4
The house is full of people; they come in and out like our family home is the Information Center for Beaufort County.
It’s a lot of women with really blond, really big hair, who are all starting to dabble in the world of Botox, which I personally hate because it makes their faces harder to read—a lot of the perfunctory sorrys, some crocodile tears followed by the pinching of my cheeks, saying things like, “Well, I haven’t seen you since you were knee-high to a duck,” which are expressions you don’t hear in England, thank God.
The ones who think they’re really cultured ask while winking and nudging me with their elbows if I spend all my free time with Will and Kate, and I say no but I do spend a lot of time with David Brent, and they look confused and say, “The old prime minister?” And I say, “Sure.”
No one seems to be talking about Dad.
My mom is like a bee flittering between flowers, too buzzy and busy to slow down or stop, and I think it’s on purpose to avoid feeling what she’s feeling.
My mother doesn’t have the capacity to be weak in front of people; she’ll be together until it kills her and she’ll finally fall apart in death.
After about half an hour or so, my sister swans in with bags of groceries and her new Realtor husband behind her. She doesn’t have an old husband, by the way. He’s just her new husband to me. New since I last saw her.
“I’m here!” she announces, carrying the bags just far enough into the house for us to see that she’s brought them in herself before she drops them. “Take those to the kitchen will you, baby?” She nods at Jase, her husband.
She herself refers to them as newlyweds, even though they’ve been married for a year and a half.
I was not in attendance.
“I didn’t see you at Maryanne and Jase’s wedding?” one of Mom’s friends asked before my sister arrived.
The hot sponsor was watching me when she asked that, and I wondered how much he knows about our family. There’s every chance in the world that Oliver’s told him a lot—he should have, for a sponsor to function at his optimal level of purpose.
I like how he watches me. I couldn’t tell you why yet. I’ll be able to soon once I’ve been alone with him again.
“I had a dissertation,” I told the nosy lady.
“A what?”
“I was busy.”
“Too busy for your own sister’s wedding?” She gave me a look that I got from about nine other women throughout today when they asked me a version of the same question, as well as my mother over FaceTime when I told her I wasn’t coming (“—After all you’ve put her through?”).
If someone asked me to help them tie their shoe, I would have used it as an excuse to be too busy for my sister’s wedding, but the dissertation was real, actually. It was a few months away… But it was real.
“Yep,” was all I said before turning away from Mom’s friend.
She was disgusted by me. Brows pulled together, whole face pinched forward. You turn up for your family where we’re from.
But turning up is a two-way street.
My sister’s husband isn’t a stranger; no one in Okatie is. Jason Devlin was my sister’s high school boyfriend’s best friend, which I think is kind of weird, but then—small town?
Truthfully, I wasn’t all that surprised when they got together; even from years before, I remember how he used to look at her when she was with Beckett.
Jason’s standing on the other side of the room with Tenny and a super uncomfortable Oliver and he’s watching me, eyes pinched together with a perfectly precise mixture of suspicion and judgment. But that’s like a lot of eyes here.
It wasn’t a secret.
Maryanne made sure it wasn’t a secret.
Maryanne was the victim and she made well sure that the whole fucking world knew it.
“Georgia!” she calls out in this breathy cry and sweeps toward me.
Everyone parts like a sea for her to get to me, and then she wraps her arms around me and the room lets out a collective sigh.
She’s such a good sister , they whisper.
Look at that—
Bless her heart.
Not my heart—no one’s blessing that. My heart is fucked.
Maryanne pulls away and strokes my face tenderly. Her eyes are wet, but I see no tear tracks. Her cheeks are pulled up, but there’s no movement in the eye area.
She’s not happy to see me.
Everyone else in the room would have missed it, and it’s only for less than a second, but the same moment she strokes my cheek—the unconscious tightening of her orbicularis oculiand pars palpebralis muscles—that, ladies and gentlemen, is contempt.
That’s Maryanne’s starter-pack emotion for me. Contempt is our baseline.
“So pretty,” she tells me with her head tilted, which sounds nice, but it’s not, and I’ll tell you why.
Before, when Sam Penny tilted his head at me, it was head back, neck exposed, his smile genuine and his pupils dilated.
Here, with my sister, her jaw is clenched, her chin is tucked, her shoulders are squared, and her nostrils are flared all while she says a nice thing to me.
