by Julia Kent
Fortunately, she gets Andrew, an inch to the left of his crotch.
“Jesus Christ!” he screams, sitting up so fast his head whacks against the underside of the table, making people murmur and gasp above.
“Direct hit!” I shout. “You sunk my battleship!”
Shannon pulls me out from under the table and directs me to my seat. “Don’t do this to me,” she whispers furiously.
Andrew crawls out as well, clutching his phone. “Found it!” he says, pretending that’s why we were under there. He does not realize three inches to the left of his lips, he’s covered in my red lipstick. He looks like the subject of a South American anthropology documentary.
“Found what? Mandy’s mouth?” my mom quips. James’ lips twitch. I don’t appreciate the childhood name, but I let it slide.
Until...
“Mandy!” Marie squeals, her eyes jumping from me to Andrew like she’s on a scavenger hunt and we’re on the list. “And Andy!” She claps like a child, jumping up and down in her seat.
“No one has ever called me Andy,” Andrew declares in a cold voice as he takes his seat and angrily wipes his face with his napkin.
Hamish waggles his eyebrows and holds up the bottle of scotch, offering to pour Andrew a shot. Andrew takes the entire bottle from him and fills his wine glass instead.
“Hardcore,” Hamish murmurs admiringly.
“And I haven’t been Mandy since I was five,” I say. Andrew and I exchange a look. I give my mom an arched eyebrow. She reaches into her bag and pretends Spritzy needs attention, except Spritzy is in James’ lap, now licking the herbed butter bowl.
Andrew and I have something in common, after all. At least there’s this: a hatred for diminution.
Marie pretends not to hear, or maybe she does and simply decides our protests do not fit her delusion and therefore are dispensable.
She zeroes in on Hamish, then Amy.
“Weel,” Hamish says in that low Scottish accent of his. “Ye dinna have a nickname you can use for me, Marie. Hamish is—”
“Hamy and Amy!” Marie interjects, pronouncing Hamish’s new moniker as if it rhymes with Amy.
The man’s face turns green. It’s astonishing, and too bad he’s not Irish, because that would be one hell of a party trick if he were, especially in Boston every March for the famous St. Patrick’s Day parade.
“Oh, God,” Amy mutters, reaching for her wine. She drinks the whole glass down, grabs the bottle of white wine, and starts chugging from the mouth.
Declan grabs the red and it looks like he’s about to imitate her. Or use the bottle as a weapon against Marie.
When he starts drinking, I exhale sharply. Whew. Marie’s safe.
Terry is watching all of this with a look of inappropriate glee, most of his attention focused on his brothers and James. Of all the McCormick men, he seems to be the only one who genuinely likes Marie.
“Carol and Terry,” Marie announces, squinching up her face. “Hmmm. You two don’t match.”
“And I’m not changing my name to Terrel,” Terry says, winking at Carol, who manages to roll her eyes and blush at the same time.
“That’s fine. Carol can just go by Carrie! Carrie and Terry works!” Marie looks like she just discovered Fermat’s Last Theorem.
“What rhymes with Chuckles?” Declan mutters.
James clears his throat. “I know a word. It starts with F—”
“Too bad ‘Shannon’ and ‘Declan’ don’t rhyme,” Marie says sadly. Is she pouting? Her lower lip pokes out like a cash register drawer.
“Where’s that sword that goes with the kilt tuxedo? I need it sooner than later,” Declan whispers to Shannon.
“Quit joking,” she says, poking him in the ribs.
“Who’s joking?” he, Andrew and James say in unison. Andrew pops back all the whisky in his wine glass and slams it on the table.
And then the caterer begins the next course.
We manage to eat in relative peace for an entire four minutes or so before someone—okay, me—opens her big, fat mouth and says, “Jason and Marie don’t rhyme.”
“Your names don’t need to rhyme to have a fabulous marriage,” Declan says, giving Shannon a lovely kiss on the cheek.
