Chapter 61: Sibling Sabotage
The humidity in St. Louis clung like a warm, damp cloth. Alexis sat in a folding lawn chair in her parents’ backyard, the aluminum creaking under her weight. The smell of her father’s signature dry-rub ribs smoking on the grill was a nostalgia so potent it almost hurt. Laughter bubbled from the patio where her mother, Ava, was demonstrating some obscure dance move from a TikTok to her cackling aunties. Her sister Ashley was strategically avoiding their dad’s requests to help with the potato salad, her nose buried in her phone.
It was normalcy. It was a lifeline.
She’d fled D.C. two days after the frozen silence in the apartment. She’d texted Mark simply: Going home for a few days. Need space. He’d replied an hour later: Okay. No questions. No protest. Just that solitary, perioded word. It felt like a door closing quietly in a distant wing of a house.
“You gonna stare at that burger all day, Lexi, or you gonna bless it with your teeth?” Her father, Aaron, leaned over the grill, a pair of long tongs in his hand, his forehead glistening. His smile was kind, but his eyes held that searching look he’d worn since she’d arrived, suitcase in hand, shadows under her own.
“Sorry, Dad.” She forced a smile and lifted the burger. It was perfect, just how he made them – a little char on the edges, cheese melted just so. She took a bite. The flavors burst, familiar and good. For a second, it worked. The present was just a backyard BBQ.
Then the screen door from the kitchen slammed.
“Who’s ready for ice-cold liquid refreshment?” a voice boomed, too loud, too familiar.
Alexis froze mid-chew. She knew the cadence of that voice before she even turned her head.
Lawrence. He emerged from the house carrying a heavy-looking cooler, his familiar smirk widening as he caught her eye across the yard. He was bigger than she remembered, his muscular arms flexing under a tight, pristine white tee. He moved with the easy, swaggering confidence of someone who’d peaked in high school and decided to live there forever.
“Larry!” her mother called, using the childhood nickname with affection. “I told you to wait for Aaron to help with that!”
“Nonsense, Ms. Ava. Got it handled,” he said, hefting the cooler onto the picnic table with a grunt. The unopened bottle of champagne she’d brought home weeks ago, now warm from the summer sun, wobbled near the edge. He steadied it, his eyes finding Alexis again. “Well, look who finally came up for air. Heard you were slummin’ it with us common folk this weekend.”
Ashley giggled. Her aunties cooed. “Lawrence, such a charmer!”
Alexis finished chewing, swallowed slowly. She wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Hey, Lawrence. Didn’t know you’d be here.”
“Your mom invited me and my folks. You know Mama Ava, can’t stand an empty seat at the table.” He popped the lid on the cooler, pulling out beers and passing them around. “Especially when one of her chicks is flying solo back to the nest.”
The comment landed with a soft thud. Alexis felt every eye flicker towards her. The unspoken question about Mark hung in the air, mixing with the hickory smoke.
“I’m not solo, Lawrence. I’m visiting my family,” she said, her tone carefully flat.
“Sure, sure.” He cracked open a beer for himself, took a long pull. “Just saying, the group chat’s been dead lately. People notice.” He meant his friends, their old high school circle. The one she’d quietly faded from.
Her father rescued her. “Lawrence, come tell me if these ribs are talking to you yet. I think they’re about ready to testify.” It was his principal-voice, gentle but directive.
Lawrence gave Alexis one more lingering look, then ambled over to the grill, immediately launching into a story about his recent promotion at the car dealership. Alexis let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
The afternoon bled on. The sun dipped, painting the sky in watercolor streaks of pink and orange. String lights flickered on overhead. Alexis helped her mother clear some plates, seeking refuge in the steam of the kitchen sink.
“He means well,” her mother said softly, scraping leftovers into a container.
“Who?”
“Don’t ‘who’ me, child. Lawrence. He always had a big crush on you. Seeing you come back alone… it’s got his antennae up.”
“I didn’t come back because I’m alone, Mom. I came back because I needed to be somewhere that wasn’t… there.” The admission was raw. She stared at the soapy water.
