7. Sophie
CHAPTER 7
Sophie
“ M y sister’s a slut,” laughed Danny, bringing a glass of bubbles to his lips and slugging down at least half of it. “I knew you had it in you. All this time and you’ve been acting like such a little angel. Good on you, Soph, for finally enjoying a one-night stand—”
I reached over the puffy armrest of the massage chair and pinched the skin on his forearm, hard.
"What the hell was that for?" he yelped, smacking his arm to his chest and holding it protectively with his other hand as if my next attack was going to be far worse.
If we weren’t sitting in a room bound by zen and tranquility, clouded with the smell of sandalwood incense while humming ocean sounds floated from the speaker, I would pinch him again or poke him hard in the ribs.
“You’re being awfully rude, Dan.” I scowled, not that my younger brother could care any less about hurting my feelings, especially when he’d spent most of our childhood trying to get under my skin. “Didn’t Mom teach you any manners?”
“I’m not being rude if it’s true.” He relaxed his arm, placing it back on the rest where lovely Gloria was going to tend to his fingernails when she came back in a few minutes.
“Besides, Mom gave up on me after you.”
“You were always a lost cause.”
“Born that way,” he agreed and studied his nails. They were perfectly trimmed, just like the rest of him. Danny took great care in his appearance. His face was always cleanly shaved— he had the loveliest cheekbones, Ed Westwick kind of cheekbones—and his nails were always clipped and manicured. He also only wore designer clothes—Salvatore Ferragamo shoes , Canali shirts, and Brunello Cucinelli pants—and spent a fortune on skin products, half of which he shared with me.
“Well, if you must know, I’m glad you were born. Life would be extremely boring without you.”
“As you should be.” He grinned.
“Who else is going to treat me to a spa day and pay for everything?” I added, still not a hundred percent sure the whole outing was a treat. But considering Danny made triple, possibly quadruple my salary as a divorce lawyer, I was prepared to force the bill on him.
Besides, he was the one who had shown up on my doorstep this morning promising a lovely surprise, which had in fact turned out far better than I could’ve imagined.
A date at the local spa in St. Helena.
The universe knew I needed it. My body was a tight ball of nerves. I needed someone strong and relentless to scrape out the knots in my neck, pummel out the trigger points in my back, and stretch me apart like taffy before putting me back together again.
So far, I was feeling as light as a cloud after Gloria’s delectable beating.
Danny chuckled, lifted a bare foot out of the lavender water, and wriggled his toes. “I’m glad I’m good for something. If not good advice, then definitely treating my sister—don’t worry,
I am paying—, especially when she’s looking old and haggard.”
“Hey,” I frowned, ready to pinch him again. “We’re only a year apart, and I’m not even thirty yet.”
He laughed, tilting his head back against the headrest. His Adam’s apple was prominent.
“Well, you look much older. At least a decade.”
I was just about to jump up and wrestle my brother to the ground—last time I won, I had been two years old, and Danny could barely hold up his head. Instead, I took a breath in, like my mom had taught me to do whenever Danny reached a new height of annoyance, and said, “Don’t be such an ass, Dan. It’s been a hard week of work, alright? I’ve been seeing a ton of patients every day. I’m exhausted.”
“Or maybe it’s not because of the patient load that you’re so tired. Maybe you’re having sleepless nights because of the hottie from the seminar?”
“For your information, I’ve been sleeping as soundly as a baby.” It was a lie. A big fat lie. Alex’s face had interrupted my dreams more times than I could count.
And it wasn’t just during sleep that his golden-brown eyes forced their way into my mind. It happened at the most inopportune of times, like yesterday when I was assisting a patient with a below-knee amputation through the parallel bars. Alex’s face slipped through the cracks of the wall I’d tried to put up in my mind—to keep him out of course—and I swore I heard his laugh down the hallway. The lovely, airy, carefree laugh I had heard for the first time under that pergola. A laugh that wasn’t in any way as controlled as he presented himself.
There were even moments when I could still feel the lean ridges of his muscles beneath my fingertips. And whenever that happened, goose bumps ran over my skin, as if I’d just passed through a ghost.
Danny reached a hand across the divide and poked my wrist. “Also, Soph, why only tell me about him now? It was over a month ago. I thought we told each other everything.”
