Chapter 18
APPLES AND ANXIETY
Rhys
The triplets are going to blow it.
Every last one of them is so tense that if I flicked them with a fingertip, they’d shatter.
Margie though—and yeah, I’m actively thinking of her as Margie tonight so that I’m not the one who spills the secret—is rocking it.
And not just with helping me peel apples at the island in the small kitchen, where she keeps accidentally brushing her arm against mine or angling her hip against the side of my thigh or grabbing the same apple I’m reaching for.
That part—the part where she keeps touching me—that part is driving me mad.
I want to toss her over my shoulder and take her out to the back seat of my truck and fuck her until we both get this out of our system.
If she’s the firecracker in the sack that I think she is—then I’ll need to work her out of my system several times.
Possibly several times a day. Every day for the next month.
Shit.
Down, boner. Down.
“Lucky was so helpful during my three months of nursing school,” Margie’s telling Mrs. Sullivan, who’s sitting at the high countertop behind the sink on one end of the brightly lit kitchen.
“You know how people are. If you say you think something isn’t for you, they’ll try to encourage you and say it gets better and you just need to stick it out a little while longer.
But Lucky was the first one to tell me I’d be okay and I’d find my real purpose if nursing wasn’t it.
And I needed to hear that. I needed that kind of support. ”
Mrs. Sullivan beams at her. “That’s my boy. He’s always been so good at recognizing it’s important to let people be who they are and to respect what they say they need.”
While Margie’s perfectly playing the role of nursing-school-dropout-turned-housekeeper, Decker and Lucky are quietly sniping at each other about potato salad.
Jack’s noped out of the whole thing and is out on the back deck, supposedly manning the corn cobs on the grill and talking to Mr. Sullivan.
No one’s touched the Chex Mix. Not even to open the bag. It’s just sitting there on the counter beside the fridge.
“Are you seeing anyone, Margie?” Mrs. Sullivan asks, her gaze flitting to me and making me very glad the counter is high enough to hide the problem in my pants.
Just barely, but it is.
“I’m working on me solo for a while instead of working on me in relationships,” Margie replies.
Mrs. Sullivan’s gaze slides to her two boys.
Specifically lingering on Lucky, if I’m reading this right.
Then she looks back at Margie with a knowing smile. “No better place than Snaggletooth Creek to work on yourself.”
“It’s been good so far.”
“With friends like my boys? I’m sure it has.”
Mrs. Sullivan doesn’t mean friends, and she doesn’t mean all of her boys.
Not with the look she slides between Lucky and Margie again.
I glance at Margie.
Now that I know her a little better, it’s easier to tell when she’s been thrown for a loop.
This—Mrs. Sullivan implying Margie’s here for a hookup—is loop territory.
While her face is mostly placid, her right eye has pinched the barest amount behind her glasses, and her lips have gone flat.
I bump her from the side with my hip. “Leave some apple for me to make magic, Skillet. Don’t take it all off with the peel.”
Her face smooths out, and she gives me a playful smile. “Have you looked at how much apple you’re taking off with your peel?”
I grab one of hers and one of mine and lift them to the light to inspect them. “You’re worse. Look. There’s at least three extra millimeters of apple width on your peel.”
“You can see three millimeters with your eyeballs?”
Lucky and Decker quit arguing about the mayo measurement for the potato salad and look at us.
“You can’t?” I reply to Margie. “Time to get your prescription checked.”
“Quit flirting with my—friend,” Lucky says.
His mom turns a startled look at him, then peers closer at Margie, who deftly gathers up a load of peels, head down like it was when she was facing Jonas Rutherford the other day. She turns away and dumps them in Lucky’s compost bin.
“There. Now we can’t argue about who left more apple on their peel,” she says.
“Still you,” I mutter.
“Just for that, you’re cutting them yourself.”
“Have to. They need to be uniform. You’d probably do some chunks and some slices, and it’d be ruined.”
She’s pursing her lips together, but you can still tell she’s smiling. “I’m going to see if Jack needs anything. He was so nice too, Mrs. Sullivan. He changed the timing belt on my van when it broke after I got here.”
“Just Jack?” I tease.
She grins at me. “Only people who don’t give me shit about how I peel apples get credit for fixing my car.”
Lucky’s glaring at me.
Decker’s not too happy either, but in Decker’s case, it’s definitely not the don’t hit on my sister problem that Lucky’s having.
Decker, I’m nearly certain, is glad that no one’s implying Margie should date Lucky anymore. And also pissed at me because he can’t tell if I’m playing a part or really falling for the sister I’m supposed to be investigating.
