CHAPTER THIRTEEN
(Matthew)
Though their parents were shockingly cool about the food poisoning, Charlotte and Scott would not let it go.
“I don’t think so, Lucretia Borgia.” He tried to swipe the beer bottle from my hand before I could pop the top off, but I dodged him.
“Well, look who watches educational television.” I tossed him the opener and gave the bottle a shake before handing it over. Charlotte, I understood, since she’d suffered the effects, but Scott was living on borrowed time with his nonsense.
“Dick.” He opened it, anyway, clamping his mouth over the top to catch the foam that rocketed out, the way he would have done when we were still in college.
“Yeah, just splash that all over my floors.” It wouldn’t do any more damage than all that lube on the staircase had. But the lube had given Charlotte another million-dollar idea: a cleaning service that specifically handles sex party clean-ups.
R when I hadn’t been briefly comatose, I’d been loaded down with painkillers.
Any port in a storm, I guessed, but my sister’s personality seemed like enough of an impediment that any sailor would want to get out of that harbor as soon as the weather cleared up.
“I was just wondering.”
My half of the screen filled with red as the timer on the match ran down. “Damn it.” I set my controller aside and shifted to face Scott. “Look, I’m gonna be completely honest here. I don’t get it.”
“She’s your sister. It would be weird if you did,” he said dryly.
“Yes, it would be weird if I was sexually attracted to my sister,” I agreed. “But from a personality standpoint, she’s mean and she’s cold.”
“To you. To your face,” he amended. “She was worried about you, Scott.”
That was news to me. “She told me that she was worried what effect my dying would have on Mother.”
“And we all know that people say exactly what they mean. Especially rich women raised from birth to not be hysterical or react in an unseemly fashion.”
Hearing my mother’s words coming out of Scott’s mouth shocked me.
And he could tell. “Yeah. She told me all about how you two were raised. You were supposed to be assertive and speak your mind because it made you strong. Catherine was supposed to find a successful husband and take over your mom’s mantle as a society queen.”
That was true. That was all true.
“I think she may have been drawn to me because I’m not from that world. I don’t understand it at all. And maybe I was the first person to agree with her that the system sucks.” Scott shrugged. “I guess that honesty only goes so far, and she had to find a more appropriate side piece.”
“You don’t know that. She might have been… fucking a kitchen worker.” There was absolutely no chance. When she’d hopped on Scott? That had been slumming it. She viewed the people who worked for our family as subhuman.
“Come on. That’s bullshit and you know it.” He shook his head. “She was embarrassed enough to be seen with me.”
“Seen with you?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Nowhere anyone would see her ,” he clarified.
But that wasn’t the part I was stuck on. Scott’s fling with my sister didn’t sound like a one-off in an ICU linen room. “So, where were you not going to be seen together? Because I thought this was a comfort-each-other-in-our-time-of-grief thing.”
“It started that way.” Scott huffed the sigh of a man who knew he was going to have to fess up to something.
“We met up a few times when I was in the city on work. Which sounds tawdry, but… it wasn’t.
It was nice. Comfortable. She was a totally different person than the Catherine I had ever met before. ”
“Different than the Catherine who was at my mother’s birthday weekend, I’m sure.”
“I went to that because I wanted you to know that I wasn’t still pissed at you,” he says. “Catherine wasn’t my main reason for being there. But I didn’t think she was going to be that angry to see me. Showing up…messed things up for her.”
“No.” I wasn’t going to let Scott blame himself for anything having to do with my sister’s inability to stay faithful to the men she was being unfaithful with. “And if you did mess things up… who cares? She was cheating on you while cheating on her husband with you.”
“Not cheating. I mean, we never had a real relationship.” He winced. “That makes me sound like a weird stalker who showed up at her mother’s birthday party.”
“You showed up at your best friend’s mother’s birthday party, after being invited there.” Geez, Catherine had really gotten into his head.
Of course, all of the stuff with Catherine probably couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Scott had been left at the altar and almost lost his best friend.
I couldn’t figure out how, exactly, my sister was the person who inspired such passion in... well, anyone.
I assumed that was perfectly normal and not because my sister was such a fucking terrible person.
“I didn’t want to talk about this while I was here,” Scott said, rubbing his eyes with one hand splayed over the bridge of his nose. He looked like a man watching his favorite hockey team tank in the post season.
I didn’t particularly want to talk about my best friend fucking my sister, either, but I guess we were even on that score. “No, it’s fine. You helped me out with Charlotte. I can listen to you mope about Catherine. I’m not sure what I can do.”
“You don’t have to do anything. Seriously, I’m... heartbroken. And yeah, I know you don’t understand how anybody could be heartbroken over your sister, but trust me, you don’t know her the way I know her.”
“Yeah, that’s probably for the best.” I tossed my controller down, because there was no way I was having this conversation while actively looking like I was itching to get back to the game. “Do you want to know what I think?”
He grimaced. “No. That’s why I didn’t want to talk about it in the first place.”
“Well, tough shit.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t think you’re as in love with my sister as you think you are. I think you were both going through stressful times, and you needed someone to latch onto.”
“That’s not—”
“Fair, I know,” I finished for him. “Please note that I didn’t say I think you’re stupid for what happened, or that Catherine intentionally used you because she’s a cold-hearted b—”
Scott cut me off with a look.