Chapter 3 (Skylar)

I forced my weighted eyes to open only to be blinded by shining rays of morning light. My head pounded like the sound of a drum getting louder and louder every second. I pulled the blankets back over my head. God, I hoped I hadn't made a fool of myself last night. Bits and pieces of recollection floated around my brain, but the pieces wouldn't fit the puzzle. Parker. I couldn't stop wondering where he was. Did he take me home? My phone read 5 voicemails, all from Brendan. "Skylar, it's me again, just making sure you got in alright. Call me." There was a sense of comfort in his voice, almost like my mom was checking in on me except Brendan. My mom, however, was nothing like any of the people here. Granted, she was a great mother to me, but my mother was different. She was quiet and shy, never one to speak up or speak her mind. I loved her greatly despite her weaknesses. My father was hard on her, he was hard on all of us, my younger sister the most. I missed them, still. As dysfunctional as they were, they truly supported everything I did and I was grateful for that. My thoughts brought tiny tears to my eyes as I lay in my bed wrapped up in a mess of sheets and blankets. A knock on the door startled me right out of my cocoon. I debated whether I should of pretended I wasn't home or just opened the door. Another knock. Fine. I hurried and opened it before there'd be another one. "I thought you would need this," Brendan gestured to the cup of Starbucks coffee in his hand. I exhaled,"You thought right." I led him to my doll house sized table and sat down with my coffee. I gave him a "how bad was I?" look, just waiting for him to tell me how much of a clown I was. He laughed with a toothy grin and shook his head. "You met my friend, Parker." What a small world, I thought. I was only there for a few weeks and already New York was swallowing me whole. "You know him?" I intrigued. His face became much more serious. His eyes were droopy and tired looking. "The Sin Claires’ and my family go way back, actually, we used to spend summers at their beach house in Thailand." Brendan never brought his family up around me. He resented them for the way they neglected to spend time with him after his sister’s death. That was the first story I heard about brendan when I got to New York. My second night there it was storming tremendously. the sky was a dark black-blue, dimly lit by the continuous strike of lightning overhead. I ran into the nearest hotel clutching a soggy newspaper over my head in a pathetic attempt to stay dry. The hotel bar was the first thing I had looked at. Brendan was the second. He had been wearing a pinstriped suit that looked awkward on his lanky body. His blonde hair was greased back in a messy fashion. He stood out to me, he was alone. There wasn’t a single person in the bar besides him and the bartender who would fill his drink up every 5 or so minutes. I sauntered over from the puddle on the floor I had made with my soaking wet clothing to the bar. I tried not to make my staring obvious, but he was intensely fascinating. He had a single, greasy piece of hair dangling in his face as he drooped in his seat. Defeated. That was the word that came to my head the minute I saw his face. His eyes were drained, almost as if he wasn’t entirely there. I wanted to say hello-for some reason, his composure pulled me in. I wanted to know who he was, what his story was. He finally glanced up at me, making eye contact with my matching set of wearied eyes. I must’ve not been as intriguing as he was to me, I thought, as he went back to his half-filled drink. The bartender, who now noticed me, hurried over to where I was sitting, 2 seats down from the mysterious stranger. I blankly asked for a diet coke that she brought 2 minutes later. “You’re drinking a soda on a night like this?” he ridiculed. His voice was light and honeyed. He was much younger than I had pictured him to be. My guess would be that he was merely a couple years younger than me, a senior in college at the most. "Excuse my bad manners, but you look like you need something stronger than a soda," he implied. Saying he caught me off guard would have been an understatement. I was astonished, speechless. The silence between us felt a thousand years long. I tried to speak up, but nothing came to mind. I watched the stranger gesture for the bartender to bring him another drink. To my surprise, he pushed the glassware filled with the copper colored alcohol right in front of me. He smiled, "this ones on me." I stared at my soda then the alcohol, debating my next move. "I suppose it won't hurt," I shrugged as I took a sip. My tongue went sour and my taste buds cried for help. The tang of the alcohol slithered down my throat making me gag. It was obvious I wasn't much of a drinker. I wiped my mouth and laughed. "I'm Skylar." He stood up from his seat and took the one right next to me. "I'm Brendan." We spent the rest of the night downing half full glasses of whiskey and talking like this wasn't the first time we had met. Back