“Not so much anymore?” he asked.
“No. Definitely not. Now all I can think is that if one of them had spoken up about something they noticed before, I could have avoided this whole debacle.”
“Absolutely,” he said.
“You know what, though? As much as it hurts and as much as there are still times when I feel sad, I really kind of feel relieved. Like I dodged a serious bullet. It’s not that I’m sad that he’s out of my life. It’s more just sad for what I thought we had,” I said.
“I absolutely think you dodged a bullet,” Nick said. “You never should have agreed to marry him in the first place.”
I laughed. “You’re just saying that because you’re my big brother and would say it about anybody.”
He nodded. “I’m not going to argue that.”
Nick pulled up in front of our parents’ house, and I was surprised at how short the drive felt. Being with my brother again and being able to talk about everything that was going on felt good. Now the reality of what was happening settled in again. I really was back in my hometown and getting ready to move in with my parents again because my marriage fell through before it even started.
That definitely wasn’t where I thought I would be at this juncture in my life. It wasn’t where I thought I would be at any juncture in my life.
I let out a sigh, and Nick looked over at me.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay with me?”
I shook my head. “Thanks, but it’s okay. I’ll be fine with Mom and Dad. Besides, they’re expecting me.”
“Alright, but if Mom gets overwhelming and you just can’t take it anymore, you can always change your mind and come stay with me,” he said.
“Thank you. I might hold you to that.”
I took one more second to brace myself and opened the door. Just as I was climbing out of the car, the front door to my parents’ house opened and Melissa came bounding out. My best friend ran toward me with her arms thrown out open to her sides and flung them around me when she got close enough. She held me tight, rocking me back and forth like I’d just come home from war.
“I’m so glad to see you,” she said.
I laughed. “Melissa, the wedding-that-wasn’t was three weeks ago. You were there for that.”
Since Melissa moved back to Astoria, we didn’t get to see each other anywhere near as much as we would like to but seeing her twice in less than a month felt like a pretty good run. Even if the last time was something I wanted to wipe out of my memory completely.
“I know. But I just wanted to make sure you’re okay,” she said. “I hate that I couldn’t stay with you after everything.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said.
I stepped away from her and into the hug offered first by my mother and then by my father. They then hugged Nick. With the hugs all around finished, my mother pointed behind her to the open door.
“Come on inside,” she said. “We’ll get some lunch.”
I didn’t realize how hungry I was until right then. Nick brought my luggage inside for me and left it in the living room as we went into the kitchen to sit around the table and talk while Mom made her famous tuna melts. The bright, vinegary cucumber salad she put on the side was a taste of home, and I couldn’t help but smile when my father peeled his sandwich apart to sneak potato chips inside.
How well this all was really going to work out had yet to be seen, but for right now, I was happy to be home.
3
Tyler
I found myself wandering the aisles of the grocery store and quickly filling my cart with anything that looked remotely tasty. I benefited from good genetics and a strong work ethic for keeping my body in shape after years of playing high school sports, so a bag or two of cookies wasn’t going to throw my entire game off. But as I stared down into the metal cart, I was starting to doubt that my metabolic gift and my regimen of sit-ups and push-ups was going to be enough to work off the calories therein.
I was rounding a corner, heading away from the prepackaged potato chips like they were silently judging me, when my cart nearly crashed into someone else’s. I leaned over the front of it to stop the momentum and dug my heels down on the hard concrete, stopping my speed just enough to only have the two carts clink together in a sad metallic sound.
“Sorry about that,” I said, not looking up yet, as I was eyeing the carton of eggs on top that threatened to spill over.
“Tyler?” the voice asked, and I immediately recognized who it was.
“Holy crap, Becca?” I said, my eyes going wide.
I was immediately stunned by how gorgeous she was. I had never really taken much notice of her growing up, since she was my best friend’s little sister, but once she hit eighteen, I’d realized she was a very pretty girl. In spite of myself, I noticed I had gotten a little googly-eyed about her when she would come home from college or spend time around her brother, but those times were few and far between, and I usually wasn’t hanging around her enough to even have a conversation. Our relationship had been strictly, and firmly, that of two people connected by another.
But now, my God, she looked incredible. The years since I had seen her last had done wonders for her. Her blonde hair hung just over her shoulders, and her green eyes sparkled out at me from a bright, smiling face. Her lips were full and lush, and her lipstick was a dark red that made me think of cherries. At around five feet and six inches, her curvy figure had filled out, and she was simply stunning to look at. It took me a moment even to realize she had her arms open for a hug, and I eagerly accepted. When her body pressed against mine, her large, pillowy breasts pressed against my chest, and I had to break the hug before I was pressing into her from other areas.
“How are you?” she asked as she returned to her cart. It looked like she had just gotten there, as the only thing in it were a bag of apples and a couple of spices.
“I’m doing good,” I said. “Staying busy.”
“And hungry it looks like,” she said, eyeing my cart.
