Sully
Idon't recognize my own apartment. A week ago, this place was empty rooms and echoes.
Tonight, there's a dining table long enough to seat the whole first line, lamps in corners where I didn't know lamps were needed, art on the walls, and an enormous rug that I was informed ties the room together and cost more than my first car.
There are plants, living ones that filter the air.
The girls did all of it in a week, with two borrowed credit cards and a shared spreadsheet that I was shown once and never want to see again.
Every day I'd come home from my old apartment, and something new would have appeared.
A couch, a coffee machine with more settings than a spaceship, and matching towels.
Tonight we're showing it off. Everyone insisted we have a housewarming party to celebrate the girls and them moving here, especially before Fish and Collette’s wedding, which is happening next weekend.
Emmett and Jo came up from one floor down carrying beer and champagne.
Fish and Collette were with them from the same level with a plant, because apparently that's what people bring now. Pierre and Issy are still doing the newlywed thing where they always touch. Felix is fussing over Harper, who is on the good armchair with her feet up. She’s pregnant, and every time she winces, he is there anxiously.
The doorbell goes, and I open it to find half my team in the hallway. Bouch is in front holding a case of beer, Evan behind him with another one, and Nelly at the back holding a single candle.
"Housewarming gift," Nelly explains, handing it over like it's a trophy. "The woman in the shop said everybody likes vanilla."
"Thank you, Nelly, very thoughtful."
"See," he says to Bouch. "Thoughtful."
"We brought beer," Bouch says. "Beer is also thoughtful."
They pile in, and I watch three professional athletes stop dead in my living room like they've walked into a museum.
"This is your apartment?" Evan asks.
"Yep.”
“This looks like a magazine,” Bouch says.
“He does live with girls now, so …” Nelly adds.
“Who are interior designers,” Evan states.
“It’s different to my last place.” I grin.
“Yeah, this is giving billionaire vibes, not frat house.” Evan chuckles.
"You even have plants." Bouch is peering at the monstera in the corner with suspicion. "Real ones. Who is keeping these alive?"
"I’m not taking credit for that, the girls mainly do it. They said having live plants in your apartment helps clean the air,” I explain to them.
“Really?” Nelly says. “I might have to add some.”
“Your apartment needs it,” Bouch says, scrunching up his face.
“Fuck you,” Nelly says, flipping him off.
“Where are the girls? We have champagne for them.”
I point them toward the kitchen where the girls are, and within a minute, Cassidy has confiscated Nelly's candle for the mantelpiece, and the boys are being given a tour whether they want one or not.
“That’s a big table,” Bouch says.
“It needed to be, to fit all you boys around it,” Cassidy explains.
“We can come for dinner?” Nelly asks.
“Sure. We used to host dinners all the time,” Cassidy tells him.
“No,” I yell out to my sister. “I spend enough time with these idiots, we don’t need to have dinners together.”
“I think family dinners are a great idea,” Fish states.
“Who said anything about family dinners?” I look at him.
“I think that’s a great idea, we should do family dinner once a month when you guys are in town,” Cassidy says excitedly.
“No.” I moan.
“Yes,” Bouch and Nelly say.
“Come on, Cap, it would be team building,” Bouch says.
“As long as they are not in my home,” he grumbles.
“We could make it each month at a different person’s home,” Jo adds.
“Babe?” Emmett argues.
“Yes, count us in,” Collette says.
“Us too,” Issy adds.
“And us, but maybe in six months.” Harper laughs.
“What have you done?” I ask my sister.
She just smiles at me as she continues the tour with the boys.
By eleven, the party has shaken out its first wave.
Felix took Harper home hours ago, one hand on her back like she might tip over, while she told him the whole way to the elevator that she's pregnant, not made of glass. Pierre and Issy lasted until ten before disappearing with the excuse that they’re still jet-lagged from their honeymoon.
And Fish and Collette just left, too, since they're flying up to Maine tomorrow to start setting up for the wedding, though not before Fish gave one more toast, this time to himself, and Collette dragged him out the door mid-sentence.
Which leaves the diehards. Somebody handed Cassidy control of the music an hour ago, a decision we will all pay for, and now the three girls are dancing in the middle of my living room.
Cassidy is teaching Jo some routine from a music video that came out when we were in high school, Jo is taking it seriously, and Ember is between them with a cocktail in one hand, barefoot on the expensive rug, singing every word with total confidence.
And out of nowhere, I'm seventeen again.
Standing in the hallway at Mom and Dad's on my way to the kitchen, stopped dead outside Cassidy's bedroom door because the two of them were in there doing this exact routine.
They were having a sleepover, the music was way too loud, and they were using hairbrushes for microphones.
I must have stood there a full minute admiring Em before Cass spotted me and threw a pillow at my head.
