“While my talents are immeasurable, I don’t have the power to save her from halfway across the city,” Connor says. “And our relationship is a bit different from yours.”
“That’s an understatement, I think.”
He smiles. “Yes, it is.” He closes the folder. “What I mean to say is that I’m trying not to be afraid for her. Since we were teenagers, she has always looked to me for reassurance, even if she won’t admit it. I’m her…rock.” He stares off as he finds the right words. “The…unwavering thing. Confident, poised, unrelenting and annoyingly persuasive. If she sees that I’m frightened, she’ll gloat on the outside, as though I lost a round of chess, but internally she’ll begin to question herself. And I don’t particularly like when Rose loses her confidence and becomes less self-assured. She’s more vulnerable, and it breaks my heart.”
This is brand new honesty for Connor Cobalt, no insults hidden beneath the words. It’s just…the truth, from the soul. I kind of like it.
“Do you love her?” I ask, returning the action figure and taking a seat on the couch.
He flips the folder back open and reads the contract in his brisk, super-human manner, turning the page faster than I can read a magazine on a toilet. “Love is irrelative to some.” He dodges my question with a strange answer. As he concentrates on the contract, he begins closing the door on his brief openness.
I squint at him as I realize something else. “How come you don’t say wicked anymore?”
He briefly tears his eyes from the papers. “What are you talking about?”
“You used to say ‘wicked smart’ and ‘wicked cool.’ It was my favorite thing about you.” His lingo has changed since I first met him. Not completely though. I mean, when we run into someone he knows, he’ll sometimes throw out a ‘hey, bro.’
His lips rise. “I usually dumb down around the intellectually deficient so I don’t come off like a complete prick.” I think he just called me stupid. “But I see you as a true friend, so I’ve backed off some of the pretenses. Most people wouldn’t be able to stand all of me.”
“Can Rose?” I ask, still trying to process everything he’s saying.
His lips just lift higher. I suddenly come to the conclusion that I won’t ever know what Connor Cobalt really sounds like in his head—what words he finds abhorrent, what he thinks of certain situations, his real honest reactions that aren’t half-insults and half-something a little nicer. Maybe Rose already knows him. Or maybe she’s just as clueless as the rest of us.
I stick to a safe subject. “So next semester, you’ll be at Wharton and Rose will be in New York.” They both graduated from college in May （along with Ryke）， and we threw a small celebration for all of them a couple weeks ago.
Connor’s dream came true—an acceptance to Penn’s prestigious Wharton School of Business for his MBA. Rose always scoffed at grad school. She thinks it’s just a piece of paper to brag over, at least for someone who’s an heir to a fortune. So she’ll spend her time at the Calloway Couture office in New York City, commuting from Princeton, New Jersey.
“That’s the plan,” Connor says.
I’m worried for them, and I know neither Rose nor Connor would appreciate my concern. But long distance relationships are difficult, and I can see all the drives back and forth not being worth the trouble—especially if Rose continues to struggle with her intimacy issues. She conquered sleeping in the same bed as Connor during Cancun, but she has yet to make the leap to sex.
I want her to find love and the fireworks, but nothing I do or say will change her problems. I’m just her little sister, and a broken one in her eyes.
Connor’s gaze falls to the floor where a comic book is splayed—the page opened to a pair of giant naked boobs and an erect penis. “Lily.”
“I wasn’t looking at it!” I defend. “I mean, I was, but then I wasn’t.” I grimace. How can speaking be this hard? I take a deep breath and realign my thoughts. “I was flipping through it and then when I came upon the…” I frown. “…genitals. It burned my eyes and magically flung from my hands.”
“I’ll forgive you for the hyperboles if you’re telling the truth.”
“I am! Cross my heart.” I start drawing crosses over my heart with my finger, but then I get confused. “Am I supposed to draw Jesus crosses or X’s?”