Whitney steered me into the kitchen and sat me down at the kitchen table before filling the kettle and putting it on the stovetop. She got out two mugs and a box of tea with a green and brown label.
“I’m making you some of my relaxation tea. Don’t be weird about it. Just drink it and trust me,” Whitney said, dumping tea bags into the boiling kettle to steep.
A pungent, musky odor filled the room. “What kind of tea is this?” I asked after she put down a steaming mug in front of me.
“Drink,” she ordered. I did as she said, tentatively taking a sip.
I looked up at my sister in amusement. “You know there’s weed in this, right?”
Whitney gave me a “well duh” look. “That’s what makes it so relaxing. And it’s purely medicinal, so don’t go getting judgy. Now drink up and then tell me what’s going on.”
“I wouldn’t judge you for drinking weed tea. Other stuff, sure, but not that,” I joked. I drank half of the hot drink before I started to feel nicely mellow, my head slightly fuzzy. It felt as if I were wrapped in cotton. It took the edge off my extreme rage.
“I hate him,” I stated firmly. “I hate him so much.” I took another drink. “Adam Ducate is an asshole.”
Another drink.
Whitney refilled my mug. “What happened? You can tell me, you know.”
I gave her a disbelieving look. “Why? Because we’ve been so close the last few years? What do you even know about heartbreak? You’re only serious relationship is with your stupid job.”
Whitney blew across the top of her tea before sipping. “I know more about heartbreak than you think, sis,” she said softly. So softly I wasn’t sure I heard her.
I snorted. “Yeah, okay. I think I would have heard about some epic break up from Mom.”
Whitney shook her head. “It wasn’t a breakup. Not really. It was...something else.”
Even in my slightly drugged state, I sensed the heaviness that weighed on my sister. That the story she had inside her was painful in a way that I couldn’t understand.
I put my mug down and gave Whitney my attention, feeling glad to focus on something, on someone who wasn’t Adam. “What happened?” I asked, fully expecting her to shut me down. She had done it enough times over the years I wouldn’t have been surprised.
To my astonishment, she began to speak.
“I know I haven’t been the easiest person for the last few years—”
“Understatement of the year, Whit. You’ve completely bitched out,” I jumped in.
Whitney winced but didn’t deny it. “Sometimes things change you, Meg. They change who you are down to the cellular level. I learned that if I wanted to get through each day, I couldn't be Whitney Galloway the way I used to be. I had to be someone hard. Someone that couldn’t be hurt. Because if I let myself feel, then I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be sitting with you right now.”
I sat back in my seat, completely taken aback. “What in the hell happened, Whitney? This doesn’t have to do with Kyle Webber staying with you in LA, does it?”
Meg looked startled. “Who told you about that?”
“What happened?” I asked again, ignoring her question.
“It has nothing to do with Kyle. Kyle was—is—wonderful. He definitely deserved better than what I gave him,” she said sadly.
There was a lot to that story that I wanted to hear about; I knew now wasn’t the time, but I’d get it out of her later one way or another.
“Shit happens, Meg. Bad stuff. And you learn to deal with it, and you move on. That’s what I did.”
I was pretty sure she hadn’t moved on. She had perhaps suppressed it. She’d pushed it way down where she thought it couldn’t hurt her anymore. But if I had learned anything from my own tragically melodramatic history, it was that nothing ever stayed hidden. It came back to haunt you in one way or another. And just when you thought you were entering into a shiny, new healthy place in your life, those bottled up emotions rose out of the ashes like a pissed off phoenix.
I put my hand over hers and squeezed. “I’m here. I always have been.”
Whitney turned her palm face up and laced her fingers with mine, the way we used to when we were little girls. “I know. Maybe one day…”