Chapter 4 #2
It’s so soft, I almost miss it. As I’m right across from him, I can’t escape the look of annoyance on his face.
To be sure, he’s been annoyed since I opened my mouth.
And, honestly, I’d love to end this whole conversation right now.
But there’s something about his attitude that irks.
Suddenly, I feel buoyant, impish. Maybe this is how March feels when he stirs things up. If so, I can forgive him.
I take a long look around. “Oh, that’s easy.”
Despite themselves, everyone seems to lean in. Everyone but August, who doesn’t even meet my eye, his indifferent expression and languid body language suggesting he’s bored by the whole thing. Game on, Luck.
“It’s August.”
August chokes on his water. Badly.
He covers his mouth and coughs as March bellows an outraged, “What!”
I shrug and neatly cut a slice of roasted potato. “August is the most attractive to me. No offense, ladies. You’re more beautiful by far. But if I’m going for flat-out attractiveness, then it’s got to be August.”
May and June start to laugh. Margo sits back, looking pleased.
While August turns an interesting shade of red.
He finally lifts his head. That ice-blue gaze of his cuts like a knife when it slashes into mine.
He doesn’t say anything. He simply stares at me like I’ve grown another nose. I smile at August. With teeth.
“Oh, come off it,” March protests. “My jawline is definitely superior—”
“Nope,” I say. “It’s not.”
“It so is,” March says. “And my eyes are definitely prettier.”
“Sorry, Hairball—” an old nickname he hates “—but you asked, and I answered.”
March sits back in a huff muttering about fixed games and unfair judges.
Still August stares at me. Flummoxed.
I stare back. Nice teeth indeed. Victory bubbles through my veins like champagne. For the first time in my life, I haven’t been reduced to a bumbling, blushing mess when put on the spot. It feels so nice, I don’t know how to fully process it.
It all crashes down when August’s mouth curls in a soft, slight smile. His voice, when he finally speaks, is a low rumble that touches my skin like a hot finger. “For what it’s worth, Penelope, I think you’re the most attractive person here as well.”
All that fuzzy, fizzy champagne victory explodes in a riot of blushing butterflies. August Luck just said I was the most attractive person in the room. Me. Pen. I’m the most— Wait. I’m the only person in the room he’s not related to.
I deflate with as much grace as an untied ballon let loose.
August
“How could you hurt Pen’s feelings like that?”
May’s irate question and hard poke at my ribs has me yelping. Can’t a man do the dishes in peace without his little sister popping up at his side like a Whac-A-Mole to attack him? I swear, the girl can get the jump on me better than any linebacker.
My heartbeat returns to normal, and her words sink in.
“Wait. What?” I set down a soapy platter before it drops. “What the hell are you talking about?”
May glances back toward the great room before answering in a hissing undertone. “That crack about finding her the most attractive person in the room? Not cool.”
My skin feels too tight and too hot. It has since dinner and that unfortunate round of Mirror, Mirror. Fucking March. He always goes too far. But me?
I blink down at a glaring May.
“What the hell are you talking about? What’s ‘not cool’ about saying I find her attractive?”
Let’s be real. It was a hell of a lot more sincere than her answer, which I can guess was to put March in his place.
Not that I don’t approve; anytime someone can accomplish taking his huge ego down a peg, I’m all for it.
But I don’t want to be the weapon used to do it.
Just remembering Penelope’s little statement of “fact” made me twitchy.
May huffs in exasperation. “August, she’s the only person in the room not related to you! It would be full-on weird if you said anyone else.”
What?
Oh.
Right.
Shit.
Was that why she seemed to wilt? Put that forced smile in place? I couldn’t figure it out at the time. But now?
I rub a hand over my face and then flinch when I realize it’s wet and soapy. Scowling I accept the dish towel May tosses me. “I didn’t mean it like that. I was trying to be nice.”
“Patronizing is what it was.”
Turning back, I concentrate on scrubbing the platter. But my guts feel like lead. “Honestly, May. That wasn’t my intention.”
“Well, then . . .” She peers at me with cool eyes. “If you say so, then I guess . . .”
“I should apologize to her.”
“No!”
“Jesus, woman. My ears.”
She sets a fluttering hand on my arm, as if to forestall any attempt I might make to leave the room, and her voice goes back to the stage whisper she’s been using since sneak attacking me. “Just. No. That would make it even more awkward.”
