by K. S. Thomas
“Is there only one washer?” I ask Greer when I join her in the kitchen to throw away the remainders of our boys’ dinner devoured in the living room.
“Nope. There are ten. And ten dryers.” She grins, like there’s more that she’s not saying.
“Is this not about doing laundry?” I lean back against the counter, folding my arms loosely over my chest and crossing one ankle over the other.
“What else would it be about?” Chase asks, wandering over from the living area to join us.
Before Greer can answer, Abbas is zipping past, making a beeline for the exit, giant hamper bag in hand and gesturing a hasty wave with the other before disappearing behind a slamming door.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Greer smirks wickedly. “But I can think of only one thing Abbas ever runs from the apartment for.”
Chase snorts. “Yeah. Sex.” Then his eyes widen, and he starts to cough like he just choked on his own spit. “Holy shit!”
“Wait.” I’m still piecing things together here. “Are you saying...? Abbas and Mallory? Really?” I barely know Mallory, but I’ve known Abbas for years. He wouldn’t casually hook up with her, she matters to him. Which means, she matters to him a lot if there’s sex involved.
“Let’s just say, Mal will be voting in our favor tomorrow morning,” she says slyly.
“But also, let’s say more,” Chase presses, mouth hanging open. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he started drooling here shortly. “How do you know? Did you catch them? Wait, do you honestly know or are you guessing? Drawing semi-educated conclusions? How certain are you of this knowledge you claim to have?”
“Very certain.” She nods slowly. “My information came straight from the source.”
“Mallory,” I assume.
She grins. “Abbas.” Then she turns unexpectedly serious, directing all her attention at Chase. “And I’m only telling you because I’m going to be gone and you’re going to have to do all the responsible meddling necessary to see them through this messy and potentially damaging turn in their relationship.”
Chase whines audibly, a sound I’ve been listening to since he was four and was first confronted with Brussels sprouts. I remember sneaking them off his plate from every meal moving forward just to not have to hear it. I don’t find it any less annoying now. Maybe I find it more annoying. A grown man shouldn’t whine like that. “I don’t want to be in charge of their happiness.” He winces like he’s in physical pain over this. “You know they’re both terrible at being happy.”
“Abbas is like the happiest dude I know,” I point out, clearly not following what the issue is here.
“No,” my brother insists. “Abbas is the most carefree dude you know. There’s a difference.”
“There is?” I’m pretty sure if I were carefree, I’d be pretty damn happy.
“He’s not carefree because he doesn’t have a care in the world,” Greer explains. “He’s carefree because he chooses not to give a shit. And you can’t be happy while not giving a shit. Being happy involves feelings. Not giving a shit generally means you’re avoiding those.”
“Just break it down for me,” Chase pushes past the hiccup I caused by not following along with their usual insanity. “Where are we at with this disaster? Why did he come to you? She’s too invested? He’s afraid of hurting her? What?”
Greer pushes the lid back down on the open pizza box in front of her. She’s been eyeing the last slice for the last several minutes and apparently just decided against it. “Why do you just assume the unrequited love is coming from Mal?”
He shrugs, spinning the same box around to face him, popping it open and taking the slice for himself. “Because we all know she’s been in love with him since the day you guys moved in and he was kind enough to help her put her stupid bed together.” Knowing Abbas this act of kindness was undoubtedly motivated by thoughts of spending time in it once he was done. Clearly, that didn’t go as planned. Or, at least not in the expected timeframe.
“Yeah, they both interpreted that gesture really differently,” Greer says brows climbing her forehead.
“Perspective matters.” Chase’s mouth is so full it’s making his words muffled, but I’m pretty sure I hear him right. Thankfully, he gulps down most of it before he goes on, “So is it Mal? Is she taking an Abbas fling and trying to turn it into a romance of epic proportions?”
“No.” She shakes her head. “Mallory is playing it cool. Abbas is the one trying to get out of an Abbas fling and into a romance of epic proportions.”
