Chapter 2
2
CLAIRE
“I can’t do a whole week,” I groused, pressing two fingers into my eye socket, just above my eye. The pressure did nothing to combat the ache that was blooming there. “I have to work.” Even as I said the words I knew Nora wouldn’t care. Nora, my youngest sister, was sweet and loyal and immature and demanding all at once. And her upcoming wedding only seemed to be highlighting her demanding side. I wanted to ask if she expected Emily to come home for a whole week, but I already knew the answer. No one in the family was going to demand our oldest sister miss a single moment of her obstetrics residency unless it was necessary. And these extra days weren’t necessary.
Nora sniffed once, and I couldn’t tell if she was fuming or close to tears. Possibly both, knowing Nora. I stifled a sigh as she began to speak again, her voice sounding wet and cracking, making it clear that she was, in fact, crying. “I thought you could make time in your work schedule for your sister. A wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime event, you know.”
Was it, though? I rolled my lips between my teeth as if the words might pop out by accident, a swell of guilt bursting in my chest. I wasn’t supposed to think those things, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t see how this marriage was possibly going to stand the test of time. Nora and her fiancé, Ethan, were both immature twenty-two-year-olds, and Ethan had only proposed because college was ending and he was worried Nora would move on. That hardly seemed like the recipe for a lasting relationship. Still, I hated myself for not being able to manufacture optimism. “I just don’t see how I’m going to get off,” I answered quietly.
There was shuffling, and I suppressed a groan when I heard my mother’s voice a moment later. “Now she’s crying,” Mom hissed. I inhaled deeply. It wasn’t as if I was trying to make my baby sister cry, it was just that the sister in question tended to be unreasonable and overly emotional.
“I’m sorry, Mom, it’s just taking off a whole week is really hard. You have to understand.”
“Do you have the days or not?” Mom asked flatly.
I opened my mouth and then closed it once, having a hard time lying to my mother, but still not wanting to tell her the whole truth. I had exactly five days, but if I took them now, I’d be stuck for the rest of the year. Lots of people didn’t care about that kind of thing, and I wished I was one of those people, but I wasn’t. Not having at least two days in case of an emergency gave me heart palpitations. Was Nora’s demand that I be at a dress fitting two days earlier a good enough reason to give up that cushion? What if something came up during the next four months? Four months was a long time.
“I told her, I’m willing to pay extra to get the fitting done when I get there,” I said, carefully avoiding answering Mom’s question.
“That’s a yes,” Mom said, and I silently cursed how well the woman knew me.
“A yes to what?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.
“You have the days, and it’s your sister’s wedding. I think you should be here.”
I groaned internally. It was always like this. Mom and Dad couldn’t say no once Nora turned on the tears, and apparently no one else got to either. I opened my mouth to argue, but all that came out was, “I’ll make it work.”
“Good. I’m glad that’s settled,” she said.
I expected her to hand the phone back to Nora, who would be magically tear-free, inevitably, but Mom continued talking instead. “You know, Ethan’s brother will be at the wedding.”
“I kind of figured,” I said flatly, cursing my phone carrier’s excellent connectivity. Back in the days when coverage was a little more spotty, people could pretend to have reception problems and hang up on their intrusive mothers.
“You know he’s held a flame for you for years, Claire Bear,” Mom continued.
Ethan’s brother, Grant, was handsome—I could admit that—but he was not my type. Far as I could tell, the guy wasn’t interested in settling down with one woman. Why my mother was dead set on this match was beyond me.
“You should give him a chance.”
My lips twisted in what I’m sure my mother would consider an “uncharitable frown.” Mom could manipulate me into using every last vacation day I had, but she’d never get me to date Grant Dupree.
Been there, done that.
Not with Grant— obviously not with Grant. But men like him were all the same, and I didn’t intend to be one in a long line of hook-ups—or worse, the naive girlfriend who believed he might consider staying faithful to her—ever again. “You know I’m not interested in Grant, Mom.”
I’d learned my lesson, and I wasn’t putting blind faith into any more men—nor was I looking for a hookup with my sister’s future brother-in-law. Too messy. No-strings sex hadn’t been my forte when the world was healthy, and it seemed out of the question post-COVID.
The last time I had sex it’d been with someone I loved and trusted—someone I thought would never cheat on me—and I ended up needing an STD panel.
I shook my head to clear it, drawing in a cleansing breath. The last thing I needed was to be thinking about Dan.
