Coming Swoon (Brunch Bros #4)

Chapter 30

Chapter Thirty

One of the things Peter loved most about his brain was, when properly interested and incentivized, he could focus unwaveringly for hours. It also helped if he was trying to complete a task for someone else and not himself. Helping Sybil clean and reorganize the trailer she’d used to start her business was the perfect job for him. The task was Sybil-centric, so he was adequately interested and incentivized, and it required little to no actual thinking. Any idiot could wipe down counters.

So far it had been his idea of a perfect weekend because he’d spent it with Sybil doing normal, everyday life things.

After volunteering at the cross-country meet, they’d gone to Stardust because Sybil had a lot of work to catch up on. He sat in the office with her while she did her bookkeeping and ordering, then tucked himself into a corner table while she made coffee, pretending to read a book the entire time, though he spent a lot more time watching her than reading. He couldn’t help himself. He had twelve years of gazing at her to catch up on.

They picked up a pizza on the way home and drank the bottle of wine they’d opened and barely touched Friday night. Then they sat on the couch and talked about nothing important, Agatha wedged between them, proving the theory that cats were actually liquid, purring blissfully. It was cozy, domestic, and he was so damn happy he thought he’d explode in a shower of glitter and rainbows.

Eventually Sybil yawned, and Peter solemnly told her that it was probably in his best interest to spend the night again because he didn’t want to risk being late to help her on Sunday. When she’d pointed out that he needed to go back to his hotel for a change of clothes, he told her he’d packed a second change of clothes, just in case. She’d rolled her eyes, but didn’t make him go back to the hotel.

The McMahon farm was located a little over twenty minutes outside of town, on a quiet stretch of road dotted with other small farms. Peter wasn’t sure what exactly categorized a piece of property as a farm, but he’d seen some livestock, so he assumed they were farms.

The McMahons were cranberry farmers, which was a fruit he’d never given a lot of thought. If Sybil hadn’t pointed out the bogs, he wouldn’t have noticed them. It wasn’t like an apple orchard or a vineyard. The cranberry bushes were low to the ground and incredibly nondescript. Everything he knew about cranberries came from cranberry juice commercials, so he was surprised when he found out they didn’t grow in water, they were just harvested that way.

A knock on the doorframe disturbed their companionable silence.

“It’s dinner time,” Connor said, and sighed when he saw Peter.

Apparently volunteer hours weren’t the way to win him over.

“We’ll be in in a minute,” Sybil said, replacing a part on the espresso machine .

Connor disappeared.

“How long do you think it’s going to take for him to like me?” Peter asked.

“I don’t know why you’re so worried about it.”

“Because he’s important to you.”

“That doesn’t mean you need to make him your best friend too,” Sybil said, crossing the small space and putting her hands on his hips. “I know it’s hard for you when people don’t like you, but the good news is, I like you and that’s a much harder get.”

Peter perked up a little. “You like me?”

“Don’t push it.” She rose on her toes and kissed his cheek. “Let’s go eat.”

The McMahons lived in a large white farmhouse. On the drive, Sybil had pointed out a smaller yellow house that belonged to Grandpa Beau, who still worked with his son Greg on the farm, even though he was in his late eighties. According to Sybil, the twins and Chris lived in the house with their parents, all saving money and paying off loans. Connor had moved out when Chris had moved back in after finishing school, deciding that living in his fixer-upper on Lilac Lane was better than reliving his childhood sharing a bathroom with his brothers. There was a fifth brother, Clark, but he didn’t live in town so Peter didn’t waste brain space remembering any details about him.

The closer they got to the house, the faster his heart beat. Peter surreptitiously wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans. Why was he so nervous? He liked meeting new people. He was good at meeting new people.

Was it because Sybil had called this a family dinner?

“Do you come out here most Sundays?” he asked.

“I do. Bitsy likes to see all her kids once a week. She wishes she saw three of them a lot less often, but I know she’ll miss having them underfoot when they’re gone.”

“So you’re close?”

Sybil nodded. “Very close. Bitsy is a better mom to me than my mom ever was.”

She’d never mentioned much of anything about her family, so Peter wanted to dive into that more, but Sybil pulled open the back door and stepped to the side.