“That’s unexpected.” So much so, he pulls out a chair and flops down into it. “Greer,” he says, sounding more serious than I would deem warranted given the context of this conversation, “I think we both know I’m not equipped to handle this.”
“You deal with teenagers and their drama all day long,” she counters, less serious, thank God. “Mallory and Abbas is just more of the same.” Then she casually moseys her way to the fridge, opens the freezer, takes out a carton of ice cream, and heads for the door like she didn’t just commit dessert theft. “Also, I’m going to do the groundwork with Mallory before I leave.”
“Is that why you’re taking my cookies and cream?” Chase points at the frosty carton in her hand, just in case she wasn’t aware we noticed she took it. “To soften her up and get her talking?”
“No.” She swings the door open and starts to go through. “I just wanted ice cream.” Then the door slams shut, and she’s gone. And so is dessert.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
GREER
“Have fun doing laundry with Abbas?” I ask from my seat at the breakfast bar as soon as Mallory comes strolling in through the front door. Her cheeks are flushed, and her hair is a mess, and even while she’s hunched over pretending like her wicker hamper is heavy with clean clothes, I happen to know it’s not.
“As fun as laundry can be,” she says, sounding especially unimpressed with the chore.
“Looks like you got quite the workout,” I motion with my spoon at her disheveled appearance before directing it back to the ice cream carton for another bite. I was hoping she’d show back up while I was still enjoying dessert. I like a little entertainment with my sweets.
“Lugging this thing up and down the stairs, yes,” she says, and I can feel my eyes widen as I try to stifle my amusement.
“Yeah.” I nod a few more times, pretending to be especially focused on my ice cream. “I can only imagine how heavy it must have been.” I reach down at my side and grab the strings of her liner sac containing all her dirty clothes. “Especially since you left all the hamper’s contents on your bed.”
She drops the basket, which bounces a little upon landing given the lack of weight. “How long have you known?”
“Since three days ago when Abbas paid me a visit at work to bring me coffee and cookies and tell me how he caught feelings after sleeping with you, but you didn’t seem to be afflicted in the same way. Which, I should tell you, left him quite distressed.” I flip my spoon over and slide it over my tongue, sucking the gob of ice cream off. “Distressed enough to come see me at work and bring me coffee and cookies,” I reiterate his fragile frame of mind before I pause and let her formulate a response.
“Good.” She abandons her empty hamper and joins me at the breakfast bar, grabbing a spoon from the dishrack on her way over.
“Good? That’s all you’re going to give me?” Just to be clear about my refusal to accept her limited offering, I retract the ice cream carton until it’s completely out of her reach. “You made a shitshow out of voting against my fake marriage to the prince on account of how wholly self-destructive you deem the act, and yet, here you are, secretly sleeping with the manwhore who holds your heart in his teeth, and all you come to the table with is a spoon and good?”
Mal bites down on her lip, eyes narrowing as they zero in on the ice cream carton, likely calculating the effort required to seize it and render me helpless to stop her and whether it would be easier to just give in and t
ell me what I want to know, which I’m hoping she’s leaning toward. Even when surrender is imminent, Mal likes to put up a good front, make you worry for a second that she’s precisely as crazy as she says she is.
Eight years in, I’ve determined she’s only about seventy-three percent there. Still, it’s plenty crazy and thus, one must always consider the possibility of a brawl over ice cream, especially when vulnerability is the alternative.
“How much ice cream is left in that carton?” she asks, trying to see from where she’s sitting, but the angle isn’t favorable for dependable results.
“About three quarters of it.”
She mulls it over. “If I tell you all mine, you tell me all yours.”
I figured we were headed here. “We both talk until the ice cream is gone or one of us pukes.”
“Deal.”
I push the carton between us. “Still in love with him?” I get straight to the point. I find it’s easier to piece together the details after you establish the main truth of it all.