My eyes tear up.
“That was fucking beautiful, Declan,” Andrew says, giving him a slow golf clap.
Declan gives him a look that silences Andrew.
“I would like to make an announcement,” James says, handing Spritzy off to my mother and standing slowly, with the grace of a man who is accustomed to being watched.
“Is this about your cancer?” Andrew asks, the words coming out of his mouth with little tethers on them, and as they roll out you can see in Andrew’s eyes a series of tiny little men desperately yanking on the ropes as they try to put them back behind his teeth.
“What?” Declan gasps. The table erupts into chaos.
Andrew has the wherewithal to just close his eyes and wince.
“I’m sorry, Dad.” He bows his head like a toy being powered off. My heart softens for him and I reach under the table to take his hand, but stop myself. I don’t really know what role I play in his life right now and the boundary between us is there. Undefined, but there.
James is blinking, his face a neutral mask as he stands above the seated group, clearly trying to figure out the best approach to salvage the situation.
“I was about to propose a toast to Shannon, but it looks like I will make a quiet personal announcement instead,” James says in a jovial voice. Either he’s really this grounded and centered about the cancer, or he’s a damn fine actor.
“Yes, it’s true. I have very slow-growing prostate cancer.” He looks at Declan with the closest thing to love I’ve ever seen him express toward his son. “And I wanted to tell you privately, Declan, but this is how you’re learning.”
Both Terry and Andrew shift uncomfortably in their seats.
Ah. Terry knows, too. Sympathy for Declan makes me pour myself another glass of wine, because...well.
Because I’m pretty sloshed here.
Declan stands and looks across the table at his father, who is already on his feet for the aborted toast. “Are you sick now? Do you need chemotherapy? What do the doctors—”
James’ eyes go soft and concerned. Fatherly. “I’m fine, son. My prognosis is fantastic. I’m one of those old coots,” he says with a laugh, exchanging a look with Jason that makes my throat ache, “who will be around to watch my grandchildren graduate high school. As long as you two get cracking,” he adds, giving Shannon a wink.
The table erupts into polite chuckling.
My mother and Shannon have one thing in common: when they get nervous, they babble. This is important, because Mom, who is sitting right next to James, turns to him and says,
“I recently did an analysis on prostate cancer issues for health insurance purposes. New research shows that men who orgasm more than twenty times a month have reduced prostate cancer rates.”
He smiles, giving her a look like he’s seeing her in a new light. “Is that an offer to help?”
Mom turns the color of my lipstick and mumbles into her wine. She’s blushing. James reaches down and touching her shoulder with a gesture that strikes me as friendly.
James doesn’t do friendly.
Then again, people change. Especially when they have no choice.
I look at Andrew.
“I’m so sorry,” numerous folks at the table murmur. It’s hard to tell who says what because I can’t drink wine and listen at the same time. Sure, I was a cheerleader in high school and was able to be the base of three-person-tall formations, but get six (seven?) glasses of wine in me and it’s a freaking miracle if I can remember to—.
Andrew’s hand goes on my knee.
Apparently, my body remembers how to respond to his touch.
“May I have a word with you?”
“Now?”
“Yes. In private,” he says through t
he corner of his mouth.
I start to crawl under the table. He pulls me back.
“Not there.”
“Oh.”
We stand. The ground got way lower since I sat down at the dinner table.
“I know you’re not taking me outside,” I say with far more cynicism than I should. He winces. I bite my lips to shut up.
He directs me to Shannon and Declan’s bedroom.
“Oh, no, bud. You’re not having sex with me here. Mr. I Don’t Have Time for a Quickie isn’t getting any.” I use a mocking tone that feels right when the angel inside me whispers sweet nothings in my ear, but that feels wrong when the devil tells me I should just shut up and unwind.
“What are you talking about?” He sounds genuinely perplexed.
I reach between my boobs. He stares. I pull out my phone. He smiles.