The thundering of paws and the scratching of nails trying to find purchase on a hard, slippery surface reached his ears a little too late for him to move out of the way. Four excited dogs swarmed his legs, almost knocking him over. They were a mass of wiggling, prancing, jumping bodies, inspecting him and vying for his attention.

“Hello…hello—oh, that is my butt!” Peter craned his head over his shoulder to see a hound dog with its nose firmly in his rear end.

“Copper, that’s not polite.” Sybil moved the dog’s nose away from Peter’s butt just as another dog shoved its snout into his crotch. “Gizmo, no.” She hooked her fingers into the border collie’s collar and pried the dog away. “Christ on a cracker… Christopher! ”

Moments later, the friendly veterinarian and second-oldest McMahon brother loped outside.

“Sorry, sorry,” Chris said. “They’re excited. They love new people.”

“Are they all yours?” Peter asked.

Chris blushed a little. “Yeah. This is Copper”—he pointed to the gingerbread-colored hound dog that had sniffed Peter’s butt—“Gizmo”—the black-and-white border collie that was a budding urologist—“Pebbles”—a mid-sized spotted mutt whose tail propelled its entire body—“and Ziggy.”

Ziggy was the smallest of the pack and had situated its pint-sized body between Copper’s front legs and was barking ceaselessly. Chris stooped and scooped up Ziggy, scratching the dog behind its silky blond ears.

“I know. You’re so tough and so scary,” he cooed to his dog, “but he’s our friend.” Chris smiled sheepishly at Peter. “The smaller the dog, the tougher they think they are. Copper and Pebbles would let anyone rob the house as long as they got a belly rub and a treat.”

“What about Gizmo?” Peter asked, cautiously moving forward as the black-and-white dog paced behind him.

“Gizmo would try to herd them.”

Sybil absentmindedly scratched Copper’s head as they moved inside. “I can’t believe your mom didn’t make you put the dogs up.”

“Well, I was about to when you opened the door and distracted them.”

Chris beckoned the dogs, and they all followed him like he was the Pied Piper.

Sybil paused by a pile of large shoes to take hers off. They looked like children’s shoes in comparison.

“I should warn you that Bitsy is a bit of a fan,” she said, “and I told her I might be bringing a friend to dinner, but I didn’t say who in case you flaked. Just be prepared for some squealing and some fawning.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Peter took off his shoes, too. “I’m used to it.”

Hopefully Bitsy would be the domino effect he needed to start getting Connor on his side.

Peter inhaled deeply. The house smelled heavenly. He’d have bet his bank account that the savory scent was a pot roast, and his mouth began to water. There weren’t a lot of home-cooked meals in his life. Craft services and restaurants were fine, but there was something about eating a meal someone hadn’t yelled at anyone else to get on the table .

“Stop eating the roast!” A woman’s voice roared from what Peter assumed was the direction of the kitchen. “Chase Beauregard, you are not too old for me to smack you with this spoon.”

Maybe there was some yelling, but it was family and barely counted.

“Ow!”

When they reached the kitchen, Chase was nursing his knuckles. A tall blonde woman that had to be the McMahon matriarch was pointing a wooden spoon at him menacingly.

For a woman named Bitsy, she was very tall. Peter would have guessed somewhere around 5’10”. She was still inches shorter than her sons, but that didn’t stop her from being an imposing figure.

“Bitsy,” Sybil said gently. “This is my friend, Peter.”

Bitsy turned around. Her eyes became wide, and there was a three-second delay before she shrieked. The wooden spoon flew out of her hand, bounced off the ceiling, and almost hit Chase in the head.

“Hello, Mrs. McMahon,” he said, opting for ultra polite and deferential, like he was meeting the Queen of England again. “It’s nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.”

Bitsy put a hand on her chest, though it was hard to tell if it was to remind herself to breathe or to calm her breathing.

“You…you…you’ve heard of me?”

Peter nodded. “I have. Cole made your cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving last year, and it was magnificent . Did you have a smooth recovery from your appendectomy?”

“Um…yes, I did,” she stammered, her cheeks turning apple red. “You…had my cranberry sauce?”

“I did, and I loved every drop. Tried to lick the bowl, but Graham wouldn’t let me.”

