Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ABBY
“ O h, that tickles.”
The woman using a pumice stone on Kristen’s feet stops what she’s doing and gives her a deadpan look. “Do you want me to stop?”
“Um, no. Sorry,” Kristen mumbles, a sheepish expression on her face.
I stifle a chuckle, making sure I don’t upset the nail technician working on my own feet.
Across the nail salon, Harper, Elena, and Kelly laugh about something as they get their manicures done, while Kristen and I are over here getting pedicures. They didn’t have enough stations for all five of us to get the same thing done at the same time.
“Is Jamie feeling better?” I ask her, trying to keep my foot as still as I can while the technician trims my toenails.
“Yeah, he had a low-grade fever the other night, but he was fine the next morning and wanted to go to school. If it was Jenny, she would have milked that for days.”
I smile. “Jamie’s pretty responsible. He reminds me a lot of Owen.”
“He is like him, isn’t he?” She thinks about it for a moment. “If I had to compare Jenny to someone, I guess she’d be like Grayson. Class clown, center of attention type.”
I consider it. “Hmm, maybe when he was younger. But he’s not like that anymore.”
She gives me a side-eye. “What, you’re an expert on my brother after fake dating him for a week?”
I rein in my blush as best as I can. “If anything, I’d say Jenny’s more like your mom.”
She gasps. “You take that back.” She’s grinning, so I know she isn’t serious.
“Think about it. She’s pushy, won’t take no for an answer…”
She groans. “You’re right. I’ve created a monster.”
Laughing, I tell her, “She’s seven. There’s still time for her to change.”
She crosses her fingers. “Let’s hope.”
My technician finishes cutting and filing my nails, and squeezes a palmful of exfoliating scrub into her hand before massaging it on my feet. Ooh, that feels good.
“So my mom hasn’t found out about you and Grayson yet?”
I go still, my heart suddenly racing. Does Kristen know what Grayson and I did yesterday? How could she? I can’t imagine he would have told her.
“W-what do you mean?” I stutter.
“That you two are faking this wedding date thing,” she says, like it’s obvious.
Relief floods me. Duh, the original arrangement. Not this new one we have going on where we give each other orgasms at my house. “No, it’s all good.”
She harrumphs, settling back in her seat as her technician begins exfoliating her feet, too. “I still don’t get why you’re helping him,” she grumbles. “It’s not like you two are even friends.”
How many times is she going to bring this up? Is it actually bothering her? “Are you mad?” I ask carefully.
She gives me a swift look then reaches over and taps me on the arm. “Of course not. But, to be honest, I’ve kind of been waiting for this to blow up in his face. I hate that you’re caught in the middle, but he’s always tried to cut corners. He deserves some comeuppance.”
I relax again. “So you just want to say I told you so .”
Grinning, she admits, “I do. You don’t have siblings, so you don’t know how it is, but saying I told you so to your brother is one of the most satisfying things on the planet.”
“Sorry I missed out on that experience, then.”
“So how did it go at Harry’s? Was it boring?”
I had complained to her about the bar portion of the itinerary last week when Harper sent it to us, knowing I wouldn’t be drinking.
“Actually, I got drunk.”
She turns to me so fast, she visibly startles her technician.
“What?” she demands, laughing. “Tell me everything.”
I explain how I got friendly with Elena, leaving out the part about how I admitted I like Grayson, and ended up taking shots. She laughs when I tell her I switched clothes with Kelly, again omitting because I thought Grayson might notice me more in a short dress, and then doubles over when I reveal how I accidentally flashed everyone when I spun around in the dress.
Her technician is not impressed with her client’s behavior, but Kristen’s delight in my utter mortification even makes me chuckle. If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry, right?
“Please tell me someone got that on video,” Kristen says, wiping at her eyes.
“Absolutely not.” I motion to the rest of our party getting their manicures. “They drank even more than me, so they weren’t in any state to film things. I think Owen even took Harper’s phone from her at one point so she couldn’t do anything she would regret.”
Kristen shakes her head. “I’m surprised Grayson didn’t record the night, then. Seems like the type of thing he’d love. Or was he sloshed, too?”
“No, he didn’t drink at all. He was pretty protective.”
She gives me a quizzical look. “Really?”
“Yeah.” I think back to that night, and now that I’m seeing it through Grayson’s perspective, I’m glad he didn’t take me up on my offer when I was drunk. That he waited to make sure I was in a clear state of mind before making a move. “He was very gentlemanly.”
“Huh. Didn’t know he had it in him.”
I hesitate, unsure if I should say anything. “Maybe you don’t know him as well as you think you do.”
Her brow furrows. “I don’t know my brother?”
