the first place.
I get off the floor and walk over to the liquor cabinet trying to catch my breath while I fix myself a drink. I don’t look behind, but I can hear him still huffing and puffing, gasping for air.
“How old were you when Isa died?” he asks me while still lying on the floor in the middle of my suite.
I hate hearing him call her Isa; I call her Isa. I don’t want to discuss this with him—the man who brought my family nothing but pain. I will not desecrate my sister’s memory by making conversation with this despicable excuse for a human. I look out at this beautiful city sprawled out before me, and I can’t stop from wishing things would’ve turned out differently. What if Louis loved my sister like she wanted and needed him to, would Isa still be alive? Would Emily and I be together? We’re almost the same age. Would she be my destiny? All I can think about is how beautiful and perfect we could be together. I ache to touch and caress every curve, every piece of her. I hear him moving on the floor and I come back from my daydream. I answer him, hoping to get him out of my suite before Emily goes on her morning run.
“I was seventeen when my father told me she tried killing herself for the first time because of you.” Was it really that long ago? Twelve fucking years. It almost feels like time actually stood still from that point on. I've gotten older, but I haven’t lived past that day. How could she try to hurt herself because of this scum? How can something as beautiful as my sister be gone and destroyed forever? Every goddamn day starts with me reliving my parents telling me two years ago that my beautiful Isa is gone to be with my baby brother. That Isabella and Thomas are together in heaven watching out for each other and me. I can still hear my mom crying, weeping like a baby as yet another one of her children gets ripped out of her hands. I remember my dad’s dead eyes as he told me she was gone. I feel the guilt of her death every bloody day. I waited in that damn restaurant for over an hour and she didn’t show, I called and she didn’t pick up her phone. I just got fed up, threw her birthday cake in the bin, and left. I should’ve gone to her flat to look after her to make certain she was all right. Maybe I could’ve called the medics sooner. When they found her, it was too late.
I didn’t understand back then that my brother and sister had been paying for my parents’ sins. You don’t get to have our wealth without being hated, envied, and cursed. Thomas was just a baby, I don’t even remember when he was taken from us, but I grew up with Isa. She was beautiful, smart, kind, and had everything. She had herds of friends and every bloke in London wanted to take her out. Why would she let herself get involved with him and his friends? Why is he special? Why couldn’t somebody stop it?
“I was thirty-eight,” Louis says, bringing me out of my thoughts and back to our painful reality. “She called me that morning. I don't know how she got my number or why I picked up. I never answer numbers I don't recognize, but I did. She said she was sorry for hurting me and that she knows how much I love Emily. She’d heard we had another baby and that it was time to give up. I wanted to hang up on her, but I couldn't. I felt so bad for her…I failed her. We were friends a long time ago. I cared for her as a friend once, and yet I just stood there in the kitchen, watching my wife and listening to Isa say goodbye. She hung up and that was it. After everything she’d been through, with the failed suicide attempts and even after she got clearance from the hospital, I knew she was too sick to go on living a normal life.”
I stand dejectedly and look out into Central Park, listening to Louis fucking Bruel tell me about my sister’s last words. As he talks to me, all I can think is, why? Why would she call him and not me? It was her