by Evans, LJ
“It’s really Georgia,” I told him with a smile.
“Like the state?” Troy asked.
I nodded.
“Why would someone name you after a state?”
“I was really named after a character in a book.” I smiled.
A woman joined us who didn’t look like Mac or Dani. Instead, she had blonde hair and hazel eyes, but when she smiled, it was with Mac’s and Dani’s smile.
“Sam, Troy, don’t bug Uncle Robbie and his date.”
“Date. Ew. You said she was your friend,” Troy said with a disgusted snarl at us both.
“Troy…” his mother warned. “I’m Gabi, and these two hooligans are my sons. I apologize in advance for everything they say or do.”
“It’s nice to meet you.”
“I thought you weren’t coming till tomorrow,” Mac said to his sister as she sat down with us.
“Vinnie is coming tomorrow, but I decided to come get the guesthouse before Bee decided she was going to take it.”
“Someday, you will not be quick enough.” Another woman came up and flicked the blonde’s shoulder. These two looked as much alike as Dani and Mac did. The only difference was that the shorter one had the blue eyes of the other siblings versus Gabi’s hazel ones.
“I’m Bee,” she said to me.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I responded.
“Moooooooommmmyyyy,” came a high-pitched squeal as a tiny person came running into the room and flung her arms around Bee.
Bee picked her up, and I could tell right away that this must have been Savanna-Rae, and I could see why Mac had said she was the light of everyone’s world. She was like a doll come to life. Maybe Tinker Bell with a sweet side instead of a fiery side. Blue eyes, blonde hair, and skin so pale that she seemed ethereal.
The Whittaker family knew how to make beautiful people. The whole group was stunning. Like an Eddie Bauer ad without the outdoors. Or maybe one of the old family photos of the Kennedys. Glamorous and gorgeous. Not even a crooked nose amongst the bunch.
“Daddy won’t let me have juice,” Savanna-Rae pouted.
A man appeared behind them, slim, narrow, and dark-haired with a goatee that screamed hipster but an outfit that screamed hippie―tie-dye T-shirt and all. His eyes were small and dark. He stood out amongst the beautiful people as being slightly off. Like he didn’t quite fit the mold they’d made. I realized this was the brother-in-law, Thomas, who Mac had said nobody liked. “It’s too late for juice,” he told his daughter.
I had to fight another laugh as I saw Gabi roll her eyes and Bee stick her tongue out. They were definitely siblings.
Bee took Thomas and Savanna-Rae off to the kitchen to get food and drinks.
“Ready to lose your shirt, Robbie?” Gabi asked.
“He goes by Mac full time now.” Dani appeared behind us with a smirk on her face.
“What? Why?”
“I guess it’s less confusing this way,” Dani said as she, too, made her way toward the kitchen and the food.
“Less confusing for who?” Gabi hollered at her.
Dani waved her hand at me.
“But she’s only one person; the rest of us all know him as Robbie,” she said and then turned to look at Mac. “The kids will be thoroughly confused if you change your name now.”
“Can I change my name?” Troy asked.
“No!” everyone hollered.
I smiled. It was light and fun and humorous. It was family in a way that you read about or watched in TV shows but never thought you’d actually see in real life. It filled my heart in a different way than my heart had been filled by Mac lately. I’d never really fit in with any of the cliques in school or college. I’d just done my thing. But this clique. This clan. They made me long to be accepted.
My phone on the table buzzed, but I didn’t pick it up. Mac leaned in and said, “You don’t have to avoid getting it on our account. Nobody will harass you about answering it. There are too many of us with jobs that require us to pay attention for anyone to really put up a fuss.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yep.”
I flipped the phone over and saw it was from Raisa.
RAISA: We will be flying in to D.C. on the fifteenth.
ME: I can’t wait to see you.
RAISA: I cannot wait to meet your sexy roommate.
I flushed, hoping Mac hadn’t read the text. When I looked up, he had his eyes on Troy who had pulled his straw from his juice box and was trying to suck up peas through it.
ME: Don’t plan on it.
RAISA: You just don’t want us to tell him about your awkward stage.
ME: What awkward stage?
RAISA: When you cut off all your hair and looked like a boy.
I smiled.
ME: He met me for the first time when I had my hair cut off.
RAISA: No! And he still has the hots for you?
ME: No one says hots here.
RAISA: I will be the judge of that when I am at Stanford. You have been too old for too long to know.
ME: I’m only twenty-eight.
RAISA: It isn’t an age, moy dorogoy.
ME: Gotta go. I’m with a group of people. But I can’t wait to see you.
RAISA: Love you.
ME: Love you, too, malyshka.
I was excited to see my siblings. We didn’t have the banter that Mac and his family did, but Raisa and I came close. We loved each other, and I wanted to believe that was all that mattered. But I wondered, for not the first time this summer, if my siblings would have any number of agencies following them once they arrived in the States, and that had me worrying about Mac and Dani and their family all over again. It renewed the sudden bitterness I’d been feeling toward my parents and the effect they had on my life, and it would have lodged into anger if I hadn’t been surrounded by the laughter and charm of the Whittaker clan. Instead, I was dragged into games of poker where tales of Mac were flung about that could only bring smiles to my face.
