by Megan Hart
“You look hungover.” Evan shoved a plate of eggs and bagels at me. “You want this?”
I took it right out of his hand. “Joke’s on you, butt wad, I’m not hungover, and I’m starving. So yeah. Thanks for the plate, buddy, looks like you need to get to the back of the line again.”
“Nice. Butt wad. Good one. What are you, ten?” My brother tried to snag his plate back. Since I couldn’t eat anything from it anyway with a glass in my other hand, I let him have it. He looked around the room. “Lot of people here.”
“Yeah, well, there were more here last night. And in a few hours, it’ll all be over. You can go home and never have to do it again.” I grinned at him and slugged back the mimosa, put the glass on an empty table and headed for the buffet.
I made small talk with the people in line, but my eyes scanned the crowd for Niall. I could’ve texted him, I thought. He might’ve forgotten about the brunch. Or, I thought suddenly as I caught sight of my mother, who was still queening over everything, he hadn’t actually been invited. Well, shit. That made sense. Niall wasn’t family. My mother wouldn’t have included him unless Evan had made sure to put him on the list, and really, I knew my brother well enough to know he wouldn’t have thought to do that.
It was an excuse to text him, and I was nowhere near too proud to take it. I spelled out the details, the room location and timing, and hit Send right as I got up to the food. Tucking my phone into my purse, I loaded my plate with goodies. My stomach rumbled. As I got to the end of the buffet line and reached the spot where my mother was standing, still directing people toward the coffee and the dessert table, Susan approached.
“What a nice brunch,” she said graciously, and, I thought, sincerely. “Thank you so much to you and Jill for putting this all together. Everything looks lovely. Thank you.”
Watching my mother beam and my sister-in-law making an effort to reach out to her, I thought something of a miracle might be taking place. It was short-lived. Plate in hand, I eased by them on my way to an empty seat so I could check my phone for an answer from Niall, and that’s when I heard my sister say, “I’m really so glad we decided to invite your family, as well. Mom and I really felt that it was the right thing to do, to include them.”
Oh, no, Jill, I thought. Don’t. Just…for fuck’s sake. No.
“Why would you have excluded them?” Susan asked, a little too quickly. A little too loud.
My sister was still clueless, though the shift in Susan’s tone should have alerted her that she’d misspoken, if her own social graces didn’t. “Well…not exclude them, it’s just that this brunch was going to be for family only. For William, of course.”
“My family is William’s family,” Susan said through tight jaws. “Why on earth would you not invite them to a party to celebrate my son’s Bar Mitzvah?”
My mother might like to battle, but she only ever caused a scene when she thought it would benefit her. She snagged Jill’s sleeve to pull her back a step. “Lower your voices!”
“Why? You don’t want any of the guests here to know that you didn’t want to invite them?”
Oh, boy. I saw Evan on his way over to try and head off the showdown, but it was too late. My sister-in-law, who’d definitely put up with her share of hassles from my mother and Jill, had finally and spectacularly lost her shit.
The screaming started, and I’ll give it to her, Susan had way more colorful vocabulary than I ever would’ve given her credit for. She suggested Jill perform a few actions that I’m sure were anatomically impossible, and when my mother tried in her wavering “I can’t believe how I’m being maligned” whine to defend my sister, Susan flayed her alive.
It was kind of awesome to behold.
Not that I disagreed that my mom and sister deserved to be taken down, but this wasn’t the time or the place. Nobody seemed to remember that William was there as those three women waged war on each other over who’d done the better job for him, but when I looked across the room at my nephew, he’d gone pale and looked shaky. I dumped my plate and went to him, tugging him out a back door into a service hallway, where he burst into horrified, mortified sobs.
“Hey, hey,” I soothed. “Shhh.”
“They’re ruining it all!”
“They’re all dicks,” I said. “Don’t…William, don’t let it upset you. Shit. Yeah. Let it upset you. They’re jerks. I’m sorry, kid.”
He swiped at his face. “Why doesn’t Grandma like my mom?”
“I don’t know. Because your mom isn’t like Auntie Jill, I guess.” I put an arm around him, squeezing.
“You’re not like Auntie Jill.”
I laughed, painfully. “No, but I’d say that Grandma doesn’t like me much, either.”
“No, but she loves you, at least.” That was a lot of wisdom from a kid.
“Yeah…well. She loves you, too, buddy. So does your mom. So don’t let this ruin your time. When we go back in there, it’ll all have blown over, and everyone will be pretending nothing’s wrong.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s what people do when something awkward happens,” I told him as the service door opened and my brother shot through it.
He looked at us with relief. “Oh. Hey, buddy. There you are.”
William gave his dad a wary look. “Are they still fighting?”
“No. Mom went to cool down, and Grandma and Aunt Jill are…sitting down. Being quiet,” he said with a look at me.
“Well, better they shut up because they feel so affronted than keep on going,” I said.
Evan sighed. “C’mon back inside, buddy. Okay? Elise, you coming?”
“In a minute.”
