38
“New Orleans?” Mom blinks. “We don’t have any business down in New Orleans. How on earth would he have met anyone?”
I shake my head, interrupting. “Don’t jump to conclusions.” I catch Tennyson’s eye. Neither of us think this is a conclusion she’s prematurely jumped to. “I’m just going to go down, sniff around—I’ll figure it out. It’ll be okay.”
Tens gives me a long look and Savannah catches it, looking between us in confusion.
Mom nods a bit vacantly.
“Well,” Oliver sighs. “You know I love a road trip.” He sidles up next to me and I smile a bit. I’m happy he’s coming. Some of my favorite memories are driving away from this house with Oliver next to me. I rest my head snug against his shoulder, and I have a surge of affection for my brother—and then pangs of guilt prick through me as I wonder how he’d feel if he knew I slept with Sam. How he’d feel if he knew I’d like to do it again.
I stomp on those prickly feelings because they’re getting ahead of themselves anyway, and I throw Oliver’s arm around my own shoulder to smother the ones my feet just missed.
“I’m going too,” Tennyson announces, chest puffing up.
“Unnecessary.” I swat my hand. “We’ll be fine without you, Eagle Scout.”
“I’m coming.” He shrugs. “You drive like an old lady with an eyepatch.”
I frown at Oliver. “I’m a good driver.”
He wobbles his head, uncertain. “You’re bizarrely strict about the ten and the two…”
“That’s good driving!”
Oliver sniffs a smile, and I look over my shoulder at Sam, whose eyes are locked on me. And I’m going to have to tell him he has to get better at looking like he hasn’t seen me naked, because I can tell in his eyes—his gaze hovers too much. Not for my liking, it’s perfect for my liking, but for hiding our secret whatever from my brother(s)—it’s no good.
“I’m coming too then!” Maryanne announces.
“Absolutely not,” I say.
Maryanne’s nostrils flare and her jaw goes tight. “You’re not in control.”
I wave my hand in her direction. “If you’re going, I’m not going.”
“Great.” She shrugs, smug. “We don’t need you.”
“Of course we fucking need her.” Oliver rolls his eyes. “What skill set do you have?”
Maryanne looks at him sharply and I want to punch her for it. Death stares, that’s one skill she has in spades.
“You need to stop being dramatic,” Maryanne tells me, and I see Sam arc up in my peripheral vision, and so does Savannah, for that matter—but I’m not worried about anyone thinking I’m sleeping with her, so I throw him a glance: “Cool it.”
“Maryanne—” I shake my head. “I’ve spent half of my life playing the character in the narrative you wrote out for me. I’m done—I’m not getting in a car with you” I shrug. “If you want to go to Louisiana, go to Louisiana. I’m sure that MRS you got from that year you did at Shaw will come in real handy.”
Tennyson flicks me in the arm. “Easy. Mer, you don’t need to come.” He steps toward her. “You just stay here—relax, look after Mom—”
“You’re siding with her?” Maryanne blinks, incredulous. “I can’t—what the fuck! Her, Tennyson?”
Tens rubs his face, all tired and angry. “So what if I am! You fucked up, Mer. All this time, you’ve trashed her and let me trash her, and for what? Why?” He’s asking genuinely. Tennyson’s guilt-ridden from head to toe.
Maryanne’s weeping begins on cue. “It was a mistake!” She looks over at me. “Let me make it right,” she says in her crying voice, carefully crafted to sound remorseful and hopeful and brave, but the lack of movement in her eye area gives her away. It’s neutral. There’s no genuine emotion at all.
“No,” our mother says suddenly. She looks at Maryanne in a way I don’t think she’s ever looked at her before. “You’ll stay.”
“But, Mom—”
“No,” she yells louder.
Maryanne makes a gurgling sob and flees the room, Jase running after her, which has got to be a full-time job in and of itself, so no wonder they’re nosy about the will.
“I’m going to have a shower,” I tell no one and everyone. Wash them all off and away.
Showers are a hard reset for my brain. I use them as a signal to myself to start up and power on again. If I’m going to find the girl my dad’s been shagging in Louisiana, I’m going to need a shower.
I’m only in there for five minutes when there’s a knock at the door.
I growl internally and out loud. “What?”
Pause.
“It’s me,” says Sam, muffled through the door.
“Oh,” I say. That’s all I say.
“Can I come in?” he asks, quieter.
“Um.” I glance down at myself, naked in the shower. “I guess? It’s open.”
He walks in and closes it quietly behind him, grinning over at me. “Why do you leave it unlocked?”
I shrug. “The only person who’d ever come in here while I’m showering is Oliver, and he knows how to jimmy the lock anyway, so—”
Then I realize I’m naked and fold my arms over my chest, shifting behind a tiled area where the shampoos live that comes up to my waist.
He snorts a laugh and waves a hand at me. “What are you doing?”