“I don’t see how. You just told me I’ve made her feel like crap. I can’t let that go.”
“I shouldn’t have said anything to you.”
I give her a speaking look, then hand her the clean platter to dry off. “But you did.”
“Just forget it.”
“Not likely.”
“Damn it, Augie.” She huffs, glances back to make sure we’re still alone. “I wasn’t thinking, okay? If you hunt her down to say sorry it will embarrass her even more.”
“Why? I’m the one who’d be apologizing.” I wouldn’t exactly call that an embarrassing endeavor, but uncomfortable sure.
How would I even go about it? Sorry, Penelope, but I really do think you’re gorgeous.
You’re so pretty it hurts to look at you, which pisses me off in ways I don’t understand.
So can you kindly leave before I do something to make it even more awkward?
Beside me, May takes her frustration out on the dishrag. “Because . . . I don’t know. Somehow, you’d bumble it and make things worse, I guess.”
Probably. I’m apparently on a roll tonight.
She rubs her forehead like there’s a headache blooming. “Just, let it go, okay?”
“I don’t understand you at all sometimes, May.”
“Well, right back at you.” Her nose wrinkles. “Usually it’s March we have to lecture. But you’ve been acting clueless all night. What gives, anyway?”
I stare down at the sink where dying bubbles circle the drain.
The panic that’s been trying to hitch a ride on my back since I signed my contract comes swooping back.
I follow one stubborn soap bubble with my eyes and try to breathe.
Part of me feels like I’ll go right down that drain with the soap if I’m not careful.
The tips of my fingers tingle. May is saying something, but my ears are ringing too loudly to make out the words.
“Augie?”
Fingertips touch my arm. It’s as though I’m wearing my gear, too swaddled up in padding to truly feel it.
“August.”
A firm shake.
May’s big eyes peer up at me, worried and slightly scared. I swallow hard. Just put on a smile and she’ll go away.
But I can’t move. The moment stretches. And I know May is going to panic soon. Shit, I’m panicking. What the fuck is wrong with me? I’m not like this. I don’t panic. I don’t bug out for nothing. All I’ve been doing since being drafted is panicking. And I hate it. I fucking hate it.
“May.” Mom’s voice breaks through the fog. “Go on into the den.”
May’s eyes stay on me for a second longer, then she nods. “Sure.”
I don’t watch her go. I look for that damn soap bubble, but it’s gone.
Mom comes up alongside me. “August.”
I swallow hard. And then she’s turning me toward her. I go along with it like a zombie. But when her arms go around me, I give in, bending down so she can properly reach me. I’m a grown man, but it feels ridiculously good to have her hug.
A sigh gusts out of me, and I hug her back. Warmth blooms through my middle, and I’m no longer unsteady.
“I’m okay, Ma.” A lie muttered into her hair.
“I know,” she says, rubbing my back gently. “But I needed a hug and here you were.”
Our family hugs. It’s what we do. When we’re happy, sad, scared, or sometimes just for the hell of it.
Before we were born, Mom had read that frequent hugging was essential to a person’s emotional and physical well-being.
She made certain we were never without them.
That she knew I needed one now has a lump welling within my throat. I pull back to meet her eyes.
Cupping my cheeks, she studies me. “Baby boy, you want to tell me what’s going on with you?”
“If I could I would.”
“All right.” She steps away and picks up a bowl. “Why don’t you go in with the rest of the kids and watch a movie.”
I’m convinced that, in her mind, we’ll all be ten years old forever. I smile but it feels heavy. “I’m thinking of heading out and getting a hotel room in the city.”
Her brows lift in outrage. “To spend the night alone instead of in your home? I think not.”
I haven’t lived here since I entered college, but this is my home in all the ways that count. I tell myself this, even as panic has me straining toward the front door. I’m headed back to LA, and reality, in the morning. It would be more convenient to stay closer to the airport.
Mom’s voice gets slightly muffled as she bends to put away the bowl. “Is it so wrong to want you here? March is staying until Sunday. Even Pen is spending the night here with the girls.”
Penelope’s staying here? I’d thought she’d go back to her mom’s house in the city.
I glance toward the arched entrance to the family room where it’s darkened with only the glowing light of the TV screen flickering and the occasional sound effect blaring out.
Someone laughs. It sounds light and feminine. I know it’s not either of my sisters.
My insides do a weird sort of flip.
“All right, I’ll stay.”