The lingering haze of smoke from the numerous lit cigarettes in the mouths and hands of most the bar patrons was starting to burn Christian’s eyes. Pressing his thumb and forefinger in the corners of his eyes, he squeezed the bridge of his nose, hoping the burning sensation would go away. Christian was all for just going back to Michael’s house to receive his weekly ass whipping at pool, but Michael insisted that they come to McLaughlin’s, so they could drink beer, hang out with normal people, and “speak as men speak,” a phrase Michael stole from their father.
In the four games they’d played, Christian had the privilege of having a total of four turns. “We need to find a new game.”
Michael cracked another solid colored ball into the hole. “No.” Picking up his cigarette out of it’s ashtray holder, he took a final drag before ashing it out. “So are you going to start talking about why you look like someone’s run over your dog, or am I going to have to beat it out of you?” Picking up his pool cue, he punched another ball into a corner pocket. “Because only one of us is allowed to have a crisis at a time, and at the moment, it’s my turn.”
Christian sighed. One of the pitfalls of working in their father’s Senate office together is that hiding anything from his older brother was impossible. The two, while they often fought, worked together on most projects, and when one of them was off, it made for a frustrating day at the office. “Ellie’s not talking to me.” Ellie was his best friend since kindergarten and his roommate for the past three years. They shared a townhouse over in Foggy Bottom, and did everything together.
“Really?” Michael asked.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t think you two knew how to fight with each other.”
Christian dragged a hand over his face. The sarcastic tone wasn’t lost on him, but lately, Christian had been letting it slide. He and his wife, Katie, finalized their divorce today. It was a media spectacle because of who their father was, and their failed marriage just added to the list of the many infidelities that the Chambers men managed to commit. Some believed that it was a curse, and often times, magazines ran with that headline. A political family going back four generations, the Chambers men was almost more notorious for their philandering ways than their politics. Christian feared this curse.
Michael propped his pool cue against the wall after sinking the 8-ball. Grabbing his beer off the table, he leaned against the mahogany edge of the pool table. “What happened?” he asked.
Christian shook his head. “She…she just…there’s a line with us, and we never cross it. We just don’t. But last night, she just…I mean, it’s not an actual line…but now there’s no line, because she crossed the line, and we’re not talking.”
“Um, Christian?”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe you could rephrase that in understandable and intelligible English, so I know what the problem is,” Michael said.
Christian didn’t understand what he said either. Maybe it was a good thing then, when he said nothing at all last night, he thought. Words would have just made it worse. “She crossed the line.”
“I still don’t get it, but I’ll think about it while I go get another beer,” Michael said. “You want one?”
He shook his head no. He didn’t really like beer anyways. But Christian didn’t want to hear Michael make fun of him for not only ordering a Manhattan, but drinking one in a pub. Forcing one bottle of the bitter tasting liquid down his throat was enough for now. As Michael made his way through the bar, packed with fans who were watching the Orioles game that was broadcasted on every television the bar, Christian used the wall behind him, leaning against it and closing his eyes. Ellie’s words from last night kept echoing over and over again in his head. It’s about one moment—this moment—and if you can’t just let go and do what you’re reptilian brain is telling you to do then…Jesus, Christian, I don’t even want to know you!
“Penny for your thoughts?”
Jumping at the sound of her voice, Christian opened his eyes and clapped a hand over his chest. It was his older sister, Hannah, with a grin on her face. “Christ, Hannah! Wear a bell, will ya?”
She laughed. Dropping her black and pink tote on the ground, she pulled over an empty stool. Hannah was Michael’s twin, and had been playing the mom role ever since their own mother passed away when Christian was four. Hannah and Michael were thirteen. Their parents had divorced two years beforehand. “Is Michael here?”
He motioned towards the bar with his hand. “Getting another beer. I didn’t think you’d stop by tonight.”
“Why? Because Michael wants to kill me?”
Christian nodded. “He was pissed as hell after lunch.”
Hannah rolled her eyes. “He’ll get over it.” Leaning over, she picked up her tote and set it in her lap. Christian watched as she dug around through the treasure trove of a bag. She had two little boys at home, so the contents of her tote were endless. Her husband compared it to Mary Poppins’ bag, because she always seemed to have everything. Christian envied his sister and how she managed to have her career as a lawyer as well as having a successful relationship with her husband and caring for her family. She was the only one in their family that managed to have a normal life. Pulling out two photos, Hannah handed them to Christian.
Staring at the odd black and white pictures with its wavy lines and blurred focus, it took him a minute to realize that they were sonogram pictures. “Wow,” he said. Pointing towards the small speck in the center, he nudged Hannah. “Is that the baby?”