“Jase!” she calls, taking me by the arm and leading me over to him. Every time she touches me it feels like the kiss of Judas. “This is Georgia. Do you remember Georgia?”
“Sure I do.” He flashes me a smile, but his eyes are still pinched.
“Be nice.” Maryanne smacks him in the arm heroically. “Don’t you pay any mind to him. He’s just protective of me how husbands are, you know?”
Everyone is watching us with invasive fascination. The conversation in the room’s simmered down, and maybe all of South Carolina has taken a breath to see if the Carter sisters are going to pitch a fit.
This kind of attention is my sister’s bread and butter.
I give her a tight smile.
“I’m not married, so.” I say that because it’s exactly what she wants me to say. It’s important for her that our power dynamic feels to her how it’s always felt.
She gives me a tight, sad smile, edges of her mouth turned down, but crow’s feet appear around the edges of her eyes. She’s happy she’s married and I’m not.
She gives me a magnanimous shrug before she says, “Maybe one day.”
And then I walk outside.
I grab a bottle of wine on the way.
I don’t know whose it is or even what it is. Something white.
Hattie would kill me. She says we aren’t poor enough to ever drink wine that doesn’t at least cost thirty pounds, and we should always know what we’re drinking so we can pair it properly.
Her sister is a sommelier, so Hats doesn’t fuck around with wine, but my sister’s a narcissist so I absolutely do.
Sorry Hats, desperate times…
I sit down on the steps out back.
I can’t call it a yard; it’s a little estate. Nearly six acres that back onto the water.
A pool, a tennis court, a prayer chapel, hot tub and outdoor bar, a wharf and a boathouse, a separate guest house that had been converted into my dad’s home office with a home movie theater—
It’s excessive, but that’s my mom.
It was the best house out of everyone we knew, and when we moved in here, Maryanne’s popularity status went through the roof.
In a lot of ways, I think maybe this house is the reason why what happened happened.
It’s a show, all of it. Everything here’s a show. Everything’s in place, everything’s perfect.
Even in the wake of a dead husband, not a single dishtowel has fallen to the wayside.
Consider me officially Okatie tired.
“You okay?” says that Australian voice from behind me.
I look back at Sam Penny, and then without invitation, he sits down next to me, pushing his hands through his hair as he does.
I like the way he moves, how big he is.
His shoulders seem bigger than he realizes. Like one day he accidentally grew up and no one told him.
And his face is interesting to me because he looks young and old at once.
Old is the wrong word. Wise, maybe? Young and wise. It’s paradoxical.
There was genuine concern on his face as he asked me that. He meant it: am I okay?
I give him a small smile and nod once. “Yep.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be some sort of—lying wizard?”
I give him a tired look. “Is that what they’re calling me these days?”
He laughs and leans back on his arms, face to the sky, and holy fucking fuck, he is divine.
He has to be a surfer—those shoulders, that tan. He still has bare feet now, even though we’re outside. That’s so Australian. They’re big feet too. Up close and a few hours later, I can now conclude that his hair is in fact brown after all, but it’s a bit gold when the light catches it, and I feel like you could maybe even say that about all of him. His mouth is surprisingly rosy and maybe the tiniest bit bottom-heavy. And I’m really glad he’s not gay.
“That’s a simplified version of what your brother told me.” He smiles.
“So what did my brother tell you?”
He rubs his hand on the back of his neck, and I can’t tell whether it’s a manipulator or if he’s just sore from his flight.
“He said not to bother lying to you because you’ll just know the truth anyway.”
I squash a smile.
“That true?” he asks, interested.
“Ah—” I purse my lips. “No.” I shake my head, and he waits for more from me by saying nothing at all.
“Well, you can know someone’s lying and still not know the truth… But sure, most of the time I can tell—”
“How?”
“You can ask questions and then the body gives you the answers even when the person doesn’t.”
He squints at me, a little dubious. “So, what is it that you do?”
“I study.” I lift my shoulders breezily. “Both literally and professionally. I’m training under the director of the Emotional Intelligence Academy Group and I’m three-quarters of the way through a double master’s.”
He straightens up. I’ve impressed him. “In what?”
“Behavioral science and clinical psychology.” I nod.
“Whoa—” He sits back. “Where?”
I pause. It always seems so braggy, but I sort of love it. “Cambridge.”