“Do you want the recipe?”

It was like a record scratch had played over a stadium-sized loudspeaker because the entire house froze. Not even the floorboards dared to creak. Chase stared at his mother, agog and dumbfounded.

Sybil shattered the silence.

“Oh, no. Peter isn’t allowed in the kitchen,” she said.

“You told me that recipe would leave this house over your dead body,” Chase said, still teeming with disbelief. “That you might consider giving it to our wives one day, but you’d have to see if they could be trusted first.”

“With the exception of Heidi and Eloise, you have incredibly terrible taste in women, Chase,” Bitsy told him. “And poor judgment, since you let both of them slip through your fingers.”

Chase threw up his hands and stomped out of the kitchen.

“That was a little below the belt,” Sybil said cautiously.

“Someone has to tell him. He’s not getting any younger.” Bitsy shook her head. “I don’t understand where I went wrong with any of them. They can cook, clean, do laundry…and not one of them is married.”

“The Mrs. Bennett Problem,” Peter chimed in. “A surplus of children and no suitors.”

“He understands.”

“If you taught me to cook, clean, and do laundry, I could probably get married,” Peter offered, not even needing to glance Sybil’s way because he could feel her eyes burning holes in the side of his face.

Bitsy flushed. “Oh, I doubt you’d need my help finding someone to marry you. You’ve probably got a line of hopefuls around the block.”

“The finding part was easy. It’s the convincing.”

“Convincing?” Bitsy was aghast. “Sybil, can you imagine anyone saying no to this man?”

“Very easily,” Sybil mumbled, but Bitsy didn’t seem to hear her .

“If I’d known you were coming, I would have made something fancier. It’s just pot roast.”

“It smells amazing,” Peter assured her. “No one ever makes me pot roast.” He went in for the kill and put his arm around Bitsy’s shoulders and squeezed. “I’m very excited.”

Bitsy piled more food on Peter’s plate than he could possibly eat. And the dogs were banned from the dining room, so he couldn’t slip bits and pieces under the table to them.

He whispered in Sybil’s ear, “I don’t know how I’m going to finish all of this.”

“There’s dessert after too,” she whispered back, a devilish twinkle in her eye. She enjoyed his misery. “Connor made pie.”

Peter bit down on a whimper.

The McMahons’ dinner table was big, and they were all still shoulder to shoulder. Which, given the average size of a McMahon’s shoulders, didn’t take a lot of effort. Peter was wedged between Sybil and Chase, and he wondered if he could sneak some of his food onto Chase’s plate without him noticing.

“So, Peter, how did you meet our Sybil?”

The question came from across the table. Grandpa Beau looked like he’d wandered off a movie set because any costume designer worth their salt would have dressed an old farmer the exact same way: yellow flannel shirt and well-worn blue-jean overalls with a red handkerchief poking out of the bib pocket. For a man his age, he was remarkably spry. Peter never would have guessed Grandpa Beau was a year older than his own grandmother.

“I met Sybil at a bookshop in London when she was studying abroad.” He glanced at Sybil, who was acting very interested in her pot roast. “We lost touch, so us both ending up here feels a bit like magic.”

“It’s interesting that she’s never mentioned her very famous friend,” Connor said frostily, then winced. Sybil had probably kicked him under the table.

“I wasn’t famous when we met. I lived in a truly wretched flat with a few friends.”

“But your parents are rich,” Connor pressed.

“ They are. I was not at the time. My mother never wanted me to go into acting, so she told me if I wanted to pursue the profession, I’d have to go it my own way. No money, no introductions, no contacts. It wasn’t that people in the industry didn’t know who I was, but my parents weren’t actively greasing the wheels for me.”

It was a story he’d told about a hundred times in various interviews. He always played it a little sheepish and very humble.

“How does your mother feel about your career now that you’re established?” Chris asked with genuine curiosity.

“She’s still not happy about it. I’m only able to do this film because men are incapable of keeping their horrid opinions to themselves and she was out of options. If you were wondering what the bottom of the barrel looks like.” He pointed to himself.

A door at the front of the house creaked, and the dogs went nuts barking. A few moments later, Mallory stepped into the dining room.

“Sorry I’m late. My shift at the hotel ran long.”

