Love Never Fails

Chapter 5: Dara

Travel alone.

Seriously.

Never travel with anybody else. It's a nightmare. Particularly if that someone is your stupid sister. Go on your own, have fun, make sure nobody, including blood relatives, ruin your days off.

These have had to be the worst five hours and forty five minutes of my life. And I haven't even been able to pick the music, which is worse.

Well, no, what's worse is that I'm going to have to share the room with these two "lovebirds" for the next... Ugh. Week. Why did I have to agree to go this early to the convention! I should have stayed at home with my parents, come bere on Thursday, leave on Sunday, done. Forget headaches.

Long story short, guess who opened up Pandora's Box while Jon was driving. I really don't know how she can be that thick. I really don't. There's plenty of good situations and times where you can tactfully test the waters, prepare the setting, perhaps cook a nice meal, and then, over a glass of wine, maybe ask nonchalantly in a hypothetical setting a big "what if" question. And if it goes well —and only if it goes well— tentatively press a little further until you do open the box if and only when there are clear good chances of it being considered for success.

Instead, my sister decided to open her particular closet while Jon was at the wheel. Sister! Please! Your poor husband had just come from work and had had nothing to eat. He's basically got back from work, changed clothes and started driving. Besides, this is not a short trip, we're stuck here for quite a few hours... AND I'M AT THE BACK OF THE FREAKING CAR! Was there really no better place, or if anything, a place a little bit more private, to discuss your epiphany about how you have just found out you want destroy your husband's lifetime aspirations by spawning children?

Sorry, that was mean. Those "spawned children" —if they ever happen— would be my nephews and/or nieces and I'd love them unconditionally as their uncle. But at this moment it looks like Armageddon is going to be much closer than I anticipated.

My sister comes after she checks in. I'm sitting on a couch at the lobby of the hotel. "We're in room 587," she says, handing me a card key for the room. Which I take. "We're... Going to talk." Her face is a funeral.

Mine is a furnace. I'm mad she's this stupid. And I'm mad she's put me in the middle again. I've got plenty of other issues to worry about. She should be the adult. Not me. Well, me too, I'm twenty-three, but she... Ugh. You know what I mean.

"It's OK. I'll be around here at the restaurant. I don't know... probably getting drunk, getting some tattoos, getting high on drugs and watching..." I look at the TVs spread in the lounge area of the bar. It's all football. Ugh. "The game. Whatever." I roll my eyes. Am I behaving as a moody teenager? Yes. I am. You got yourself deep into this, sis. And brought me into the mud. Don't expect me to be happy.

She looks down, disappointed. Probably at herself more than anyone else. "I'm sorry, Dara, but this is also not easy for me. I'll come back later OK?" She holds Jon's hand, who's furious face only rivals mine, but knows they have to sort this out somehow, and they leave for the room.

I growl. I'm mad. I'm frustrated. And I'm in the middle of freaking nowhere, wanting to punch somebody's face. My sister's? Maybe. I can't even go to bed and scream into a pillow because my bedroom is four hundred and fifty-one kilometres away. And the closest thing to my pillow today will be on a foldable bed in my sister's room.

But I can't let her go like this. Call me naive, but as mad as I am, as soon as I see them leave the lobby I get up and go after them. "Sis!" They're waiting for the elevator. Both turn around. "I love you, OK?" She smiles. "Both, of you. I'm mad, and you need to sort this out. But I love you."