Chapter 15
“B
est burger in the city.” Max, my eldest cousin, nudges his empty plate across the heavy wooden table and picks up his beer.
Max, Connor, Elliot, Walker, and I are sitting in the private dining room of Walker’s craft brewpub in Brooklyn. The bare brick walls are adorned with antique brewing paraphernalia and black-and-white photos of the building’s industrial history.
“And when was the last time the brousins were all together like this, just us?” Max asks.
His use of brousins—our hybrid of brothers and cousins—elicits a groan from Connor. “Haven’t we grown out of that yet?”
“I don’t even remember who came up with it,” Elliot says.
The term was spawned after Walker and I went to live with Maggie and Jim. Overnight, their three sons—our three cousins, the men sitting around this table with Walker and me—accepted us like brothers. And so brousins was born.
“Just because I’ve attended via video chat, rather than in person, doesn’t mean I’ve not been to all the family gatherings,” I protest.
“Well, it’s good to have you in town.” Walker shoves his final french fry into his mouth and raises his glass toward me.
“And I’m glad we’re together with no one else around,” Max says, returning to his original point, “because I have an announcement.”
“What global enterprise have you bought now?” Connor asks, lounging back in his chair.
“Not in the slightest bit work related,” Max says.
Instantly, the rest of us all react the same way—exaggerated gasps and shocked faces.
“All right, all right,” Max says. “You’re definitely going to have to get used to me having something other than work to talk about.”
“Other than work or Polly, you mean?” Elliot asks.
“Or her mom’s goats,” Connor adds.
“Those goats can actually be cute as fucking hell,” Max says. “But no, it’s not about goats. It is kind of about Polly, though.”
The other four of us exchange knowing glances. We can all guess what’s coming, but none of us would dream of ruining his moment.
“We are expecting a baby.” Max, the man who owns a Manhattan skyscraper, God knows how many household-name companies, and a fucking helicopter, has never looked as proud, as satisfied, and as happy to his bones as he does right now.
He holds up his hands to quiet Connor’s wolf whistles. “It’s early days yet. She’s only eight weeks. Due at the end of August. But since we’re together, I wanted to tell you.”
We all get to our feet for the congratulations and the hugs and the backslapping, and Walker asks a server to bring us a bottle of twenty-five-year-old Macallan whisky from behind the bar.
“Will this make me a bruncle?” I ask.
“Oh, fuck off,” Connor says over everyone else’s laughter.
“She’d better not go into labor at our wedding,” Walker says. “That would make the day memorable in a way we never intended.”
Walker and Emily, his co-founder of the brewery and pubs business, are getting married in late August at their new brewery resort on an island off Cape Cod.
“We all thought you’d be the last to settle down,” I tell Max. “And now you’re the first one to have a kid.”
“And he doesn’t mean a baby goat,” Connor says. Now it’s his turn to get the groans.
“Yeah, it’s funny how things work out.” Elliot turns to me. “I mean, you were the first one to get married, but now you’re the only single one in the room.”
“Thanks for that, El. You know how to make a guy feel good.”
Max’s news prompts an image of being with Hannah and Dylan, and another kid of our own, to pop into my brain. Ridiculous. But impossible to stop.
And the worst part is how that image makes me feel—all warm inside, like that’s how my life is meant to be, like nothing will ever match up to how happy it would make me.
But there could not be less point in allowing myself to think like that.
We all retake our seats as the server does the rounds with tumblers and scotch.
Connor rests his forearms on either side of his glass and looks at me. “So, what’s it like to see Hannah again?”
The room falls silent. As if Connor’s broken some unspoken rule that she mustn’t be mentioned.
I drum my fingers on the table. “Maybe the real question is why none of you bastards told me she was living there before I came back.”
“Mom wanted it to be a surprise,” Max says, twirling his freshly minted wedding ring.
“Well, it sure as fuck was that.” Probably best I don’t relate the whole naked-on-the-landing story.“Oh. And funny thing. Maggie also hadn’t told Hannah I was coming.”
There’s a simultaneous sharp intake of breath around the table as everyone leans back, recoiling from the horror of it.
