Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
MORGAN
Accidentally saying “orgasm” instead of “organism” to my hot lab partner during my college biology class.
Walking in on my boyfriend getting a blow job from my roommate senior year.
Showing up to my first day of work after college only to discover I had a pair of underwear stuck to the back of my skirt.
Hitting on my business school professor, who was giving me all the right signs, only for him to tell me I was way too young for him.
Trying to catch the eye of a cute guy at a coffee shop, running into a post with a hot cup of coffee in my hand, and getting first-degree burns on my chest instead.
Those are only some of the highlights in the catalog of awkward or embarrassing things that have happened to me over the past decade. But nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, will ever top sitting next to my one-night stand at the post-wedding dinner for our parents.
“So, when are you officially headed back to work?” Max asks Danny, seemingly trying to steer the conversation into familiar territory given that every time anyone asks him something, Danny responds with clipped, one-word answers.
His hand flexes open and his fingers splay wide on top of his beige linen trousers beneath the table. We’re seated so close our knees would be touching if I hadn’t crossed my legs to prevent it.
“I’ll catch you up later,” Danny says, and my gaze flits up to his face.
I’m surprised that he didn’t respond with “yes” or “no” given the stilted conversation thus far.
His casual tone reminds me so much more of the man I got to know last night than this rigid and unengaged person I’ve sat next to for the past fifteen minutes.
“Morgan and I chatted for a bit at the bar last night,” he continues.
Heat rises on my neck and spreads up to my cheeks as he says my name.
“I don’t want to bore her by repeating myself. ”
He glances at me then, and our eyes lock before his gaze slips down my face and to my quickly reddening neck. When he continues his perusal down toward my chest, the flush spreads.
I rest the elbow closest to him on the table, bringing my fist under my chin, to block his view. All I can think of right now is there’s not much of a difference between how he looked at me last night and how he’s looking at me right now—and I need to shut that down.
Stepbrother, I remind myself.
“Oh look, Max,” my mom says, excitement lacing her voice as she sets her menu down on the table, snapping our attention and focus back to her. “They have oysters on the half shell. Let’s get some! Morgan? Danny? Do you guys like oysters?”
“Not a fan,” Danny says.
I sigh. “I’m deathly allergic to shellfish . . . remember?”
“Oh my gosh, of course!” she says, and playfully bonks her forehead with her palm as if we didn’t have this conversation at the engagement party before her last wedding, when she’d given me an appetizer that included chopped clams and almost killed me.
A shot of epinephrine and a trip to the emergency room were not how I planned to spend that evening. “Well, no oysters for you then!”
I focus on relaxing my shoulders because I can tell I’ve tensed up at the memory of those events . . . which I obviously can’t share with our present company.
“Should we even get oysters if Morgan’s allergic?” Danny asks, concern lacing his tone.
“Well, we’re not going to force feed them to her,” my mom says with a giggle that borders on maniacal—a sure sign she’s uncomfortable. Mom does not like being called out like this, no matter how kindly. “You’re fine with other people eating them, right, honey?”
“Sure, let’s just keep them away from me,” I say with a lightness I don’t feel.
What I do feel is the weight of Danny’s gaze on me, like he recognizes the wrongness of this whole conversation—of my mom not knowing that I’m allergic to shellfish and insisting they be served on a table I’m eating at—and wants to know if I’m actually okay with it.
The thought of him caring more for my well-being than my own mother has a lump forming in my throat, and I have to remind myself that not wanting me to die is not the same as actually caring.
I’ve been known to glom onto a little detail like that and conflate it in my mind to mean something it doesn’t.
And that’s not a road I’m willing to go down again .
. . especially not now, with my stepbrother.
Fuck my life.
My friends always say I have the most shit luck of anyone they’ve ever known, and I’m sure they’d find this whole thing hysterical. Hell, if it were happening to anyone but me, I’d probably find it funny, too.
Danny must mistake the slight shake of my shoulders as I try to hold the laughter in for something else, because he runs his knuckles along my outer thigh beneath the table. When I glance at him, his eyes are narrowed on me. “You sure?”
“Positive,” I say, shifting in my chair so his hand falls away. The glide of his knuckles along the thin fabric of my bridesmaid dress brings back too many memories of last night, and dinner with our parents is the last place I want to be when envisioning us together.
The waiter returns to take our order, and we fall into conversation that lasts through dinner, most of which my mom dominates.
Max seems content to let her talk, and maybe he’s even amused by her vivaciousness.
Mom can be great in small doses. I’m curious to see what happens when that dose builds up to toxic levels, and what happens to their relationship when it does.
My mom wasn’t always like this. She was always a bit insecure and clingy, always needing external validation. My childhood was a happy one, though.
I was ten years old and had just hit puberty when things started to shift between my parents.
At the time, I was incredibly focused on how my body was changing, how my friends’ opinions of me seemed to be shifting as my body developed before theirs, and how my mom was suddenly so critical of me.
