Chapter 15
CHAPTER 15
T HE KITCHEN IS SURPRISINGLY QUIET WHEN WE GET back to the house. Reenie and Cormack are sitting outside, and I race to the shower. I showered after my run, but then biked and sweated and rinsed with salt water and rolled in sand and rinsed and sweated again. I am sodden and dried and sodden again on repeat, and there is sand in the creases of my ears. When I am out of the shower, I am cleaner than I have ever been before. I look at my reflection, naked, and I have the sense that a layer has been removed. I’ve had a spa day by accident.
I dress in luxuriously clean jeans and a white top that makes the tiny new freckles on my cheeks pop, and I return to the bedroom, where Dan is dangerously shirtless again. I grip the doorknob and look for a spot over his shoulder to rest my gaze. He grabs clothes from his bag and I just stand there.
“I’m going to shower too,” he says.
“Yes.” It’s a word I cannot stop saying.
“So tonight, I sort of forgot, my brothers are all going out for dinner. It’s a thing we do when I come home, and Aidan planned it for tonight.” He’s cradling a pair of khaki shorts and a faded blue button-down in his arms, and the cotton of the shirt is resting against his chest.
“Could you put your shirt on?” I ask.
“I’m about to take a shower.”
“I know, but I just . . .” I look down at his feet, also bare. “You’re so naked, I’m not following what you’re saying. You’re going somewhere?”
He smiles and pulls his shirt on, buttoning just one button. “Better?” The blue of the shirt and the smile both do something to his eyes. No, not really better.
“Thank you.”
He’s still smiling. “So we do this brothers’ dinner.”
“Oh, got it. Yes. That’s totally fine. I was thinking about biking back to town, maybe grabbing something at the diner. Maybe I’ll catch Jack getting ice cream.” Not being with Dan tonight is probably for the best. I need to get back on task, and that’s going to be a lot easier when I’m not standing here watching him bite his bottom lip the way he is right now.
He takes a step toward me, and now we’re both in the doorway. “Will you come? The wives don’t come, so it would just be you. But the food is good, and I could use a little backup.”
“You want me as backup?”
“Yeah, I couldn’t have taken those kids today without you.” He smiles again. “Aren’t we trying to be a team?”
“Yes,” I say again.
*
NELLIE’S CRAB SHACK is on the beach just outside of Oak Shore. From the road it looks like it could be a small bait shop, a door with two windows on either side and a shingled roof. But the back opens up to tables on the sand under thatched umbrellas. I kick off my sandals before I even realize I’ve done it.
We sit at a round table that would have been fine for six smaller people, or even the five of them without me. As it is, we are wedged in tight. They insist on giving me the seat with the best ocean view. I take it and wiggle my toes in the still warm sand. Dan sits next to me and kicks off his flipflops too. He has rolled up his sleeves since we left the house, and his forearms rest on the table, dwarfing mine. The waitress greets us with “Danny’s home!” and brings two pitchers of beer we didn’t order.
“Against all odds,” Connor says and shoots Dan a look.
She starts to hand us wooden menus, and Brian raises a hand to stop her. “Do we need menus?” he asks us. “Softshell crab and fries? Chopped salad and cornbread?”
Everyone agrees on the order, and Aidan pours us each a beer. “Before you all get drunk and disorderly, can we talk about the party?”
Dan leans back in his seat and takes a long sip of his beer.
Aidan says, “Paula wants us all there by five to help set up. People are coming at six. And it’s like a hundred people— I don’t think anyone said no.”
Brian says, “Marla picked all the food, I think. Connor did the toast and Finn picked a song.”
Dan lets out a breath and shakes his head.
“You have to,” Brian says.
“I know,” Dan says. And then, to me, “I don’t actually love acting like a jackass in the same way my brothers do.”
“He gets stage fright,” Finn says and makes a sarcastic sad face. Boo-hoo. Connor laughs, though I’m not sure at what.
Dan rolls his eyes. “It’s not stage fright. It’s idiot fright. I know I’m going to hate whatever stupid thing you have planned.”
Aidan places his hand on the back of Dan’s chair. “He’ll be fine. And Janey will make sure he shows up.”
“Of course I’m going to show up,” Dan says.
“Seemed a little touch-and-go that you were even coming to town,” Connor says with an edge. “We weren’t exactly counting on you.”
“Can we not do this?” Dan says. His hands are clutching the table like he’s about to push himself away and leave. I feel like I’m witnessing something I shouldn’t.
“Well, it was nice of you to give us a little time during your hunt for a pop star,” Connor says. There’s a smirk on his face that I’d like to punch.
“You’re welcome,” Dan says without missing a beat.
“I mean, it’s their fortieth anniversary. We’ve been planning this thing since Christmas . . .” Connor trails off. For a second, I see his baby-of-the-family energy.
