Trapp #3
“I’m not saying you’re in the wrong.” Grayson clapped him on the back, too hard, nearly making him choke on the sip of flowery drink he’d just swallowed. “Things reached their natural conclusion. And she’s a human. So.” He shrugged with a grin, as if Trapp were meant to feel better.
“Whatever. I fucking hate this,” he grumbled.
“Everyone’s going to have an opinion. Everyone.
All over town. Mom’s going to be upset .
. . I’ve got to get in front of it. It was for the job opportunity.
She’s moving for a job opportunity. But then that doesn’t explain why she didn’t give the school a chance to counteroffer.
. . She’s moving to be closer to her family.
Her mom fell not long ago, and Julia needs to be closer .
. . that’s what I’ll say when it comes up. ”
Grayson’s sharp bark of laughter echoed across the water.
“That’s what you’re upset about. That’s what has you smelling like a distillery.
Not the end of your relationship. Not because you’re heartbroken.
But the possibility that someone, somewhere, is going to think badly of you.
She’s probably still packing her trunk and you’re already rewriting your version of things. ”
“Oh, fuuuuuck you. Don’t even pretend that you don’t do the exact same thing!
This is a page out of your playbook; yours and fucking Jackson’s.
And while we’re at it, don’t pretend you didn’t fall to pieces when you and Vanessa split up.
Sure, you acted like everything was fine, but I was witness to it. ”
Grayson shook his head, still laughing. “Trapp, you are wholly invested in being everyone’s best friend. I could give less of fuck about the neighbors. It’s good to have a strong public game, but not at the detriment of your actual life, you dumbfuck. This is all for me.”
Grayson gestured around him. Trapp winced at the volume of his brother’s voice, wondering if the sound carried out better than it traveled in.
“It’s not to impress the neighbors. It’s not to goad the assholes in the old neighborhood.
I don’t care if the minotaur from the gym whispers about how much I spent or how much land had to be cleared.
I don’t care if Xenna thinks I should have been happy buying some shitty little house in the flex developments and be forced to go to the pisswater public pool.
Because the second that gate closes behind me, they don’t exist and I don’t have to smile for fucking anyone until I leave again.
And you’re right, I was upset when Vanessa and I split.
But I was upset about us. Not over the neighbor’s opinion.
And tonight she’s going to come home, and we’re going to do our skincare and float in our pool and watch a video from the caterer, and I’m not going to spare a single fucking second wondering how I might be perceived by a stranger at the coffee shop.
That’s all you think about. You’re so wrapped up in other people’s opinions that you can’t take a shit without wondering whether it’ll offend someone on the other side of town.
You can’t spend your whole life walking on eggshells in this place, Trapp.
What’s going to happen when one of them breaks?
So are you upset that your girlfriend dumped you?
Or because the cashier at the fucking grocery store might have an opinion about it that doesn’t involve you being the good guy? ”
He never got a chance to answer. They were interrupted by the sound of a car door slamming on the other side of the gate, both of them going quiet.
Trapp swallowed thickly. This was another part of the new normal he hadn’t realized would be such a hard adaptation, not one he even liked admitting to himself.
Once, Grayson had been entirely dependable, and that included dependably single.
Too career-minded, disinterested in monogamy, too unwilling to make time in his schedule for anything but his ambitions.
All of that had been upended when Vanessa had started at the firm.
Now he was getting married, and everything was going to change.
“I never thought the day would come that we’d lose him to a nine-to-five job and a psycho girlfriend,” Lowell had laughed weakly, that last time he’d come home for a visit.
They’d been at the Pickled Pig. Trapp had opened his mouth to tell Lowell he was wrong, but the words had stuck.
He liked Vanessa. Despite his brother’s revision of the past, Trapp knew that in the few months Gray and Vanessa had split, he had been in shambles.
She was good for him . . . but Lowell wasn’t entirely wrong.
Grayson had gone from a nihilistic workaholic with a girlfriend in the city to someone entirely content to sequester himself in his suburban yard with his wife-to-be and little else beyond wedding planning.
“She’s not psycho,” Trapp had corrected eventually, but the underlying sentiment lingered.
As he listened to the sound of the back door sliding open, Vanessa crossing the first deck, he considered that perhaps his relationship with Julia might have repaired itself, had they lasted through the wedding.
Trapp knew that made him sound terrible, but that didn’t make it less true.
A family like the Hemmings — large, close, even if their personalities oftentimes clashed — was a safety net, one his girlfriend hadn’t had here in Cambric Creek.
If she’d stayed until after Grayson’s wedding, perhaps Trapp would have been more invested in their relationship.
That makes you sound like a fucking monster. You deserved to be dumped.
His inner voice wasn’t wrong, but neither was his rationale. Grayson had been his person from the moment Trapp had been born, closer than the rest of their brothers ever had been, and his relationship with Julia hadn’t changed that . . . but now his person had a different person.
“Holy shit, I have been daydreaming about this since lunch,” Vanessa exclaimed, approaching the pool, passing both their chairs.
She’d changed into tight shorts and a cropped t-shirt, crossing the deck to where the bar stood beneath a shaded pergola.
“Do we want to try the black caviar? Or stick with that 24-karat gold snail mucin?”
Trapp watched in fascination as she opened a small tabletop refrigerator, carefully applying black jelly under-eye pads in response to Grayson’s answer, before moving to the other side of the deck, where a matching lounger rested half out of the pool.
It was the strangest version of a his-and-hers pastime he’d ever witnessed.
Pushing the pool lounger into the water fully, Vanessa dropped into it backward, sending the float to their side of the pool with a small bounce as she groaned.
“This is it. This is all I’ll ever need to be happy again.”
“I’m going to pull that up on the security footage and save it,” Grayson informed her, pushing to his feet from his chair beside Trapp’s, crossing to where his own pool lounger bobbed against the wall.
“I don’t understand why they won’t let us work from home.
We’d never have to get out. We need to pick what’s going on the grazing table so that it can be sent to the farm. ”
Trapp watched a projection screen lower from the pergola, as Grayson splashed back into his float. If he didn’t leave now, he’d be stuck watching wedding catering videos, a reminder of his newly single status.