“Well, shit!” He laughs. “Your parents must be so proud of you.”
“Come on.” I give him a look. “You don’t have to be a body language expert to know that’s not true.”
His eyes look sorry, and I want neither for him to feel bad nor his pity, so I flash him a smile. “Don’t worry, I’ve adapted to coexisting with their disappointment.”
He sniffs a laugh. “What made you get into this?”
“Oh—” I give him a playful look. “If you haven’t figured the answer out yourself by the end of the week, come back and I’ll tell you.”
“Yeah, all right.” He nods once, eyes smiling even though his mouth isn’t. “Deal.”
“What about you? What do you do?”
“I own a few coffee shops back in California.”
“But you’re Australian,” I tell him, as though he didn’t know.
He nods again. “I moved over from Sydney when I was eighteen.”
“And what are you now?”
“Twenty-eight.”
I look over his face. “What was in LA?”
He nearly smiles.
“A lack of supervision.” Then he laughs once, how people sometimes do at the memory of their former selves. “That’s what I was after.”
I have more questions and I have a feeling he has more answers—but I decide not to pry too much right now.
“So cafés, like franchises?”
Sam shakes his head. “Sister stores. One in Balboa, one in Los Feliz, and another one in Echo Park. Different names, same level of artistry in the coffee.”
“Artistry?” I smirk and his brows lower in defense; then he points at me.
“You’ve never had good coffee.”
I frown a little, not liking the idea that he might think I’m uncultured. “That’s not true, I have.”
“What’s your order?”
“Black, normally.”
He arches his eyebrows. “Do you like it?”
“Mmhm,” I hum.
He cracks a grin. “Liar.”
I am lying. I ignore him though. “What made you get into cafés?”
“Well—” He purses his lips. “The coffee in America is—” He pauses, I think for diplomacy, and then flashes me an apologetic smile. “It’s so good back home. Our café culture is unparalleled. And then I went to Nepal and tried Sherpa coffee. Then Italy and Guatemala, but here, it’s just shit… It’s always burnt and bitter. So I started roasting my own beans, then I started selling them to friends, and then at markets, and then it kind of—got away from me?” He shrugs. “I had some cash from some modeling, and I just thought—fuck it.”
“Why coffee?” I ask him as I watch his face closely. I ask it, even though I’m pretty sure I already know the answer. I just want to know if he knows the answer.
He gives me a long look. “I was sober by then. I think I just needed something else to be hooked on.” He tacks on a guilty grin at the end.
He’s self-aware. I didn’t realize that I thought that was a sexy thing till now, but it’s so sexy.
I look at him a bit longer than I should…drinking him in again because he sort of demands it; he’s that kind of beautiful. He doesn’t look away either, just stares back, chin in his hand.
“You don’t look how I imagined a sponsor to look,” I tell him.
“Yeah?” He blinks. “How do you think they look?”
“I don’t know—you know how Ben Affleck can look sort of weathered? Like, handsome, sure—but weathered? But you don’t look weathered.”
Sam gives me a look. “He’s not a sponsor.”
“Just weathered?”
He sniffs a laugh. “I’m weathered.” He sounds tired. “Just not in ways you can see with your eyes.”
I press my lips together and peer over at him sheepishly. “I’m sorry about before.”
He fights off a smile as he shakes his head. “Don’t be.”
His pupils dilate again, and he looks at his hands.
“You’re attracted to me?” I technically ask him, but it’s more of a statement because his body is already giving him away.
He scoffs and looks over at me. He looks pained for a second, like he’s working out how to proceed.
“Fuck—” He smiles tightly, then laughs again. “Yep.” He nods, then shoves his hand through his hair uncomfortably. “What gave me away?”
I scratch my wrist, make it look absent-minded—except it isn’t—it’s called a manipulator. And I’m not being manipulative to him doing this; I’m humanizing myself. I’m doing an action that would imply to him I feel nervous, and I want him to think I’m nervous because he’ll find it a bit disarming, and I want him to stay attracted to me and sometimes men are weird about power dynamics like that.
“Um.” I take a breath. “Dilated pupils, genuine smile.” He tries to squash his smile. He’s amused. “You keep wetting your lips, and you pushed your hands through your hair twice.” He starts chuckling. “And your feet—”
He rolls his eyes, exasperated. “What about my feet?”