Ava turned, drying her hands on a towel. Her lawyer’s eyes were sharp but softened by love. “And how’s ‘there’ doing?”
Alexis shrugged, the gesture feeling helpless. “I don’t know. Quiet.”
Before her mother could probe further, Ashley burst into the kitchen. “Lex! Lawrence is trying to get the fire pit going but he’s being a total caveman about it. Dad’s on the phone. Can you come show him how we do the logs? You remember.”
She did remember. It was a ritual. A specific criss-cross pattern for optimal airflow. Mark had teased her about it once, calling it her “pyromaniac STEM side.” The memory was a tiny, sharp prick.
She went outside. Lawrence was squatting by the stone ring, clumsily stacking split oak logs in a teetering tower.
“That’s gonna suffocate itself,” she said, kneeling opposite him. The dusk air was cooler now. “Here. You need a base, like this.” She took the logs from him, her fingers brushing his. He didn’t pull his hand away.
She worked quickly, efficiently, building a small, stable log cabin structure. He watched her, his earlier bravado muted.
“You’re good at that,” he said.
“It’s just physics.”
“Not just that.” He paused. “You’re good at lots of stuff. Always were.”
She ignored the compliment, placing the final piece of kindling. “There. Now it’ll actually catch.”
He struck a long match and held it to the newspaper. Orange flames licked upward, greedy and bright. They both sat back on the grass, watching the fire take hold. The family chatter seemed to fade into the background, the crackle of the fire drawing a private circle around them.
“So,” he said after a while, his voice low. “DC guy. The YouTube famous one. He treatin’ you right?”
The question was so direct it winded her. She stared into the flames. “It’s complicated.”
Lawrence snorted softly. “Complicated. That’s what people say when it’s bad but they don’t wanna admit it.”
Anger, hot and sudden, flashed in her chest. “You don’t know anything about it, Lawrence.”
“I know you’re here. And he’s not.” He picked up a twig, tossed it into the fire. “I know you look… tired. Not bad tired. Just… carrying something heavy tired.”
His perception was disarming. She was tired. Soul-tired.
“Life is heavy sometimes,” she said finally.
“It doesn’t have to be.” He shifted, turning to face her more fully. The firelight carved planes into his face. “You used to laugh so hard you’d snort. Remember? At, like, the dumbest stuff. I miss that laugh.”
The ghost of her past self felt like a different person. A girl who didn’t know about studios shrouded in silence, about empty rooftops, about the specific weight of a loss that wasn’t death but felt like a kind of dying.
“People change,” she whispered.
“Some things don’t have to.” His hand moved then, covering hers where it rested on the cool grass. His palm was broad, warm, slightly rough. It was a possessive, claiming gesture. “Simple can be good, Lexi. You can have a simple, good life. Right here.”
His touch felt wrong. It wasn’t aggressive, but it was presumptuous. It was an answer to a question she hadn’t asked. A solution to a problem he didn’t understand. This simplicity he offered—the dealership job, the backyard BBQs, the familiar, unchallenging arms—it felt like a beautifully wrapped box full of nothing. It felt like giving up.
She looked at their joined hands, then at his earnest, hopeful face in the flickering light. The momentum of the moment built, a pressure to accept this easy out, to fold herself back into a past where things were uncomplicated.
Slowly, firmly, she pulled her hand away.
“I built a fire, Lawrence,” she said, her voice clear and quiet, carrying over the crackle of the wood. “Not a bridge.”
She stood up, brushing grass from her jeans. The confused hurt in his eyes was immediate, but she didn’t stay to decipher it. She walked back toward the house, toward the light and the noise of her family, the decision settling inside her with a firm, final clarity. The quiet in D.C. was a problem to be faced, not a reason to run. She had built something there, too, however fractured it was now. And you don’t walk away from something you built just because the night got cold.
She had a plane ticket back for tomorrow. For the first time since she’d used it to flee, she was actually looking forward to using it to return.