Page 20 of About to Fall

Why should it be weird? I didn't need to think about the fact that last night, watching Adrian dance with Sabrina—watching his hands on her hips, watching her laugh against his shoulder, watching them move together like their bodies already knew each other—I had felt something hot and irrational twist in my chest.

What was wrong with me? I just couldn’t stay away from the wrong—

I stopped that thought before it could finish.

I didn't need to think about Théo right now. I didn't need to think about how I had a type, apparently, and that type was complicated men who were bad for me. Jealousy. That's what it had been. Jealousy I had no right to feel about a man I barely knew and mostly found irritating.

Beautiful. I like looking at you.

Goosebumps broke over my skin.

I closed the windows and went to get ready for brunch.

◆◆◆

Brunch at my parents’ was at eleven, which meant I had exactly forty minutes to shower and dress and assemble myself into something presentable.

My parents lived in North York—a detached brick house on a quiet street that still smelled like childhood to me. Every time I pulled into the driveway, I was simultaneously 21 and 6, simultaneously an Olympic hopeful and a kid who used to practice crossovers on the pond out back until his mother called him in for dinner.

After Aurora, my mother had wanted me to move back home. She’d said it gently, practically—just for a little while, mon chou, until you’re settled—but I’d heard what she meant. Where I can watch you. Where I can check on you at 2 a.m. Where the bathroom door doesn’t lock.

We’d had a family session with Dr. Priya about that. A hard one. I’d told them I needed to live on my own. That being monitored—however lovingly—made the anxiety worse, not better. That I needed them to trust me to ask for help when I needed it instead of hovering and waiting for me to break again. My mother had cried. My father had sat very still and nodded. They’d agreed, reluctantly, to let me keep my apartment.

It was a work in progress. For all of us.

I parked in the driveway at 10:58. Checked my hair in the rearview—fine, presentable—and went inside.

The front door was unlocked. It smelled like warm vanilla and crêpes.

“Nico!”

Margaux hit me at approximately hip height—a compact, furious little body with our mother’s dark hair and our father’s stubborn chin and an energy level that suggested she had been awake since dawn and had already exhausted every adult in the house. I caught her and lifted her onto my hip and she wrapped her arms around my neck.

“You were gone forever,” she said into my shoulder.

“It’s been six days since you last saw me.”

“Forever.”

“How was tennis?”

Her face lit up immediately. “Coach Sarah says my backhand is getting really good. She says I could do a tournament in the spring if I want. Can you come watch?”

“Let me know the dates and I'll be there.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

I set her down and she ran back toward the living room already talking about something else—a horse at her riding lesson named Captain who only liked her and no one else, a detail she delivered with the absolute certainty of someone who had not yet learned to doubt her own significance.

I watched her go and felt the thing I always felt when I looked at my sister—a protectiveness so fierce it sometimes scared me.

Margaux was eight and fearless. Good at tennis. Getting better at riding. Her swimming teacher said she had natural coordination. She was, in other words, exactly the kind of child someone might look at and think she’d be a beautiful skater.

Thank God she’d never shown any interest.

It would have been awkward to explain to my family that even though I was considered one of the greatest skaters in my generation, I didn’t want my little sister anywhere near the sport. I knew what it cost. I knew what the machine looked like from the inside—the pressure, the performing, the way expectation piled up so gradually you didn’t notice until you were buried under it.