and forth, sharing stories from our childhoods. It was when I told a story about my younger sister, that he told me about his. Brendan's family consisted of his father, a big CEO of some popular tire company, his mother, a divorce attorney, him, his younger sister, and his older brother. His older brother, Christian, was twenty-seven, 6 years older than Brendan. He lived in Arizona with his wife and daughter, isolated from his family by his own choice. I never knew what exactly happened between the two, only that Christian loathed the way money ran through his family like blood. Brendan's parents had money like they grew it on trees in their own backyard. Always buying anything and everything their kids wanted. The only thing their money couldn't do was save their daughter. Juliana was her name and she was 10 years old when she passed away from leukemia. Brendan described her battle as depressing and lonely. His mother and father could not bear to watch their only daughter suffer the way she did. Behind hospital curtains, they got her the most credited doctors and any treatment they recommended, but their efforts were defeated when she slipped into a brain dead coma. Brendan was 15 when she died. He told me that was the breaking point for his family, that it was equivalent to a natural disaster for the Caldwells. Instead of being together, each one of them became a stranger to one another, only speaking when absolutely necessary. He didn't see too much of his parents after that, only quick visits between business trips. It was hard to relate to such a tragedy. I’d never gone through any of the difficulties Brendan endured. My family was My father, a correction officer, my mother, an elementary school teacher, my younger sister, and me. My sister was ten years younger than me, she was 16 years old. My family and I lived cordially in a small house in the suburbs of Chicago. My mother gave me her silky, dark brown hair that I parted down the middle. Green eyes from my father and his porcelain pale skin. We were a typical white middle class family; we ate dinner together every night. My family, however, lacked depth. We each played our parts well. I was the intelligent, do-gooder of the family. Confident, but still small. My sister was a complete opposite. She shared my father’s black hair and my mother’s deep brown eyes. Her nose was small and every time she laughed, it would crinkle up in an adorable little girl way. She wasn’t an angel. Karrie was outgoing and daring. Never one to back down from anything no matter what the consequences were. When I was 18, she broke her arm because the boys at school dared her to jump off the roof of our house. My dad was so angry, his face blushed the darkest shade of red I had ever seen visible on a face. My mother said he looked like he had been sunburned really bad. She had her comedic moments. All the reminiscing made me lose all focus on Brendan. I did this a lot. Sometimes my head seemed like a safer place to be than reality. “I’m sorry, what?” I stuttered, trying to recall what he was saying. He chuckled a sincere laugh and smiled. “Will I ever be able to keep your attention for longer than five minutes?” Brendan joked. I shrugged my shoulders. Probably not. “As I was saying, I’ve known Parker for a while, we’ve never been too close, I would never refer to him as a best friend, but a good friend he was,” he went on, “He helped you when you started to stumble and walked you to the town car. My driver took you home and managed to get you from the car to your apartment. And now here you are. I told you you’d live like you were rich.” I was still shocked that I had seen him after we bumped into each other on the street. I cringed at the flutter feeling in my stomach. "What's he like?" I asked. I was trying not to sound overly interested, not wanting to come off as creepy. "He's quiet, doesn't really talk much. He used to be crazy, there wasn't a day where he wasn't drunk." I didn't understand. There was so many contradicting traits about this guy. The way he was witty and charming, but dark and mysterious at the same time. I knew nothing about him yet he was all that swarmed my thoughts. "What changed?" Brendan leaned in his chair, slumping his lanky body. "His dad passed away, he never knew his mom, so he had to live alone and start running his fathers company." It felt impersonal hearing all of this from Brendan and not Parker. I was wondering why I felt that Parker should have been the one to tell me all of this, I questioned why it felt like I had known him longer than two days. I nodded my head and looked away. I felt different. Not good and not bad either, just different. There was an almost wondrous feeling in the pit of my stomach, as if I felt something was coming. Brendan and I finished our coffees and said goodbye to each other. I hurried to the shower and cranked the water to hot. Steam filled the tiny bathroom and opened my pores. The refreshing water splashed my chilling skin. Closing my eyes, I let the shower pull me into a deep trance.