She hugged Bitsy, then Greg, and hugged Grandpa Beau the longest before kissing the old man on his cheek.

“We’re just glad you’re here, sunshine,” Grandpa Beau told her, beaming at her.

Mallory dropped into the open seat between Connor and Chris. “It smells amazing. I’m starving.”

She loaded up her plate with as much food, if not more, than Bitsy had put on Peter’s plate. He didn’t know where she was planning on putting it since she was about a foot shorter than he was. If she’d displaced Chase, maybe he could’ve shuffled some of his food onto her plate.

“What did I miss?” Mallory asked, looking around the table. “Oh, hey, Peter.”

Next to him, Sybil tensed. Gently, he tapped his knee against hers, and she relaxed a fraction.

“We were just discussing my super-secret past that’s been used as clickbait for about a decade,” he said and took a sip from his water glass. “Sadly, the truth isn’t very scandalous.”

“Peter and Sybil met in London,” Connor pointed out, and Mallory’s eyebrows rose. “At a bookshop.”

“London?” Mallory repeated, then leaned forward to try to make eye contact with her sister, though Sybil was very invested in cutting a carrot as small as she could with her fork. “You met a movie star on your vacation, and you didn’t say anything?”

“It was before he was famous,” Sybil said tersely. “I did my study abroad in London, but you probably don’t remember that because it didn’t revolve around you.”

The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees, and Peter mentally scrambled for a different topic to steer away from potential disaster.

Grandpa Beau beat him to it.

“Isn’t your grandmother Estelle Whitman?”

The entire table exhaled in unison.

“She is, and yes, she is as drunk in real life as she’s appeared on every award show and interview you’ve ever seen.”

The collective chuckle thawed the room. Grandpa Beau continued to pepper Peter with questions about his grandmother, some of them borderline inappropriate, but apt considering some of her more titillating roles, until Peter finally said, “I’d give you her phone number, but she’d eat you alive on the first date.”

“Kind of like a praying mantis,” Chase said.

Grandpa Beau grinned. “But what a hell of a way to go, eh? She was my hall pass. That is what you kids call it, right?” He looked to his son for confirmation, though for a man well into middle age, Greg looked as mortified by his father as any teenager. “Peggy would be tickled pink to know I had dinner with Estelle Whitman’s grandson.”

The conversation moved along as Grandpa Beau asked Connor about the cross-country meet. Peter leaned over and whispered in Sybil’s ear, “Who is Peggy?”

“Grandma McMahon,” she whispered back. “She died ten years ago.”

Peter’s heart ached for everyone at the table. Estelle was the only grandparent he’d ever known, and while he recognized her comedic value as martini-swilling matriarch, they didn’t have a heartwarming relationship. If the late Peggy was even half as warm and welcoming as Grandpa Beau, her death must have been a catastrophic loss.

Sybil’s knee tapped against his, and her eyebrows scrunched together in a silent question. Are you okay?

He flicked his eye in a casual upward diagonal like an ocular shrug. You know me.

Her mouth twitched downward into a frown, and under the table, she squeezed his thigh.

Heaven and hell help him if he lost this woman again because he loved her more than he could bear.

“That was fun,” Peter said, turning the ice pack on his forehead to the colder side. “I’ve never played a game of Pictionary with casualties before.”

“You shouldn’t have sat between Connor and Mallory.”

Sybil turned on her bright lights. The road was dark and empty.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because they’re so absurdly competitive that there’s an unofficial town ordinance that requires they be on the same team for any team activity because otherwise people get hurt in the crossfire.”

“My forehead would like to point out that they were on the same team for Pictionary and I got hurt.”

“It’s worse when they play against each other.”

Peter chuckled. “I had fun, though. I’d like to do that again. We should have a game night, the four of us.”

“That is the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

“Why? It would be fun. We could have some wine, a little charcuterie board. Maybe Connor would go from hating my living guts to benign dislike.”

“I think it’s going to take more than one game night for that to ha— Oh shit! ”

A deer darted into the road, its hooves scrambling for purchase on the asphalt. Sybil slammed on her breaks, throwing both of them forward against their seatbelts, but it didn’t matter. The deer had entered the road too close to her car, and the resulting thud was much louder than he would have guessed, like a giant taking a baseball bat to the front of the car.