The memory sucker-punches me. Weird, I haven't thought about that in years.
The boys are lined up along the kitchen island like spectators at practice. Emmett, Bouch, Evan, and Nelly are watching the show with their beers, and it's Bouch who makes the mistake of saying it out loud.
"Your sisters are fun."
"Very fun," Nelly agrees.
Emmett sets his beer down on the island with a clink that has a lot of authority in it. "Let's have a conversation."
Oh shit.
Emmett points his finger at three of them, one at a time. "My sister is off-limits. Whatever thought was forming behind your eyes just now, unform it," he warns.
"And the one currently teaching your girlfriend choreography is mine," I add. "Same rules, do not touch. They have both been through enough.”
"Nobody was thinking anything," Bouch protests.
"You're always thinking something," I tell him.
"They just got out of marriages," Emmett says, and his voice drops out of captain mode into something quieter. "They came here to start over, not to get tangled up with anyone in this room. Everyone clear?"
"Crystal,” Evan says.
"Clear." Bouch nods.
“No touching, got it,” Nelly adds. “I have a question though …” Emmett and I glare at our goalie. "I was only going to ask if they'd help with my apartment," Nelly asks, looking afraid. “My family will be coming over at Christmas for the first time and I … I would like my home to look nice.”
"That's allowed," I tell him as the girls are looking for work.
He gives me a smile.
Across the room, the song changes, and Ember throws her head back and laughs at something Cassidy says, and in that moment, something stirs in me.
Now is not the time.
It's almost one by the time I see everyone out.
When I turn around, the girls have disappeared, and the apartment is silent for the first time all night.
I grab a garbage bag and do a lap. Bottles, napkins, a plate of something that used to be dip.
One of the girls kicked a heel under the coffee table.
I collect the glasses, load the dishwasher, and wipe down the island.
Nelly's candle is still burning on the mantel, and I blow it out.
He was right, everybody does like vanilla.
I straighten the rug, put the couch cushions back, and turn the lamps off one by one until the living room goes dark around me.
I’m exhausted, and I head down the hallway to bed, but when I push open my door, I freeze.
What the fuck?!
Ember is asleep in my bed, on top of the covers, still in her dress, star fished diagonally across the whole mattress. Her hair is everywhere, and she is snoring, very quietly. What is she doing in my bedroom? I’m confused.
"Em." I keep my voice low. "You're in the wrong room."
Nothing.
"Ember." I say her name louder.
"Mm." She burrows deeper into my pillow. "Five minutes."
"This is my bed."
"No, it’s not," she mumbles, eyes closed, with total certainty, and goes back under.
What the hell do I do? I stand in my own doorway, weighing my options. Her room is six feet away, and she'll want to wake up in it, so won’t even remember this. I slide one arm under her knees and the other behind her back.
"Come on, party girl, back to your own bed.”
She's asleep for most of the journey, and then she's not. Her arms come up around my neck on instinct, her face tips into my shoulder, and she smells like jasmine and champagne.
"Sully," she mumbles into my neck.
"Mmmm,” I answer.
"Good party," she says.
“It was.” I lay her down on her own bed.
She lets go of my neck slowly, like her arms haven't gotten the message yet. I pull the blankets back and slowly try to get her under them, eventually getting her tucked in. I head into her bathroom and grab a glass of water and some headache pills, she will probably need them in the morning, and as I’m placing them down, Ember mumbles something.
“Sorry, what did you say?” I ask her.
Her voice is small and already half under, the words sliding into each other. "Do you think anyone will ever find me attractive again?”
I still.
She's not looking at me, her eyes are closed, her cheek pressed into the pillow. Nearly fifteen years with a man who was never really looking at her, and this is what he left behind. This is what's underneath the girl power and fuck men stance the girls have been saying.
"Yes," I say quietly. "Someone already does," I confess to her stupidly.
I hate that seeing her so carefree and happy like she was tonight has kind of unlocked the feelings I had for her when I was a teen.
I thought they had disappeared, but after spending all this time with her again, the very rusted lock around my feelings toward her seems to have broken open, and now here I am.
She doesn't hear it. Her breathing has already gone long and even, one hand curled under her chin, out completely.
I switch off her lamp and close her door behind me.
Back in my room, the bed is a mess in the shape of her, and the pillow smells like her perfume.
I lie down on the very edge of the mattress and stare at the ceiling for a long time.
It's nostalgia, that's all. We're around each other for the first time since we were teens, and the last couple of weeks have been emotional for everyone, stirring up memories from the past. I roll over, and her perfume is on the pillow. I suck in a deep breath of it and my dick twitches.
Nope.
Not going to happen. Stay down, boy, now is not the time. I sit up and punch my pillow a couple of times, hoping that will help. It doesn’t. And I try to get some hours of sleep.