So maybe I wasn’t attuned enough to figure out why things changed between my parents—why my mom suddenly became too much for my dad to deal with—right then.
“What do you think, Morgan?” Mom asks, and my gaze snaps to her. Luckily, I think she can tell that I was lost in my own thoughts, because she prompts me, “Boating tomorrow sounds fun, right?”
“Sure,” I say through a fake smile, not even a little surprised she’s forgotten that I’m terrified of the open water. I don’t want to remind her because, after the oysters, I’m afraid I’ll make her look bad in front of her new husband. “I love boats.”
I can tell from her bright smile that adding my love of boats doesn’t trigger any memories for her. Next to me, I feel, rather than see, Danny tense up, like he can tell I’m lying even though my mom has no clue.
“It’s not a very big boat,” he says, “we’ll just take it over to St. George’s. Then there’s a really nice private beach we can go to, and a shipwreck we can snorkel around if we want. It’s all within the bay, so the water is pretty calm.”
“Sounds lovely,” I say, hoping my voice doesn’t convey my anxiety. As long as there are life vests and I can see the shore, I’ll be fine.
“Perfect way to spend your twenty-seventh birthday, right?” Mom says.
I clear my throat. “Twenty-eighth.”
Max laughs and rubs my mom’s shoulder, saying, “There’s no way anyone would believe you have a twenty-seven-year-old daughter, sweetie, much less one who is twenty-eight.” The irony of him being her plastic surgeon is probably not lost on anyone at the table.
In fact, if Danny’s clenched jaw is any indication, I’d say he hasn’t missed the irony at all. I watch him as he looks at our parents together, and it occurs to me then that his name doesn’t fit him at all.
Danny is a happy-go-lucky name. Maybe that name would have felt right last night—though not half as well as Nicholas, if you ask me.
But tonight? This rigid man, who seems to alternate between pissed off and concerned, does not seem like a Danny.
There’s a darkness there, an underlying resentment, that I didn’t see last night.
I wonder if he has the same kind of relationship with his dad that I have with my mom?
Maybe this is as hard for him as it is for me?
Mom’s eyes flit back and forth between us as she takes her napkin from her lap and sets it on her empty plate. “Who feels like a little dancing? There’s a club at the hotel right up the road.”
A laugh escapes even though I don’t mean it to.
Mom’s always accused me of being an “old soul,” and I always remind her that someone has to be.
Sometimes I wish I could be a free spirit like she is.
But in my mind, “free spirit” is just a polite way to say “selfish.” The kind of person who puts their wants above everyone else’s needs, even their own child’s.
“I wish I had the energy for that,” I say. “You kids have fun.”
Mom laughs and says, “We’re the kids?”
Max presses a kiss to my mom’s temple and says, “You make me feel like a kid again.”
Once again, I wonder how long he’ll be enamored with that aspect of her before he realizes she’s technically an adult, but never really grew up.
My best guess is that Max is nearing sixty.
He’s already raised his son, and while my mom might make him feel young right now, he’ll tire of her eventually.
Six months. I give it until between Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day before it all falls apart. Unfortunately, I’ve gotten exceptionally accurate in predicting these things.
“I’m out too,” Danny says from beside me.
“Well, if you two are going to be complete downers,” Mom says with a giggle, “we’ll just have to go without you. C’mon, Max,” she says, pulling him up, “take me dancing.”
“Charge dinner to my room,” Max says to Danny as my mom pulls him away.
“My god,” Danny mutters as he watches them make a spectacle of leaving. My mom is holding Max’s hand up above their heads. Her white dress and her bouquet, and his boutonniere pinned to his lapel, make it clear they just got married. Everyone around them is clapping as they make their exit.
“They’re going to be loads of fun this weekend,” I deadpan, and he huffs out a laugh in response.
“Are we going to talk about what happened last night, in light of us now being related?” he asks as the waiter approaches the table and puts the bill in Danny’s outstretched hand.
I don’t know how I didn’t anticipate this question. I guess I just figured he’d spend this weekend pretending like nothing had happened, the same way I planned to.
“We’re going to forget that happened,” I say. “In light of us now being related.”
He glances over at me with a smirk as he picks up the pen, writes down what I know to be his room number, and scrawls an illegible scribble for a signature.
“You’re going to forget, huh?” He lifts an eyebrow. “I’d like to see you try.”
He’s not wrong that forgetting the best sex of my life would be difficult, but it’s the cockiness that grates at me—the way he casually assumes that I’ve never had anything better, with anyone else. Joke’s on him though, because the bar is extremely low.
“It’s already forgotten,” I say, standing as I drop my napkin on the chair, pick up my phone, and hightail it out of the restaurant so quickly I’m hoping he can’t catch up.
Joke’s on me this time, though, because when I glance over my shoulder, he’s sitting at the table. He’s not trying to catch me, and he’s amused that I’m running.