“Oh,” I said, in mock surprise, “is this my cart? I think I must have confused it with a family of five.”
She laughed, and the sound was musical and free. Even her voice had gotten sexy. And I really, really needed to stop thinking of her that way.
“Hopefully you find them,” she said.
“Hopefully,” I said. “So, how are you, really?”
She grimaced a bit and then looked around to make sure no one was close by. “Did my brother tell you?”
I pursed my lips together. How the hell was I going to get out of this one now?
“Ye-ah,” I said, pausing in the middle as if I could change the word into something else, but not knowing what. “I heard a little bit about it. I’m sorry that happened to you.”
She shrugged. “I’m just trying to deal with it as it comes, you know. It sucked. Like, a lot. But being home is helping.”
“Are you staying with Nick?” I asked, a sudden and unexpected hope springing up in my voice.
“No, though he offered,” she said.
Damn.
“Oh,” I said, lamely.
“I’m at my parents’ house, actually. At least for now. We will see how much being around Mom twenty-four-seven does for my nerves.”
I laughed. “Yeah, she can be a bit much sometimes, but you always know it’s out of love.”
She sighed. “Yeah. I suppose. What about you? Are you still living with Mason?”
“No, that didn’t last long,” I summed up. “I have my own place now. It’s nothing spectacular, but it’s in the new complex down the road.”
“Anything else interesting happening?” she asked, and there was a hint of something else there, another question going unasked.
“No, nothing much really. Live by myself, work at the bar. You heard about the bar, right?”
“Yes, Nick did tell me about that!” she said, concern suddenly crossing her face.
“It’s okay. They cau
ght the guy that did it, and insurance paid for most of the stuff we lost. But we had to move to a new location. It’s actually not far from where your parents live,” I said.
I told her the location, and we fell into a silence for a few moments, but neither of us moved. I did that nervous laugh people do when they don’t want to end a conversation but are at a loss for what to say next.
“Are you guys open at the new place yet?” she asked.
“Yes, actually. You know, you should come check it out,” I said, unable to stop myself. “We have these great theme nights. My sister-in-law, Ava, she’s great at coming up with cool stuff for us to do, and the place gets packed. It’s a blast.”
“Ava who dated Mason way back , Ava?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said with a chuckle. “She moved back home, and she and Mason realized they were still madly in love with each other. We hired her to help us bartend, and I don’t think it was a week before they were all lovey-dovey again.”
“How lucky,” she said, and I suddenly felt bad. Talking about people falling for each other to a woman who was literally just stood up at the altar. Also, I felt bad for how eager I was to have her come to the bar and visit me, for much the same reasons, and with a heaping pile of guilt that she was my best friend’s sister.
Still, I couldn’t help myself. “Hey, why don’t you come down on the next theme night. We do them every Saturday, and I think you’d have a blast.”
“I might just do that,” she said, a grin stretching across one side of her face.
“Awesome. I’ll look for you,” I said, offering my arms for another hug. She fell into my chest willingly, and I savored the second and a half I had of holding her body close to mine, all while chiding myself in my mind for enjoying it.
“See you around,” she said.
“You too,” I said and moved my cart down the next aisle. I didn’t need anything down the spice aisle, but I had to get away from her beguiling eyes and sexy smile or else I would have followed her around the grocery store all day.
I didn’t see her again as I checked out and piled the groceries into my truck. All I could think about as I got inside and started it up was that I simply couldn’t understand it. What would possess a man to ditch her? She was gorgeous, and curvy, and funny, and smart. It just didn’t make sense.
I pulled out of the grocery parking lot and headed back to my place to drop off the groceries. My hoarding of all things delicious and terrible for me, added to the conversation with Becca, had put me well beyond my normal twenty-minute shopping window, and now I had to rush to get to the bar on time for work.
When I got to the bar, Ava was at the helm, and I learned that Mom had begun doing daycare duty. It was a good choice since it gave her something to focus on now that Dad was gone. It still hurt to think about him not being around anymore, but I could throw myself into work at the bar. Mom had nothing, except for the time she spent with us for dinners and when she got to take care of little Robert. As much as I missed Dad, I knew she missed him far more, and having something for her to do was good for her.
The new cook came in just after me, and I took them into the kitchen to get acclimated. I knew I was going to be spending a lot of my time bouncing between the kitchen to put out figurative fires there and possible literal ones should the need arise, and the floor of the bar, where I would be running food out and refilling drinks.
The night wore on, and I was surprised that my mood never wore down. As busy as we stayed, I was peppy and on top of things the entire time. It was a good night; when the last customer was out of the door, I didn’t even want a drink to top the night off. I was in a good enough mood as it was.
4
Becca
“What are you doing tonight?” Melissa asked when I answered my phone Saturday afternoon.
“Um… nothing,” I said. “Kind of why I’m here. I did have plans for a moonlight dinner on the beach tonight, but that sort of fell through.”
She hesitated for a few seconds. “Yeah, I realized that while I was asking the question, but I was already committed and couldn’t stop.”
