I went home the next day. My mother had inquired where I had been for the weekend. It wasn't accusatory; she trusted me.
“I was at Serena's. She needed help babysitting her brother.” I grinned at my cleverness. This was enough to get my mother off the topic of me and talking about some wedding for some relatives I neither knew nor cared to know. Regardless, she chattered on about them. I learned more about my cousin Francine than I probably needed to know.
“Oh, and Darcy?” My mother was the only one to still call me Darcy. “Go talk to Damian, would you? He won't talk to me and I think he's having a hard time adjusting.”
It apparently did not occur to my mother that Damian was 19 years old and did not need his younger sister's advice, but I went anyway, trudging up the stairs and tapping on Damian's door twice, then opening.
“Hey, Damian. You in here?” I called out to the darkness. I fumbled for a light switch. Damian was sitting in the middle of his bed with his head down, his phone in his hands. Damian didn't even look up when I turned on the light.
I crawled onto his bed, sitting down right next to him. “What's wrong?” He didn't react to my words, just handing me the phone he had in his hands. On the screen was a text:
I just don't think this is going to work, Damian. I don't see how it could. You're a couple hundred miles away from me. I do love you and I hope we can be friends.
It was signed Emma, his girlfriend.
“Jesus, Damian. I'm so sorry. Who even breaks up by text anyway?” I asked, trying to make light of the situation. He didn't respond. I wrapped my arms around him.
“She obviously doesn't know what she's missing out on,” I said, trying desperately to make him feel better. I was hopeless at these things but I was also relentless.
Damian wrapped his arms around me in return. “Thanks, Lizzie.” I was okay for the moment with him calling me Lizzie, but any other time I probably would have punched him in the arm.
“I'm not really sure how to deal with guy break ups. Do you need chocolate ice cream?” I asked. He chuckled.
“No, it's alright, Liz. I'm fine. I'll be okay. It just sucks. I thought I'd be with her forever, you know? That when I got the money, I'd drive back to California and we'd be together again. But now...”
“I'm sorry, Damian. Maybe things weren't supposed to work out.”
“They would have if we hadn't left California for this stupid house in the middle of goddamn nowhere.” He was angry, but more than that, he was downright upset. I pitied him. I never had liked Emma, and now I disliked her more. I couldn't get over the whole text message thing.
“She seriously didn't even call?”
“Nope.”
“She could have at the very least called. Or wrote a letter. Or something.”
“Yep.”
“That's cruel. Like, legitimately cruel.”
“Yep.” He seemed unable to say anything else.
“Is there anything I can do to help you out?”
“Possibly to leave me alone to my thoughts and throw a pity party.” And so I did just that, retiring to my room, leaving my brother to his thoughts.
Holden left for his show in California a few days after that and was not expected to be back for two weeks. From then on, the days went slowly. I hadn't realized how much I had enjoyed having Holden around every time I went to Serena's and I especially missed the Holden I had gotten to know the night after my hangover.
