59
Mom plans this big dinner for all of us—just trying to keep busy, I think.
As soon as we were back from Vi’s, Oliver was by Maryanne’s side, right up until dinnertime, like they were glued.
Interestingly, Jase hasn’t been around much lately—not at dinner again tonight. Maryanne says he’s working, but I don’t think he has a real job, so my best guess is that he stopped feeling like the best thing Maryanne had to wield. Before, when I was romantically unattached, my sister saw that as a weakness, but now that I’m with someone (and not just your average, run-of-the-mill, Okatie redneck man like hers—I’m with the best man, and literally everyone, even she, knows it), she needs a different weapon.
Dinner, for the most part, is largely uneventful. Clay cooks us all his famous fourteen-hour pulled pork, and I’m surprised that a little part of me is genuinely happy to see Savannah when she walks in the front door.
Sam and I sit next to each other, but we’re not overly physical or laser-focused on each other—we’re consciously respectful of how this is an uncomfortable situation for Oliver. But he’s following Maryanne’s lead now, and they’re on the hunt. They sit across from us and glare at me (me, not Sam) the whole time, still drinking rosé as they whisper to one another and laugh. They roll their eyes at everything I say and shoot down my words like they’re clay pigeons I loaded up the sky with just for them. And I can pretend like it’s fine and that it doesn’t hurt my feelings to see, but for what? It does. I hate it; it makes me angry. Angry at her, but also at him, because I know he knows what he’s doing, even if he’s not totally himself in this moment.
Sam squeezes my knee under the table, and I get lost in my thoughts, wondering how I would have even survived these last few weeks without him.
I suppose, if he wasn’t here, I wouldn’t have fallen in love with him, so then this particular mess I’ve found myself in presently wouldn’t have existed, but there would be other messes, and I wouldn’t like to be in them without him anyway—that’s what I’m thinking about as Oliver drains his wine, then reaches across the table to pour himself another.
“Oliver, sweetheart.” My mother forces a smile, but her forehead is impossibly tense. “Don’t you think you’ve maybe had enough?”
“Nope,” Oliver says, continuing his pour all the same.
“But you’ve worked so hard on your sobriety,” she tells him, and she’s trying to be nice, I think—but Oliver flicks his eyes toward her and they’re pinched.
“How would you know?” he says, tone sharp, and her head pulls back, affronted.
Honestly, objectively, it’s a fair question. Our mother has been overtly absent throughout Oliver’s wrestle with alcoholism, and I think overarchingly in the scheme of life, he has every right to be angry at her about it, but now’s not the time. And were he sober, he’d know that.
“Ol—” Tennyson shoots him a look across the table.
“How would she know?” Oliver says again as he shrugs with faux-indifference, but he’s not actually indifferent at all, just completely heartbroken on mute.
Oliver glances at Maryanne for backup, expecting it, but he’s wrong. He doesn’t realize that the length of Maryanne’s camaraderie with him is only as long as it takes her to get to me. She doesn’t meet his gaze; instead she reaches over toward Mom and touches her hand.
“Pay no mind to him, Mom, he’s under a lot of stress right now.”
“You have been different since you got back.” Mom nods at Oliver. “What happened while you were away?”
“Oh.” Oliver straightens up. “You mean besides Georgia showing her true colors?”
Maryanne barely fights off a smile, and I roll my eyes. Sam tenses up next to me, says nothing, which is good, but Tennyson doesn’t like it.
“Oliver…” And there’s something about how Tennyson says his name—it’s too loaded or something, and Mom hears that, whether she realizes or not.
“What?” She looks between her two sons. “What happened?”
Tennyson says, trying to cover his tracks now, “Nothing happened, Mom.” But he accidentally rounds his sentence out with an AU28—self-hushing 101.
Mom looks at Tennyson suspiciously. “You’re not saying something.”
And she’s right, it’s true. He’s not saying something and it’s painfully obvious. His self-hushing aside, his swallowing has increased in the last minute, and he’s even scratching his nose…it’s nonverbal cues of deception galore with Tenny right now, and she’s right to be picking up on them. I’m sort of proud that she is. Nevertheless, once someone’s picked up on cues, it only serves to hurt the credibility of the story we’re trying to peddle if we dismiss them, so on the spot, I decide to go a different route.
“Okay, fine,” I sigh as though I’m annoyed.
Tennyson and Oliver stare over at me with wide, panicked eyes. Even Sam squeezes my knee under the table. It’s like they’ve forgotten everything I’ve been trying to teach them about half-truths.
“Mom.” I look at her. “We didn’t want to say anything because we didn’t want you to get upset because we know how it might look—but there was an apartment in Louisiana that belonged to a girl that Dad was paying for.”