“Why do you ask?” I asked.
“Because we’re going out,” she said. There was a more cheerful note in her voice, and she seemed to have swept the awkward beginning of the conversation away.
“Out?” I asked.
“Yes. Out. As in, we’re emerging from our homes and going to do something for the purposes of having fun,” she said.
“I’m familiar,” I said. “I mean, I am in theory. It’s been a long time since I went out to do something just for fun. What did you have in mind?”
“Well, it’s Saturday night. I thought it might be fun to go up to the Anderson’s bar. You haven’t seen it, and it would be a good chance to visit and maybe catch up with some people.”
“Oh, that’s right. Saturdays are their theme nights,” I said.
“Exactly,” Melissa said. “No better time to get our neon blazing.”
“Our neon blazing?” I asked, puzzled
“Nineties night,” she said, sounding excited about the prospect.
“Nineties night? Was neon the nineties? I thought that was more the eighties.”
“Then what was the nineties?” she asked.
“I’m thinking more like the crop tops and baby doll tees. I’m not really sure. I wasn’t particularly hip and happening when I was in elementary school.”
“It doesn’t matter. That’s what the internet is for. And there are several thrift shops within a half-hour radius of here that I’m sure would be fertile grounds for finding everything we need to fit right in,” she said.
Melissa sounded right on the brink of exploding with all the excitement. I had a feeling even if I wasn’t up to going out to the bar that night, she would come and drag me out of the house. Fortunately, she wasn’t going to have to go that route. The idea of getting dressed up and going out for the night sounded amazing. Like I told her, it had been a long time since I just went out and had fun.
That was another of the realizations I got from this situation with Steven. Leading up to the wedding, I was so wrapped up in being engaged and getting married, I lost touch with the reality of our relationship. Not that there was anything inherently bad about what we had.
At least, not that I was aware of. Now that I knew he had been carrying on with any number of girls and had actually formed a close enough relationship with one that he was currently living with her, I had a different idea of it. That suggested things were definitely bad, and I just didn’t know.
In my mind, things were just kind of run-of-the-mill. We had gotten into a rhythm, and it’d worked for us in the beginning, and we stuck with it. That meant rarely going out and only seeing other people if they were coming over to his place, or we were going to theirs.
It had probably been more than a year since we’d done anything different or special like going to the theme night at a bar. Just the fact that I was so brimming with excitement only underscored how mundane my life had become.
I couldn’t wait to get out there and just let loose. The last three weeks had been a particular sort of hell, and I wanted to relax and get my mind off all of it.
Melissa was at my parents’ house less than half an hour after we hung up. We sat down in the living room and did an image search, trying to figure out what people wore just a few years after we were born.
“Think we could find any of those metallic miniskirts at the thrift store?” Melissa asked.
“I would only accept wearing them if we could find the matching socks these girls are wearing with their heels,” I said.
We looked at each other and laughed.
The rest of the afternoon played out like a montage from a movie most likely set in the decade we were trying to emulate as we tried on outfits at the thrift store. By the time we got to the bar that night, we were decked out in our very best nineties style.
The bar was completely packed when we got t
here, a line weaving along the patio and out to the street.
“It’s full,” I said, disappointed. “Look at all these people. We’re not going to get in. And we went to all this trouble.” I let out a sigh. “I’m wearing beige iridescent eye shadow.”
“You insisted on authenticity,” she said.
“Not doing me a whole lot of good right now. It looks like I’m going to be very authentic while waiting outside for the rest of the night.”
“Hold on.” She pulled her phone out of her cleavage, which was the only place she had to stash it considering her choice of metallic minidress she was thrilled to find. She made a call and held the phone to her ear. “I’m outside.” Her eyes slid over to me. “Yes, Becca is here.”
She smiled and hung up, earning a questioning quirk of one eyebrow.
“What was that all about?” I asked.
“I called Tyler,” she said.
“Tyler?” I asked, feeling a strange sort of jealousy bubble up. “I didn’t realize the two of you were so close.”
“We’re not,” she said, giving me a look that said I was ruining the vibe she was going for. “I actually just called the bar and he happened to answer.”
I laughed, unexpectedly relieved. “You’re too much.”
The door to the bar opened and Tyler looked out at us. He waved us in, and Melissa and I wove our way through the waiting crowd. There were a few groans and complaints, but we ignored them and happily followed him inside. He led us to the bar where we managed to slide onto stools right as two people left them to go out onto the dance floor.
“You know,” Melissa said, “usually I’m the kind that would be embarrassed by ruffling that many feathers, but that was kind of a rush.”
I laughed. “You rebel.”
The throwback music was thumping so loudly it was hard to hear but that just added to the atmosphere. All around us, the eager revelers had turned out to put the entire decade of nineties fashion on parade. They sang the familiar old songs at the top of their lungs and danced like they had never left the middle school dances.
His Best Friend's Sister: A Secret Baby Romance Page 2