“Yep,” she said, patting the barely there bump on her stomach. “In a month or so, we can tell what the sex is. But you know how Scott is. He collects these things like trading cards to show the guys at work, so after my appointment with Michael, he came with me to my appointment and the doctor took some pictures for him. Of course, I did pass these around the room at the PTO meeting before I came over here and—”
“You!”
Christian and Hannah looked up as Michael approached them, a beer in his hand. “You really want to make a scene here?” Hannah asked, taking back her pictures from Christian.
“You screwed me with my pants on!” Michael yelled. “The whole point of hiring you was so that minimal damage would be done to my bank account! Now, I’m going to be paying alimony out the ass for the next five years!”
Christian watched as Hannah stared at Michael with disbelief. “First of all,” she said, “I told you that I didn’t want to represent you and I did the best I could. Second, you got off easy because she could have gotten everything thanks to that awful pre-nup you had drawn up, but lucky for you, Katie still has some compassion left in regards to you. Third, keep in mind how much you hate paying alimony the next time you get the urge to screw your secretary and fourth, look at these.”
Michael took the sonogram pictures that Hannah handed to him. Staring at them, he squinted his eyes, moving the pictures far from his face, then up close. “What am I looking for?”
“Waldo,” Hannah said. Christian bit his lips together to keep from laughing.
“I love how you think you’re funny,” Michael said. “Wiseass.” He flipped the photos back towards her. “Point to where I should be looking at.”
Hannah helped him out. Michael stared at the pictures for a moment, smiling a little before handing them back. “I’m sure that once I meet him or her in person, it’ll be as cute as its mother.” Taking a drink of his new beer, he set it on the table. “But I’m still pissed at you.”
“I’ll live,” Hannah said. “But I’m sacrificing the wellbeing of my child for one night to listen to you two wallow, so someone better start talking. And when I say someone, I mean you, Christian. I already know Michael’s problem.”
Christian slouched down a bit, still using the wall as a backrest. Pulling at his necktie, he loosened the knot that took him forever to tie that morning and sighed. Ellie usually tied his ties in the morning, but she wasn’t there when he woke up. “Ellie had a date last night, but he didn’t show up. So she came back to the house and she was upset, so I hugged her and told her that he didn’t deserve her anyways. I mean, who would stand up Ellie?”
Hannah gave his arm a squeeze. “That was nice of you to make her feel better.”
“Don’t mommy him,” Michael said. “You and Ellie are like a married couple, without the benefits, and it’s disgusting.”
“Why do you have to be so…well, you, in general?” Hannah asked as Christian picked at the label on his beer bottle, tearing off pieces of the metallic paper one shred at a time. “Christian, what happened after that?”
He shook his head, staring across the way at the neon Budweiser lamp that glowed against the wood paneled walls. “She…she just stared at me for a second, and then she leaned in and kissed—”
“She kissed you!” Michael exclaimed.
Hannah dropped her head in her hands as Christian stared at his brother. “I said she crossed the line, Michael. What in the hell did you think I meant?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “It’s why I went and got a beer. She kissed you?”
“Yes.”
“With her tongue?”
“Michael Andrew Chambers!” Hannah hissed. “How is that even relevant? She kissed him, and that’s all you need to know!”
Michael vehemently shook his head no. “Every kiss has a meaning behind it. Is it a hello kiss? A goodbye kiss? Is it a honey-I’ve-had-a-bad-day-at-work kiss, or is it an I-wanna-jump-your-bones kiss?”
Christian and Hannah both stared at Michael as if he’d grown a third head. Christian tried to come up with something to say, but he couldn’t. So instead, he dropped his head on the table, and began to repeat the motion over and over again. Hannah, however, was never at a loss for words. “You’re an idiot.”
Grinning, Michael took another drink. “Coming from you, I’m taking that as a compliment.”
Hitting his head on the table one last time, Christian kept it there, wishing that the ground would open up and swallow him whole. That’s the only thing that could make him feel better at this moment—disappearing forever.
“Christian, sweetie,” Hannah said. “As much as I feel for you right now, you’ve got to pick your head off of that table. God only knows what kind of germs are on it.” He reluctantly picked his head up, leaning back against the wall. “Thank you.”
He swallowed hard, trying to regain some kind of coherent thought. Staring at his brother, Christian watched as he walked to the pool table, picking up one of the striped balls and tossing it to himself. “Can I ask you a question?”
Michael caught the ball and held it in his hand. “Me? Sure. Ask away.”
“Do you regret marrying Katie?”
Scratching his chin, Michael shook his head no. “I loved her,” he said as he rolled the ball between his hands. “I mean, I still do. Probably always will. I regret the shit she had to go through while divorcing me, with the media and the magazines, but I’d marry her again if I had the choice.” He dropped the ball back on the table. “Of course, I can’t say that I wouldn’t cheat on her again, but that’s because I’m an asshole.”
