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People get distracted with grief.
When Carmy asks her why she wants to work at a rundown sandwich shop while holding her ambitious resume in one hand, Sydney stalls for a moment, even though she practiced the script at home.
But her hesitation – that brief stab of panic in her belly – goes unnoticed by him. Carmy is distracted with grief. She mumbles something about coming here every Sunday after church, about what this business means to her family, her dad, the community at large, and Carmy buys it, doesn’t look too much into it, because his mind is elsewhere, and in her panic to sound genuine, she halfway does.
It’s not really a lie, it’s just leaving out an important detail. A detail in the shape of a man they both knew. But only Carmy can mourn him. Because she’s not supposed to know him. Sydney has to play dumb.
You said his name was Michael? she will ask, a few weeks later, sounding, as far as anyone can tell, perfectly believable.
The only one who doesn’t seem to buy it entirely is Tina. Tina suspects something. Tina looks at her with an odd, hostile look. Sure, Sydney is new and full of fine dining tips and arrogant insider knowledge, but that’s not the full story. Where do I know this kid from? Tina’s eyes seem to wonder.
Sydney ducks her head and turns her face away, tries to seem more annoying than mysterious. Eventually, the annoying part wins. Maybe because she is kind of annoying. Michael used to sort of joke about it. You being a brat on purpose? And sometimes she’d say yes.
She catches herself smiling thinking about it, thinking about some of the things he used to say, and then she feels bad for smiling, because she’s standing in the crummy kitchen where he used to work, and she can see his cramped office where Carmy now sits hunched over the paperwork he left behind, and she shouldn’t be here. None of this belongs to her.
She just had a promise to keep.
She really hates this deception bullshit, though. This three-card monte of plausible deniability.
She’s never been a good liar. She gets away with it because people are busy; people have their own shit to manage. But she hates it either way, having to put up with this lie, having to pretend to be someone she’s not.
To be fair, she doesn’t know which person she’s pretending to be – if she’s playing the girl before that summer with Michael, or the girl after.
And it wasn’t just that summer with Michael. There was the winter too, and a bunch of other seasons and Sundays, so many moments, so many hours in the day, in the week, in the year for her to grow up and meet people and become a promising young woman who values truth and transparency and hard work, and now – now all of that seems to have gone to fucking waste.
She wakes up every day with a dull feeling of guilt in her chest. And she resents it too, having to carry this burden – the intimate knowledge of a dead man’s body.
She didn’t use to like the sandwiches here. The beef was always too mushy. But her dad was happy when they got to sit in their corner booth. He had this thoughtful, focused look on his face as he chewed. She liked watching him enjoy something for a change.
She always picked up the plates and took them back to the counter. Michael was often there, in the background, coming in from the kitchen to check on things, mostly to dunk on Richie and mosey with the patrons. He had this knack for looking both busy and relaxed, so that he seemed to be paying attention to everything and nothing. Fifteen-year old Sydney’s eyes would slide up his strong forearms in the blue BEEF T-shirt, then quickly look down, embarrassed by her own lack of imagination. Michael winked at her if she happened to be in his line of sight, or if he happened to be manning the counter. How was the food, sweetheart? he’d ask, flirting with her in the pat manner of adults teasing teenagers. She knew he didn’t really see her, didn’t really know her from the other kids. And that was okay. She didn’t mind. It was like a dumb rite of passage, getting slightly hot and flushed when Michael Berzatto winked at you.
Everyone in the neighborhood called him Mike or Mikey, including her father, but he was always Michael to her. That’s what she called him silently in her head.
Michael suited him better, she thought.
And the real him – whatever part was real and could be known – was closer to Michael than Mikey.
She was nineteen when she saw it, the switch from Mikey to Michael. It was the last summer before she moved to New York to figure what the fuck she wanted to do, before she started working for the postal service to get herself through culinary school. She still had energy for other people back then.
It was a neighborhood cook-out and she was helping with the barbecue skewers. There was a small group standing around him, listening to him talk. He was always telling a story, always spinning a yarn that did not sound like the truth, that, in fact, he made sound like a big fat lie. And that was the weird part. It was rarely a lie. Most of his stories were true, if a little embellished, and could be corroborated by the other men around him, but when he told them, the events didn’t seem to have any bearing on the real world.
