Just Before You Go

The next morning, Luke treated me to a second round of IHOP pancakes. It felt less like an interrogation than it had the first time; for me, anyway. I was chalked full of questions for my brother about the news he’d shared—but refused to elaborate on.
As I sipped at my coffee and waited for my diabetes on a plate, I gaged my brother. When had he gotten so old? There were lines tracing his eyes that I’d never noticed before. His hair had lightened and he looked almost foreign for a second.
“So,” I breathed from behind my cup, “are we going to talk about your life or are we going to ignore it until the baby comes out?”
Luke took the table’s carafe into his steady hands and poured himself a cup.
“Lucas,” I pressed.
“What is there to say?” he asked rhetorically.
I pursed my lips together, wracking my brain for the best place to start, “How far along is she?”
“Far enough that I’m telling you,” he shrugged.
“That isn’t an answer,” I half-laughed, setting my cup down and folding my hands onto the table. “Here’s a better question: why don’t you seem excited?”
His jaw clenched, “Because I’m not.”
I wasn’t sure what to do with that. It stunned me, that was for sure. I’d assumed maybe Luke was just a straight-faced kind of guy, like Blair in that emotions were best kept under the surface. But, alas, no.
“I…” I tried and failed. “Why not?”
“Because,” he grumbled. “I’m not a father. I’m too busy to raise a kid.”
I scoffed, “Lucas.”
“Stop full naming me,” he griped, taking a sip of his coffee. “I’ve been panicking for months…And I needed to tell someone that wouldn’t judge me. I needed to tell someone the truth.”
“And what is the truth?” I asked flatly.
He sighed, glancing around at the ceiling, “That I’m not ready to be a parent, I guess. Grace is…She’s wonderful, don’t get me wrong. She’s absolutely the person that I should end up with…”
I sensed the hesitation, “But?”
His lips fell into a dissatisfied frown. The guilt he’d been harboring pulled at his brows and crinkled his aging forehead.
“But I don’t want to end up like Mom and Dad,” he said finally.
I narrowed my eyes to better see through his bullshit, “What does that even mean?”
“I don’t want a marriage based on obligation,” he said slowly. “I don’t want to feel tied down because I have to be…They don’t even love each other, Aria.”
“Do you not love Grace?” I asked because I honestly wasn’t sure what else to say.
My brother was forever doting. He was patient and caring, responsible and reliable. If anyone was designed at birth to be a parent, it was Luke. Even as adults, he was still trying to mold me. I knew he was selling himself short, but I wasn’t about to start dictating the way he was feeling—even if it broke my heart.
“I do,” he sighed. “I guess.”
“You guess,” I repeated blankly.
He set his mug back down, his hands now trembling slightly from the weight, “I’m jealous of you.”
“Of me.”
“Yes,” he half-laughed. “How silly is that? I’m jealous of my baby sister…But I suppose I’ve always been. You’ve always been so resistant to standards, even if you ultimately obeyed them. It’s admirable, really. I’ve never been brave enough to say no…to anything.”
Was this the start of a mid-life crisis? Luke was hardly old enough for a mid-life crisis…a quarter life crisis perhaps?
“I’m really not someone to be envious of, Luke,” I informed him softly.
“Sure you are. Look at your life, Aria. You’re travelling around the country with a bunch of interesting people…You abandoned your inhibitions…The ambitions Mom and Dad had for you…And you’re in love. It’s…I’m so jealous of it. The way that you are around Jimmy…I wish someone made me that…giddy.”
“It isn’t without its problems,” I argued lightly. “My life isn’t easy, Luke…I had to give up my relationship with our parents to do this. I had to kick and fight to stay on board with the decisions I’ve made…I’m in love but that doesn’t make it exciting all the time. It’s been a struggle.”
“But it’s a struggle you’re willing to endure,” Luke nodded. “I don’t think I am.”
My teeth were grinding together, “So, what? You’re just going to abandon Grace to raise a baby on her own? Come on.”
“No, of course not,” he sighed, sinking into himself. “But…”
“No,” I cut off. “There are no buts here. You can’t do that, Luke. You can’t. If you leave her and that baby, I will never look at you the same way.”
He moaned, “Maybe that’s the point.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I couldn’t process the fact that my brother wasn’t a fraction of the man I’d always thought him to be. Panic about an unplanned pregnancy, sure. That’s warranted. But seriously contemplating abandoning the situation before it had even come to fruition? I was judging him hard.
“What’s your plan?” I asked through my aggravation. “What are you going to do?”
He took a deep breath, “I’m probably going to marry her.”
“What?” I laughed, my head spinning at that point.
“It’s the right thing to do,” he frowned. “You’re right, I can’t just leave her…But she’s so excited and…I don’t know how to pretend like I am too. Maybe I’d feel differently if I thought she was at least a little spooked by this all…Am I just a terrible person, Aria?”
“You aren’t making any sense,” I replied slowly, rubbing at my cheek like it might soothe the situation. “You want out…but you’re going to marry her? She’s excited but you don’t want her to be? I’m beyond confused.”
