Her words trailed off, her eyes landing on the acid stained concrete floor.
“I should go.” She pushed past me, stepping into her shoes and getting back on the elevator.
With my hands in my pocket and words caught in my throat, I watched her go.
“Coco, can I come over?” I asked as I stood outside Wilder’s apartment building. Glancing over my shoulder every two seconds, I just prayed he didn’t follow me outside. Then again, he didn’t talk me out of leaving. He didn’t stop the elevator. He let me go.
“Addison, it’s late,” she said. “Aren’t you usually in bed by now?”
“Aren’t you?” I asked. She usually got up around three to get ready for work.
“Come on over,” she said.
* * *
“Hi, Harrison,” I said as I stepped into their loft. He glanced up from his weathered leather chair, his feet kicked up on the ottoman as he did a New York Times crossword.
“Pleasure to see you, Addison.” His words were dry, and I watched as he glanced up at the clock above the mantle. I knew it was well past a proper visiting hour, but I needed my sister. Harrison always had a stick up his ass, anyway. I’d learned over the years to let him roll off my back. Most of the time, I’d razz him back and call him out when he was being a giant asshole, and we’d laugh and be fine. But I wasn’t in the mood that night.
The fireplace glowed, bringing a warmth to their home that I’d come to love over the years. I’d found them their apartment years ago when they were just newlyweds. Before she’d landed the spot on the morning news show. Before they’d thrown in the towel on what seemed to be a perfect union.
Coco’s fiercely guarded nature rivaled mine, though, and she never did tell me exactly why she’d divorced him. She never did tell me exactly why they were still living together two years later, either.
Coco left Harrison, at least on paper, around the same time Kyle and I had crumbled to the ground. Too many times she’d set her own personal issues aside so she could deal with mine. She was amazing like that. Coco wasn’t just my big sister, she was my best friend. My protector. My person.
“Come on in,” she said. “Ignore him.”
“Not getting along today?” I whispered.
She rolled her eyes. “He’s got a giant stick lodged up his ass right now.”
“The one that’s been there for years?”
“Yep. The one passed down from generation after generation of Bissetts before him.” Coco lead us down the hall to the master suite, the one she inhabited all by herself. Somehow she’d convinced Harrison to take up residence in the guest suite.
I perched on the foot of her bed, the same place I’d spent curled up in an inconsolable ball the night I found out about Kyle and all of his indiscretions. The same place I laid when I swore off men and love and romance and anything else that could make me feel.
I told her I was going to be independent and self-sufficient to a fault. I’d never let another man control my heart again. I’d never rely on another man to boost me up, either, professionally or socially. I could do it all on my own. My heart wrapped itself in barbed wire that night.
“So, what’s going on?” Coco asked. She looked completely different without her camera-ready face on, though she was still gorgeous. We shared the same almond-shaped eyes and heart-shaped, swollen lips. With our high cheekbones and long necks, we looked like two aristocratic sisters born in the wrong century.
Who’d have thought we were a couple of dirt-poor Kentucky girls who’d flown from the only nest we’d known in search of something better for ourselves?
Tears stung my eyes. My attempts to blink them away were useless.
“Uh-oh.” Coco scooted closer to me, rubbing her hand against my back. “What’d the bastard do to you?”
A knock at her door pulled her away from me for a second.
“What do you want?” she said as she pulled the door open. Harrison’s muffled voice on the other side seemed to be asking her a question. Or telling her to do something. Probably the latter. “No, I told you. No. I’m not. You’ll have to find someone else to do that interview.”
Harrison said something else that I couldn’t make out.
“Never in a million, billion years. I’m not doing that interview,” Coco said, stomping her foot into the carpet. “I’m with my sister. I don’t know why you’re picking right now to discuss this.”
She slammed the door, looking flustered and red-faced as she returned to her spot next to me.
“I’ll never understand why you two still live together,” I sighed, almost grateful to not be talking about my issue.
“It just works.” She shrugged. “And you know why? It’s because I don’t care. Once you care, you’re fucked. But if you don’t care, you find you can really put up with a lot. If Harrison walked out tomorrow and found his own place, I’d be thrilled. It’s because I don’t care.”
I didn’t believe it for one second, but I didn’t have the energy to argue with her on that fact. We’d gone rounds on it before, and I’d lost every time. Coco was quick on her feet whenever she had to defend her life choices.
“What if you wanted to date someone new?” I asked. “You can’t bring him to the house you share with your ex-husband.”
She pursed her lips, looking at me funny. “You know I don’t have time to date.”