Mallory’s mouth is full, but she nods and makes a sound that’s similar to ‘uh-huh’. She swallows, pointing her spoon at me. “Falling for him?”
My first instinct is to say no. No is usually the right answer here. Usually. But nothing about Lachlan is remotely usual. “Possibly.” Saying the word out loud is enough to make me feel nauseous in a way that has nothing to do with eating too much ice cream. “Ever plan on telling him?”
“Doubtful.” She pokes around the carton trying to get a chunk of cookie. “You?”
“Highly unlikely.”
She finally gets the perfect bite she’s been digging for. “So, are we done here?”
I laugh. “If only it were that easy.”
Careful not to lose anything, Mallory navigates the spoon into her mouth. For a long moment, she savors the ideal combination of cream and cookie. Then, she sighs. “Let’s forget for a moment how dumb I’m being,” she starts, but I cut in before she can keep going.
“Just to clarify, which part is the being dumb part? The sleeping with the guy you have feelings for who never sleeps with anyone he has feelings for? Or the not admitting you have feelings for the guy you have feelings for who has feelings for you even though he never has feelings for anyone. And sleeps with everyone. Until now. That he’s only sleeping with you. A lot. And has feelings. A lot of them. And all for you.”
She rolls her eyes. “I was going to go with the first one, but that’s clearly not the direction you’re leaning in.” She jabs her spoon at the ice cream like she’s making a statement, but it’s already too soft to stand up to a jab, so the statement gets a little muddled. Or it would, if I didn’t know her well enough to interpret every gesture, successfully executed or not. “Now that we’ve clarified, can I go on with what I was saying?”
I gently scoop another spoonful as any civilized person would who doesn’t have to pummel their way through layers of rage every time they’re asked to confront their feelings. “Absolutely. Please, do continue.” I wave my spoon for her to go on and then suck it clean again. This part is less civilized.
“As I was saying,” she presses her mouth together in a stern line, almost daring me to interrupt again. I would, but my mouth is still full, so I let this one slide. “My poor romantic choices aside, you’re kind of on the verge of blowing up your life a little, and frankly, I’m a lotta scared for you.”
“Are you sure genius level brains make use of the phrase, ‘I’m a lotta’?”
She scowls and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she’s imagining flinging ice cream at my face right now. “Don’t deflect. It’s tacky and rude among best friends.”
I set my spoon down. If I’m really going to go down this road, my stomach can’t handle anymore sugar in it. “Fine. I’ll be the first to get all raw and real and shit.”
“I knew you would.” She smirks. “You’re a good friend like that.”
I lick my lip, then bite it, then run my tongue over it all over again. Saying certain things out loud is harder than I thought it would be. Or maybe it’s not saying them out loud as much as I’m realizing not everything I want to say is completely true. Not anymore. So, I can’t say them. Only now I don’t know what words will come out in their place.
“My feelings for Lachlan have definitely evolved past the whole initial, profoundly superficial, attraction,” I say, peeling at a sticker on the side of the ice cream carton. Apparently, there was a two for one special. Only I didn’t see two cartons of ice cream in Chase’s freezer. Not important. “But I think that’s pretty natural given the amount of time we’ve spent together and the fact he went from stranger to friend over the last few days.”
“So, you’re saying your feelings have evolved to a more platonic place?”
I don’t even have to look at her to know the face she’s making. It’s all skeptics and sarcasm between her eyes and mouth over there.
“I’m saying, my feelings have evolved. That’s all. Not in any particular direction. They just have more depth now. I care more than I did on Sunday. But I don’t care more in a way that means more than not caring meant before. I just...care more.” I pull at the sticker but only half of it comes off. I’m almost grateful. Now I can obsess about getting the rest of it without having to delve too deeply into whatever comes out of my mouth moving forward.
“You care more.” It’s like she’s trying the words out for herself. To see if they feel different than they sound. “You care more. Fine. Do you still find him attractive?”