“What else do you keep in there?”
“Not quickies.”
His face falls. I shove my phone in front of him and show him his earlier text.
He frowns. “I wrote that?”
“The text is from your phone number.”
“I’m an idiot.”
I don’t argue.
His warm hand presses between my shoulder blades as he looks behind us and guides me into Declan’s walk in closet. He closes the door and turns around, giving me a smile that not only melts my non-existent panties, but I think my clitoris just became a Roman candle.
“No way,” I declare before my body can override my circuits. “I am not regressing.”
“Regressing?”
“This whole relationship started out in closets. We moved up to limos and beds and restaurants. I will not let you take us back to the dreaded closets. Nope, nope, nope.”
He looks down at the soft carpeting.
“Closets can be good.”
“For storing clothes.”
“For making up.”
“Is that what this is?”
“I’m trying, Amanda.” He steps into my space and our heat mingles. His eyelids flutter and he sighs, a sound of hope. “I’m really trying.”
“I am, too,” I confess.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his hands on my hips, reaching out like twin olive branches. “I don’t care about your father being in prison and I like your mother and I followed you that night at the marina because I had just learned about my dad’s cancer the week before and it made me think. Really think. It made me realize that life is short.” He makes a small, earnest sound. “Not that I didn’t learn that a long time ago.”
I start to open my mouth to say something about his mother, but he continues.
“When I saw you there, I didn’t chase you down to keep you quiet. I followed you because it seemed like more than coincidence to meet you there. Like fate was trying to tell me something.”
Oh.
“For the past two years I’ve been stupid. I thought you weren’t my type. I have watched Declan fall in love with Shannon and listened to our father tell my brother what a fool he is to take such a huge risk with her. I live a life where all my risk is poured into my work. Not my personal life.”
“No girlfriend,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Never. Easier that way.”
My heart tightens like someone’s pulling a drawstring.
“But not better.”
I stretch up to meet his mouth, the movement like smoke seeking the sky as I burn for him. He tastes like fine whisky and apologies, his mouth tender and loose, the kiss lush with that gentle moment when everything you thought had dark, thick borders around it turns out to be an optical illusion you invented by accident.
I’m blurring in his arms, my lips becoming his, his hard shoulder muscles now mine, the soft curve of my waist a part of Andrew, his hardness against my thigh a part of me.
Or it would be, soon.
In me, at any rate.
For weeks I have ached for him. Dreamed of him. Given over my mind to the endless recriminations of what ifs and rifled through my self-doubt like a woman who has lost her wedding ring in the trash. Did I throw away my one best hope for love because I can’t handle the hint of abandonment? Was Andrew right? Has his absence been a misunderstanding fueled by the ghosts of my past?
Shannon is the overthinker. Always has been. I’m the one who pretends to listen and then acts to fix whatever’s wrong. My mind loosened by too many fermented grapes and adrenaline, my blood thickened by want and proximity, I pull back.
It’s time to act.
“If I sleep with you right now, it’ll be hate sex,” I say, then frown. Where in the hell did that come from? I thought I was about to reach for his belt buckle, but clearly my hands and my head have two different agendas.
“Nothing wrong with hate sex.”
“Boozy hate sex we’ll both regret in the morning.”
“I might regret the booze in the morning, Amanda,” he says with a voice filled with longing and urgency, “but I would never, ever regret having sex with you.”
“How long have you been practicing that line?”
“Since you stabbed me in the neck with the fork.”
“You’re a planner.”
“I am very good at risk assessment.”
“And you’ve determined...”
“That there is no downside to sex with you. Ever.”
“No wonder you’re so good at negotiations in the boardroom.”
“I’m even better in the bedroom.”
“How about closets?”
His hands reach up to cup my breasts and I lean into the touch, his thumbs tracing circles around nipples that strain against the cloth of my bra to be closer to him. We could, you know? Make love right here, right now, against the row of ties that hang like ribbons on a vine. On the carpeted floor amidst the sterile, organized cabinetry.