“You’ve been busy.”
“Not that busy,” he said, pressing two fingers to his neck where dear Harriet—Gloria’s partner—had kneaded him to splinters. “So, will you see him again?”
“Of course not!” I shouted. “Why would you even ask that? You of all people should know that you never contact a one-night stand again.”
It was the truth. I hadn’t contacted Alex at all. But the same couldn’t be said of him.
He had sent a message three days after the seminar asking how I was doing, which I had obviously ignored and deleted straight away, thankful when he didn’t follow up. And then once more at the beginning of last week to let me know that his insurance company had contacted mine. Again, an unnecessary text considering that my company had already emailed me to let me know that the damages would be paid for.
“Me, of all people?” gasped Danny, turning his body so that he was facing me completely. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Well,” I started, not sure if I was on a slippery slope. “You’ve slept with a ton of women—”
“A ton!” he puffed, his eyes—the same gray as mine—widening comically, while his jaw grew slack. “What exactly are you saying, Sophia Katarina Manning?”
I giggled. I always did whenever someone said my full name. As a child, I heard it mostly when I was in trouble, and as an adult, I rarely heard it uttered except on graduation days and job interviews. But Danny liked to use my full name whenever he wanted to make a point, or just to add a dramatic flair.
“I’m saying that you’re kind of a man-whore.”
He gasped again, his smooth face crinkling up with hurt, his lips pressing into a pout, and his arms folding over his chest. The Danny pose.
“Ah no, did I hurt your feelings?” I sang teasingly, swinging my body over the armrest, hoping to untangle his arms and lift his spirits like I used to do when we were little, when a sudden ache sliced across my chest. “Ow!” I exclaimed, falling back into my chair and clutching at my boobs.
“It wasn’t me,” he said, an automatic reaction, lifting both hands up like he used to do whenever Mom or Dad came in to find me howling because Danny either stole my Barbie or ate the last chocolate chip cookie. “I promise.”
“I know it wasn’t. It’s my boobs. They’re really sore.”
He cringed, despite growing up with a mother and a sister, and covered his face with his hands, as if I’d mentioned something far more embarrassing than boobs.
Two days ago was the first time I had noticed a change, just a slight twinge around my nipples, but clearly, things had gotten worse. Strange, since my PMS symptoms rarely ever included anything more than an increased appetite and bloating before Aunt Flow arrived— A nervous, worrisome thought suddenly shot into my head, but it vanished as quickly as it came, leaving me no time to grasp it, to make sense of it, before both Gloria and Harriet walked through the door.
“All good here?” asked Gloria, her voice as solid as a tree trunk. She was built equally as strong, with hands that could swallow mine whole. Harriet was the opposite of her, a petite woman but with as much strength. I knew from experience that it wasn’t about the size but the strength and willpower to get the job done.
“Perfect,” I said, leaning into the cushy chair, ready to have my feet scrubbed and my calves massaged. “Thank you.”
I glanced over to Danny. He had his eyes closed as Gloria lifted up his foot and began to work ground coffee into his heel. Harriet was doing the same for me, and the smell of coffee beans lingered strongly in the room.
Everything was perfect. Moments of blissful silence without worrying about Alex, without thinking about work and the patients I had to see. A perfect Sunday morning— But then that same thought came rushing back, except this time I could actually grasp it, process it. And just as it made sense in my head, my heart began to beat faster and faster until it was threatening to burst from my chest cavity. I was two days late for my period. I was never late, just like the sun which rose every morning like clockwork was never late.
“ Shit ,” I cried.
I sat forward so quickly Harriet’s grip tightened on my ankle, her green eyes wide, her brows knitted tightly together. “Are you alright, Ma’am? Did I hurt you?”
“No,” I shook my head. “Not at all. You’re amazing. Absolutely perfect. I just . . . ” My voice trailed off as if I’d lost the ability to speak.
“What’s wrong?” asked Danny, glancing my way. His eyes were narrowed as he stared at me with a What the hell is going on with you? look.
But how on earth could I possibly say that I was dumb enough to have unprotected sex with a stranger—who was an only child and grew up in Colorado but didn’t like the mountains, and was actually not the complete asshole I had thought him to be in those first moments of meeting him—and could possibly, but hopefully not, be pregnant?