Chapter Twenty-Eight
Of all the sounds I dislike in this world, the blare of the alarm at seven this morning takes the top spot. (We set it on the off chance that our all-night bangfest would prevent us from waking in time for the wedding day family breakfast at eight.) (And yes. It absolutely would have). But second only to that noise is the cracking squelch of an incredibly hungover Blaire Weston breaking raw eggs into her coconut water.
“Blaire,” Janet says without looking away from where she’s primly cutting a slice of mango into tiny, Barbie-sized bites, “you really shouldn’t eat raw eggs.” She’s in her standard Janet Weston finery: a soft pink linen lounge set with the word Dior stitched into the breast pocket, and matching Dior sandals.
“Well,” Alex says, and his eyes flicker to me, “correct me if I’m wrong, soon-to-be-Dr. Anna, but I believe eggs contain high amounts of cysteine, an amino acid that helps break down acetaldehyde, which causes hangovers.”
I lift my coffee to him. “Well done.” Apparently while Liam and I were re-creating most of the Kama Sutra, our big brother was studying medical texts.
“Yes, thank you, dear,” Janet drawls. “I’m less concerned about her well-earned hangover and more concerned that she’ll get salmonella and vomit all over Charlie’s couture wedding gown.”
Reagan gags and gets up from the table, GW giggles and begins mimicking the sound, and Alex takes an aggressive slurp of his coffee.
And across the table from me, Liam looks up, already smiling. His hair is a little wild—there was no hope in taming it after last night—and I’m not sure if he’s noticed there’s another small bruise under his ear. Our eyes lock, and I hope he’s thinking the same thing I am, which is that the thing I did with my mouth very, very early this morning was born from pure, divine inspiration and given the sound he made when he came, he really owes me that perfect bite of pineapple on his plate.
With a laugh, he spears the fruit with his fork and drops it on my plate.
“How did you know?” I ask, amazed.
He rests an elbow on the table, setting his chin on his fist. “Because you’ve been staring at it for about five minutes and only just looked up with pleading in your eyes.”
I pop it into my mouth and smile as I chew. “Thank you.”
“No, thank you.”
I was right. He’s definitely thinking about the blow job.
Blaire groans. “The pheromones are so strong at this table, it’s like living in a Teen Wolf fanfic.” She turns a head that looks like it weighs twenty pounds to glare at Alex, who in turn is watching Liam with narrowed beady eyes.
“Liam, darling, no elbows on the table,” Janet murmurs.
Unfazed, Liam straightens, pulling his elbow away and going back to smiling at his breakfast.
Charlie and Kellan arrive, their “we’re six hours away from being newlyweds” glow firmly in place, but the moment Charlie sits, Janet leans over and launches into Defcon One Wedding Day Preparedness mode. A warm ocean breeze flutters the gauzy sleeves of my sundress. Blaire sips miserably at her hell juice; even her hair looks hungover. Jake helps Nixon cut his pancakes while also schooling him on the superiority of coconut syrup over maple, and Alex resentfully cleans up some milk little GW spills across the table. It’s chaos, and stress blankets the air like a haze of bug spray, but there’s something… sort of wonderful about it? I always imagined what it would be like to be part of a big family, and here I am in the thick of it, warts and all. Even with the looming threat of the loophole, Liam and I are optimistic that everything will be okay. We’re falling for each other; we’re not faking a thing.
It’s my turn to rest my chin on a fist and gaze in adoration at him.
“I don’t have any more pineapple,” he murmurs, peeking up at me through his lashes.
I grin back, about to open my mouth and let some drippy, infatuated words fall out, but my phone buzzes on the table with the first call I’ve received in days.
It’s Mel.
My manager never calls just to check in.
And I realize with a jolt that the art exhibit must have opened, and not only had I not been obsessing about it, I hadn’t even remembered.
I throw Liam a nervous smile and stand without excusing myself, answering the call before I’ve even made it past the hostess stand near the entrance.
