[Dawn]
I nod but don’t say anything. Aldo nods but doesn’t say anything. Suddenly everything I was thinking this morning, silly games of ‘are we together’ or ‘are we not’, seems just exactly that. Silly. I feel comfortable being in the cab with Aldo.
He’s big and muscular. No one wants to mess with guys who are big and muscly. Even other muscly guys, I’m guessing, don’t like messing with other muscly guys. I don’t even want to imagine what it’d be like to get punched by one of these men. Let alone fight them. The two in the car didn’t look as big as Aldo, but they were driving past at sixty miles an hour…
We’re cruising along the highway by the time I come back. And I’ve had a change of heart. Five minutes ago, I believed in thinking that what I was thinking this morning was silly, but current me doesn’t think so. I’ve calmed down from our pull over experiment and want to know what Aldo thinks of us. It’s fantastic timing, I know, but I feel like we should discuss it…
If not the kiss, at least the sex. The sex was absolutely mind blowing. I look at Aldo slumped over the steering wheel, his body taut and muscles bulging under his little jacket. He wore things to be comfortable in the car, yet I feel like he wore things to show off his muscles. Is this how comfortable Aldo makes me feel? We’ve just confirmed to our own paranoid brains that we’re being followed, and within ten minutes I can be day dreaming over him? Seems it’s the case-
“So I got a text last night,” Aldo begins.
My mind goes blank. I freeze up and my heart clenches, what text?
“From Andre.”
Oh. Him. My heart relaxes. It’s fine. But I suppose we’ve had to discuss Andre at some point too. Not that I really want to…
“How is he?” he asks me.
My eyebrows do a dance of surprise; the reaction makes him chuckle. “Shouldn’t I be the one asking you? He lives with you.”
Aldo nods. “I know, I just mean maybe he mentioned more things to you.”
‘I think you’re the one he’s most honest with.”
Aldo errs now. He goes to talk and then shrugs. “I don’t think so. Not anymore, at least. Did he tell you about moving north?”
“Well, he moved north with Leah,” I say, my gesturing in the air like that reason in itself was questionable. Maybe the better explanation would be that he escaped north.
“Of course.” Aldo ticks it off. “I also know he found your mother’s accident pretty overwhelming.”
“We all did.” I fold my arms. The understatement of the year has just been made.
“I know how difficult it was for you.” Aldo reaches over and takes my hand.
I look down at the gesture. Suddenly remembering how his mom had cared for me at that difficult time, Kendall Andretti was a gem of a person.
“I don’t think he meant it the way it may have happened, though,” Aldo offers.
I take my hand away. How else does a brother disappearing after our mother has a near fatal stroke come off? “I think he did.” I sigh, and remove my hand. “I know Andre is your best-friend. I know you guys have history, and that is what is hard for us-But Mom’s accident just gave him an excuse to leave. He was already wanting to jump ship.”
Aldo chews his lips. He obviously thinks otherwise.
“It did affect him,” Aldo finally admits. “He just didn’t know how to express it.”
“Which is much of Andre’ life,” I say.
“Why’re you so harsh on him?”
“Why are you so easy?” I huff. “Look, I’m happy to see Andre. I’m happy he’s back and that he came and saw Mom and everything, but you gotta understand Aldo, for us-for me. He left. Period.
He’d call mom, and he kept in touch with her that way. But for me, he’s barely kept in contact. He’s barely made an effort. I spent my whole life being considerate of him, considerate of a person who doesn’t give it back.
He left to move up north with Leah, a girl he’d known for all of a month. Mom’s stroke was just his way out.”
My rant has spilled out from a depth I didn’t even know I had. All this anger at Andre has been stored away in the depths of my heart.
I guess it needed to get some light someday…
“Do you feel better?” Aldo asks.
I look sideways at him. “I feel pissed off.”
“But do you feel better, knowing you’re pissed off at Andre?”
I purse my lips. “What the hell trick is this?”
Aldo smiles slightly, a small thing that is so endearing. Like it’s just a little trait just for me. “I’ve always known you were angry with him. I completely understand too. I think, well, I guess your anger stopped you from making the effort too.”
I open my mouth to speak, and Aldo continues on.
“But he also knew how shit of a move he did. He knows he fucked up. Bad. Which is why I think something is wrong now.
Something happened up north which he won’t tell me about. Not that I’m his diary or something, I just know when he’s not being completely honest about things.”
“Andre is a big boy. I’m sure he can figure it out.”
That stops our conversation. I think Aldo has realized that me and Andre aren’t exactly a thrilling conversation piece. He’s right, I do have too much anger toward Andre. But I’m justified in my anger. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the only place I want to be with him at the moment.
What kind of coward leaves his paralyzed older mother and younger sister to fend for themselves?
What kind of man uses his lack of fatherly influence to justify his leaving? I didn’t have a father either, but I took care of mom.
This is why I have anger toward Andre, and it irritates me that it’s stopping Aldo from being with me.
I suppose he just hasn’t turned his back on Aldo yet like he did on us.