It’s enough to make me look away from my sticker project and stare at her. “Really? You’ve seen him, right? In a towel? In fitted shirts and tailored pants? Holding a baby?”
She cocks a cynical brow. “You know that baby thing doesn’t work on all of us.”
“Well, it’s like hot guy crack in my book. So, yes, I still find him attractive.” I return my attention to the sticker. “But in an objective way.”
“Like you’re just objectifying him?”
“No. Like I can be objective about the fact that I find him attractive because I find men holding babies attractive. It’s separate from my feelings for him.” It’s what I’ve been telling myself, silently, inside my head, since I met him. But hearing it out loud is better. It sounds right. True. Yes, I find him attractive. But maybe I’m not even attracted to him. “There’s been no substantial flirting. I haven’t fantasized about any first kiss. And I certainly haven’t made any moves to get one.”
Mal looks less than impressed with my argument. “I don’t think that means what you think it does.”
“You don’t think it means that while he’s undeniably handsome, I’m only interested in a totally platonic relationship with him?” I spell out what I thought was the obvious interpretation of my feelings.
“No.”
I can’t lie. I was hoping for more than a one-word response to that. “Why not? I think Abbas is hella pretty, but I don’t want to kiss him, and it definitely has to do with my not having those sorts of feelings for him.” I decide it’s time to turn things back to her. “Unlike you. Who does have those sorts of feelings for him, is definitely kissing him, and still wants to maintain a platonic relationship, which for your information, no longer exists.” I bug my eyes out at her, just to emphasize how hard it would be to find this elusive platonic relationship now.
“Don’t you see?” she calls out, inexplicably exasperated with me. “That’s exactly why I know what I’m talking about. There was an instant thing between me and Abbas. And it wasn’t even attraction. It was connection. But he’s Abbas. And even in the first twenty-four hours of knowing him, I knew that kissing him was utterly out of the question. Mostly because he tried to sleep with me less than thirty minutes after we met.” She grimaces, half in mockery at his efforts and half in pain. “I spent seven years not wanting to kiss him, Greer. Seven years making zero moves. Never flirting. Until one stupid night of grief and bourbon fucked it all up.” She drops
her spoon in the ice cream carton and pushes it away. “Know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t spend seven years not kissing him because I wasn’t in love with him. I spent seven years not kissing him because I was. And because kissing him when I was in love with him was out of the question when I knew that kiss would give him the power to destroy me at any given second of any given day after. And it wouldn’t matter if he wanted to or not. Because he’s Abbas. So, he would. Eventually.”
“Mallory.” I want to say something, anything to comfort her, but outside of her name, the words stop coming out.
“The only difference between you and me, Greer, is that I’ve been honest with myself since the moment I met him. And you haven’t been,” she says, her voice quiet, her tone somber.
“That’s not the only difference,” I whisper, too scared of my own truth to say it out loud. “I’m not scared he’d have the power to destroy me. I’m scared I’d have the power to destroy him.” Because I’m my mother’s daughter. All the years my father’s raised me on his own just means I know better than to put anyone through what she put us through.
Mallory reaches across the counter and takes my hand, squeezing it softly. Our eyes meet and it’s the first I notice we’ve both been crying. Silent tears streak her cheeks, but she musters a smile.
“I love you, Greer,” she says on a breath laced with emotions. “But that’s just another lie you tell yourself.”
LACHLAN
WHEN I COME BACK OUT to the living room after putting Monroe to bed, I find Abbas and Chase sprawled out on the sofa and recliner, each eating from a different bag of chips and carrying on a heated debate of some sort.
I plop myself onto the sofa next to my brother, expecting to listen quietly until I’m caught up on the back and forth of the moment, but they stop talking as soon as I sit. Or, rather, they stop talking to each other.
“Do you have a thing for Greer?” Abbas asks before I can even pull the throw pillow out from behind my back and get comfortable.