Chapter Twenty-Six
Thanks for picking me up,” I mumble into my dad’s chest.
Boston is fucking freezing. Or maybe I’m just worn out, wrung out, from all the tears I cried on the way here.
The woman who sat next to me on the plane had walked into the airport bathroom as I dried my tear-soaked shirt under the hand dryer.
She looked like she wanted to ask if I was okay, but thank god she didn’t.
I don’t know that I have any tears left to cry, but receiving motherly concern for possibly the first time in my life might undo me altogether.
Splashing water on my face did little to erase the splotchiness of my skin or the puffiness in my eyes, but I blame both on the biting cold and lack of sleep when my dad’s attention lingers on my red-rimmed eyes.
I realize he sees right through me when he says, “Unfortunate your friend couldn’t book the same flight.
” The way he says “friend”—somehow, fatherly instinct perhaps, he knows the person I was bringing home last minute was not just a friend.
“Yeah,” I mumble before slipping into the front seat, cutting off that line of conversation.
I was bummed Dax wasn’t on my flight when he booked his this morning—this morning feels like a week ago so much has happened since.
Now I’m grateful for and terrified of the time apart.
I’m grateful for the space to sort through what’s eating at me so we can talk about it with our heads on straight.
I’m haunted by the way he said, Okay, like he did three years ago when life sent us in different directions and he let me go without a fight.
I’m terrified he might do the same again, that when I go to the airport tomorrow to pick him up, he won’t have gotten on the plane.
He doesn’t push further, because he’s my dad, and he’s never pushed us kids to talk more than we’re ready to.
Occasionally, growing up, he’d sit us down and force us to tell him what was going on, but only when he was concerned we’d gotten in over our heads.
Somehow, he always knew when that was. Otherwise, he trusted us to figure it out ourselves.
With five kids to raise on his own, he didn’t really have the time to coddle us all.
We knew the reason the gray at his temples rapidly took over after Mom left was the stress of doing it all on his own, so we did our best not to get into any real trouble.
We didn’t want to lose him, too. As far as dads go, he’s a pretty great one.
We don’t speak as he navigates the congested airport traffic, and I study him from the passenger seat.
His close-cropped hair is fully gray now, and the cut of it screams ex-military.
His angular face has more wrinkles now than it used to, and it’s weird watching him age more and more each time I come home.
As we finally hit the highway, I try to view him through Dax’s eyes, what it would be like to meet him for the first time, if Dax does show up tomorrow. Would he ask Dax to call him Mr. Donavan, or would he let him call him William or Bill?
“Your brothers are excited to see you,” he offers, cutting through the silence.
“Yeah?” I say, smirking. “Did they say that?”
My dad scoffs in the back of his throat. “Of course not. But they did set up the old Nintendo.”
I grin. Five kids and four controllers were responsible for easily a dozen Donavan-sibling wrestling matches. “Apologies in advance for all the screaming.”
“I bought earplugs on the way to pick you up,” he says as he pulls onto our street, gesturing to the drugstore bag at my feet.
He still lives in the house we grew up in, and sometimes it makes me sad to think about him in this big house all alone, but I’m always happy to see it when I come home. The brick and mortar are an extension of our family.
Next door, a light shines from the narrow basement window. I won’t see Charlie and the rest of the Post Humorous crew until tomorrow night, but there’s comfort in knowing Charlie is only a wall away.
As soon as the car is in park, my door is open. Snatching my backpack from between my feet, I throw it over one shoulder as I head for the basement door around back. I can’t remember the last time anyone entered our house through the front.
I drop my bag as I kick my shoes off on the cold cement floor, my brothers’ voices drifting to me from the basement living room that was ours to destroy.
The couch down here is broken in more places than not, so unlike the untouched, pristine sitting area upstairs my dad frequents with a J. R. Alastor thriller and a whiskey.
My dad shuts the door behind him, and my brothers’ voices cut off immediately.
“Sammy?”
“SAAAAM!”
“Sam! Sam! Sam!”
“AY, SAMMAY!”
It’s been twenty-five years since they found out they weren’t getting another brother—who they’d decided would be named Sam—but instead, a little sister: me. They have never let it go, refusing to call me by my name. I hope they never do.