“I’m naked!” My cheeks go pink.
“I saw you naked this morning,” he laugh-sighs.
“That was different!”
“How?”
“We had sex!” I whisper-yell.
Penny’s face softens a little. “I remember.” He waves his hand nondescriptly in my general direction. “Are you really hiding yourself from me?”
“You know it’s a common nightmare people have, about being naked in front of clothed people.”
He rolls his eyes. “You’re not standing here doing a naked presentation.”
“That’s easy for you to say.” I gesture to his dressed self.
He rolls his eyes again, and then reaches back for the scruff of his shirt and pulls it off, discarding it on the floor.
“There.” He shrugs, and I swallow heavily. “Now we’re even.”
I get a hold of myself and shake my head, then point to his pants.
He scoffs a laugh. “Nice try.”
He walks over to me, and through the fog, his eyes are bright and dilated. AU6. Cheeks pulling up. He’s happy.
His eyes flick down my body then back up again before he calmly says, “I just wanted to check you were good with me coming to New Orleans?”
I chew my bottom lip how I wish I was chewing on his. “I’m counting on it.”
“Okay.” He smiles coolly and nods. “Are you okay?”
“About what?” I blink up at him, water falling from my eyelashes.
He pushes some wet hair behind my ears and searches my face.. “All of it. Your Dad, Violet, Maryanne… You and me?”
He saves his most important question for last.
“So my dad’s having an affair, like every other man in America.” I scrunch my nose up.
Sam gives me an intentional look. “Not every man.”
Something about what he says makes me feel shy, so I talk past it. “Even so, it’s not like I had this perfect image of him that’s now suddenly been shattered. I knew he was an asshole to me and Oliver—I guess it turns out he was sort of an asshole to all of us…” I shrug like none of it matters to me, but I think all of it matters to me a lot, just in a way that’s too high up on the shelf of my subconscious for me to reach.
Penny’s eyes go tender. “And Violet?”
“She’s doing what she thinks is right. She’s just—protecting him the only way she has left.”
“Maryanne?” he asks softly, but as he does, he subconsciously thrusts his chin forward. Sam Penny does not like my sister, and that makes me smile a little.
“Zero fucks.” I nod, resolute. This is mostly true.
He tilts his head. “And what about you and me?”
So many fucks. More fucks than I know what to do with.
So I just mirror him, tilting my head too and lifting my eyebrows. “What about you and me?”
He tilts his head the other way, squinting at me playfully. “I asked first.”
I lean in closer. “I asked second.”
He does his best to lasso in his smile, and he’s going to kiss me, I know he is—I can tell now because I know his tells—and I don’t know how much kissing we’ll get to do once we get to Louisiana, so—
“Georgia?” Oliver calls to me somewhere distantly.
Fuck. Shit—fuck!
Sam’s eyes go wide. Oliver couldn’t be farther than sixty feet away; if he was, I don’t think we’d have heard him.
The average male stride is two-point-five feet…counting for that, we have approximately twenty-six seconds to figure out what to do, but let’s bring the clock forward to twenty to play it safe.
I look around my bathroom frantically.
“I’ll lock the door!” Sam whispers urgently.
“He’ll just pick it!”
“Fuck!” Sam says, eyes wide.
Fifteen seconds.
There’s only one way in and out of my bathroom. Sam could get in the bathtub, but Oliver might perch on it.
Twelve seconds.
There’s no linen closet… He could hide behind the door, but that’s risky, Oliver might see.
Nine seconds.
“Shit,” I squeal and grab Sam by the wrist, pulling him into the shower.
Four seconds.
Three seconds.
“What are you—?” he starts, but I yank him in and push him down behind the shampoo wall.
Two seconds.
Sam looks up at me from the shower floor, squashing away his biggest smile yet, and I am aware that I am fully naked in front of the person I love in secret.
One.
The bathroom door swings open.
“Gige—”
“Oliver!” I scowl, like I would even if I had nothing to hide.
“What?” My brother blinks at me, innocuous.
“Oliver, I’m having a shower!”
“Oh!” Oliver nod, inconspicuously and uses air quotes. “A ‘special’ shower?”
“No!” I squawk. “Just a regular shower, where I don’t want to be naked in front of my brother.”
“Oh, calm the fuck down.” He swats his hand. “It’s disgusting and no one’s looking.”
And I could actually die on the spot—my brother doesn’t notice though, thank God—he’s looking at himself in the mirror. Runs his middle fingers under his eyes that look a little more sunken than I’d prefer them to. “Have you seen Sam?”
I’m conscious of the muscles in and around my eyes not moving in any way I don’t want them to, and the only way I want them to move is for me to look annoyed.
“Yeah.” I toss my brother a wry look. “He’s in here with me.”
That’s a tactic to throw him off. Hiding the truth in plain sight.
