Chapter Twenty-Five #2
“What?” I asked, defensive but not really annoyed.
He jutted his chin at me, grinning. “Charlie, I’ve known you since you were a kid. And aside from that weird summer when my momma let you come along on all those estate dumpster dives, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk this much in one sitting.”
Magnolia pretended to clutch her pearls. “Oh my God, he is talking. I didn’t even notice until you said something. I was riveted.”
I rolled my eyes and reached for my drink again, trying to tamp down the smile that was tugging at my mouth.
“She’s got stories,” I muttered. “And I just happen to like listening to them.”
Sutton leaned back in her chair, one eyebrow raised. “Too bad she’s got a boyfriend. Otherwise, I’d say Oscar the Grouch here finally met his match.”
I didn’t flinch or respond. I reached for another slice of pizza and shoved it in my mouth like that might muffle the sting. I’d forgotten all about the supposed boyfriend until Sutton just had to interrupt me and bring it back up.
“Boyfriend?” Lee asked, craning his neck to see Sutton behind me.
“I don’t buy it,” Magnolia said, her eyes locked on mine. “I think you saw what you wanted to see, Sutty.”
Sutton’s phone lit up and skidded once across the bar. She glanced at the screen and sighed. “LaMonte needs a warm body to fill in for Katie at the Telfair Ball. Looks like I’m it. Love you, losers.”
She kissed the side of my face with an exaggerated smack, wiping pizza grease off my cheek with her sleeve as she bolted out the door in a blur of urgency.
Lee stood, stretching with a dramatic sigh. “Guess I’d better head out too. I’m performing at said ball tonight with Ryan, and we are, how do you say, completely unprepared and wildly unrehearsed. Here’s hoping he’s not already drunk in a tux somewhere.”
Magnolia dismissed him with a flick of her hand, her expression unreadable.
She stayed silent, still, watching him back out the door, that damn grin still tugging at his mouth, like she was the only one who could pull that kind of smirk from him.
Her fingers curled slightly against the edge of the bar—the only sign she hadn’t taken a full breath since he walked in.
It reminded me of when we were kids, back when the two of them first started sneaking around. Making out in the back storage room of O’Malley’s, locking themselves in Magnolia’s bedroom, and pretending no one noticed.
We’d noticed.
She caught me watching and turned, her expression hardening. “Don’t start.”
I raised my hands. “Didn’t say a word.”
“Please. You didn’t have to.” She cracked open a beer, giving me a look that said she wasn’t in the mood for brotherly wisdom. “Besides, you’ve got your own mess now. How was the appointment, by the way? Everything okay?”
“I think so, she seemed to relax a little after. I think seeing the baby, and maybe having some support there, really helped ease her anxiety.”
She stared at me. “You could’ve said no to all of this, you know,” she said pointedly, taking a long pull from the bottle, her voice lighter but not without an edge.
“Are you serious?” I asked, flat. “You’ve met Doyle. Imagine if I bailed on his sister today or didn’t provide around-the-clock updates on her vitamin schedule and if she’s doing her prenatal stretches. He’d drown me in a vat of wine in the back of the shop.”
“Unfortunately accurate.” Magnolia leaned over the bar casually, as if she wasn’t about to toss a grenade into the middle of the table.
I grabbed another slice of pizza and focused really hard on the crust.
Magnolia looked wrecked—hair in a messy bun that had lost the battle with gravity hours ago, dark circles blooming under her eyes, and that tight line between her brows that only showed up when the weight of everything got too heavy.
“Never mind me, how are you doing, baby sister?” I asked, softer than I meant to, which always happened with her.
“Don’t change the subject.” Magnolia popped open the top of the pizza box I’d brought—Vinnie Van GoGo’s, of course—and peeled off a slice. “Sutton swears she saw her cuddled up with some guy in front of the fireplace at the coffee shop.”
I clenched my jaw. “So I’ve heard. Sutton needs to mind her damn business.”
“And you,” I said, jabbing a finger in her direction, “Could stop playing matchmaker and maybe focus on the fact that your fiancé skipped town for Christmas and your ex-boyfriend looks five seconds away from throwing you over his shoulder and disappearing into a dark corner every time he sees you.”