“They’re as pointed toward me as they can be. Even though you’re sitting square on, they’re pointed in my direction.”
He looks down at them and then back up at me, giving me a fake glare before pressing his tongue into his bottom lip. “Can you teach me?”
“Teach you what?”
He waves his hand in my general direction. “How to do your…thing?”
I think it’s cute. I think he’s cute, all of him, everything about him.
I like how optimistic he is about himself.
“Yeah,” I smile up at him. “I can teach you a few basic things to look out for…”
“Like what?” He tilts his head and I wonder what his mouth tastes like.
There’s a school of thought that suggests we taste pheromones though kissing.
“Like smiles. How to read smi—”
“There you two are!” Oliver says from behind us, and in a rare moment for me where I’m not in control of the way I allow my body to be seen, I unconsciously shift a little but away from Sam Penny. Oliver doesn’t seem to notice that nor what it may tacitly imply as he trots down the back steps and stands with his hands folded across himself. “So, Gige—how are we doing back in the Hellmouth?”
“Well, it took Maryanne a full two minutes of being in the same room as me to give me a passive-aggressive insult, so I think she’s getting soft in her old age.”
“Oh my gosh, Maryanne will fuck you up and eat you for breakfast if she ever hears you refer to her as old.”
“She’s twenty-eight. That’s nearly thirty.” I shrug, just to be petulant. “That’s kind of old.”
“I’m twenty-eight,” Sam tells me.
“Then you’re kind of old…” I bat my eyes playfully, then lean over to him and say quietly, “Please don’t fuck me up and eat me for breakfast.”
“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.” He grins.
“Uh-uh—” Oliver shakes his head dramatically, pushing my face away from Sam’s with theatrics akin to those you may find in a seventh grade musical theater production. “No way. You find your own sobriety coach.”
“I don’t have a drinking problem.” I frown.
Oliver’s eyebrows get tall, and he crosses his arms over his chest. “Well, Georgia, that’s your fault, not mine.”
“So who’s the poet in your family?” Sam asks, I think trying to change the subject.
Oliver looks at him, confused. “What?”
“The poet?” Sam glances between us. “In your family?”
“What are you talking about?” Oliver tilts his head, hands on his hips.
Sam looks at me specifically, but I shake my head. “No poets.”
“One of your parents loved poetry though—”
I press my lips together and shake my head.
Oliver raises his eyebrows in expectant confusion.
“You’re all named after poets,” Sam tells us.
I frown.
“Well—” He considers. “Most of you. You—” He looks at me. “I haven’t worked you out yet.”
I give him a dubious look.
Oliver shakes his head. “What are you taking about?”
Sam glances between us. “Tennyson…obvious.” He points to Oli. “Mary Oliver. And Maryanne… How does she spell it?”
“M-A-R-Y-A-N-N-E.”
Sam Penny thinks to himself for a minute. “Marianne Moore.”
He raises his eyebrows in victory.
I shake my head. “Our parents were engaged-to-be-engaged fresh out of high school—I don’t even think Mom went to college—” I look at Oliver to verify, who shakes his head to confirm that she didn’t. “And our dad is the least creative man on the planet.”
“Econ major at Cornell.” Oliver tells him, like it should explain it all. “He’s a real ‘shredded wheat bran cereal’ for breakfast kind of guy, even though he doesn’t have a fiber problem. He ate it for the taste.” Oliver eyes widen for the sake of drama. “For the taste, Sam.”
Sam chuckles.
“We aren’t named after poets.” I tell him decidedly. “It’s too romantic.”
Sam shrugs, unconvinced. “Maybe your mom’s a romantic…”
I turn to Oliver. “Didn’t Mom say Valentine’s Day was a fine day for the devil to stretch his legs?”
“Yeah,” Oliver concedes. “But I think that’s because I was trying to send a love letter to Josh Hartnett.”
“Well—” I cast a look between the two of them. “One could hardly blame you.”
“Dad blamed me.” Oliver nods as his mouth pulls tight across—AU 1—he’s harboring a side of contempt with that specific memory.
“Yeah well, Dad was a bit of a dick sometimes,” I say really off the cuff, and Sam goes quiet, unsure of what to say. He just flicks his eyes from me to Oliver.
My brother clears his throat uneasily as he bows his head. “May he rest in peace.”