“Hi.”
“Are you sitting down?” she asks, and a vibration spreads through my blood at the smile I hear on the other end of the line.
“No, in fact I essentially just hit the eject lever and launched myself out of a chair. What’s going on, Mel?”
“Your paintings sold,” she says.
Her words bounce around inside my ears before landing. “Which?”
A pause. “All of them, Anna. And they went for a thousand dollars each.”
I stare out at the beach, unseeing. “What?”
“Your paintings sold,” she repeats, laughing. “All three of them. Snatched up.” Mel waits for me to say something, but my entire vocabulary is stuck in a traffic jam in my cranium. “Anna?”
Finally, I become unstuck, and it sinks in. I sold my work. I, Anna Green, sold three paintings. This might be the start for me. The path to a career I chose and trained for, a following—even a small one. Hope makes me feel weightless. “This is—this is amazing, Mel, oh my God.” I walk in a small circle in front of the restaurant, my free hand in my hair, and when I look over, I see Liam at the table on the patio, craning his neck to watch me. I beam at him, lifting my hand to give him a thumbs-up.
And only a man worthy of these enormous feelings ballooning in my chest would smile in sun-bright relief back at me like that. Holy shit, I am so gone for him.
“Is there anything you need from me?” I ask.
“Not yet. We’ll touch base when you’re home, but for now, I’ll get to work on finding some more openings for you. Congratulations, Anna.”
We hang up and I stare at my screen for a few astounded moments.
And then, in my palm, the phone rings again.
But this time it’s Vivi. And Vivi never calls.
Panic spreads in an icy chaser, and I let it ring twice, three times, wondering whether I’m hallucinating this or whether the universe really is this fucked up. The best news ever followed by the worst. If something happened to my dad while I was here, sunbathing and fucking and drinking—
“Hey,” I answer just before the fourth ring. “What’s going on?”
“No emergency,” she bursts out, immediately. “My texts weren’t going through, and I had something time-sensitive to run by you.”
I fall gracelessly onto a bench outside the restaurant, relief making my head swim. I drop my head into my hand, willing my heart to start beating again. “Jesus Christ, Vivs.”
“Sorry. Your dad is okay. He’s kicking my ass at chess right now.”
“Why didn’t he call instead of you?”
“Because he won’t pressure you into this like I will.” She laughs.
“Pressure me into what?”
“So—okay, he mentioned that the oncologist recommended some in-home rehabilitation care?”
I nod, still shaking. “Yeah, um, a few weeks ago they gave us the order, but we were waiting for insurance to approve it while we sent out some requests to different agencies.”
“Insurance didn’t approve it,” she says bluntly. “The letter came yesterday. Which is very unfortunate, since we heard back from one of the agencies and they have someone who can start now. But she isn’t cheap.”
“Oh.” I take a deep breath. “I mean, that’s okay, right?”
“That’s what I thought you’d say,” Vivi says, and in the background, Dad calls out, “No way, Anna. There is no way you’re doing this.”
“He’s worried about the money,” Vivi says with a meaningful lean to her words.
“Well,” I say, “I just sold three paintings.”
I hear footsteps, like she’s moving to another room. A door closes and her voice comes back as a whisper. “Like really? Or as in, you want me to tell your dad that version?”
“Really.” I turn my face to the sun and feel its warmth spread through me. Residual panic drains away and I feel only contentment. I have money from West, I have the start of a potential—maybe, let’s hope—career as an artist. I might be falling in… I cut the thought off. “Mel just called me. Tell Dad I can cover it, absolutely no problem.”
Vivi screams out a happy “Congratufuckinglations!” and I hear her jog back to the other room where I get to eavesdrop while she tells my father. He shouts in disbelief and then celebration, and the two of them do what sounds very much like dancing.
My dad, dancing.
“Here he is,” Vivi says before passing the phone to my dad.