Mom blinks a lot. “What?”
“What!” says Maryanne louder, like, borderline on a yell.
“I know.” I look between Mom and Maryanne. “We were worried at first too, but—” I sigh again, and throw a glance to Tennyson, hoping he’ll catch on, but he doesn’t.
“Mom,” I start again, my voice measured. “Something happened in college to Dad.”
Mom puts her cutlery down. Her face looks a bit white, actually. I feel bad making her feel sick how I think I must be doing in this moment, but I remind myself it’s kinder than the truth.
“What are you talking about?” she asks.
I breathe out my nose, try to sound reluctant. “It’s kind of a long story…”
“He drowned,” Tennyson says. Thank God.
“What?” Mom says, looking between us all.
“Nearly,” Sam jumps in, clarifying.
I nod. “He nearly did.”
Mom shakes her head. “Why didn’t he t—”
“I mean,” Tennyson starts. “You know Dad? He’d never want you to worry…”
“Or,” I add, “an alternate headline: you know Dad, he’d never want anyone to think he was weak.” Tennyson rolls his eyes at that, but I think he does it for plausibility. And it works. Us disagreeing over why none of us knew our father apparently drowned in college is very believable. Tennyson believing the best in him, me believing the worst? Very believable.
Oliver’s real quiet though; that’s the part that I feel like is maybe our weak link here.
“What do you mean?” Mom keeps looking between us all. “What happened?”
“Apparently”—I just dive on in because I trust me the most—“Dad and some friends were at some lake near the campus, and he had been drinking, and then he slipped off a pier and hit his head?” I say that intentionally with an upward inflection, infer that I don’t really know myself—and that whatever I do know, I know barely. My uncertainty, in this case, should help sell it.
“And then this guy—” Tennyson jumps in.
“Alexis,” Oliver says, finally! And I fight all my natural instincts not to throw him a grateful look.
“Alexis”—Tennyson nods at Oliver—“saved him. I think Dad’s always felt indebted to him or something.”
“The lake house—it was a thank-you,” I tell her, to round it off.
Mom stares at all of us for a few seconds, then glances at Violet. “Did you know about this?”
Vi shakes her head. It’s convincing. I’m impressed.
“So, wait,” Maryanne interjects. “Who’s this girl with an apartment Dad’s paying for?”
“Alexis’s daughter,” Sam says.
Maryanne’s eyes flick from Sam to Tennyson. “Why is Dad paying for this Alexis’s daughter’s rent?”
“I guess they kept in touch over the years?” I say again, intentionally sounding unsure. “And then they fell on hard times during the pandemic or something?”
“Dad didn’t want her to lose her home,” Tennyson says with more authority—believable! My heart swells with pride—and Mom buys it, I think.
She sniffs as Maryanne clutches her arm. “That sounds like Daddy.”
Tennyson and I catch eyes—which we shouldn’t have, since it was risky to do, but it’s a natural relief response—and it’s fine because no one caught it.
“It does, doesn’t it?” Mom says, but her eyes look faraway. “Can I—would it be rude if I went to lie down for a while?” she says, asking the room for permission.
There’s a choral response from everyone, telling her “of course” and “absolutely” and “whatever she needs,” and then Maryanne escorts her upstairs.
I wonder if she’s okay? It’s a lot, everything—and she’s probably not actually really okay. But there’s something in her eyes…
Once they’re out of earshot, Tennyson turns to look at me.
“You are terrifying,” he whispers as Sam gives me a proud little nod.
“I’m deeply impressed with all of you,” I tell the boys and Vi.
“Well.” Oli rolls his eyes. “Lucky us.”
I don’t breathe out the sigh I’d organically like to, and instead decide to keep trying. “No, I know that would have been hard for you—”
“Yeah, well.” Oliver shrugs. “This isn’t about you and me, it’s about Mom, so—”
“What’s about Mom?” Maryanne asks, walking back into the room.
“Nothing,” Tennyson says a sliver too quickly.
Maryanne turns to Oliver. She doesn’t quite bat her eyes, but she honestly might as well as she says in her most syrupy voice, “Oli, what’s he talking about?”
Oliver looks sort of trapped, and it makes my heart sink. He thinks he needs Maryanne because we’re fighting. I don’t know how to tell him we’re not fighting, and yeah, he’s been a fucking prick to me the last few days, but I guess, same? And no matter how much we’re fighting, it’s not worth selling your soul to Maryanne—but I think he thinks he’s backed himself into a corner and Maryanne’s his only way out.
