Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
CORMAC
Sweat beads on my hairline as I watch my father pledge to love and cherish Moira Applebaum forever.
I wonder if her hair is supposed to look like that, all piled up on top of her head like a boule of bread. I’ve never been one to notice trends. For all I know, it’s a fashionable new hairstyle, and this is simply the first time I’ve registered it.
I remind myself that Moira is a perfectly nice woman, and she bakes uncommonly good apple pie. Perhaps she felt she had to, with a last name like that. Regardless, I don’t think my father should be marrying her.
My mother and father never told me they were unhappy when I was growing up, but I felt their misery. It was a silent weight we all carried. At first, I figured it was my fault for being different.
My mom had gotten pregnant accidentally, and since both of my parents were in their thirties at the time, they decided to get married and make a go of it.
But my mom had two older brothers and a very specific view of what little boys should be like—mainly that they should enjoy contact sports and constant socialization.
She hadn’t known what to do with me and my enthusiasm for nonfiction and breaking down and rebuilding electronics.
God knows, she tried to make me more normal. She brought me to endless social events so I would be “socialized”—the way you bring a dog to dog parks—and used to pinch my hand when I was supposed to make eye contact.
It hadn’t worked, obviously. Just like it hasn’t really worked for my dog, Cookie. So I’d assumed my mother was unhappy because of me. There was probably some truth to that, but it turned out she objected to my father too.
Nine years ago, she went to some kind of motivational lecture, after which she informed him that she’d never loved him, marrying him had ruined her life, and she was taking half custody of poor Daisy.
I didn’t hold it against her. She definitely wasn’t happy, and everyone should at least try to be happy.
Besides, even though it is not a happy coincidence that Mrs. Applebaum is Nora’s mother, there have been some other happy coincidences attached to my father’s unexpected later-in-life pairing with Mrs. Applebaum.
For years, I’ve wanted to be in a band.
I’ve always had an ear for music. Even when I was a little kid, I could memorize lyrics and bridges without trying.
Everything about music spoke to me, but I was most drawn to the rhythmic foundation of the songs.
Eventually I learned they were made by the bass guitar, which is such an overlooked but necessary instrument.
I liked the thought of being the road for other people’s cars.
So I taught myself how to play it. My friend Kenji and I used to jam together in his garage before he moved, but I’d always wanted to be part of something bigger. A real band.
I didn’t think it would be possible for me, because I’m not a man who finds it natural to make opportunities. My brain isn’t built that way. But if an opportunity falls into my lap, I can build a fucking skyscraper out of it.
Which is what happened six months ago.
Hannah, who’s standing to my left in a tux that matches mine, set my dad up with Mrs. Applebaum, now Mrs. Applebaum-Peebles. It was through Hannah that I met Travis, the drummer for Garbage Fire. They’d needed a bassist, and in an unusual moment of daring, I told him I played bass.
The rest is history. I love being part of the band, but I still throw up before every performance, especially since our first album just released, and we’ve been steadily booking bigger gigs. We’re performing at the reception, so I’ll probably throw up tonight too, if only for consistency.
I don’t mean to look at Nora, but my eyes stray to the left of Mrs. Applebaum’s bread-boule hair and find the curve of Nora’s cheek, her messy brown bob, and the severe arch of her dark eyebrows. It gives her a look of being perpetually pissed off.
Nora’s wearing an ugly pea-green dress, but it doesn’t make her ugly, unfortunately. It suits her, especially with the bright red lipstick she always wears. That’s no novelty, of course.
Everything suits her.
I had a high school English teacher who loved to compare beautiful women to flowers.
Each girl in class had a flower assigned to her.
I was the only one who was surprised when he got busted for exchanging text messages with a few female students, but that’s beside the point.
He was an idiot, in addition to being a pervert, because flowers aren’t nearly as eye-catching as, say, praying mantises. Or black widows.
Nora has always seemed both beautiful and dangerous.
In high school, she talked back to everyone, including all of our teachers.
She had dozens of ideas, all of them interesting, everyone raved about her homemade ginger beer, and her wit was a barbed weapon she used to stab everyone—and God help me, I used to want my blood on her hands.