The smile that breaks across my face is nearly painful, my socks sliding on the cement floor as I rush into the living room, throwing my arms in the air like a gymnast landing a particularly difficult floor routine.
All four of them are sprawled out on the tan sectional with the telltale sag in the middle.
Nate, the oldest and tallest of us, is on the left-hand side, his hair sticking up at all angles probably from a wrestling match I just missed.
No matter how old we get, if you put us all together, we’re right back to being delinquent little shits.
With the same brown hair and brown eyes, Nate, Bryce, and Austin look like triplets, despite there being two years between them all. They’re all clones of our dad.
Gray and I are the only ones who got our mom’s blond hair and blue eyes.
I head for the right side of the couch and wrangle Gray into a hug.
We’ve always been close, but even more so since he dropped out of college and moved back home my senior year.
It was another one of those times where my dad somehow innately knew what we needed, letting Gray come home to lick his wounds before pushing him back out the door again a year later.
I smell the popcorn before I see it, pivoting around as a petite brunette woman comes downstairs.
She seems vaguely familiar, but I can’t place her until Bryce hops up off the couch to grab the third bowl of popcorn she’s barely managing to balance.
I recognize her as his on-again, off-again high school girlfriend.
Are they… back together? I cut a silent look to Gray, who rolls his eyes in the way I know means both long story and tell you later.
“Sammy, you remember Anna,” Bryce says, providing her name helpfully.
I nod and wave.
“Hi, Sloane,” she calls to me before sitting down in the middle of the couch—in the saggy, broken middle of the couch.
Popcorn flies everywhere as she sinks down, slowly consumed by the quicksand section. As buttery popcorn rains down, our golden retriever, Biscuit, appears, summoned by the smell of food.
I manage to hold back my laugh as Anna tries and fails to extricate herself, but the chaos of Biscuit jumping on her to help clean up combined with Bryce’s unsuccessful attempts to haul her out of the sunken middle because he’s laughing too hard—it undoes me.
My dad disappears, muttering something about a vacuum, but not before an unspoken game begins as all of us try to shove as much popcorn into our mouths as possible before Biscuit can get to it.
It’s a miracle I don’t choke on a kernel I’m laughing so hard, shoving more into my mouth in some crunchier version of chubby bunny.
“Wait, Sammy,” Nate calls around a mouthful of popcorn. “Dad said you were bringing someone.”
I take my time chewing and swallowing my now-soggy popcorn, trying not to get teary over how cute Bryce and Anna are picking popcorn out of each other’s hair while Biscuit dutifully hoovers up the fallout.
“Yeah, but his flight is tomorrow,” I say.
And I hope he gets on it, I don’t say. I want to break down, to admit how scared I am by our first fight, but I can’t bring myself to let that be the first impression I give my family of him.
Plus, I know what my brothers would say—to take the job and not look back.
But then I watch Bryce and Anna, and I’m not so sure.
“His flight?” Bryce clarifies.
Pushing Gray’s feet off the chaise section of the couch, I drop gracelessly onto it before shooting Bryce a look, silently telling him to be cool. I’ve never brought someone home before, never had anyone I cared about this much.
Bryce, of course, is not cool about it, exchanging looks with my other brothers like, Did you know about this?
“What’s his name? Age? Profession?” Bryce barrels on, not one for delicacy. Anna squeezes his knee, and he looks at her like he has no idea he’s obnoxious.
It’s not lost on me that my dad is using a broom on the carpet so he doesn’t have to turn on the vacuum and, thus, can eavesdrop.
I shake my head, smiling at the ground as I wind a loose thread from one of the couch pillows around my finger. “Dax. Twenty-nine. Musician.”
Bryce grunts, dissatisfied with my minimalistic answers. “And who is he to you?”
I chuckle as Anna swats Bryce for being so pushy, but I expect nothing less from my second-eldest brother. He’s always been the one who will say what everyone else is thinking—even when you wish he wouldn’t.
I hesitate. Dax was my boyfriend. I hope that’s still true. I want to believe one fight—the same fight—won’t end us again, but this is uncharted territory for me.
Gray nudges my foot with his. “Didn’t you already date a guy with that name?”
I nod. “Yep. Same guy.”
Austin laughs. “Wait—are you pulling a Nate right now?”