“You sure you don’t care? Because I know you. I’ve seen what happens when you try not to catch feelings and fail miserably. You go broody. You get weird.”
“I’m not getting weird.”
“You are deeply weird right now,” she said calmly. “Which is fine. But I think you like her.”
“Again, maybe you should focus on your own drama. And trust me, sis, you have plenty of it.”
Magnolia raised an eyebrow. “I’d love to pass the drama baton, thank you very much. You haven’t dated in years, and you certainly haven’t been this twitchy since that girl from SCAD ghosted you mid-sculpture.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ve dated, Mags. Don’t be ridiculous.”
She gave me a long, unimpressed look. “Charlie, you and I were two minutes away from becoming the Southern Gothic version of Grey Gardens—just two emotionally stunted siblings holed up in a crumbling bar, talking to our dead relatives and scaring off tourists.”
I groaned, dragging a hand down my face.
“Oh, please, Magnolia. Really rich coming from someone who finally has a boyfriend after years of swearing off men because her first love broke her heart—and now she’s swatting said first love away like a gnat who won’t leave her alone, but she secretly loves it. ”
Magnolia had the nerve to smirk. “Again, I would love to volley the drama.”
“There’s no drama,” I muttered, reaching for another slice of pizza—my fourth, maybe fifth, I’d lost track. Emotional damage was apparently carb-fueled tonight.
“I don’t even know what it is with her,” I went on, quieter now. “She’s just… whenever she’s around, suddenly my skin feels too tight. Like I’m breaking out in hives, or I can’t breathe right.”
Magnolia narrowed her eyes, catching it before I could stop myself. “Charlie—”
“You’d think I’d be used to that by now,” I added quickly, trying to cover, waving a hand between us. “I’ve spent my entire life sharing oxygen with you.”
From inside the bar, it probably came off as a joke. A sarcastic jab between siblings. But from the open to-go window, where a certain poodle had just barked loud enough to turn heads, it landed like a punch to the gut.
Magnolia turned toward the sound, squinting through the glass. “Oh. Oh, my God. Was that—”
I was already on my feet, barstool screeching backward across the floor as I lunged for the door.
“Tally!”
She was already halfway down the sidewalk, her shoulders rigid, Nancy Reagan trotting furiously beside her like she, too, was deeply offended.
A fine mist had started to fall in soft, silvery threads that caught in the streetlights, and by the time I caught sight of her face, she looked washed out.
Blank in a way that made my stomach lurch.
She didn’t turn around until I called her name again. When she did, her expression didn’t crack.
“Not sure why you’re chasing after me if you don’t like me,” she said flatly. “Wouldn’t want you to break out in hives just standing beside me.”
The words hit me like a sucker punch, and my throat tightened. “You weren’t supposed to hear that.”
“Well,” she said, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear with fingers that weren’t quite steady, “I did. Loud and clear. So—thanks for the clarity.”
“Tally, wait. I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did.” Her voice wasn’t angry. It wasn’t raised. But it was steady in that way that meant she was holding in what she really wanted to say. “You meant every word. And it’s fine. You can relax. I don’t want to be your problem. I never did.”
I stepped forward, useless. “Tally—”
She exhaled, one slow breath that cracked between us like thunder. Then she looked at me—really looked—and it felt like standing dead center in a storm I hadn’t seen coming.
It was the look I’d dreaded since the moment I met her.
That sharp, unflinching way she saw people, the same way she did behind her camera lens.
And now, she’d found it in me—the thing I’d buried so deep I thought no one could touch it.
That beneath all the steady, reliable armor was a man bluffing his way through, desperate for the world not to notice he had no idea what the hell he was doing.
“You’re doing my brother a favor.” Her voice wavered, then steadied. “And I thought… I don’t know what I thought. I guess I let myself believe all the little moments meant more than they did. But now I get it. Message received.”
The rain picked up, gentle but persistent, flattening her curls and darkening the hem of her dress. Nancy Reagan gave a single bark, judgy and unimpressed, before they both turned and walked away, shoulders high, spine straight, dignity fully intact.
And I didn’t chase her.
Because maybe this time—whether I meant it that way or not—I’d earned the walk away.