The hand on my foot moves up to my ankle and he pulls me closer to him. Between the wine and the feeling of his hands on me, I feel utterly intoxicated.