He flashes her a quick half smile. “I’ll tell you later,” he says, but I don’t think he means it. If he would tell her, we’re fucked, but even in his current state of having fallen off the wagon, I don’t think he would. Tennyson can’t read him how I can though, so he takes Oliver’s response at face value, interprets it as a threat to a burden he’s already carrying with great reluctance and frustration, and he reacts accordingly.
“The fuck you will!” he says, coming out of the gate way too loud and hot with an unnecessary tonal escalation.
I see Sam’s face shift, trying to predict the outcome here.
“Are you gonna stop me?” Oliver says, straightening up, and under any other circumstance, I’d be impressed, but for now, that little burst of confidence is mostly just inconvenient.
“Maybe,” Tennyson fires back, and Savannah touches his arm, trying to curtail what seems to be happening. It’s worth noting that this whole time, the left corner of Maryanne’s mouth is the slightest bit turned up in a smile. She’s not overtly smiling; no one else would notice it (except maybe Sam nowadays), but it’s there and its message is clear: this pleases her.
Oliver tilts his head. “Do not press me.”
Sam takes a measured breath, and I think he’s about to step in when Tennyson throws his hands in the air. “Or what?”
“Or!” Oliver says loudly, making sure everyone is listening. “I’m going to tell Savannah what happened while we were away.”
And Savannah’s face shifts immediately, mostly confused but a bit laced with a nervousness that I hate seeing her wear.
“What happened while you were away?” she says softly to Tennyson specifically, but the entire room’s gone quiet now, so literally everyone hears.
“Nothing.” Tenny shakes his head.
Oliver gives her a steep look. “Something.”
Savannah looks from Oliver back to Tennyson, moves her hand that was still resting on his arm, still trying to keep him steady, and then she glances over at me for verification.
I roll my eyes, and I’m angry now. “Literally nothing.”
“Liar!” Oliver says, pointing his finger at me before flicking it to Tennyson. “The both of them.”
“Well, go on…” Maryanne says, eyes wired now, ready to feed the drama more.
Tennyson gives Oliver a daring look, and I think that maybe if he hadn’t done that, Oliver wouldn’t have continued. I think it’s an unfortunate collision of multiple factors. One: Oliver’s not his best self when he’s drinking. Two: Oliver has years and years of pent-up anger toward Tennyson for what he perceived as Tens’s rejection of him. Three: Oliver, in one way or another, for the majority of his life, has felt disempowered. Sam and I trigger in him a sense of powerlessness. You can’t help who you fall for, and you can’t make them fall back. Four: Oliver, I think, has waited his whole life to have the upper hand with Tennyson, and here, he believes he finally has it.
Oliver flashes Tens a stubborn, petulant smile. “Tennyson hooked up with some random girl while we were away.”
“What?” Savannah says so, so quietly, in disbelief.
“Oliver,” I groan.
“Mate, what the fuck?” Sam shakes his head at Oli, and at the same time, Tennyson’s eyes are bulging. He can’t believe it.
“Are you serious right now?” Tens says loudly.
“You swore!” I say to Oliver.
Savannah’s face turns to mystified horror. “It’s true?”
I yell, “No!” at the same time Tennyson just says her name, trying to placate her while trying not to throw me under the bus.
“What are you doing?” I look at Tennyson, shaking my head, and he shakes his back.
“You don’t have to—”
I cut him off. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Oliver’s got his hands on his hips now, pissed off. “What are you talking about?”
I spin on my heel to face him, my eyes all wide with exasperation. “Tennyson didn’t have sex with anyone!” I yell, and all the tension in sweet Savannah’s brow dissipates into relief. I motion toward Penny. “The wrapper was ours, Oliver! Sam and I had sex in the car. Tennyson was covering for us, he—”
“Ever the picture of class,” Maryanne cuts in, and now it’s my turn to escalate things, evidently.
I point right in her face. “You can shut your goddamn mouth, Maryanne.”
It flashes over her face—absolute fury. It’s just for a second, and God, I love microexpressions. If you know to look for them, they speak so loudly. She’s incensed that I would speak to her like that, but offense is a difficult emotional reaction to garner external support and camaraderie around, and she knows that, so she hides it, quick smart, and then she upcycles that offense into the much more emotionally accessible hurt.
She contorts her face into an emotion that resembles pain. “God, Georgia, all I’ve ever wanted is to—” But it doesn’t quite hit because it’s hollow underneath, so Tennyson cuts her off.
“Mer, shut up.”
Once you’ve been exposed to the tricks up the sleeves of a narcissist, they’re hard to ignore.
But then comes the voice of real hurt.
“You had sex that night at the hotel?” Oliver looks from me to Sam, then back to me. “I was right there.”
“Ol,” Sam says, brows heavy.