It didn’t help at all that she wore that red lipstick every single day.
Yes, I had a vicious crush on her in high school, so bad I tripped over my words every time she spoke to me—and then revisited every interaction with excruciating agony for months.
But in addition to razing a warpath through the school, she smoked outside of the building with the same assholes who thought it was hilarious to regularly steal my best friend’s gym shorts and mimic everything I said.
She went to their parties too, something I knew because I was invited to one of them for helping a jock ace a test. I stayed for all of five minutes before finding a very good reason to leave.
Because no way was I going to make out with the girl I’d been fantasizing about in the same room as every popular kid in school, separated only by a folding door.
We mostly avoided each other after that.
Still, it had felt like a particularly hard pill to swallow when she made out with the biggest asshole in our year behind my senior year science project, which was supposed to be a big deal for me for a couple of different reasons, and ended up accidentally crushing it.
She barely apologized, as if I didn’t matter enough for her to feel true remorse. So I lost it and yelled at her.
We both got detention, and the day we graduated, she flipped me off when I got up to make my very short valedictorian speech.
Still…I never forgot that she was beautiful.
I never forgot her at all.
When her brewery opened, I saw the articles. I wasn’t surprised, because her ginger beer had been legendary, even then. Leave it to Nora to figure out how to make it even more appealing to the masses by rendering it alcoholic.
But I didn’t go to The Ginger Station. I knew if she remembered me, it would only be with contempt.
She obviously still holds me in contempt, but I’m consumed by the memory of our discussion in her office. In particular, by—
It’s perfectly normal to get turned on by your soon-to-be stepsister kneeling in front of you…
Yeah, I’ve repeated it in my head half a dozen times, but I still don’t buy it.
Why the hell did she have to do that? Did she know it would drive me crazy?
I’ll have to talk the whole thing through with my friend Liam, who laughs at me for asking stupid questions but at least does it in front of my face rather than behind my back. There’s a lot to be said for that.
Liam was supposed to find me a date for the wedding—and he did, but she bowed out after meeting me. In my defense, I had no idea she wasn’t actually interested in the science behind the ball-throwing and retrieval robot I’d designed for my dog. If she’d been honest, I would have cut myself off.
“You may kiss the bride,” the officiant says, cluing me in on the fact that I missed the whole ceremony.
My father tips Mrs. Applebaum backward. Her lofty hair nearly takes out the pedestal the officiant was using for notes, but the older woman who married them beams as my dad mauls his new wife with his mouth.
“Is there anything more wonderful than love?” she asks.
All the guests respond by bursting into applause. The vibe is congratulatory, as if everyone thinks my dad and Mrs. Applebaum are doing an extraordinarily good job of making out, and my father seems to puff up.
I’m not sure why, but my gaze seeks out Nora’s. She pulls a face, nearly making me laugh, but I look away in time, pushing my glasses up by the bridge. They got messed up at my friend’s boxing gym several months back, and they’ve never fit the same since.
My gaze drifts to the other bridesmaids—one young and dark-haired, the other middle-aged. They both have the weird bread hairdo too, so maybe it is in style. Nora is the only one with normally proportioned hair.
“Dear me,” the officiant says joyfully as the kiss continues, and Mrs. Applebaum’s hair finally makes good on its threat and swipes over the papers on the pedestal, scattering them. “What a special moment. Let’s all get some drinks and give them a little time to themselves, don’t you think?”
She says it with a wink-and-nod expression, like she hopes my dad and Mrs. Applebaum, now Mrs. Applebaum-Peebles, will have sex in the special events room as soon as we leave.
Honestly, I wouldn’t put it past them. They seem to have forgotten that anyone else is present. My dad practically has her bent over the pedestal now, and the cheap wood is creaking.
While I’d rather not watch my father make out with my elementary school teacher, I feel a surprising pang of…
Loneliness.
Despite my doubts about marriage as a construct, my father is clearly deeply in love. I’ve never felt like that about someone, as if the rest of the world could melt away and I wouldn’t notice. As if everyone could be watching, and I’d see only her.
For me, one thought tends to tumble into another, leading me down tangents that capture my attention. It happens all the time, often when I’m with other people, which makes it difficult to form real connections.