“Fuck!” Sybil threw the car in park and jabbed the triangular hazard lights button with her finger before springing out of the car to inspect the damage.

Peter didn’t know if it was a good sign or a bad sign that the airbags hadn’t gone off.

The deer was definitely dead. Its brown eyes were open and unblinking. He tried to focus on the damage to the car instead of the animal. The hood was crumpled up and in, and there was a faint tendril of smoke in the cold night air. It was like the deer said, “If I’m going down, you’re going down with me.”

“Do you have a signal?” Sybil asked, holding her phone in the air to search for reception, a frustrated scowl on her face. “I need to call the tow truck.”

Peter checked his phone. “I might? The bars don’t always update.”

He handed it to her, and she dialed, then waited.

“Hello? Jody, can you hear me? It’s Sybil Morgan.”

Sybil explained to the tow truck driver where they were and what had happened, then she hung up.

“Jody will be here in about thirty or forty minutes.” She handed Peter back his phone, then looked at the deer. “Goddammit.”

“What do we do with it?” he asked.

“Move it off the road. Nature will take care of it.”

Together, they moved the deer off the road and into the ditch. It was somehow lighter and heavier than Peter had expected, not that he thought about deer a lot.

Sybil kicked shards of a broken headlight into the ditch.

“Will your car insurance cover this?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice was thin and tense, like a string about to snap. “But this couldn’t have happened at a worse fucking time. I mean, I guess it could have, but… Fuck! I finally get a little ahead, and I hit a fucking deer.” She looked at him. “Do you know how long it takes to save two thousand dollars?”

“Um, no.” He didn’t dare add that he didn’t know because he hadn’t tried to save money since she’d known him in London. Even then he wasn’t particularly good at it. “Why two thousand?”

“That’s my car insurance deductible. I wanted a low monthly payment to free up cash month to month. I thought, hey, I’m a good driver. I live in a safe, small town. What could happen?” She laughed mirthlessly. “I forgot about the fucking wildlife.”

“I can pay for your car to get fixed?—”

“No.” She shook her head. “I take care of myself. I have the money, it’s just…” Her chin wobbled, and her lower lip quivered. “I’m going to lose it again. I thought I had it this time, and it’s going to slip through my fingers again.”

Peter took a step towards her to comfort her, but Sybil stepped back in equal measure.

“Lose what? What are you losing?” he asked, making his voice as soft and gentle as he could.

Sybil wrapped her arms around herself and stared at the damage again.

“You know the empty storefront next to Stardust? I’ve always wanted to turn it into a bookstore. Everything seemed like it was lining up. The space was available. I was getting an influx of cash from the movie stuff. And then…” She thrust her hands in the direction of her car like she was showing it off on a game show. “I can’t win. I can’t…”

Her voice caught, and she clamped her mouth shut. The light from the headlights made the tears that filled her eyes glisten. Then Sybil turned and started to walk down the road. She walked until she was almost out of the reach of her headlights, then she stopped and screamed.

It was the guttural yell of someone who’d been pushed and pushed and had nowhere left to go but over a cliff. Sybil screamed at the top of her lungs, hands balled into fists at her sides, until she was out of breath, then she inhaled deeply and screamed some more. The sound was eaten up by inky night, pushed away in a thoughtless breeze.

When she came back, she marched up to him and put her head on his chest. This assignment he understood, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her and swayed gently side to side until she moved her arms like a rusted robot and hugged him back.

“I’m paying to fix your car,” he said into her hair as he kissed the top of her head. She tensed, and he cut off her argument at the pass. “I’m not taking no for an answer. I know you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, but goddammit, Sybil, I can take care of you, too.” He squeezed her tighter. “And before you start feeling guilty or resentful about my generosity, this isn’t altruistic. I’m going to have to sleep at your place so you have a ride to set, or so you can take me and borrow the car for the day. It’s a sacrifice, but it’s one I’m willing to make.”

Sybil’s watery laugh bubbled up like a mountain spring, and the sound soothed his peripheral anxiety.

She sniffled a few times, then rose up on her tiptoes for a simple, lingering kiss.

“Thank you.”