Maybe if you’re always struggling with the lie at the center of your being, everything you say and do will seem storied, will seem part of a larger made-up plot.
She listened to him talk, moving his arms and torso in time with the story, like he was swimming through the words, trying to find the shore. His movements were large, but careful. He didn’t want to look like he was struggling. He was only doing laps by the pool. He was floating on the strength of his charisma, buoyed up by his natural charm. A man like him couldn’t drown.
But then, the group dispersed like gnats to sit down and eat and he took a few steps aside to light his cigarette. He probably didn’t think anyone was still watching him.
Sydney saw the waters crash silently over his head, washing away the humor from his eyes. His mouth looked stiff with the effort to hold it all together. He seemed, in the moment, disgusted with himself, but also proud that he had tricked them.
She stared at him for a beat too long. He met her eyes across the lawn. He didn’t really see her, didn’t recognize her as anyone he knew. But he shook his head at her, smoke trailing from his lips, as if to say, you keep your mouth shut, all right?
And Sydney nodded. She nodded too quickly. His eyes looked small and dark.
Lying in bed that night, she felt better about leaving Chicago. Her father was still asking her if she was sure.
She was sure, at least, that she didn’t want to be that kind of miserable, the kind where you’re always lonely and you’re never alone.
The frightening thing about the switch was that it could happen during sex, for instance. And like, sure, she didn’t think sex with her was special or something, but she thought being intimate with someone demands at least half of your attention. You can’t get distracted by shitty thoughts if you’re touching another body, if you’re moving inside it.
Now it sounds stupid. Now she realizes that you can fuck someone and still rage inside your head, that in fact, the fleeting pleasure makes the rage feel earned, so that when he gripped her jaw like he was about to take out her teeth, or when he bruised the flesh of her back with thoughtless hands, his anger was rewarded, his anger found a perfect form. Like how she got a kick out of slicing onions so close to the eyes she nearly felt them get sliced too. You just had to find the right outlet. Maybe that’s why she didn’t put up a fight, she just moaned louder, gave him what he wanted to hear, made herself believe she deserved it and enjoyed it, because she did, half the time. She wanted to be a willing participant. He couldn’t take what she was already giving. Nothing could hurt her if it was by her own design.
“Not being too rough on you, am I?” he’d ask huskily, like a parody of concern, kissing the back of her neck. Nuzzling his nose in the fleshy warmth. Still being rough.
“Fuck off,” she’d mumble, trying to sound like she was laughing, like she was fine. Something shivered inside her, and she didn’t know if it was the shudder of a body on the brink of release or the cold inside her bones from that last winter with him.
She remembers the first time he saw her, like really saw her. The first time he took note of her as someone other than ‘Manuel’s nice kid who brought the plates to the counter.
She was twenty-two and she looked older, more grown up, a little weary in fact – three years of New York and two semesters of CIA will do that to a girl. And the thing is, she hadn’t even meant to draw his attention. But one Sunday she just popped in to get some sandwiches to-go because her dad was not feeling well, and when she caught Michael at the counter she made the mistake of asking him about Carmy. She wanted to know if he was back from Europe. By now, everyone in the neighborhood knew he’d gone to all those fancy cooking schools and was staging for the best in the business, even if maybe no one in this sandwich shop knew what “staging” was.
Sydney knew. She often felt irrationally jealous, often felt it should’ve been her on that scholarship to Copenhagen, but she was also happy that one of her own, a kid who practically grew up across the block from her, could get that far.
And she must’ve had that starry-eyed look, that ambitious mirror look, the I want to be like that one day look on her face, because Michael’s shoulders straightened and he finally noticed her.
His voice was a lazy drawl, but his small, dark eyes flitted shrewdly over her features.
“Yeah, Carmy’s back. He’s in New York, actually.”
She couldn’t help a small, excited gasp. “Really?”
The prospect of running into him, maybe even frequenting the same fine dining circles, was slightly dizzying.
“Yeah, really.” Michael sounded sort of amused, like he found her excitement endearing. She’d later realize he was never endeared, never really amused.
“That’s cool. I mean, you must be really proud of him.”
He hummed, tapping his fingers against the counter. “Yeah, guess I am.”