“Yeah,” I continue, “we were both pretty shocked.”
“Is Mom playing games?” Elliot asks.
I shrug it off.
No way in hell am I going to tell them about the Overlord Hybrids tickets incident. Not only because they’d give me an even harder time than they are probably about to, but also because I’d never throw Maggie under the bus.
“Sooo,” Connor repeats. “What’s it like to see her?”
Maybe the best way out of this is to tell just the first part of the story. “She hates me for never coming back from London and not staying in touch. And she could not have been clearer about that.”
It’s not a lie. She might have come around to kissing me but, as sure as I’ll never sign one of Aunt Maggie’s houseplants in a three-album deal, it’s not erased her hurt.
“Guess Mom didn’t think that part through,” Max says and sips his scotch.
“Awkward,” Walker mutters out of the side of his mouth.
“Yeah. A bit.” Except it’s now awkward in the most spectacularly great way. In a way that we have to hide from Maggie and Jim like we’re teenagers again, trying to make out while not getting caught.
This evening in Brooklyn has been fantastic. One of the best nights out in a long time. Being around these guys always makes me feel that, even though I lost my parents, I’m incredibly lucky to have this amazing family.
But despite how life-affirming the brousins are, just the thought of getting to take Hannah out the day after tomorrow makes me itch to get back.
My phone buzzes on the table next to me. Ordinarily I’d ignore it when I’m with the guys, particularly since it’s too late to be anything business-related from London. But the flutter of hope that it might be from Hannah draws my attention.
That flutter instantly turns to a sinking feeling. And not a fast one that gets it over quickly. A slow one. With a long, drawn-out death. Like the way the Titanic went down.
LOUISA (09:47 PM)
How long are you going to ignore my lawyer’s email?
What the fuck is she talking about? And at almost three a.m. her time.
Our divorce is over. Done. Dusted. Tied up with a bow. So what the hell could she possibly want now?
There’s a nudge on my arm.
“Everything okay?” Walker asks. “You’ve gone weird and pale.”
I darken my phone. “Yeah. Fine. Just a work thing.” I stand up. “Need to make a quick call.”
“In the middle of the London night?” Max asks.
“It’s a sub-rights deal in Los Angeles.” Thank you, brain, for thinking of that so quickly even after two pints of Walker’s new Belgian-style ale and half a free-poured whisky.
There’s no way I’m going to tell them it’s Louisa, who will undoubtedly be after something. None of them have ever liked her.
I slip out the door into the hallway between the kitchen and the bar and bring up my emails. And there it is. Thought I’d seen the back of the dreaded Slate, White Associates in my inbox.
I scan the message, my eyes freezing on the middle paragraph.
While we acknowledge the divorce is settled, as a gesture of goodwill we would appreciate it if you could turn over the house in Nice, France, to Ms. Worthington at your earliest convenience.
Ms. Worthington—who apparently didn’t hang around changing her name back—can go fuck herself.
She can’t come crawling back after the settlement and claim another property, even if…what is it they say…
It was she who procured the home on an inside tip from her personal friend Sir Elton John, oversaw all the renovations and decorations, and you have visited for only one weekend in the four years since.
Guess she’s already missing the chance to swan around telling people she has a house next door to Elton’s in the South of France.
Her shallowness and selfishness know no bounds.
And every man sitting around that table with me tonight always knew it. They only tolerated her because she was my wife, and even then only barely.
It’s not like I didn’t know she had those traits. But I ignored them, unable to stop myself from gravitating to the first person after Hannah to tell me they loved me.
After losing my parents and moving in with two different sets of relatives, I didn’t know where I fit in, where I belonged, or who I belong to. I was adrift, and Louisa was the wreckage I clung to.
For a long time, it worked fine. I was her gateway to the celebrity social whirl she craved, and she gave me the stable relationship and sense of home I desperately needed. In exchange for that feeling of security, I buried my head in the sand and ignored the fact that, deep down, she was never my kind of person. She would always be intrinsically self-serving. And she would never want a family with me—a child would prevent her from doing whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted.
I told myself those things didn’t matter. But I knew they did.