Hannah shook her head and sighed. “Michael…”
“What?” he asked, laughing a little. “At least I’ll admit it, which is more than Dad ever did.”
“I’ll give you that,” Hannah said. “But I still love you.”
Michael laughed. “Good. Because Katie won the house today, and I need a place to stay.”
“I’m sure the boys would be happy to share their bunk beds with Uncle Michael.”
Christian laughed at his sister. He loved how she took pleasure in bating Michael to fight with her. Hannah lived in a seven bedroom manor in Alexandria, making sharing a room with her boys an absurd notion at best. But she still says it just to see what kind of reaction it’ll get out of Michael. Bickering might be their way of life in regards to each other, but Christian also knew the lengths that Michael would go to protect Hannah. He felt the same way about Ellie, only it wasn’t in an uber-protective brother kind of way. “I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt her.”
His words caught Hannah and Michael’s attention. “Ellie?” Michael asked.
“Yeah,” Christian replied.
“Who says you’d hurt her?” Hannah asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “History. Fidelity, as Michael pointed out, isn’t exactly something that men in this family are good at.”
Michael finished off his beer. “But you and Ellie are different,” he said. “You two have been attached at the hip for the past twenty years. No Chambers man has ever been connected with a woman in any kind of capacity for that amount of time. It could very well be a record.” He walked around the table and clapped his hands on Christian’s shoulders. “If she loves you, and you love her back, everything else will fall into place.”
“But you loved Katie,” Christian argued.
“Katie wasn’t meant for life in a fishbowl,” Michael said. “Ellie, on the other hand, understands it. She’s grown up with it, because you two do everything together. Ellie understands that it’s a permanent part of your life, and she’s ok with it.”
Hannah leaned down, pulling a bottle of water out of her bag. “I agree with Michael,” she said before taking a drink. “And you know how much I hate it when that happens.”
Rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, he yanked at his neck tie, pulling down the knot even further. It wasn’t ever a question of whether or not he loved Ellie, because he did. He just chose to not acknowledge it because he feared it would complicate their relationship. If he had to make a choice of keeping his feelings inside box or telling her everything, with the possible outcome of them not being friends anymore, he’d pick the box.
But now it was out there, and Ellie felt the same way. At least, he assumed she did, seeing how she initiated the kiss. He’d been kicking himself all day long for not saying anything back to her afterwards. She stared at him too, waiting for a response, and when he said nothing, Christian realized he accomplished the one thing he never wanted to do, and that was hurt her.
“I love her,” he said.
Michael laughed. “What was that? I didn’t hear you.”
“I love her,” Christian repeated. Hopping off the barstool, he felt a renewed sense of energy for a moment, before reality smacked him back down. “But she’s not talking to me. How am I going to tell her if she’s not talking to me?” He dragged both hands through his hair so hard that he could feel his forehead stretch backwards.
“Before you spontaneous combust,” Michael said. “How about you turn around and tell me who you see by the door.”
Turning around, he saw Ellie flashing her ID at the door. From the back of the bar, he watched as she tucked her ID in her back jean pocket while scanning the room, looking for him. At least, he assumed she was looking for him. Swimming in an old grey shirt with a faded maroon HARVARD print on the front that she stole from him a few years back, he watched as she haphazardly collected her long brown hair in one hand and quickly wrapped it up in a sloppy bun, securing it with a hair elastic from her wrist.
Waking away from his siblings, he maneuvered around the people still playing pool and jogged down the steps that separated the pool area from the rest of the bar. Pushing past the bar patrons, trying to nudge and bump people as little as possible, he walked up behind her. As he got ready to tap her shoulder, she turned around.
“How did you know I was behind you?” he asked.
Ellie tucked a loose strand of hair back behind her ear. “I always know.” Crossing her arms protectively over her chest, she stared down at the dirty hardwood floor, then up at the ceiling before looking at him again. “Christian…I’m sor—”
He held a hand up. “No. Don’t say it. I’m not sorry. I mean, I’m
sorry I didn’t saying last night, but that’s just because I’m an idiot.” He took a step closer. “I’m not good at relationships.”
Ellie cracked a wry smile. “I know.”
“And you scare me,” he confessed. “And you’re going to have to tell me when I’m being an idiot, or when I’m being stupid, because I don’t want to be like my father, or like Michael because…I love you.”
He waited for what felt like an eternity for a response. But the more she stared at him, her face completely blank, the more he started to panic. He went to say something, to retract his statement, but she beat him. “Good.”
“Good?” he asked. “I pour my heart out and all I get is ‘good’?”
“I was just going to tell you that I was sorry for calling your brain ‘reptilian’,” she said, smiling again. “But I love you too.” Yanking on his tie, she pulled him down and kissed him only this time, Christian kissed her back
