Would You Rather

41 - WYR: try to move on or live with the regret?

FINLEY

Hugging Brodie after two years without seeing him is the best feeling in the world. It's always really been the two of us, then the gap, then the twins, and I missed my second half of farm mischief.

Dad dropped him off in the driveway with Laney and all their stuff; but, none of us could wait for them to make the thirty meter walk from the truck to the house, running outside in the blistering wind and launching ourselves at him. Nick and Jack, to their utter surprise, are now both a little bit taller than their older brother, and Brodie, to his horror, is shorter. Mom immediately notices that he's been sprouting gray hairs and we all stop to look at the top of his head, where, sure enough, he's starting to go salty. I'm pretty sure Dad hasn't really even seen any pictures of Brodie in his time away because he keeps staring at him with a slight undertone of fear, probably coming to the conclusion that the two of them really do look exactly the same, spare Mom's pointier nose.

Dani puts the dots together after a few minutes, shouting Brodie! and letting him give her a hug. It's Laney that throws her off.

I've met Laney... sort of. She dropped through Regina about a year back and we met up for about twenty minutes just to say hi because Brodie told us to, but we're not similar at all and thankfully, after a very stilted twenty minute chat over coffee, I had a lab time to get to. She's petit, almost a bit birdy, and very very quiet around my loud and off-the-walls family members, though I'm sure the quiet will wear off just a little bit when she settles in, this is, after all, her first time meeting everyone except me and she's going to be stuck here for around a week and a half for the holidays.

I realize, though, after we get through dinner and settle in for beers, soda for Nick and Jack, though they do look longingly at it, that she's about as dry as she was in our little meeting and I think I'd be annoyed by her if she weren't so clearly good to my brother.

That's the thing. I'd probably get irritated with her little high-pitched laugh that she covers with her palm or her perfectly manicured hands or her dainty... everything, if she didn't give Brodie the most ridiculous heart-eyes every time she looks at him. They've been together for probably three years, maybe more, and if she's still giving him all sorts of goofy heart-eyes, I've got a little bit more faith in her. Well, as much faith as I can in a girl that's freezing cold in our toasty warm fireplace room, who's hair is light and white-blonde, and who looks like she could get absolutely crushed if my oil-rig working brother rolled over just a bit too wrong in bed.

Not that I don't agree with his choice of future fiancee, or anything.

He's just... you know. A Shaw. We're built tough and ruddy and hardworking to the core and she looks somewhat like she'd be annoyed by dirt in the house. Which, like, whatever, not my house.

I'm mostly mad because she can't seem to interact with Dani without looking like she's passing a kidney stone. Actually, it's pissing me off. I get it. I get it. Dani isn't easy to interact with. Dani can't say too much. Dani needs really simple words and shorter sentences. Dani gets confused easily. Dani has no fucking clue what Laney means when she says that she's a hairdresser the first two times around and then gets sort of attached to the idea of Laney giving her a haircut when she figures it out which clearly makes Laney even more uncomfortable.

I get it. More people than not are, like, violently uncomfortable around folks that are visibly disabled. I get it, but I just don't fucking care. Dani is my sister and if Laney wants to be with my brother, she's going to have to learn how to get the fuck over it and treat Dani like she's one of the rest of us and not like some strange alien entity that needs words to be spoken slowly without her vague accent and have things repeated before Dani can even respond.