“Kiddo!” he shouts. “This is fantastic news!”
“Can you even believe it?”
“I can absolutely believe it. I am so proud of you, honey.”
With a smile, I ring off and stand in place, letting it all sink in. I do the math, at which I am terrible, and realize that even if I pay off all of Dad’s medical debt and his future treatment co-pays, with the money from Liam and the sale of these paintings, we can afford two months of daily physical therapy to get him back to health.
It isn’t forever, and it’s insane to me how fast the money goes, but it’s enough. It’s all we need.
EVEN THE NEW PRESENCEof Ray at the breakfast table when I return isn’t enough to dim my elation. And since with this crowd I am supposed to be better at dissecting cadavers than at wielding a paintbrush, I can’t burst into song about how, for the first time in my life, I sold not one but three actual paintings. But I do try to communicate as much of my joy as possible when I look at Liam across the table.
“What happened?” he mouths.
“I’ll tell you later.” My foot finds his leg under the table, and he captures it between his calves, squeezing, looking at me with curiosity and adoration. We get lost into a spiral of eye contact. I’m not in his brain, obviously, but I’d bet my next three orgasms that we’re thinking the same thing, which is exactly how much time he plans to spend with his face between my thighs when the wedding reception wraps up tonight.
The sound of a fork dropping onto porcelain breaks through my trance, and I blink over to where Ray is now impatiently wiping his mouth on a napkin. “They just canceled now?”
Charlie, looking miserably down at her phone, nods. “Apparently a pipe burst upstairs, and the entire house is flooded.”
“Surely there’s something else nearby.” Janet, ever the placater, pulls out her phone, too, and begins searching.
Ray looks over her shoulder and swipes it out of her hand. “Why are you looking at rentals?”
“Because it’s only two weeks, Raymond. It’s just a honeymoon.”
“It’s her only honeymoon, and the same shit could happen. I told you: it never works to rent.” He leans forward, looking at Charlie. “If we bought instead, would you two use it?”
Charlie and Kellan grin at each other. “Of course!” she sings.
I look around, trying to figure out what the fuck is happening. Are they really talking about buying… houses? Liam is in his own little world, frowning out at the surf behind my shoulder. Blaire leans over, her ketone-warmed breath sour on my cheek when she explains, “You are hearing this correctly. Ray is suggesting they buy a house for Charlie’s honeymoon.”
I swallow around a rapidly swelling cork of “what the fuck” forming in my windpipe.
Ray slams the phone down on the table with a note of smug finality. “Done.”
“Ray,” Janet says quietly.
“What?” he says, waving to one of the waitstaff and snapping at his empty glass. “They needed a wedding gift. I got them a wedding gift.”
“They already have one, darling. The…” She stares at him meaningfully.
“What?” he asks, exasperated. “I can’t read your mind.”
“The house we already bought them?”
Ray snaps his fingers again. “The Newport Coast place. Sure. But this is different. This is a vacation investment. Nobody seems to work here so I’m gonna find a drink.” He stands, kissing the top of Charlie’s head. “I’ll have Terry handle it so it’ll be ready for you.”
I blink. I mean, I know nothing about escrows and whatnot but I’m pretty sure houses aren’t bought in a day. “Isn’t their honeymoon, like, tomorrow?” I ask.
No one pays me any attention, and Ray turns to leave and barrels right into a woman carrying a tray of mimosas. Glasses sail through the air, crashing with bright chaos onto the patio; one lands on Janet’s lap, and Ray is absolutely doused in orange juice and champagne.
“Are you fucking blind?” he roars, and the woman falls to her knees beside Janet, scrambling for napkins to mop up the orange lake on the lap of her Dior loungewear. Waiters rush over with brooms and mops, sweeping up the piles of broken glass, cleaning the floor.
“Hello?” Ray booms, throwing his hands up. “Does anyone have a towel for me?”