“I can’t wait to see what he does next.” She winced, feeling like an overeager middle-grader. “Sorry, I’m just – I kind of want to reach that level myself.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? You gonna be a fancy chef like him?”
Sydney blushed. “I don’t know about fancy. But I wanna be good.”
“Like him?”
“Yeah.”
Michael picked up the sandwich bag. “I shouldn’t give this to you then. You’re just gonna pick it apart instead of eating it. I don’t want you deconstructing my sandwich.”
She laughed. “I promise I won’t. We’re not allowed to deconstruct anything with bread in it.”
“Is that what they teach you at the CIA?”
Sydney was surprised he knew about her that way.
“Your dad never stops talking about it.” He smiled at her. Then he said her name. Sydney. Letting her know he knew that too.
And it did make her stomach knot stupidly.
Then he said, “Alright. I wanna see you eat that sandwich.”
She blinked. “Like, right now?”
“Got anything better to do?”
Yeah, she thought. I have to get my dad his lunch.
Because the truth was both six-foots were for him. She knew it sounded really fucking pretentious, but her palate had changed.
But Michael Berzatto was flirting with her. So she said, “I guess not.”
He picked up two paper bags and a pack of cigarettes. “Come on. Let’s go eat.”
The thing to remember was that he was older, and not older like Carmy, who had five years on her, who felt like a distant cousin, a respectable role model.
Michael was at least fifteen years older. Maybe more. And he’d always looked older, always looked grizzled and rugged, built like a bear. He’d never been a boy to her. He was one of those men who enjoyed beer a little too much but avoided pot bellies, kept in shape even if they were slowly killing themselves.
And that counted for a lot.
So she sat with him on a bench near the playground and she chewed each mouthful, pretending to watch the kids while he watched her eat.
Later, when Richie tells her the “Ceres” story she has to pretend she’s hearing it for the first time.
Even though Michael recounted the history in detail as he drove her down Jackson Boulevard. They weren’t anywhere near her dad’s, but she didn’t mind. She liked watching his profile as he drove, she liked the self-assured way he held one hand on the wheel.
She thought about the faceless statue on top of the Board of Trade. How painful to be surpassed. How shameful to be elevated, to think you’re beyond the human eye, only to be, in no time at all, dwarfed by steel giants. Hundreds of eyes watching your empty face hundreds of times a day.
This is what happens to all of us, eventually, she thought as she stared at Michael’s proud profile.
But in that moment, she couldn’t picture it ever happening to him.
He kissed her in the car, sort of leaned over and asked, you wanna sit with me a little longer?, his nose already rubbing against her nose. She stuttered for a moment, unable to open her lips properly, she was too anxious, too excited, and he laughed, he fucking laughed like she was still fifteen, and he stroked the corner of her mouth with his thumb and said, you gotta loosen up, kid. She felt humiliated. She thought she was already grown-up. She thought she could be cool around him.
But he knew – didn’t he – that the more he touched her, the harder he’d wind her up.
He didn’t go slow with her, even though those first few kisses were slow, like he was testing the waters. She got the idea he wouldn’t want to sleep with someone so inexperienced, so dorky. He’d put his hand under her shirt the second time he kissed her, but he only cupped her bra, and that was probably as far as it would go.
So it really caught her off guard when she ended up on his couch a few days later, naked from the waist down, and he didn’t stop at two fingers, didn’t even let her come, just sank inside her when she was wet enough without minding her pained whimper. He fucked her against his couch, fast and sloppy, not really stopping to ask her if she was comfortable with her knees drawn up like that or if the springs were digging into her back or if the angle was bad for her neck. Or if she’d ever done this before, really. Just sort of burying himself in her like he was a regular customer, like he came here every Sunday. When he was done, she felt both used up and turned on.
She sat on his toilet for a long time, wondering if she should just make herself come, wondering if that was more pathetic, actually.