I offer him the weakest shrug in the world. “You said you didn’t like him.”
And I don’t know why I say that, honestly. It doesn’t matter what he said to me—it never matters what anyone says to me, and everyone in this room knows that. It just felt like it was maybe worth throwing out there, to remind him I had inquired before. Or maybe it was just plain old guilt that had me say it.
Oliver gives me a disbelieving look. “And you didn’t know that was a lie?”
“No,” I say quietly. “I did.”
Maryanne sniffs this smug, quiet laugh. “And yet, you did it anyway.”
I don’t respond to her, don’t even look her way; I’m just locked on Oliver now.
“How could you do this to me?” he asks, and his voice is so sad, and that’s okay.
I stare up at my brother, hope he sees the sincerity in my eyes. “I need you to understand—I did not fall for Sam of my own volition.”
Maryanne sidles up next to Oliver. “Did you not fall into bed with Sam of your own volition too?”
“No, Maryanne.” Sam pulls a face. “That’s called sexual assault…” He pauses, then says quieter to her, “I think you’re familiar with the concept.”
Her eyes go to slits, and God, he’s my favorite person—but now’s not the time, so I stay focused on my brother. “I’d never do anything to intentionally or consciously hurt you—”
Oliver shakes his head. “Bullshit…”
“Oliver.” I sigh. I shouldn’t have sighed, probably. I didn’t mean to sigh. But it slipped out because it’s the truth of how I feel. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to protect you—”
And I don’t know whether it was the sigh that did it, but my brother’s face goes cloudy with defense.
“Yeah, and who the fuck asked you to?” Oli growls, and it’s as though he thinks I’m throwing that in his face, he’s so ready and willing to fling it on back.
“No one. No one needed to—I was glad to—”
“Well, I don’t need you,” he spits, and that stings me. Of all the things my brother has hurled at me over the last few days, I don’t know why that one hurts me how it does. Maybe because for such a long time, he was all I really had.
“Why?” I flick an eyebrow up. “Because you’ve got Maryanne now?”
Maryanne rolls her eyes. “You can go ahead and keep my name out of your mouth.”
“And you can go ahead and fuck yourself,” I fire back.
“Oh, lovely,” Maryanne cries dramatically at the same time Oliver tosses his hands in the air at the madness of me.
“And you wonder why she doesn’t like you!” he says.
“Seriously?” I stare at him, my eyes a bit wild now. Oliver gives me a half-hearted shrug, as if to say “what?” except he knows exactly what. “What are you doing—she tortured us!”
“Unlike some people”—Maryanne eyeballs me—“Oliver’s embraced forgiveness and has moved on.”
I wave my hand toward my brother as though I’m presenting him. “Oliver’s drunk.”
“Yeah.” Maryanne shrugs. “And whose fault is that?”
“His,” I say without missing a beat. “Absolutely. And arguably possibly yours,” I tack on at the end just for her.
Oliver steps toward me. “I’m not drinking because of Maryanne, Georgia. I’m drinking because my little sister, my former best friend on the planet, has been hooking up with the guy I’m into behind my back, who I brought to our dad’s funeral to support me when I needed it. That’s why I’m drinking.”
“No, Oliver.” I shake my head at him, apparently at my wit’s end now. “You’re drinking because you have poor impulse control and a predilection for numbing the uncomfortable.”
“Shut up! Georgia—fuck!” Oliver yells louder than he’s ever yelled at me, ever . It makes me jump a little, and if I was paying attention to Sam—and admittedly, I’m not, due to the fright of being yelled at—I would have noticed how his body went stiff, but I don’t notice because Oliver’s still yelling at me and releasing what might be a lifetime’s worth of anger and steam. “No one gives a shit, okay? No one fucking cares that you went to Cambridge and you count blinks and you’re a human lie detector—no one cares, literally not a single person. It’s not a personality trait! It doesn’t make you interesting or cool. Actually, it makes you annoying and unlikable and—”
“No,” Sam cuts in as he steps in front of me.
“What?” Oliver says quietly, a bit like he forgot Sam was there.
“No,” Sam says again. “You don’t talk to her like that.”
Oliver lets out a shallow laugh. “Oh, so you’re officially taking her side now?”
“From here on out?” Sam blinks, unfazed. He nods. “Unequivocally, yes, man.”
Oliver’s nostrils flare, but it’s not anger, I don’t think. Indignation, maybe?
“This is such a fucking joke.” Oliver glances away.
“Nope.” Sam is totally straight-faced. “I’m just in love with her.”
Both Oliver and Maryanne scoff in their respective ways—Oliver’s now laced with fear, Maryanne’s all saturated in disbelief, because on what planet am I loveable, according to her?
