Would You Rather

55 - WYR: have your brother tell the family or pay him off

FINLEY

FINLEY: hi. Um. this is kind of out of nowhere. But I sort of treated you maybe a little mean at Christmas for no reason and I wanted to apologize.

FINLEY: a shitton had just happened to me a week prior, and I have a really hard time remembering that most of the people I hang around and most of the people back home have been around Dani for a very very long time and are really used to it. So I'm sorry about snipping at you for not knowing things that I forget most people don't know.

FINLEY: this is. This is really weird. I am so sorry how random and awkward this is.

FINLEY: point is. Brodie really loves you. Like really really sappy and gross type in love with you. And you're so so so kind. And you've supported him so well in the last three years.

FINLEY: You didn't do anything wrong at all, I was a complete bitch for no reason. Just completely out of touch with people who haven't spent years researching and living with someone with a brain injury like this.

FINLEY: I am also a slight bit drunk, which is why this is so rambly.

FINLEY: I felt bad about it in the moment, I'll have you know, but I really only put a name to what was going on tonight. I brought my boyfriend home to meet everyone this weekend and I'm watching him stumble around with it just a little bit and I'm realizing that the standard I have in my head for how I think people should act around Dani is absolutely unachievable. Even for myself.

FINLEY: she's way more resilient and intelligent than I give her credit for. And you did absolutely amazing with it. Don't let me acting foolish and aloof convince you otherwise.

FINLEY: uh. Anyway. Tell Brodie I said hi.

Fidan pulls my phone down away from my face, giving me his soft, loopy tipsy smile. "You're gonna miss your turn, girlie."

Shit.

I look back at him and his side of the table. Dani is leaning over to read off his scrabble tiles. The twins are working together, my parents are working together, and I am losing.

I wouldn't be if I could just pick up a single vowel. Just one.

I slide my tiles out onto the board and the turn changes to my parents. Out of the corner of my eye, Fidan is rearranging the tiles to where Dani wants them. She's rather good at scrabble, but because of where a lot of her injury is, doesn't have enough motor control to handle the little tiles. I'm normally her partner for scrabble, but she picked Fidan.

I have a mild hunch that the amount of blushing she's doing is entirely because my boyfriend has been scheming with her over scrabble for the better part of the last hour, which is exactly the way to her heart.

It could also be that Fidan has gotten incredibly dopey and cute in the last hour because of the beer. My Dad is drinking both of us through the table. Easily. He's been on a wheat beer kick and has a friend with a restaurant in Regina that makes a bunch of his own brews in quite literally the most micro of microbrew settings. Dad managed to swindle a thirty rack with fifteen flavors. He keeps cracking open new ones, splitting them three ways, and then bringing them for us to try.

Fidan doesn't like to drink heavily in-season, especially not beers because of the nutrient split, and I certainly am not at the tolerance I could dole out at the beginning of the year. This is meddling close to the first thirty minutes of the Halloween bash and I... am nervous.