When she came back out, she wanted to find a reason to leave, but he convinced her to sit and watch a game with him. And then he fucked her again. In fact, it happened ten minutes into the game. He pulled her into his lap. You think I wouldn’t take care of you, he chuckled in her ear, like he knew what she was thinking, like he could map her anger with his fingers. I’ll take care of you, sweetheart. Sydney clenched her jaw, wanted to avoid coming, wanted to let him finish inside the condom, so he’d feel bad. She wanted to be inert and indifferent. Which was like asking water not to boil and oil not to fry. Actually, she’d had to do that in cooking class. There was this stupid exercise where you had to let water simmer, but not boil. You weren’t making anything. You were just sort of controlling the weather. It was a really simple thing, but she managed to fuck it up a couple of times.
Sydney tried to keep it at a low simmer. But Michael licked the side of her jaw, rubbing his stubble against her throat. He slid two fingers halfway inside her, making her feel extra-full, stroking the hood of her cunt, bending her knees until the muscles burned, and he whispered in her ear, like giving her permission, ’s okay, kid, you can let it go. Let it rip.
Let it rip, like a band-aid. Rip yourself apart. Tear off the skin of the wound, don’t let it heal.
This is what she hears every time.
It was pretty clear to her a few weeks later that he didn’t want to be with her, not like that, not officially, not in any capacity really, and she couldn’t blame him, because she was going back to New York soon and he was in over his head with the shop, and they were just fooling around.
Nothing about this should’ve hurt her. The guy was pushing forty. He’d served her ice cream cones when she was ten. Her dad wouldn’t like it. No one in the neighborhood would like it. The talk would be ugly. The last thing she wanted was talk. That’s why he made sure to keep it just between them.
But he must’ve sensed she was a little bruised, because he sometimes kept her lying next to him longer than necessary, wouldn’t let her get dressed until she heard him all the way through. He started telling her stuff, random stuff, stories and facts that all sounded like he’d just made them up for her.
“Do you know who's the real Easter Bunny?” he asked one afternoon, running his fingers down her bare back. He hadn’t put bruises there yet.
Sydney craned her neck to look at him.
“Um, is that a trick question?”
He told her that people in the past believed wild hares could lay eggs, because they used to find them sitting next to egg nests in the grass. People draw bad conclusions all the time. It wasn’t until later that they figured out it was a bird that was leaving those eggs. Something called a lapwing. It didn’t sound real. But she looked it up when she got home, and yeah, it was fucking real.
“Why would the bird leave its eggs like that?” she asked, looking at him over her shoulder.
Michael shrugged, dragging his thumb against her spine. “Birds get spooked. They get hungry. They get tired.”
His voice sounded hoarse. Like a weak warble. She could picture the grass and the still warm eggs.
“I’m hungry,” she muttered, more to herself.
Michael smiled. “I’ll make you pasta.”
That summer was good, ultimately, she thinks. She didn’t even notice the drugs, though she did notice his drinking. But it was like something out of a hazy dream, hazy because she only focused on the parts in front of her. Anything on the outer edges she ignored. Even his drinking – she sort of minimized it, because he could drink four beers straight and not slur a single word, in fact he was sharp, clear-eyed and focused in a way she could hardly manage when she was sober. She didn’t know this was exactly how it worked if you had practice.
She thought to herself, I know alcoholics, I’ve met alcoholics, this street alone is full of them, and Michael was not one of them.
He made really good pasta when he was drunk. The kind of pasta she secretly loved – drenched in sugary, syrupy sauce – even if her palate had changed. It was nice to make love afterwards, feeling greasy and sated, even though she shouldn’t call it making love, because they still felt like strangers.
She went back to New York and he went back to being the older guy at the sandwich shop. Nothing much to it. She tried texting him the first few weeks, but he mostly ignored her messages. One night, months later, she got a rare text from him. He asked her how she was doing. Then he asked her for a pic. Sydney rolled her eyes, feeling both insulted and pleased.
U wanna see my boobs, is that it?
Yeah, but I don’t think you’re gonna let me. I’d be cool with a selfie.
Sydney wished he’d just asked for boobs. She decided not to check if her face looked okay. She grinned sarcastically at the camera, holding two fingers up.
A few minutes later, he wrote, You’re fuckin cute.
You’re fuckin not, she wrote back.
Missed those two front teeth, kiddo.
Sydney groaned, feeling self-conscious and happy. And a little sad.
As far as she knows, that’s the only photo of her in his phone. She doesn’t know what happened with his phone after his death, who went through it, who deleted the photos. If someone saw her face. Or if maybe he’d already deleted the photo. Just like he probably deleted that last voice message, the one she can’t really – can’t even think about.