“As an adult, I mean. People change as they get older. He’s not the same carefree teen he was when he left Crescent Pass. I think it’s easy to revert to the dynamic you had a decade ago when you lived together, but you’re not the same person you were then, either.”
Kristen’s quiet as she listens to me. “Did he say something about us not knowing him now?”
“No,” I assure her, not wanting her to think Grayson is mad at his family or anything. “He just seems a little… lonely.”
He’d stayed for a while at my house after our tryst , keeping me company while I finished packaging all the wedding favor boxes. He’d offered to help, but it was abundantly clear after about five minutes that he’s no good at wrapping.
I’d told him about funny things that happened at the library and caught him up on stories of his niece and nephew. He’d seemed wistful, commenting more than once that he wished he could have been there. And when he’d told me about his life in Seattle, it was mostly about his job in one of those tall glass buildings downtown and going to sports bars with his coworkers after ten-hour workdays. Or how he used to hang out with his friend Charlie a lot more before he got a girlfriend, and now he feels like a third wheel when he’s with them. When he mentioned his condo is only a half-mile walk from the Space Needle, I expressed interest in seeing it and he had immediately said his place is always open to me. He’d remarked no one ever visits him in this heartbreakingly offhand way that I hadn’t wanted to call attention to.
“He didn’t outright say it,” I continue, “but he seems to miss you all more than he’d admit. And sometimes feels excluded when he comes home, like he’s out of the loop.”
Kristen shifts uncomfortably. “Well, he moved away. What did he expect?”
I nod. “But the burden’s always on him to stay close. He’s the one who makes several trips a year here to visit, but no one ever goes to see him. And again, I’m only inferring. He didn’t complain about any of this.”
She runs her hand through her hair, considering my words. “Oh my God, I’m a shitty sister. All I’ve done is bust his balls his whole time here.”
“No,” I interject, but she cuts me off.
“I’ll do better. And I’m taking the twins to go see him in Seattle this summer.”
I hide my smile. “I bet he’d like that.”
I settle back in my chair as my nail technician finishes the base coat and fans my toes to speed up the drying process.
“So you really are an expert on Grayson now, huh?” she teases.
God, I wish. Maybe then I’d know how he feels about me. If what we did yesterday was only a fun afternoon or meant something more. Meant everything to him, the way it did to me.
I know it didn’t, though. Not with how casually he suggested hooking up in the first place.
But he did ask to come over again tonight. That’s something.
“Hardly,” I tell Kristen, knowing she’s waiting for an answer. “But we’ve been spending a lot of time together this week. I guess it’s only natural we’d find things out about each other.”
Like how big his dick is, the feel of him incredible. Or how sexy he is when he comes, his hips jerking as he loses control. Or how he seems to already have mastery over my body, everything he did ramping up my pleasure to previously unknown heights.
Not that I would ever say any of that to Kristen.
“So what has he found out about you then?”
I swallow, thinking of something safe to tell her. Not the strip poker game or the drunken pass at him or their mom catching us kissing. “He had to help me with my dad the other night.”
The admission comes out unbidden.
“Oh, Abby.” She lays a comforting hand on my arm, knowing it’s a sore subject for me. That I hate this awful thing happening to him, to the point that I rarely talk about it with others.
“It was embarrassing,” I whisper. “Dad fell and Mom couldn’t get him up.”
She sighs in commiseration. “I’m so sorry. But I bet Grayson was glad he could help you. I give him a lot of crap, but when push comes to shove, he’s always there to help if we need him.”
I nod, not saying anything.
“Is your dad doing okay?” she asks hesitantly.
“Oh, yeah. No lasting harm.”
Just the increased worry always going on in the back of my head about what’s going to happen next to him. And at what point Mom won’t be able to care for him anymore.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Yes. No. “Maybe another time.”
She nods in agreement. One of the things I love about Kristen is she never pushes if I ask her not to.
Unlike Harper, I’ve come to find. I eye her across the salon. What would she say if I told her what Grayson and I have been up to? It’s a good thing she’s been so preoccupied with her friends visiting and planning for the wedding or she definitely would have noticed something by now. She hadn’t even commented on Grayson’s car parked in my driveway yesterday when she dropped off the last of the wedding favors.
And then there’s Kristen. She’s always been clueless about my true feelings for her brother, and it’s no different now. Guilt builds in my chest, knowing I’m essentially sneaking behind her back. Not that she’s the boss of Grayson, but I’m fairly sure she wouldn’t be happy about this. She’d say he’s cutting corners . Hooking up with me without the commitment of a relationship.
But I’m okay with that. Right? That’s what I told myself yesterday. And I don’t regret what we did for a single second. But that uneasiness flashes for a moment again, thinking about what it’ll be like when he heads back to Seattle. A fling that could never be.
What else can I do, though?