He groaned, “Fuck. I don’t know.”
“I like Grace,” I reminded him. “She’s a nice girl. She seems to really adore you…Why isn’t that enough to make you happy?”
He met my gaze, “I don’t know.”
“I don’t even know what to say,” I told him, working overtime to try and get a grip on it.
Before he could say anything, our waiter appeared and dropped food down in front of us. It was a welcomed distraction as I tried to work out my own feelings about my brother’s situation. I tried to imagine if roles were reversed, how I’d feel. What if I was the one with a baby on the way? Would I be happy? Would I be scared?
Like Luke, I didn’t have the answers. But I couldn’t put us on the same level; mine was a fictitious hypothetical and his was real life.
Real life has a way of coaxing feelings out of you.
“I’m being forced into a life I don’t want,” Luke said quietly once our waiter had vanished once more.
There was a sentiment that struck me as familiar. Was abandoning a child the same as abandoning your parents? I decided it wasn’t.
“Okay,” I declared, pushing my plate aside so that I could get real without the delicious distraction of IHOP pancakes. “I’ll bite. Let’s say you leave. You pack your stuff and you move out; you move on with your life without Grace and your child.”
He cringed, “Please don’t call it that.”
“That’s what it is, Lucas,” I snipped. “Your child.”
His face was burdened with regret.
“What then?” I continued. “You’ll be paying child support for a kid you have absolutely no relationship with. You’ll have to explain that to any future girlfriends you have…And what if you want children later? Huh? What then? What does that say about you as a person? Do you want children? Ever?”
“I don’t know,” he sighed.
“This is real,” I told him straight. “You can’t ride the fence on this one, Luke. You need to make a decision and it needs to be a good one. Once you leave, you can’t take it back. You can’t change your mind.”
He nodded grimly, “I know.”
“But that’s what you want?” I pressed. “Don’t you want Grace at all? If she’s the person you should end up with, why don’t you want to?”
“Because she doesn’t excite me,” he told me sadly. “She doesn’t make me…I don’t want to be with her all the time. I don’t get butterflies when she laughs. I don’t feel like shifting my life around for her…That just doesn’t sound like real love to me.”
I sympathized. Jimmy offered all of those things to me…in spades. Luke and I were on different playing fields and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get down onto his level, as much as I desperately wanted to.
“Is obligation enough?” Luke asked me seriously. “Shouldn’t building a life with someone be about more than obligation?”
Against my will, I nodded, “Yes.”
“God,” he grumbled, pulling his face into his palms. “I’m a terrible person.”
I couldn’t bring myself to disagree.
“What are Mom and Dad going to say?” he groaned, glancing up at me through his fingers.
“It doesn’t matter,” I sighed. “They are terrible people…Who cares what they think?”
He frowned, “How did they end up with two rogue children? We’re definitely not what they were expecting.”
“I don’t have enough time in my life to get into that,” I joked lightly, despite my serious distaste for my brother in that moment.
“Do you hate me?” he asked, dropping his hands down to the tabletop. “Do you think I’m making the wrong choice?”
“I don’t know,” I offered lamely. “It isn’t my life…I don’t know what’s best for you. What I would do and what you are doing are two very different things…”
He nodded his head glumly.
“But you’re my brother,” I tried to lighten up. “And I’ll love you even when you make bad choices…or do things I don’t necessarily agree with.”
He almost smiled.
As I slid my plate over, decidedly finished with this heavy conversation because my heart simply couldn’t handle it, I stabbed a fork into my stack of pancakes.
“You have to tell them, you know,” I informed him.
He grumbled quietly, “I know.”
“If you need a lawyer…” I teased.
“Can you come with me?” he asked desperately. “I can’t face that conversation alone…”
Given that I had news of my own to share, it seemed like a plausible situation. I still hadn’t decided whether or not I actually wanted to tell my parents that I was engaged, but I figured it would come out eventually…Maybe I could soften Luke’s blow by offering up my own disappointment to the parental unit. They’d surely be more devastated by my intent to marry Jimmy than Luke’s abandonment of his child.
That was a shockingly terrible truth.
“Yeah,” I answered finally. “I’ll come with you. I’ll have to talk to Jimmy…but I’m sure we can work it out.”
“Good,” he sighed with relief, digging into his own breakfast finally. “Thank you.”
I took a big bite of syrupy goodness, “I’m not coming with you to tell Grace though. That’s on you.”
He stifled a laugh, “Yeah…”
I watched as he moved on with his day, careless of the conversation we’d had. Mindless of the new light he’d shed on himself. It only made me judge him more to see him carry on happy conversation and boast about the good time he’d had with my musician family. I tried to play it cool, but inside I was absolutely seething.
He may have been my brother, and I may have had to love him…but in that moment, I really, really didn’t like him.

Notes

Oh no. Oh, Luke....

xx