I could tell him I’m sorry. That I got all the wrong ideas from all the right actions. He’s scared and vulnerable, so he creates a life that reduces risk. I understand that. I can honor it, even if it means never going outside in the sun with him eight months a year, extreme as that may be. Yielding to his obsessiveness to eliminate risk is nothing new to me.
I’ve done that most of my life with my mom.
Now, at least, I know why.
Exponentially.
All these thoughts mix in my mind like word salad, each making sense alone until they’re all blended together. He just needs to be open with me, to tell me how he feels.
And how he feels about me.
It would be so easy to say yes to sex right now. I could use a few minutes of bursting passion where I lose myself in him. The word is on the tip of my tongue, which is currently sliding against his teeth, rising up to the top of his mouth as his welcome touch makes me wonder why I’d ever say no. That yes bounces from my mouth to his, then back, and I am about to release it and claim him for myself when we hear:
Tap tap tap.
Andrew groans.
“Are you two having sex in my closet?” Declan says in a voice that makes it clear that we do not, under any circumstances, have permission to have sex in his closet.
“Yes.”
“No.”
We answer simultaneously, then giggle.
The doorknob jiggles.
“Don’t come in!” Andrew shouts, reaching between us to adjust himself.
“Why not? Afraid I’ll see Amanda naked? We’d just be even, then.”
“I am not a bag of flesh you get to parade to settle some score!” I shout.
Andrew’s eyebrows go up.
The doorknob stops shaking.
“Get out here. Now. You two are the maid of honor and the best man at this wedding and you’re acting like horny teenagers. You have responsibilities. And not just announcing Dad’s cancer to a group of people and violating his privacy.”
“Shit,” Andrew hisses through his teeth. His gaze drops and he sighs.
I fling open the door and look up into the eyes of a very angr
y Declan McCormick.
“See here,” I say, shoving my finger in his face. “You don’t get to blame Andrew for the fact that your father doesn’t want to share his private information with you.”
“Amanda—” Andrew grabs my other arm and tries to stop me.
“Are you blaming me for what Andrew just did?” Declan’s voice goes low and dangerous, like a coiled snake preparing for a full strike.
“No.”
“Sounds like it.”
“That’s your interpretation.”
I can feel Andrew’s eyes on me, though I can’t see his face. I’m not fighting his battle for him; he can do that just fine.
I don’t really know why I’m taking on Declan. Six (seven?) glasses of wine, maybe? Does everything I do have to make sense? Everyone around me has tacit permission from the universe to act in irrational ways.
Maybe it’s my turn.
Finally.
Declan’s face is a study in how to exude power without actually doing anything. No words. No expression. No movement. Just the steady breath of a man who is accustomed to having time stop for him while he deliberates.
And then:
“Not now. I am not having this conversation now. Dad,” he says, looking around me and catching Andrew’s eye, “is out there trying to salvage everything after that bomb you dropped. You owe him, at the very least, the courtesy of your attendance.”
And with that, Declan slams the door shut in my face.
Andrew looks at me.
I look back.
He runs a shaking hand through his hair and asks, “I’m guessing sex is out of the question now?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The wedding is in one week, and it’s time for final fittings, not-so-final fits, and a lot of frustration.
Plenty of words that start with the letter F.
Which means grumpy men, lots of wine, and a mother of the bride who is like a hummingbird on crack.
We are at Shannon and Declan’s apartment yet again, though there’s no fancy dinner for us to ruin. Just an assemblage of snacks, some beer and wine, and a tailor flown in from Edinburgh to make sure the men in their kilt tuxedos fit the part. Marie has gone for the modern Scottish look, with the men in tight, tailored, short jackets and bow ties, and kilts that look more complicated than a corset to assemble and wear properly. The look is more Royal Family than Eighteenth Century Highlander, thank goodness.