Often times, she feels like the stupid fucking Easter bunny, sitting uselessly next to an abandoned nest.
Two more summers passed and she didn’t go back to Chicago because she had no moment to spare and she was too broke for a holiday; at least that is what she told herself. She had wanted to find a way to get into contact with Carmy, to see if he remembered the awkward black girl who’d hung around his family’s sandwich shop. To ask him to give her a chance to prove herself. But she couldn’t do it now, not after sleeping with his brother like a fucking moron. She’d blown it. She’d gone and closed that door for herself.
Too bad. She’d find another door. But it still made her cringe every time she thought about it. She was supposed to be smarter than that.
She was supposed to have thicker skin, too. New York wasn’t supposed to grind her down into nothing. She’d survived Chicago. She couldn’t let a bunch of CDCs with a sadistic streak make her life a living hell. But the only way not to let them was to quit and start her own business. The idea gripped her one morning, after throwing up in the toilet from anxiety. She didn’t want to have this acidic taste in her mouth anymore.
And suddenly, it seemed simple. She’d start small. Her dad’s garage. She could ask Michael for help –
No. No that would be so fucking stupid, Syd. You can do it on your own.
So, that’s what she did.
That winter, after her small but promising catering business went up in flames, Sydney had two options. Bury herself in her childhood bedroom and never come out. Or go see Michael and ask him to bury her instead.
She thought it would be awkward and difficult to restart what they’d dropped two years before. She thought maybe they would just be friends. Maybe he’d let her cry on his shoulder.
But the minute they were alone, the minute he had her on his couch again, he pulled her into his lap and put his hand inside her bra and his cold fingers sent a jolt through her whole body, making her arch into him like a needy thing. They took their time kissing and undressing. But when it came time to straddle his lap, he didn’t help her at all. She had to sink on his cock all by herself while he watched, sullenly, and only tilted his head back with a small hiss when she sank all the way down. Then he kept still, one hand resting loosely on her thigh, watching her through hooded eyelids, and Sydney sat there uncomfortably, wondering when the fuck he was going to move. To which he said, in a tone which she now recognizes as – well – not nice, not well: “Go ahead, kiddo, go ahead and fuck yourself on it. It’s what you came here to do.”
And maybe if she’d been in a better head space she would’ve hopped off him and put her clothes back on and left him to deal with his own fucking issues.
But she wasn’t in a better head space.
She clenched her jaw. “All right, I will.”
She gripped his shoulders and shifted awkwardly for a few moments, trying to find the right balance or some kind of rhythm, some kind of way to get through this without feeling like a failure. She was too full and too fucking empty with him inside her. She began to ride him slowly, making a greater effort than she’d expected to slide up and down his cock, mostly because she wasn’t wet enough, because he wasn’t doing anything, not even really touching her, it was so fucking sad, she wanted to cry so badly, and her eyes actually fucking welled up for a moment before she blinked real fast.
Michael looked up at her with those small dark eyes, little pits of black despair. “What’s wrong, Sydney? I thought you were a big girl. Little Miss Independent can’t handle her shit? Can’t even get the job done?”
It was like the voice inside her head, only crueler. More precise. It was everything she hated about herself, reduced to a string of words. How did he know?
“Fuck you,” she muttered.
“You can’t even do that,” he tossed back, eyes wild and hungry for a fight.
And she felt herself getting wet. She hated herself for getting wet.
“Can’t even fuck me, Syd.” His grin was a little manic. “Can’t make yourself feel good, huh? No matter what you do, you’ll never feel good again.”
“Shut up.”
“You know, deep down, don’t you? You know it’ll never feel right. You’ll never get it right.”
And even though a part of her realized he was talking about himself, she couldn’t deny that in this moment, it did feel like that. She was like that.
She gripped his face like she wanted to claw the skin off - let it rip - and he gripped her face like he wanted to do the same, and they began moving at the same time. Maybe it didn’t feel good, but it dulled the pain for the moment, and when it got too much they both came with an angry scream, spitting the poison at each other, swallowing it back.
“We’re both such fucking losers,” she spoke softly into his shoulder when she could breathe again.