“I know you say that, but it’s been awhile since Dan,” Mom protested. I grunted my disagreement, but didn’t argue. If nothing else, that part was true. I had more or less said goodbye to any hope of sex or love or intimacy when I broke up with Dan a couple years earlier.
“We’ll talk about it when you get here,” Mom said, apparently encouraged by my silence.
“Right,” I muttered. Mom was going to talk about it whether I liked it or not—that much I knew. “I better go call my boss if I’m going to be taking off all these days,” I added, reluctantly opening my laptop and pulling up my email.
“Wonderful,” Mom said, as if we were both equally excited by the prospect. “I’ll see you then, sweetheart.”
“Love you, Mom,” I said.
“You too.”
I hung up and gave my full attention to my computer, trying to figure out what needed to be done in order to miss this much work. First, I needed to review my current files and see what I could do before I left. Plenty of people took full weeks off, but I never had, and the idea made my stomach churn.
My to-do app was filled with an array of colorful little lists, each with its own neat line of tiny checkboxes. I found them soothing, as if this single digital page could put order to the chaos of the world.
Add new list
Title: Wedding Bullshit
I colored it purple to match Nora’s most recent hair color and nodded approvingly. Now I just needed to make a list of all the things I had to accomplish before I went out of town.
Thirteen neat little checkboxes later, I’d delineated every damn thing I could think of, and now I stared at the list blankly, changing the background to a cheery turquoise and then back to lavender while I thought.
It was likely I’d think of other things, but for now this list of thirteen tasks was more than a solid start, so I opened a new tab and pulled up my email to shoot a quick message to my boss, Sandra. She was always hounding me to take some time off, so I knew she’d be supportive, but somehow even that knowledge didn’t change the anxiety I felt at taking so much time away from work. What if there was chaos when I was gone? Or worse, what if Sandra realized she didn’t really need me? I sighed heavily, pressing my fingers back into the hard bone above my eye socket, aware again of the dull ache that had never gone away.
I sent a wordy email assuring Sandra I’d get all my work done early and have it submitted before I left, feeling nauseous as I pressed send. Sandra’s response came only moments later, a short three sentences that did little to ease my discomfort.
I know you’ll get it done. Don’t stress. Go home and enjoy your sister’s wedding!
Unlikely. I picked up the phone, pulling up the text chain I kept with my oldest sister, Emily.
Claire: Took off the whole week. Can’t believe that’s necessary.
Emily: I can’t go until Wednesday
I didn’t know why I was angry. After all, I’d predicted this before I’d even agreed to come early, but I was still pissed. I stared at my phone for a full minute, grinding my teeth, then I hit the button to call my sister. “What the hell do you mean you aren’t going until Wednesday?” I snapped as soon as Emily picked up the phone. “Mom said I had to be there Monday.”
I could practically hear Emily’s shrug through the phone. “I can’t come until Wednesday,” she said, as if it were that simple.
“ I can’t come until Wednesday,” I protested.
“Then don’t go until Wednesday. Why are you yelling at me?” Emily asked mildly.
I sucked in a long breath, letting it out in one angry snort. I was yelling at Emily because she was the only one who wouldn’t yell back. “I just don’t understand why I would need to take off the extra days of work and you wouldn’t. I know you have patients and all, but my job isn’t just something I can walk away from.”
Emily made a little noise and I frowned irritably, hearing the skepticism in that tiny exhalation. “Don't most people at your job still work from home? Why are you even taking days off?” she asked. I chewed on the inside of my cheek, not wanting to admit she was right.
Most everyone in my department worked full time from home now. A few came in twice per week. I was one of only three people who had gone back into the office full time. The other two were men with small children. And I was definitely the only one who’d gone back into work because I was losing control of my anxiety stuck in my apartment all day.
As a obstetrics resident, Emily had been working on the front lines since the pandemic. Obviously she couldn’t walk away from her job with the ease of an auditor. It wasn’t the same, and I knew I shouldn’t complain to Em after all she’d seen and been through, but I still wanted to complain. I hoped that was human nature and not just me being self-absorbed.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I know how hard your job is.”
Another noise from Emily, this one more like a hum. “My job is a miserable shitshow—agreed—but you can always vent at me, Claire Bear. It’s what I’m here for.”
Somehow, the sentiment only made me feel guiltier. I tended to believe Nora was the selfish, self-absorbed baby of the family, but what if everyone else thought I was the one who only thought of herself? I never broached the subject with them because I didn’t think I could handle that much disapproval. “Thanks, Em. I’m being an asshole, though, so I’m sorry. Are you busy?”