Brian says to me, “He’s MIA for a lot of stuff.” I don’t know how to respond. Dan is under attack and seems completely used to it. I want to defend him, or at least let him know I’m on his side. It’s not that easy to show up for dinner on Long Island when you live in Los Angeles.
“I’m not MIA,” Dan says evenly. He leans back in his chair. “I don’t know if you guys know, but they recently opened the borders around Long Island. You could stick a toe over the line and see how it feels, if you wanted.”
Aidan laughs. “Not a chance, we’d never survive.” He lifts up his beer and says, “To crossing county lines.”
Everyone drinks to that, and the tension softens, but I don’t like this. I don’t like the four-against-one. I don’t like the way Dan seems like he’s on defense against the people he loves most.
“I’ll run lines with him,” I say. “I’m a pro.”
“And then you’ve got to get him on the stage,” Aidan says. “That was going to be my job, but you’re prettier than I am.”
“I think you’re exceptionally pretty,” Dan says to Aidan. His brothers laugh and I am confused. It’s a joke because they’re identical, but I didn’t expect something light to come out of Dan’s mouth. I think I expected him to sulk or storm out of the restaurant. I’m realizing what it is about this family that has me so rapt—it’s the way they say what they mean and just move on.
Brian says, “Okay, Jane’s in charge of Danny. I guess that’s all we need to deal with. Connor’s texting everyone his corny-ass toast.” He raises his beer. “Cheers to Mom and Dad.” We all clink glasses again, and I feel a pressure in my heart. An old longing to be a person who could say Mom and Dad like it was nothing, but also the feeling that I’m part of this night, the sixth glass clinking. Reenie and Cor- mack feel like people I’d like to toast again and again.
When a mountain of food is placed on the table, Aidan asks, “Any Quinlan sightings today? Like, are you staking out his house?”
“If we knew where he was staying, I probably would have. We actually just rode bikes to the beach,” I say.
“And we kicked ass in a tug-of-war,” Dan says.
“They made a brief appearance at the Owl Barn,” Finn says. “And Janey and I made music history.”
“Yep, that was our workday,” I say. I smile at Dan over my beer. It was a good day. I can’t remember the last time I spent an entire day playing. I wore the world’s dumpiest bathing suit and got covered in sand; I ate a sandwich the size of my head and biked and made music. I’m no closer to not getting fired, and yet it was an oddly good day.
Connor grabs a crab and shakes his head. “I don’t know how you guys do it. I hope this movie thing works out, really I do. But the stress of not knowing if you’re getting a paycheck, I can’t imagine it.”
Aidan says, “And Danny, can you imagine spending the day flossing crap out of other people’s teeth?”
“I cannot,” Dan says.
It occurs to me then why Dan loves True Story. It’s the kind of love he grew up with, where the real and maybe not- so-nice thing is said, and then you come back together. The love creeps in in small ways, a hand placed on the back of your brother’s chair.
“I wouldn’t worry about Dan,” I say. “He took me through his retirement plan, it’s ironclad.”
Dan laughs and gives me a sideways smile. I guess it’s okay to use his joke now.
The sun gets lower, and they tell so many stories. The time Aidan snuck a girl into their room and made Dan and Connor sleep in the garage. The time Finn got arrested for trying to buy beer using his dad’s expired driver’s license. The mildly erotic love letter Dan wrote to his kindergarten teacher. Brian’s first mullet. Laughter rises up from the table, and just as it’s about to settle down, someone starts another story. I have laughed so hard that my body idles with anticipatory laughter for whatever’s coming next. I tell them about pranks we played on each other on set, harmless, uncreative pranks that invariably went all wrong.
Through all of it, I clock the nearness of Dan. When I laugh, he leans in, not away. When he leans back in his chair, he places a hand on the back of mine. I try on the feeling, just for a second, of what it would be like to belong to him.
*
I AM STUFFED with softshell crabs and ice-cold beer when I wander inside to find the bathroom. There’s a line, so I check my phone and see that I have just missed a call from Clem. I would rather wet my pants than miss this chance to talk to her between shifts, so I walk out onto the street.
“Hot?” she asks before I’ve even said hello. “Dan, who you hate, is hot at home?”
“I have a feeling he’s hot everywhere,” I whisper into the phone. “But maybe I just notice it more when he’s not also dashing my dreams.”
“What’s the family like? Are you in a big mansion on the water? Like in Revenge?”
“Small house on a potato field,” I whisper. “I love it. And we’re sharing a room and he takes his shirt off and it’s just like nothing I’ve seen before. I want to lick him? Is that a thing people do?”
Clem is laughing so hard that I need to pull the phone away from my ear. “People, yes. You, no.”
“That’s what I thought. Maybe deep down I’m people.”
“Yeah, Jane, I think you are.” We’re quiet for a beat.
“His parents are married,” I say. “Forty years, and they all fight, but it’s fine. I honestly feel like I’ve stepped into an alternate reality.”
“You have my permission to lick him all you want,” she says.