Page 77 of On the Ropes
“Is she asleep?” Alexis whispered.
“Almost,” I said. We were nearing the end of the video, and I was talking about Tenth Street.
“I don’t share a lot about my personal life on my platforms, but I’m enormously proud to call South Philly home. I have known some of the people on Tenth Street undertaking this project for most of my life.”
Alexis and I shared a grin, both of us sipping lemonade from Linda’s collection of funky, bikini-themed glasses.
“This neighborhood is a special place,” I said. “And everyone there means a lot to me.”
Watching it back now, I heard the note of hesitation in my voice and saw the hint of pink in my cheeks. I couldn’t resist stealing a look at the far wall—the one I shared with Dean’s house.
The video ended and Juliet had gone dead weight in my lap. Eric swooped in and scooped her up from my lap. “I’m gonna take her up and let her sleep for a bit in your bed, if that’s okay?” he whispered.
“Of course, anything she needs,” I whispered back, noticing the look of pure affection on his face as he carried her up the stairs with a practiced ease. The second he was gone, Alexis all but launched herself onto the couch next to me.
“Speaking of people who personally mean a lot to you,” she said with a sisterly smirk, “we didn’t get to finish our conversation about Dean because Juliet wanted to switch from Play-Doh to pretending that the floor was lava.”
I grabbed a bag of mini marshmallows from the table—an ideal slumber-party snack and my sister’s favorite. Handing them to her, I said, “There isn’t much more to say. Dean Knox-Morelli basically”—I cast an uneasy glance at our shared wall, wondering how much he could hear—“fucked me into the next stratosphere, and he’s probably over there right now, listening through the wall with his ear pressed to a water glass.”
Her eyes widened. “Do you really think he’s eavesdropping?”
I considered it and shook my head. “No. He’s much too nice and respectful to do something like that.”
Alexis settled back on the couch and propped her feet on my lap. Twister hadn’t seemed like the easiest time to fill in my sister and brother-in-law about what happened between Dean and me at the art museum the night before. So I went with telling them while we were building with Play-Doh instead and proceeded to have a frantic and hilariously whispered conversation using hand gestures and creative euphemisms that made Alexis laugh so hard that she cried. Eric kept putting his hands over Juliet’s ears, who was deeply concerned with the structural integrity of our castle and oblivious to the adults at the table.
My sister tapped the inside of my arm with the edge of her foot. “Do you like Dean?”
“Of course I do.”
Her brow furrowed, like she didn’t like my answer. Eric came back down the stairs, shaking his head. “It’s been a while since I’ve been at Lin’s house, so I keep forgetting that Jon Bon Jovi’s picture could be sewn into so many different types of fabrics.” He dragged one of the dining room chairs over to the couch and sank down into it. He looked at Alexis and said, “She went to sleep easy. No problems.” To me, he said, “Are we finally talking about Dean now?”
Alexis passed him the marshmallows. “Tabitha likes him.”
His eyebrows shot up.
“What?” I said with a laugh. “He’s incredibly likeable. It doesn’t mean anything.”
My sister sat up and grabbed my hand. She didn’t have to say it. I was already struggling to admit it. Dean wasn’t some casual hookup, and we weren’t discussing this over FaceTime, multiple states and time zones away. It made the truth more glaringly obvious even though my first instinct was to skirt around vulnerability and pretend.
I squeezed her hand back—three times. Her smile widened.
“I like him a lot,” I admitted. “More than a lot and more than I should. Last night, our chemistry being so instant, only proved a few things that I’d been avoiding. Mostly that you shouldn’t have mind-blowing sex with someone who’s also a friend. And incredibly kind and humble and charming and slightly broody and very, very cute.”
Her eyes softened, and I almost couldn’t take it. My gaze wandered over to my pack, still leaning against Lin’s bookcase. I used to dream about packing you girls up and hittin’ the road too. Just to escape.
“Are you worried about hurting Dean if things don’t work out?” she asked, drawing my attention back to her and Eric.
I nodded. “Always. And I don’t really know how to do any of this anyway. Or even if Dean’s interested. Besides, I’m moving to Austin in a week. And, just between the three of us, Dean might be moving to Las Vegas for a job opportunity. There’s a lot of complicating factors. Especially if he takes that job.”
Eric moved to the couch and squished in next to Alexis. He held the bag of marshmallows open without her needing to ask. And she reached in immediately without looking. They’d had an effortless intimacy for as long as I’d known them together. I didn’t believe I’d ever been privy to an intimacy like that.
Though thanks to Dean, I was beginning to understand it.
“I get it, Tab,” Alexis said. “It was hard for me to trust when Eric and I started dating and hard for me to be fully honest with him. Dad hadn’t met Kathleen yet, and so I only had memories from the Bad Year stuck on loop.”
Eric reached between them and entwined their fingers. “We got through it though. It took a lot of patience and a lot of communication.” His lips quirked up at the ends. “That wasn’t super easy given that we were only twenty-one but it was different between the two of us. I recognized that from the very beginning of our relationship. So fighting through whatever was trying to hold us back was worth it in the end.”
I could feel all three of us tense up on the couch. I chewed on the end of my thumbnail. “Does Juliet ever ask about Mom?”