Charlie and Kellan rush to stand, handing him their napkins as another waiter comes over with a towel that Ray snatches from his hand and uses to mop at his shirt, a polo with the logo of some corporate golf tournament printed on the pocket. His eyes are the color of a muddy puddle and just as deep, as he stares down at the waitress still trying to help Janet dry off.
“Oh just… let it go,” Janet seethes before standing and storming out of the restaurant.
The waitress slowly rises, turning to face Ray. “Sir, I am so sorr—”
“What’s your name?” he barks, ice in his voice.
“Thuy.”
“Thuy, do you want to hear what I have to say, or would you prefer to bring me your manager?”
Her neck flushed, chin shaking, Thuy jogs off, and I look around as Alex, Charlie, Jake, and Kellan return to their breakfasts. Blaire sits back in her chair, her jaw tight, eyes fixed at a point in the distance. I glance at Liam, who is staring with fire up at his father. “Dad,” he says steadily, “you ran into her.”
Ray waves a hand. “It’s fine.”
Reagan catches my eye and panic consumes her expression. This isn’t only embarrassing for her, it’s probably terrifying. I give her a reassuring smile and mouth, “It’s okay.”
But I’ve lied. It isn’t okay. The manager comes out, listens as Ray quietly enumerates the many transgressions this poor woman has made upon him and his family, and then shakes Ray’s hand saying, “I’ll handle it.”
Ray sits back down in his seat, lifts his napkin, and lets it float down over his lap, picking up his fork like nothing has happened.
“Tell me you didn’t have that woman fired,” Liam says.
Ray stills, a bite of caviar-topped poached eggs hovering on the fork in front of him. “You think someone like that should be working in a Michelin-starred restaurant?”
“Maybe a one-star, definitely not two,” Jake jokes with mock seriousness, and Charlie and Kellan exhale quiet, courteous laughs.
But Liam remains undeterred: “You collided with her, Dad.”
“Do you have any idea how much I’m paying for this wedding?”
Blaire stands up, dropping her napkin on the table and walking away, tilting her head for Reagan to follow. Ray doesn’t even seem to notice. Around us, the three other Weston siblings and Kellan eat in silence, pretending they don’t hear any of this. Only the three little boys look around in confusion, trying to read the cues.
It’s for them that I speak up: “Whatever you’re paying, it isn’t enough for you to treat a waitress like that.”
Ray turns his stony gaze to me, and it takes everything in me to not look away. “She’s in the service industry,” he says flatly. “It’s her job to be invisible.”
Liam cuts out a sharp “Dad.”
Ray continues to stare at me for a handful of seconds before slowly blinking his gaze over to Liam. “I need you to give Ellis some time at the reception today.”
He’s just made his point: Anna, too, should be invisible.
“Ellis Sikora?” Alex asks, while Liam and Ray have a silent showdown. “From Forbes?”
I pull a deep breath in through my nose, turning my attention to my plate. My heart rolls violently, a catfight in my chest. In my peripheral vision, I see Liam’s hands curled into fists on either side of his plate.
I feel when he turns to look at me and meet his gaze. I’m relieved to see the same horror I feel reflected back in his eyes. Yes, this morning has been an amazing smorgasbord of sex, and perfect bites of pineapple, and smiling whiskey eyes, and good news, and even better news. But reality washes over me like ice water. This dynamic isn’t kooky and wonderful. This family isn’t a charming group with a few warts. This family is gross. Liam is paying me a sum of money that I wouldn’t earn in three years working two jobs and yet, with Dad’s medical expenses, it won’t even last me the rest of the year. Meanwhile, these assholes are buying a house for a honeymoon and firing a waitress Ray basically tackled for spilling mimosa on a shirt he got for free. I feel like sweeping my arm down the table and sending all the fancy crystal and porcelain crashing to the floor.
I drop my napkin on my plate and stand. Without a word, Liam does the same, and we walk together out of the restaurant.