Even when the issues rose to the surface and I couldn’t ignore them, I still hung on, trying to make it work, trying not to be the one with the broken marriage.
Until I saw the light last spring—saw that I couldn’t live the rest of my life with someone like that. And even if I couldn’t find my perfect person and have my own family, being alone would be preferable to being with Louisa.
The divorce was as fast as I could possibly make it and, thankfully, she didn’t contest a thing. Probably because I offered her more than even the best lawyer could have gotten her, just to get it done.
I’ve barely given that life in London a second thought. Ever since that first morning on Jim and Maggie’s landing, my mind has been on Hannah. Even more so now my mouth and hands have been on her too.
God knows what would have happened if Maggie and her new plant hadn’t burst in yesterday. I wouldn’t have been able to keep my hands outside Hannah’s shirt or her pants much longer.
Christ, imagine if we’d started a few minutes earlier and Hannah was bent over the sofa when Maggie opened the door.
Also, imagine Hannah bent over the sofa…
My dick shifts at just the thought of it.
But here, now, with my phone in the palm of my hand, reality is slapping me in the face.
London.
That’s where my life is. It’s where my work is. And it’s where my now apparently not actually resolved divorce is.
Louisa can wait till tomorrow for an answer to her greedy text and supercilious lawyer’s email. I need to sleep on that one before I send an alcohol-fueled response that sets out my feelings on the ownership of the French house with total clarity.
My instinct is to just let her have it. It’s true that I’m not that fond of the South of France. And giving it to her would be the swiftest way to get her to shut up and go away.
I learned quickly that was always the line of least resistance with Louisa—do things her way, let her have what she wanted, and life was simpler.
I shove the phone, and with it my London life, into my pocket, run my fingers through my hair, and head back into the room.
“We were just wondering what your best man speech is going to be like,” Elliot says, referring to Walker’s wedding.
“Well, it’ll definitely include the story about how he thought he could grill tomatoes in a toaster and the whole thing burst into flames,” I tell them as I walk around the table.
“Great name for a business, though,” Max says, pointing to the Toasted Tomato Craft Brewery sign on the wall.
“All good?” Walker asks quietly as I retake my seat next to him and place my phone face down on the table.
“I’ll deal with it tomorrow,” I tell him.
“You need an assistant,” Elliot says as all eyes turn to Connor and Max who, for reasons unknown to me, are arm wrestling.
“Hannah’s my temp,” I say without thinking, my brain preoccupied by a greedy ex-wife and two men in their thirties behaving like competitive teenagers.
Elliot’s and Walker’s heads snap from the contest to me.
Damn. Why did I have to let that slip out?
“Thought she hated you,” Walker says.
“Oh, she does.” I shift in my chair. “But she needs work experience. And a reference. And some cash. She’s moving to California.” I drain the whisky glass, the smooth liquid coating my throat and warming my insides. “And I needed some help with stuff, so…” I shrug.
Max drops Connor’s hand to the table and raises his fists in victory.
“You cheated.” Connor sounds like a fifteen-year-old who didn’t get his own way.
Max leans back in his chair, freshly topped-up glass in hand, and gives me the knowing and slightly superior look he’s spent most of his life perfecting. “It’s totally going to happen.”
“What is?” I ask.
“You and Hannah. Totally going to happen.”
“No, it’s not.” Man, I hate lying to these guys. “I’ve only been divorced for five minutes, for fuck’s sake. I’m not ready for another relationship. I’m not looking for one. I don’t want one. I need to spend some of my adult life alone. This is just a work thing with Hannah. It’s just practical. It works for both of us.”
Most of that is true.
“Methinks he doth protest too much,” Connor says, raising his brows.
I run my fingers around the edge of my phone. My life with all its successes and issues is in London. And yet, I still don’t feel like I belong there.
But I don’t feel like I belong here either. Yes, I belong with these people. But this isn’t my home.
And any life I live while I’m here is just a fantasy.
But that fantasy is pretty fucking powerful. As great as it is to see the guys, my heart and my mind are pulled northward, wondering what Hannah and Dylan are up to in their little guest suite.
“Hey.” I waggle my empty glass at my brother. “I thought this place was a pub.”