In cases like these, people usually express dismay. They say, he was the soul of the party, he was so full of life, he could make anyone laugh, a guy like that? You never see it coming.
But she should’ve. Cuz she saw the signs. She was there.
She knew he wasn’t well, but she figured, I’m not well either, and two is better than one. And maybe a really stupid part of her thought she could save him, could pull him back to the surface. They could swim through it together.
In this way, letting him be rough, letting him be fucking angry and miserable while she held him inside her felt like the only way through it. If she’d been in her right fucking mind she would’ve realized what they were doing, she wouldn’t have let him snort cocaine off her belly like they were teenagers, she wouldn’t have laughed, wouldn’t have gotten high with him, wouldn't have sucked his dick, wouldn't have let him hold her hair while she threw up from the wine coolers, would have tried talking it out, talking with him, instead of this skin-to-skin corrosive language.
That was December, that was before Christmas.
In February, he was dead.
Sydney picks up the grimy butt of the cigarette. It looks old, it looks from months ago. She wonders if maybe he smoked it. If he put his lips there. If there’s anything left of him.
She closes her eyes and leans her back against the brick wall. It’s hard being here. He never really let her come in, never wanted her in his kitchen while he was alive. She even asked him once, that first summer, if she could help out with the orders, get a little practice in, she wouldn’t be in the way. But Michael said no, a really hard no, said people would get suspicious, besides, why would she want to work in a place like that?
She didn’t understand it then, why he didn’t let anyone in, why he couldn’t let them see the mess.
She hears footsteps. Someone clearing their throat.
“You all right, Chef?”
Tina stands with her back to the other wall, watching her. It’s the first time she looks concerned on her behalf.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“You need a napkin?”
That’s when Syd realizes she’s been crying. God, she never cries in public. She didn’t even feel it coming.
“No, thanks,” she mumbles wiping her cheeks self-consciously.
“You changed your hair,” Tina says, tilting her head.
Because someone noticed, after all. Someone saw her last winter.
Syd swallows. “Tina, please, I know you don’t like me but –”
“Relax. I won’t say anything.” The older woman examines her thoughtfully. She doesn’t read any judgment there. “But you better not say shit either.”
Syd nods, wiping her eyes. She can’t seem to stop crying. She lowers her head in shame.
Tina takes a step forward. She puts a hand on her knee. And her voice is almost tender. “I loved him too.”
The last time they were together he made pasta for her and they talked about nothing at all, because neither of them wanted to think about the new year that was right around the corner, until he said, “I think Richie’s got this idea I’m seeing someone... He won’t stop bugging me about it.”
Sydney paused with the fork to her mouth. “What are you gonna tell him?”
Michael shrugged. “I don’t know. What do you want me to tell him?”
“I don’t know either.”
He scratched the side of his beard. “I thought about – I thought about bringing you to the Christmas dinner. But it would’ve been too fast. Ma would’ve thrown a fit. Well, she threw one anyway. She usually does.”
Sydney felt a strange lump in her throat. “Oh. You could’ve asked. I think it would've been nice. I think - I would’ve made a good impression.”
Michael shook his head. “It’s not about you. It’s the people in my family…It’s always a shit show. I don’t wanna put that on you. You’re too young anyway.”
Sydney put down the fork. “I’m too young.”
“Yeah. You’re too young for your life to get fucked by that family.”
She glared at him. “I wasn’t too young for you to fuck me.”
She thought this would make him mad, but Michael sort of chuckled absently.
“Yeah, you’re not too young for that. Difference is, when I fuck you, you can always get out.”
Sydney felt like screaming. But she said it calmly. “Do you even give a shit about me?”
Michael looked at her with small, dark eyes. “Come on, Syd. You don’t want it.”
“What?”
“You don’t want me to give a shit.”
“But do you? Do you give a shit about anything?”
He finally looked angry. The rage was always there, lurking. He told her to get on the floor.
The thing is, she couldn’t stoke the anger. She simmered, but she didn’t boil. She gripped his shoulders as he fucked her against the linoleum and she peppered his face with kisses, saying sorry, sorry baby, even though she wasn’t sure what she was apologizing for. He brushed his forehead against the inside of her thigh, kissed it gently and sort of sighed, like he was about to apologize too. And for a moment, it looked like they would be okay.