Mac
NEW DAY
“Standing in the rain with nowhere to go.
Laughing and we're spinning and I hope that you.
Remember this day for the rest of your life.”
Performed by Robbie Seay Band
Written by Tolhurst / Smith
After dinner, I played Uno with my nephews like I promised but was pleasantly surprised when Georgie sat down with us. I was relieved when that game lasted a whopping thirty minutes before they were taken to bed, because, while I loved my nephews, they were exhausting.
I turned to Georgie, rubbing my hands together, and said, “Ready for the real game now?”
She chuckled, having no idea how deadly serious I, or my family, would be about the game. I led her into the dining room where Mom had the poker chips out, and everyone was focusing way too somberly on their Texas Hold ‘Em cards. We both bought into choruses of grumbling because we were joining late and would have more chips than those who had already been losing. I gave them all the stink eye.
“Be nice, we have a guest,” Mom chided.
My family’s obsession with their poker became increasingly obvious the more people lost their chips. Their faces closed down until they were almost mannequins. After calling on one particularly long hand, I looked at Georgie only to find her hiding a smile behind her cards. I leaned close to her ear, hid my lips behind my cards, and said, “If you keep smiling, they’ll know your tells instantly, and you’ll be out before you’ve even started.”
She chuckled, and Bee called out, “No cheating!”
“Let him woo the girl in peace,” Dad said, and Dani snorted.
“Woo? Really, Dad? What are you, Grandma now?”
“Just for that, Gooberpants, I’m taking all your chips.” Dad waved his cards in her face before pulling all the chips in the middle toward him while Dani groaned.
The sucky thing about playing poker wi
th your family was that they knew all your tells. You had to get really, really good at covering them up, or they would eat you alive. I tried to explain this to Georgie, but she just laughed her way through the game, losing her twenty dollars without a care in the world. But she stuck around to watch as Dad and I battled it out, even when many of the others made their way back to the kitchen for dessert.
Dad started in on the stories about my younger days in an attempt to rattle me.
“So, Georgie, did Mac tell you about the Mercedes incident?”
“Oh, that’s a good one,” Dani said, coming back in with chocolate cake and offering a plate to Georgie.
“Mac was, what, in the third grade?” Dad looked at me.
“Fifth, and you aren’t getting away from this hand, Dad. I raise you five,” I said, tossing more chips in the middle.
“He and this girl at school had decided they were a couple, ‘going together,’ whatever the term was, and had arranged a date night, dinner and all. When I told him he was too young to date, he snuck into the garage, started up Clare’s Mercedes, and ended up crashing it into the gates.”
Georgie turned to me, eyes big, smile glowing, and I must have let my guard down, because Dad folded instead of calling.
“What did the girl think when you didn’t show?” Georgie wanted to know.
I scratched my chin. “You know, I don’t remember.”
“Liar,” Bee said, coming into the room with her own piece of chocolate cake. “He was devastated because she broke up with him, saying if he didn’t know how to drive, she couldn’t possibly continue to date him. He cried for a week.”
Everyone laughed, and Georgie tried to hold back her own laughter but failed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t…but it’s so sweet, and sad, and funny at the same time.”
I stole her fork, taking a bite of her cake. She watched me eat it, and I lost my concentration again.
“Did you just steal my cake?” she asked.
“Oh my God, you can’t leave anything sweet within ten feet of the man; it’ll be gone in a flash,” Gabi continued to torture me.
Georgie got up and returned shortly with a new piece of cake, and I was watching everything she did instead of paying attention to the game. Dad knew it as much as I did. For the first time in a really long time, my heart wasn’t in the game. It was somewhere else. When I lost my final chips to him, my sisters all groaned.
“It’s your fault,” I said, waving at them. “You were distracting me with your stories.”
“Yeah, it was us that was distracting you, um-hmm,” Bee said with a pointed glance at Georgie who was talking to Dani.
“Someday, Robbie. Someday, you’ll be able to beat the master.” Gabi patted me on the shoulder.
“Never,” Dad hissed playfully.
“Don’t let Grandma hear you call Dad the master,” I retorted.
There were mumbled agreements because we all knew Grandma was the real poker queen. Everyone slowly started meandering away to bed with yawns and talk of tennis. I walked with Georgie to the Blue Room and stopped her before she could go in.
“I’m really glad you came,” I told her.
“I am, too.”
“But don’t believe everything they tell you.”
“Why? It’s sort of romantic that you tried to take your ten-year-old girlfriend on a drive.”
I groaned, and she leaned up and kissed me on the cheek. My hand snaked out to stop her from moving away when she would have, the laughter from before disappearing as longing welled up inside me.
She pushed gently against my chest, and I let her go.
“Goodnight, Mac-Macauley,” she said quietly.
“See you first thing in the morning for tennis camp, Georgie-Girl.”
She nodded and slipped inside the room, closing the door before I could change my mind, or her mind, about where we were sleeping.
I knew it was a good thing. We weren’t there yet. We weren’t at the part where I could lie down next to her and make her forget what was said about me and just believe what my hands and heart told her.