Oliver rolls his eyes. “I don’t know where he’s gone—hey.” He looks over at me, and it’s right then I notice Sam’s shirt on the floor.
Oh my God. My heart is pounding because I think we’re about to be sprung.
I’d notice. That’s the sort of thing I’d notice.
Shit.
Oliver frowns a little and tilts his head. “You’re cool with Sam coming with us, hey?”
I can’t help but sigh with relief, but I mask it by sticking my face under the showerhead and letting the water run over me.
“Yeah, sure.” I spit some water out of my mouth as I look over at my brother, shrugging indifferently. “Whatever.”
Oliver purses his lips. “Where do you think he’s gone?”
“I don’t know! Maybe to a bathroom where people don’t just bust in on you all the time? Get out!”
Oliver rolls his eyes again. “You need a ‘special’ shower.”
“Out!” I squeak.
He harrumphs and slams the door shut.
I look down at Sam, soaking wet and shirtless at my feet, and he stares up at me, laughing silently, and I do my best to not smile—and we’re both frozen in this weird, hilarious, frenetic, urgent terror, not wanting to moving in case Oliver marches right back in.
About thirty seconds pass, and slowly, Sam stands.
And the way he rises feels like watching a tree grow in fast forward. When he’s standing at full mast, I feel the same way I did when I stood at the bottom of the Empire State Building and looked up when I was nine.
He slips one hand around my bare waist and pulls me in toward him, and with the other he holds my face, and he just stares at my mouth for the longest few seconds in the history of time, and then his mouth crashes into mine and he pushes me up against the shower door.
That old lusty ache radiates through my bones and I want him in ways I know I can’t have right now, but that doesn’t stop me from pulling him closer toward me.
Sam’s hands start going all the places I want them to go, and I pull back a little, looking for his eyes, mine all heavy with “sorry’s” and tacit “I love you’s.”
“It’s probably not the time…” I tell him, and he flops his forehead down on mine, crestfallen.
He sighs big out of his nose and kisses me again, but softly this time. “Yeah.”
***
After the shower, I pack a bag and make my way downstairs.
Sam’s already down there, in a different pair of nonsaturated black jeans and a different white T-shirt, and it’s getting harder and harder for me to pretend he’s nothing to me.
“Where’ve you been?” Oliver asks Sam brightly, appearing at the bottom of the stairs with a Balmain weekend bag.
“Ah.” Sam swats his hand dismissively. “Just went for a walk.”
“Oh.” Oli smiles, thinking nothing of it, and walks out toward the car.
Tennyson’s watching Sam and his eyes flick to me and then back to Oliver. He nods his chin at Penny. “Was it raining out?”
Sam’s face falters, confused. “No?”
Tens cocks an eyebrow at Sam’s damp hair and then looks over at me and mine. “Good shower, then?” he asks me, eyebrows tall.
I keep my face very still, as neutral as possible. “Weird and pervy question coming from my oldest brother, but yeah, thanks—it was great.”
Tenny glances between Sam and me and bites back a smile. “I bet it was,” he says as he walks toward the car.
I cast Sam a “fuck” look and he reaches for my overnight bag.
I do quick emotional and social IQ math in my head and conclude it’d be more overt to thwart his attempt to carry my bag, because maybe he’s just being a nice guy and he’d do that for anyone, and it’d be weirder and draw more attention to us if I didn’t let him, so I let him. My heart sparks a bit, because even though it’s nothing, it’s the first something he’s gotten to do for me that isn’t in hiding.
My mom’s standing out on the front steps watching us, and I walk over to her, but she doesn’t look at me as I do.
“It’s going to be okay,” I tell her.
She watches the horizon of nothing for a few seconds longer before she looks down at me.
“You’ll tell me what you find?”
I nod.
Then she moves past me to hug Tennyson, and for a split second it hurts me, but then she sort of collapses into his arms, and even though it often is, the distance between us today is not about me at all.
Violet stands at the top of the steps looking down on me.
“You sure you don’t want to come?” I call up to her.
She shakes her head solemnly.
I take a few steps up toward her. “What am I going to find out there?”
Violet gives me a long look. “You get why it is I can’t tell you, right?”
I nod once. “To death and for free.”
“To death and for free.” She nods back. “I love you though.”
She wraps her arms around me.
“I love you too,” I tell her as she pets my hair.
I trot downstairs toward the car.
“Y’all drive safe, okay?” she calls out to the boys, waving at them.
Tenny’s driving, apparently. He’s at the driver’s side, kissing Savannah.
“I’ll miss you, baby,” he tells her.
“Get a room,” I groan at him.
“Maybe I’ll just get a shower.” My brother gives me a pointed look and Savannah hits him in the arm.
She smiles at me. “Bye.”
I give her a small wave as Tens climbs into the front seat.
He looks back at Oli and Sam. “Let’s go find this bitch.”