“Lucky, do you—” his mom starts as the door closes behind Margie, but he interrupts her.
“Mom, tell Decker that Grandma’s potato salad recipe is wrong with how it’s written, and we need to double the mayo and add dill.”
She shoots one more look at me, but this one holds an exasperated smile. “Do you have family members who intentionally wrote down recipes wrong so that no one else could make them correctly, Rhys?”
“No, ma’am. I cooked with my mom until she died, so I would’ve known if she was hiding anything.”
“Maybe you should make the potato salad if you know her recipe.”
“Prefer coleslaw myself. The vinegar kind.”
Margie breezes back into the kitchen. “Jack says yes to dill, no to doubling the mayo,” she reports. “And is the chicken ready for the grill? I can take it out if it is.”
“No chicken,” Lucky says at the same time Decker says, “We’re doing kabobs.”
Margie makes an oops face that I’m completely positive is an act. “Oh, right. I knew that.”
“You ever have kabobs?” I ask her.
“No, Rhys, I’ve never been to a cookout where someone made kabobs.” She shakes her head at Mrs. Sullivan. “Men. Am I right?”
Mrs. Sullivan laughs. “And now you know what my entire life has been like. I’ve spent the past thirty-odd years surrounded by only men.”
“You’ve had Sabrina and Aunt Traci, and they were over all the time,” Decker reminds her.
“Still outnumbered.”
“Not with the size of Sabrina’s personality,” Jack calls from the deck.
“That all three of you tried to keep up with,” Mrs. Sullivan says.
I know the triplets have another cousin, but there was some drama with him a couple years ago, involving when he almost married Emma, Jonas’s wife, plus some other things, and they don’t talk about him anymore.
Apparently they don’t talk about his parents either.
“Son, best to quit when you’re not so far behind that you can’t see where you started anymore,” Mr. Sullivan says. His voice is softer but still carries through the screen door.
I grab a knife and start cutting apples.
Margie digs into the fridge and comes up with the kabobs. “Okay to take these out?” she asks Decker and Lucky.
“Yeah, get ’em going,” Decker says.
While Decker’s distracted with answering her, Lucky adds an extra scoop of mayo to the potato salad, then screws the lid on and moves around me to put it away.
“Are you serious?” Decker mutters as he looks down at the potato salad.
“You’re not letting the flavors blend long enough anyway,” I tell him. “Won’t actually matter in the end.”
Mrs. Sullivan giggles.
I eye her. “You know the real recipe, don’t you?”
“Who, me? I’m only an in-law. I don’t get the real Sullivan family recipes for anything.”
Her smile says she’s lying.
For a moment, I wonder how things worked out that Mr. Sullivan isn’t the triplets’ biological father.
And then I remind myself it’s none of my business.
My business is telling Decker if he can trust Margie.
And honestly?
I think the answer’s yes.
She’s going to want something from him and his brothers that they might not want to give, but I believe her when she says she doesn’t want collateral damage.
I believe she wants to fit into a family.
And if I’m wrong—
If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. There’s enough to be suspicious of in life.
I want to keep my rose-colored glasses on when it comes to Margie-Margot.
To be brave again.
To not be afraid to live.
The apple cobbler goes in the oven as the kabobs come off the grill, and we all head outside to eat in the cool evening. Jack and Lucky flank Margie, with Decker and me across the table and Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan at either end.
Mrs. Sullivan grills Margie on where she’s from and how she’s liking Snaggletooth Creek and if she thinks she’ll settle here long-term, and before long, even the triplets have calmed down.
They have no idea they’re dealing with a world-class achiever.
They think she’s just a nice person who’s putting effort into not messing up in front of their parents.
Not that the favor is being returned.
Their mom is dishing out a lot of, “Lucky, did you hear that? Margie loves cooking shows. You two should compare notes and cook together sometime,” and “Lucky, you should take Margie to Sir Pretzelot if she loves this bread that much,” and “Lucky, Margie’s never been white water rafting!
What are you doing tomorrow? You should take her. ”
“Rafting season is long over,” Decker says.
Jack takes a more direct approach. “Mom, leave him alone.”
“What? I’m just trying to be helpful. You boys so rarely have friends in town like this where you can really show them around.”
“He’s not into Margie like that,” Decker says.
Mrs. Sullivan rolls her eyes. “Because of the curse?”
“Shh,” Decker hisses.
“It’s not because of the curse,” Lucky says.
“Curses aren’t real,” Mrs. Sullivan adds.
“Don’t curse it worse by saying curses aren’t real,” Jack says.