My phone had buzzed while this was going on with a text from Niall saying he’d be right down to brunch. I tried to reply with at least a bare sketch of what had happened in case he was going to walk into a shitshow, but my signal bars had dropped. I moved along the corridor past stacked chairs and trays of glassware until I turned a corner, then down another corridor and through a set of double doors, where my phone got better reception. That was where everything really hit the fan.
There was Susan, shoulders shaking as she pressed herself against a man I recognized from being at the party the night before, but whose name I did not know. He was stroking her hair while she said, “…and he just stood there and let them fucking walk all over him, and me, while his mother insulted me and my family. And he did nothing! Not a damn thing, as usual!”
The guy wasn’t her brother or an uncle or a conveniently affectionate male cousin, either. He might’ve been a gay best friend, but when they started kissing on the mouth, even I couldn’t make that one fly. All I could do was stand there with my mouth open, phone in my hand bleating with an incoming text message that alerted the lovers to my presence so they both turned at the same time, and I could not pretend I hadn’t seen them.
“Shit,” the man said.
Susan looked remarkably put together considering how short a time had passed since she’d been screeching like a harpy. And considering her dirty secret had just been found out. She lifted her chin and murmured something to the guy that seemed to put him off, but she repeated it, harder this time. He nodded and moved past her, heading toward the swinging doors that led to the lobby. She looked at me.
“Are you going to tell Evan?”
I didn’t know what to say, other than “He’s my brother.”
“Well, don’t tell him today. Okay? Let’s not make this day any worse than it’s been already.” She looked tired. And sad.
I shook my head. “You should be the one to tell him, not me.”
Susan laughed without humor. “I’m not telling him anything. Are you crazy?”
“You can’t… I mean, he’ll find out.” My phone slipped in my sweaty palm.
; “How’s he going to find out? He doesn’t fucking pay attention.” Susan sneered. “To anything. You really think he’s going to just figure it out on his own? And even if he does, Elise, your brother is a fucking master at ignoring things he doesn’t want to deal with.”
She wasn’t wrong, but he was still my brother, and she was a woman who’d never bothered to even try to be my friend. I didn’t say anything. She shrugged and eyed me.
“What did I ever do to you,” I asked finally, “to make you hate me?”
Susan answered quietly. “I don’t hate you.”
“Then what the hell, Sue?” I leaned against the wall.
“It was everything,” she blurted. “Everything about you.”
I frowned, not sure how to take that. “What about me is so awful? I mean, I get why you can’t stand Jill, but…”
“Jill’s jealous of me, that’s all,” Susan said. “She’s jealous because she can’t have kids because of the…because of what happened when she was in college. And she’s always been jealous of you and Evan.”
“What the hell happened to her in college?”
Susan gave me a long, steady look. “She got pregnant. The guy wouldn’t marry her, the way Evan agreed to marry me.”
“Jill got pregnant?” I shook my head and wished I had a chair to sit in.
“Yeah, and she’s never gotten over the guy or gotten married or had kids, and she hates that I have what she wanted.” Susan shrugged and crossed her arms over her stomach. She looked at the carpet. “I’ve tried to feel sorry for her, but really, she’s just a bitch.”
“Well. Yeah.” I shrugged, too. “She kind of always was.”
Susan gave me a sideways look. “I’m jealous of you, Elise. So that makes me a bitch, too, I guess.”
“But…why?”
“Because Evan talks to you when he won’t talk to me. Because you stand up to them, and I just let them walk all over me. Because,” she said on a low rasp, “when William was a baby and I felt trapped into having him and getting married when I didn’t want to, there you were. I was afraid to drop him. You changed his diapers with practically one hand. And here you are now, with a job you love and you’re just…so fucking put together and confident, and you always have been, and I never have.”
We stared at each other.
“Jesus, I wish I still smoked,” she said.
I would gladly have lit up right along with her. “I won’t tell Evan anything, for William’s sake. But you should. Or you should end it. Or both.”
“I can’t end it,” Susan said. “I love him.”
I winced. We stared at each other some more. Finally, she squared her shoulders.
“I need to get back in there and, I guess, make nice.”
“You don’t really have to make that much nice. They’re going to leave you alone. Oh, they’ll snipe at each other and probably wear off Evan’s ears later, but you…” I gave her a grin that hurt my mouth and a shrug. “You, they’re going to leave alone.”
For a moment, I thought she was going to break down into tears again. I couldn’t in any way not judge her for cheating on my brother—what the fuck was I going to do about that anyway? Still, I didn’t blame her for finally laying into my mom and Jill.
“Look, Susan…” I paused, thinking of her Wednesday afternoon yoga classes, and being late. “I’m not going to put any sort of ultimatums on you or anything like that. But if you ever again use me to be responsible for your kid while you’re off fucking around, I will make sure Evan knows everything.”
She looked guilty, I gave her that. She nodded. My phone buzzed, and I looked at it. Without another word between us, she left me, and I thumbed the screen to find a text from Niall.
Where are you?
I told him where to find me, and when he got there, I hugged him, hard. Squeezing. I pressed my face to the side of his neck, and said, “Get me out of here.”