♫ ♫ ♫
The next morning, I was at her door at seven because the court was going to be taken up for the Whittaker Family Tournament as of ten. I knocked on her door lightly. I didn’t want either Dani or Bee, whose rooms were just down the hall, to hear.
No answer.
I knocked again.
Still no answer.
I tried the doorknob and found it unlocked. I turned, looking both ways, and then entered. I certainly didn’t mind being in a bedroom with Georgie, but I knew what I’d promised her about this weekend. And I knew just how much my family would never let either of us hear the end of it if someone saw us coming from each other’s rooms.
The plantation shutters on the windows cut off almost every lick of light, even though the sun was already up, making it hard to see into the depths of the bedroom. I moved closer and caught my breath.
Georgie was curled on her side, one arm around a pillow, shoulder bare, hair flung out behind her on the white pillowcase, eyes closed. The bedding had slipped off, and her long legs were also bare. From the angle I was at, with the pillow hugged to her middle, she looked like she wasn’t wearing anything.
My entire body reacted to that, my tennis shorts not hiding any of it.
I ached to climb in with her. To tuck that long-limbed body up against mine. And that did nothing for the hard-on I had. I tried to think of anything but the gorgeous creature lying in the bed.
I looked at the ceiling and the cupids that were making their way across it. Thought of Mom having them painted when I was a teen and how I had remarked that the ceiling didn’t match the room. Thoughts of Mom helped. I slowly drew a breath and said quietly, “Georgie.”
She screamed, throwing the pillow at me, hitting me in the face because I was too surprised to catch it.
“What the hell?” she said when she realized it was me.
And I was right back to having to think about the ceiling and the cupids, because she was wearing clothes, but not much. She had on a silk camisole with the strap sliding off her shoulder and the neckline hanging low enough that I could almost see the full curve of her breast and dark nipples. Below the top was a pair of silk pajama shorts that barely fit the curves of her. She was goddamn breathtaking.
“Tennis,” I croaked out.
“Now?” She hadn’t moved, but her breathing was fast, making the neckline dip farther.
“I told you early,” I said with eyes back at the ceiling.
“Early isn’t before the crack of dawn.”
I went to the shutters and pulled them open a little so the sunlight started to peek in.
“It’s seven,” I told her.
“We barely went to bed at one.”
I came back to the bed, which was a mistake because she was still showing me all her contours, and I was still having a hard time controlling my dick’s reaction to it. I went to the door.
“You’re acting weird,” she said.
I waved at her. “You’re practically naked.”
She looked down at herself and then crossed her arms over her chest, which just pushed her cleavage up in a way that made me want to kiss it more.
“I’m not sure I’m ready to learn tennis at seven in the morning,” she said.
“I promise you coffee and a homemade blueberry muffin first.”
“You made muffins?”
I smiled. “No, I’m an awful baker, but Mom makes the best. Plenty of sugar-coated goodness on the top.”
Her smile filled the room more than the sunlight. “Sugar.”
I shrugged, knowing she was making fun of my sweet tooth and not caring.
“I’ll meet you downstairs. But hurry, the court won’t be available for long. Some of the others will want to warm up before the tournament begins.”
Georgie snorted, but she didn’t un
derstand the driven nature of my family. If she’d thought poker last night was competitive, she was in for a real surprise over how cutthroat it got over tennis.
She stood up, and I had to combat my desire to close the distance and wrap myself around her. Instead, I opened the door without thinking and ran right into Bee.
“Morning, Robbie,” she said with a smile.
“It isn’t what you think,” I said automatically.
She snorted. “Of course, it’s not. You aren’t coming out of the guest room after a night spent with Gorgeous-Georgie.”
“We didn’t—She isn’t—Never mind.” I gave up because anything I said would have just dug me in further with any of my sisters.
By the time Georgie came down, I had two cups of coffee sitting on the counter in travel mugs and two muffins I’d heated up. She went directly for the coffee.
She was in a pair of white shorts with buttons on both sides of her hips―like sailor pants of old—and they were tantalizing me to undo them. The shorts weren’t much longer than her pajama shorts had been, but they covered her butt, which at least helped my body’s reaction, if only slightly. She had a red, white, and blue striped top on, and it made me think of Fourth of July, and the fireworks, and how she’d said she loved America.
She looked like America. Freedom and independence. Elegance and charm. At least, the America that I wanted for our world―that I wanted for my niece and nephews. Her hair was up in a ponytail, the way she wore it the most, but I liked how it showed off the graceful lines of her face with her high cheekbones and slender nose.
“Thank God for coffee,” she said.
“We don’t have much time. I reserved us until eight, but Bee and Thomas are after us, and they won’t give us thirty seconds of extra time.”
“Wow. First poker, and now tennis. This family does take its games seriously.”
“You haven’t even seen the worst of it yet.”
After we finished the muffins, I led her out toward the court. It was hidden from the pool and patio area by trees and shrubs. I had never thought much of it growing up—having a tennis court in my backyard—but I realized, now, that it made a statement about us―about me. And I wasn’t sure if Georgie would see the lifestyle of my family as a good thing or a bad thing.