But then he asked her, cradling her head between his arms as he drove into her, “what’s the best meal you ever had?”
She sort of laughed. Suddenly he was right in her face. “What?”
“Best meal you’ve ever had. Tell me.”
“Um – I don’t –”
“Tell me who made you the best meal of your fucking life,” he muttered, nose brushing against nose, looking like he was going to bite her.
He drove into her harder and faster, keeping her locked in his arms. Syd couldn’t see the ceiling. She could feel the scream from earlier, could feel it crawling to the surface.
“P-please don’t do that –”
“Do what?”
“You’re hurting me,” she whined, half-moan, half-cry. His fingers gripped her hair.
“Say it. Come on, say it.”
Sydney screamed when the first sting of pleasure shot through her. It hurt so bad.
“Fucking say it, Sydney. Fucking do it.”
Those small, dark eyes. She felt herself getting sucked right into them. Fade to black.
“Carmy.” She gasped. Like it was her last breath. “It was – Carmy’s place.”
The rest of it was obliterated. She had to give herself to the feeling. She let it wash over her.
It was the best high she’d ever had.
She heard him moan into her shoulder. “Fuck – yeah. It was Carmy.”
He almost sounded happy.
Michael buried his head in the hollow of her throat. He held her tight as he spilled inside her.
In that moment, she realized he was trying to love his brother through her. And he also hated his brother through her.
And she couldn’t be a part of it any longer.
The morning commute is a weird kind of torture. There’s only one song she listens to on repeat. She’s not punishing herself, but it’s the only thing she can stand to hear, warbling gently in her headphones.
Michael was drunk enough once that he danced with her on it, spinning her across the room while she laughed. He told her it was his favorite song. “No one sings it like Dionne,” he’d said. She hadn't really paid attention to it, because that was a happy moment.
But she can hum it all by heart now, every last chord, can hear it even when she doesn’t have the headphones on, in her dreams too. Sometimes he’s singing it to her.
If you see me walking down the street, and I start to cry, each time we meet, walk on by, walk on by….
One morning, she was standing on the train platform, muttering the words to herself when she thought she saw him sitting at the window of a passing train.
She stood very still, but something inside her followed him. Something seemed to leave her body, something jumped on the train, sat down next to him in the seat.
He turned to her with a wry, bearish smile.
What did I tell you, kiddo? he said softly, brushing his nose against hers.
“Walk on by,” she muttered, leaning forward.
Sunlight bathed her face. She was on the platform again. The song was still playing.
Just let me grieve in private, ‘cause each time I see you, I break down and cry.
She’s been trying to do what he told her.
She doesn’t go to therapy, but she knows what the therapist would advise.
Sydney finally deletes it one afternoon. The last thing she had from him. She deletes the voice message. She listens to it one more time before doing it.
He sent it to her three days before killing himself.
Hey...it’s me. Look, I’m sorry about last time. I’m sorry about...sorry about all the times. You just fucking got to me, kid, all right? You fucking – I fucking love you, okay? Look, you and Carmy, you’re the best people I know, and when he comes back to town, I’m gonna talk to him. Cuz you two, you could do something. He’d really like you. And uhh...he’ll need someone like you at his side to run the place when the shit hits the fan, so please...just...just go to him, all right? You’ll know when.
Take care, Syd.
Michael was right. Carmy does like her. They work really well together. It’s just hard right now, but it’ll get easier. She doesn’t believe it, but she knows it will happen. And she’ll resent it, at first, because there is comfort in being miserable, in thinking you deserve to be miserable.
But she will let it happen.
When she hands him the full layout of the dinner menus one afternoon, Carmy stares at her like she’s too bright. His blue eyes have no dark in them.
“You know, you’re a Godsend.”
Sydney laughs. “Um, if you say so.”
She thinks Michael would have liked that. Being compared to God.
She stands in front of the tomato cans. She thinks about the pasta he made, the pasta only he could make. She thinks she understands him better now, what it’s like to keep this secret about yourself, keep the family together, love them all.
She doesn't hate the lie anymore. Because it's never just a lie.
It’s her job now, he left it to her.
“Fucking asshole,” she mumbles, wiping the corner of her eye, smiling at the ghost.