* * *
Niall took me to a diner and fed me eggs and pancakes and toast and coffee, and he listened to me rant about my stupid, crazy family without trying to offer any advice. I didn’t tell him about Susan—some knowledge is more of a burden than ignorance would be, and he worked with my brother, after all. When he reached for my hand across the table, I let him take it. A simple touch, but it meant a lot.
“Want some?” I offered a piece of toast that I’d sprinkled liberally with cinnamon and sugar. I bit into it, crunching, savoring the sweetness. I sighed. “My favorite.”
“I’ve never had it.”
Surprised, I blinked. “What, never?”
“Nope. Butter and jelly for me, always.” He leaned to take a bite of my toast. I wanted to jump across the table and kiss away the crumbs from the corner of his mouth.
In the car, I got my chance. And oh, his kiss was sweeter than sugar. Sweeter than anything.
“I should get back,” I told him after a few minutes of the kind of kissing that could make a girl forget she was in the front seat of a car. “Make sure nobody killed anyone.”
“It’s not your job to play referee, Elise.”
I smiled. “Is that just an excuse to get me to make out with you some more?”
“Maybe.” He leaned close but just out of reach, and when I moved toward him, he teasingly moved back.
I didn’t go after him again. I let him come to me, and he did, after a moment’s pause, taking my mouth in a lingering but sweet kiss that nevertheless pushed up my heart rate. Niall traced the line of my jaw and sat back. We stared at each other for a moment or so.
“I’m not crazy, am I?” I asked him.
He raised a brow. “Umm…?”
“There’s something here.” I gestured to the space between us. “I’m not reading you wrong, am I? We really did almost have sex last night, right?”
Niall blinked and looked a little embarrassed. “Yes.”
I wanted to kiss him again, but didn’t. “Just wanted to be clear, that’s all. Because you’re confusing.”
“C’mon, I’m as clear as day,” he said.
We laughed together, and I leaned back in the passenger seat with a sigh. Without looking at him, I said, “Why did you cancel our movie date?”
Niall didn’t answer me at first. When I finally looked over at him, he looked a little shamefaced. “Because I’m an idiot?”
“It’s because of those pictures, isn’t it? And the stuff you asked my brother about.” I kept my voice light, though I felt sort of dark. “It’s too weird for you.”
Niall reached for my hand. He kissed each of my fingertips then curled my fingers against my palm and kissed the knuckles, too. “It was all those messages you kept getting while we were at the acrobats show. I knew they were from a guy.”
“They were, but so what?”
“I thought maybe they were from a boyfriend,” Niall said.
I frowned. “If I had a boyfriend, I wouldn’t have gone out with you. Wow. What kind of person do you think I am?”
“Fascinating, intriguing, intimidating as hell,” Niall said.
I narrowed my eyes, though in truth his answer flattered me. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Right. You have lovers.” It was his turn to frown.
I took my hand away from his and linked my fingers in my lap. Staring straight ahead, I said, “I had a lover. One. And I don’t see him anymore. But even if I did, that’s my business, isn’t it?”
“A guy just likes to know where he stands, that’s all.”
I gave him the side eye. “So, you thought I had a boyfriend…or a lover…and yet you took me to bed anyway.”
“I think you could argue that you’re the one who took me to bed,” he said.
I was quiet, thinking of lonely nights and desperation, of unrequit
ed longing. Of rules that were supposed to keep my heart safe but had not. Niall took my hand again. His thumb stroked the back of it, and I shivered.
“You think I’m this badass. That it’s all whips and chains and hot candle wax. You think I’m going to be hard and sharp, but I’m soft, Niall. That’s what you don’t understand. That really, I want to be soft.” I shook my head and carefully took my hand away again. He ran a fingertip down my bare shoulder and arm, tickling. I looked at him again. “I’m tired of games, that’s all.”
“No games,” he promised and made an X on his chest with his finger. “Cross my heart. Hate ’em.”
I made a face. “That’s what everyone says, and the next thing you know, you’re not being honest about something, or you’re trying to manipulate someone, or you’re trying to change someone into what you want them to be. Or change into what they want you to be, only you never really can, can you? And all you have is disappointment and grief.”
“He must’ve really jacked you up,” Niall said. “Whoever he was, that boyfriend you didn’t have.”
I frowned. “Yeah, well, that’s what happens, isn’t it? Bad breakups leave you scarred.”
“So you take a lover,” he said. “Instead of having a boyfriend.”
“Are you offering to be my boyfriend?” I asked, annoyed.
He shook his head and gave me that damned smile. “I wouldn’t dare.”
“If you ask me out on a date again, you’d better follow through this time,” I warned. “No bullshit.”
“None. Not a speck of it, I promise. So, what do you say? You want to give it a try? Can I have another chance?”
Mollified, but only a little, I let myself study his face, searching for any signs he was being insincere. “I mean it, Niall. I’m not interested in being jerked around. What happened last night was one thing. Taking me to the movies is another.”
“Can’t I have both?” He looked totally serious. “Does it have to be one or the other?”