Love in Slow Motion

3. Reed

3 REED

As soon as I open the door and see Chase on the other side, I slam it again.

“Reed!” he shouts from the other side. “Come on! I know you’re mad at me, but I need your help.”

Mad at him. He thinks I’m mad at him. I imagine “mad” as a subatomic particle, the tiniest piece of matter that exists in the universe. What I feel toward my brother is an atomic bomb. If detonated, it could destroy entire towns. “Mad” is laughable.

I stare at the door and sip my coffee. “You must have me mistaken for a person who gives a shit. Have you tried calling Sabrina?”

“Yes, actually,” he says through the door. “And she agreed to help me. But I need everybody in on this one.”

I continue to stare at the door. It doesn’t have a peephole, thank God. I don’t want to see my brother’s little rat face all distorted through the glass. He’s clown enough without all that spectacle piled on top.

“I’m not helping you with anything, Chase. Go home.” I turn away from the door. I’ve spent too much of my life trying to help my brother, bending over backward to make sure he had everything he wanted, and what did he do?

He threw away a marriage to the best person in the world. He had everything he could have ever wanted in life, and he fucked around until he lost everything. And I don’t feel bad for him. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Leaving my door chain firmly intact, I head into my bedroom and get ready for my meeting. Standing in the mirror, I roll up my sleeves. I can’t keep my eyes from wandering over to the picture frame on my wall. The entire Lynch family, all together for Thanksgiving five years ago. College-aged Quinn and Chase smile back at me, so happy, so optimistic about life.

I wonder how she is, if I should reach out. I’ve started a text to her at least three hundred times since Chase told me they were splitting up. But what would I even say? Sorry, my brother is a piece of shit. I don’t suppose you want to run away with me instead?

I run my fingers through my short hair and stick my wallet in my back pocket on my way to the door. A glance at the clock tells me I’m going to get there right on time, which sort of irks me. I like to arrive early. I like the moments before the storm.

With that lovely thought in my mind, I open my door to leave and trip over something.

“Fuck!” a voice that isn’t mine says as I stumble and smack into the wall across the hall. Chase is sitting on the ground in front of my door, cross-legged like he’s getting ready to recite his alphabet in a kindergarten class. He glares up at me. “You can’t look before you step out your door?”

“What the hell are you still doing here? Go the fuck home, Chase.”

He scrambles to his feet, and I push past him to lock my door. The last thing I need is him squatting in my apartment while I’m at work. I head down the hallway to the elevators, but I can hear his footsteps behind me.

“Reed, you can’t ignore me forever. I’m your family.”

I spin around, and he smashes into my chest. I hold firm, and he bounces off of me. Chase might be a smidge taller than I am, but he’s a lot scrawnier. “Quinn was your family, okay?”

Chase stands to his full height, crossing his arms. “Look, I get that you’re pissed, but what’s the big deal? It’s my life I ruined, my wife I lost. What does any of it even have to do with you? People cheat on their wives all the time.”

If he thinks he’s making a case for himself, he’s sorely mistaken. I don’t answer him, mostly because I think he sounds like an idiot, but also because if I keep fighting him on this, he’s going to figure out that I’ve been in love with his wife for five years.

Ex-wife .

I put the date on my phone calendar. They completed their mediation today. All they have to do is wait for the ink to dry, and they’re done.

I continue to the elevator. But while I’m waiting for it, Chase hovers around me like a fly. “Would you hear me out?”

“No.”

I step into the elevator, but much to my chagrin, he steps in with me. When the doors close, I see the smug expression on his face in the reflection off the elevator door. He glances over at where the button for the lobby is lit up. He’s clearly calculating how much time he has before the doors open again and I can escape.

“Here’s the thing,” Chase says, “Mom has upped the price if we go to the lake house. $500,000. I know you don’t care about the money, but I really need it. Mom says she’ll only give me the money if I convince everyone to go. That means you and Sabrina. I know you hate me, and I know you have no reason to do anything for me, but I’m your brother, and I’m begging you.”

“Absolutely not.” I’m not about to go stay at the lake house with him just to make him even richer than he already is. Mom had to have known there was no way I was going to show up. I don’t know what she thought she was going to accomplish with this, but it doesn’t matter. Because I’m not going.

The elevator doors slide open, and I take a step out, but Chase appears in front of me, blocking my way. “What do you want from me, Reed? I’ll do anything, I swear.”

I shove past him, out into the lobby where I send Jackson at the front desk a dirty look. It’s his job to keep people like Chase away from our doors. Just because Chase is my family doesn’t mean Jackson can sleep on the job.

“If you won’t do it for me, will you do it for Quinn?”

I slow to a stop, feet from the door to the street. On the other side, people walk by on the sidewalk. Without turning around, I say, “What does Quinn have to do with this?”

He knows he’s got me. I can feel it in the way the air shifts, can hear it in the slow, measured way that he approaches me now that he knows I’m not going anywhere. He steps up beside me. “Mom and Sabrina think we’re still married. You’re the only person I told about the divorce. If we want the money, everybody has to come to the lake house, even Quinn.”

I’m the only person he told about the divorce. It wasn’t by choice. He didn’t have anywhere to stay that first night after Quinn kicked him out of their house and he showed up on my doorstep, asking if he could sleep on my couch.

I let him stay a week, but only because I didn’t know why Quinn kicked him out. It wasn’t until I caught him sending nudes to some random woman in the middle of the night that I put two and two together and left his shit in the hallway while he was out.

“And Quinn agreed to this?” There’s no way Quinn thought this was a good idea. It’s true that she’s always enjoyed going to the lake house in the summer—which I only know because Sabrina always texted me when she got back to the city to tell me what a great time I missed out on. But there’s no way Quinn would put herself through that.

Chase shrugs. “She went from having a man providing for her 24-7 to having no source of income. I know how much that house costs. She needs the money.” He says it with a tilt to his mouth, like he’s bragging.

Look, I love my brother, but ever since I found out he was fucking around on Quinn, I’ve sort of wanted him dead.

And then his words sink in.

Quinn already agreed. Quinn is going to the lake house. And she won’t be married to my brother anymore.

“Okay, I’ll go.”

Chase’s face changes, lighting up like I told him he won the lottery. This certainly does seem like a lot of work on his part for half a million dollars. But at the end of the day, I don’t care why he needs the money. All I care about is getting to that lake house and seeing Quinn.

And this time, I’m not leaving without her.