Considering the way things started out between us, I can’t believe hanging out with Pierre is the better alternative. But I think about the car ride over, how sweet he’s been with his sister. And I can’t ignore the fact that the only moments tonight that I haven’t felt wrapped up in a cloud of anxiety are the ones I’ve spent with him. Maybe arguing isn’t much better, but I’ll take any emotion over crippling sadness. And, well … we’re not arguing now.
“Or I could stay,” I say, shocked at how confident the words sound in my mouth.
Like they belong there.
Like we belong here. Together.
A slow grin spreads across Pierre’s smooth, dark skin. “Or you could stay.”
* * *
I’ve made a mistake.
A few minutes later, and we’re still standing here in the living room, staring at the hardwood floor, the ceiling. Anywhere but each other. What if our silent truce is just that—effective only when it’s silent?
“I’m starving,” Pierre says bluntly, blessedly breaking the tension. “I saw a pizza place up the street. Know if it’s any good?”
“It’s good enough.”
That makes him smile. “You want to split a pie? I can do anything but deep-dish.”
My eyes widen. “Wait—seriously?”
Pizza can be a controversial topic in Chicago. When your city is known for a specific type of food, it feels downright traitorous to choose anything else. But the truth is I don’t like deep-dish pizza and I don’t think I ever will.
“I know it makes me a freak around here, but I really hate it.” He makes a face. “There’s too much damn bread.”
“Make that two freaks, then,” I say with a small smile.
He leaves and I check on Gillian. She’s sleeping soundly on her side, but the room still smells awful, so I tiptoe around the air mattress to push the window all the way up. The summer moon is fat, and it shines through the pane brightly enough that I can see the rectangular patches on the wall where Audrey’s pictures used to hang. I’ve spent so much time here that I can envision her bedroom exactly as it looked before she packed everything away, from the Fannie Lou Hamer quote that sat framed on her nightstand (“I am sick and tired of being sick and tired”) to the bookshelves full of Baldwin and hooks and Lorde and Morrison to the nubby stuffed elephant named Freddie who sat on her bed.
A memory lies in every corner of this apartment: the bistro table where I calculated equations and ate leftovers from Aunt Farrah’s, the love seat where I took countless afternoon naps, the space between the coffee table and the armchair, where I sat cross-legged while Audrey put twists in my hair.
All of it is gone now. But maybe that’s the best part—that I won’t be able to come back here after Audrey moves away. Because some days I think I’m doing okay, and then it hits me, in my own house—a nick in the bathroom tile where my mother dropped her flatiron, a birthday card, buried under a pile of old papers, that says “Love you forever, Rah.” I gasp and it is the worst kind of surprise, the permanent reminder that life is only temporary.
Pierre comes back, in possession of a large pizza box and two bags from the convenience store filled with drinks. “I didn’t know what you like, so I just got as much as I could carry.”
There is a blue sports drink and a purple sports drink and three types of soda and a canned energy drink and apple juice and sparkling water. I thank him but quickly turn away to load them in the refrigerator, because I am embarrassed by his thoughtfulness. My father has known me his whole life and he wouldn’t go to this trouble. If he wasn’t sure which drink I wanted—and he wouldn’t be, not without asking—he’d likely bypass the cooler altogether.
Pierre takes the blue drink and I choose the apple juice and we sit in the middle of the empty living room with the pizza box and roll of paper towels. He opens the box to reveal a glorious thin-crust pizza with mushrooms and red peppers on my half, sausage and pepperoni on his.
“Are you a vegetarian?” he asks, removing a slice.
“I used to be.” I pull out my own piece and hold it in the air. “My mom never ate meat, but my dad is, like, the biggest carnivore on the planet. Sometimes it’s easier to eat what he makes, since it’s just the two of us.”
“Is your mom…?”
“Dead.”
Pierre swallows a bite and washes it down with a swig of blue water. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I say.
And this is the part of the conversation where people wait for me to tell them how she died, also known as the part where I start resenting them. But I don’t get that vibe from Pierre. He’s just here, in the now, not demanding an explanation. It fills me with an unnerving but pleasant sort of comfort.
We’re silent as we plow through our first slices of pizza, and maybe I should be worried about the possibility of grease on my chin, but I’m too hungry for that.
Halfway through the second piece, Pierre says, “I had an older brother.”
I wipe my mouth with a paper towel and look at him, confused, but before I can respond, he goes on. “He got shot on our street and died when I was fifteen.”
“Oh my God.” I don’t mean to say it, but of course I’m surprised—by the way his brother died and that I didn’t already know this, but also because Pierre is in the same club as me. Lots of people lose grandparents by the time they reach high school, but things are different when a parent dies. It’s probably the same with a sibling. Nobody talks about the secret club, but you know when you meet someone else who belongs.
“I’m sorry,” I say. Because I know how it feels, when people are so horrified by the way someone who was close to you died that you end up trying to make them feel better about their reaction. “I didn’t know … Gillian never said anything.”
He finishes his slice, scrunches a paper towel between his fingers, and sits with his legs bent in front of him, arms hanging lazily over his knees. “It didn’t happen in Oak Park. I was born on the South Side. Parents never married, and my dad was around some but not a lot. Mom’s a nurse in the maternity ward at a hospital.”
The South Side? I know less about Gillian than I thought, because Audrey never mentioned she had lived there. Maybe they moved after Pierre was born. Though I could have sworn she said Gillian’s parents are still together.
Pierre clears his throat. “After what happened to my brother, my mom wanted me out of our neighborhood. Someone on our street knows who shot Braden and nobody talked. Nobody. My brother was, like, a fucking golden boy. Straight-A student, good at every sport, nice to people who didn’t deserve it. She didn’t want the same thing to happen to me, so I went to live with Gillian and her family. She’s not my real sister—we’re, like, foster siblings. My mom knows her dad from the hospital.”
I’m surprised I didn’t catch on before now; they don’t look anything alike. But lots of brothers and sisters don’t resemble each other. And Audrey and Gillian have always referred to him as her brother—no clarifiers.
“Is it weird?” I ask. “Living with them?”
“It was at first.” He glances back toward the bedroom, as if Gillian can hear him, but she’s still passed out. “I miss my house and living with my mom. And I wish she didn’t blame herself for what happened to Braden. She still talks about how maybe if she hadn’t been working so much and—God, I hate that she does that. She couldn’t have helped it. Braden couldn’t help it. He was doing everything right. Sometimes really bad shit just happens.”
“Yeah,” I say, my voice quiet. “It does.”
“Gillian’s family is great. They make me feel like I’m part of them. And … just so you know, Gilly is the reason I’m living with them at all.”