Oliver gives Sam a look. “You just met.”
“I know, man.” Sam nods. “We did, you’re right, and I’m so sorry. If I swung your way, Ol, in a heartbeat it’d be you and me—but fuck. I love her.” Sam lets out a strange breath that’s all heavy with emotion. He shakes his head as he stares at my brother with absolute sincerity. “I’m in love with her, Oliver—I’ve been into her since the second I first saw her when she felt me up because she thought I was your boyfriend, and I’ve been in love with her since the morning after when we went to the beach and she wouldn’t take my jumper.” Sam catches my eye, throws me an inch of a smile, and I turn into a puddle of goo. “And I love you as well, Ol—I do—but I love her more, and differently, and you can’t talk to her like that,” Sam tells him firmly but also somehow kindly, then shakes his head again. “I won’t let you. She didn’t do anything wrong.”
“She took you from me,” Oliver tells him, and there’s a stubbornness to his voice, but I don’t think, if he were his actual self in this moment, he would believe that to be true. He’s just reeling.
Sam’s head tilts to the side. “I wasn’t ever yours, dude. I know you know that. Not in that way. Not how I’m hers now.” Sam shrugs helplessly. “And I know you’re upset, and I know this is hard for you and you’re not doing good right now, and I want you to be good and healthy and okay, but if you talk to her like that again, Oliver—mate, we’re going to have a problem.”
Oliver says nothing; he’s gone totally quiet, and I can’t tell whether he’s feeling put in his place or just total despair. Or both.
“Yeah?” Maryanne smirks. “What are you going to do? Beat him half to death like you did Beckett?”
Sam looks at her, unfazed. “I hope not, but if it comes to it—”
Maryanne turns to me now.
“A violent cokehead,” she sneers, and she has this smug little smile, but whatever, fuck her smile, because what I care about is the way Sam’s face falls as he stares over at Oliver, who’s obviously been telling Maryanne secrets that aren’t his to tell. Sam’s perfect face—it looks a bit squashed, and I hate it.
“Wow, Georgia.” Maryanne shrugs as her eyes fall down Sam, all full of judgment that is not hers to pass. “You sure know how to pick ’em.”
And then it happens before I even consciously know I’m doing it—I lunge for her. I don’t know where I’m aiming, really.
I’ve been Maryanne’s punching bag for as long as I’ve been alive in one way or another, and I’ve never lunged for her before, but for Sam I will.
If I’m honest, I was probably lunging for her throat, but I don’t quite make it there. But I do get to her—grab her by the hair and yank—and Maryanne screams like she’s being murdered. I blindly claw at her, and I’m about to hit her properly, my fists all balled up and everything—when I’m picked up off the floor from behind and dragged away from her, before I’m tossed over Sam’s shoulder and carried outside.
When I’m at what I suppose he considers to be a safe distance, Sam places me down on the porch.
He gives me a steep look. “Yeah, you’re not getting into fistfights with a sociopath on my account.”
“Narcissist,” I correct him.
“Oh,” He tosses me a sarcastic look and thumbs back inside. “In that case, go on back in.”
“For the record,” I start. “You are better off fighting a narcissist than a sociopath because they’ll likely care about their face because they’re vain, so they’ll be preoccupied trying to—”
He cuts me off, shaking his head. “Not the time, Gige…” He takes a step away from me, looking me over. “Are you okay?”
I take his hand. “I’m fine. Are you okay? You looked sad.”
Sam’s eyes widen with exasperation. “You don’t hit a dangerous person because I looked sad, okay—that’s stupid.”
“Not stupid,” I say, resolute. “Worth it.”
“Well, that was a long time coming,” Violet says, emerging from inside.
Clay tosses an arm around me and whispers, “You could have taken her.”
Tennyson and Savannah appear next.
Tens nods his chin at me. “Are you good?”
I glance up at Sam, who tosses his arm around me, speaking on both our behalves. “Yeah, we’re fine.”
Vi catches my eye. “Why don’t y’all come back and stay at our house?”
“Oh, why?” I feign confusion. “I was so looking forward to being stabbed in my sleep tonight…”
“That’s not funny,” Tennyson says at the same time Sam says, “Don’t joke about that.”
“Guys.” I laugh. “She has never displayed violent tendencies.” I pause to reconsider, supposing that there are difference kinds of violence and I have suffered at her hands some of its variants. “Well, not physically, anyway”
No one laughs yet again, and I let out an awkward, low whistle. “Tough crowd.”
“Come on,” Violet says, opening the door to her Range Rover. “Get in the car. And you can leave your gentle comedy here.”