“I’m currently indulging in a bath, so no,” Emily said.
My nose curled. There was something weird about talking to Emily while she sat in the nude, even if it was just a bath.
“Why did Nora need you to come home on Monday?” she asked. “Dress fitting?”
“Yep. How’d you get out of that? You on call?”
“No, actually, but I went up a couple weeks ago and got fitted, so they don’t need me there until Wednesday.”
Damn. I could’ve done that too. I wanted to whine to Emily that she should’ve invited me along, but again, that was me being self-absorbed, and I refrained. “I should’ve done that. It stresses me out to use up all my vacation days in August. Now if I need a day, I’m screwed.”
“Your boss loves you, doesn’t she? I’m sure if you needed a day you’d be fine.”
Emily’s words were probably true, but that didn’t mean I was ready to let go of the worry that I would be trapped with no options later in the year. My therapist once suggested I was less aware of what triggered my anxiety than I thought, and while I generally thought she was right, it didn’t change how I felt in the moment.
“That’s true, I guess,” I said, but Emily could probably hear the skepticism in my voice.
There was gentle splashing as Emily continued talking. “If I were you, I’d be way more worried about Grant.”
A thousand possibilities filled my mind, one crazier than the next, but I still didn’t know what that could possibly mean. “Ethan’s brother? What about him is worrisome?”
Emily hummed softly—this was a sound I knew well. It meant Emily was deciding whether or not to spill a secret. “Em? What about Grant?” I repeated.
“Well,” she began slowly, “when I went home a couple weeks ago, I overheard Mom talking.”
I waited, but she was quiet for too long, and finally I pressed. “About what?” I asked. I’d been sitting on my couch, but now I was up, pacing the length of my small living room. It was nine steps each way. Emily hummed again. “Em!” I exclaimed.
“Apparently Mom and Nora think you and Grant would be perfect for each other, and they’ve planned some…” Emily trailed off, and I attempted to be patient and not scream. “I don’t know, like, meet-cutes for you.”
Meet-cutes? I’d already met Grant. I’d met Grant a zillion times and not one of those encounters had been cute. “They’re going to try to fix us up?” I whispered, horrified by what I was hearing.
Emily snorted softly. “I think they’re going way beyond basic fix-ups. Their scheming sounded next-level.” There was another series of splashes, but I ignored them, wide-eyed and speechless. Emily went on. “I told them you weren’t interested in Grant, but they seemed to think they knew better.”
I swallowed hard, trying to push down the anxiety that pressed at my throat. Of course they thought they knew better. Mom and Nora probably believed they knew my heart, my mind, and even my vagina better than I did. “They can’t set me up with Grant,” I said softly.
“I know, it’s crazy, but with you going solo to the wedding…”
Emily was right. There was no stopping them. “But I’m seeing someone.” The words flew out of my mouth before I had time to pull them back or, at the very least, think through the lie. Because it was a bald-faced lie. I hadn’t seen anyone in months.
“Really?” Emily asked, the word punctuated by one big slosh of water that suggested she’d sat up to hear more. I frantically tried to think of more.
“Yeah,” I lied, sure Emily would see through me. The words sounded unconvincing—I couldn’t seem to make my tremulous voice find the surety I would need to sell a lie of this magnitude. And this was big. If I was going to craft a lie this enormous and potentially humiliating, everyone would have to believe it, even Emily, who usually knew all my secrets. I would never live down the truth getting out. I inhaled deeply. If I was going to sell it, this lie needed details, and quick.
“I didn’t even know you were dating. Where did you meet him?” Emily asked, which seemed like a reasonable question, but I had no idea what to say. Shock had drained my creativity. There was no way I could invent a whole mystery man on the spot.
“In the building,” I replied as my mind filled with a real-life image. Hudson. I only knew his name from the multiple times he’d left a box in the vestibule for days. I had cursed the mystery Hudson North every time I passed the boxes, sure they would lead to a vestibule break-in, until one day I saw him grab a delivery and bring it to the elevator.
Hudson North. Irresponsible package receiver slash suspiciously attractive neighbor. You couldn’t trust a man that good-looking.
“Why did I not know this?” Emily asked shrilly. “How long have you been seeing him? Have you had sex?”
So many questions. So few answers. “Because it’s new, and no, not yet.”
“How new?” Emily demanded.
Really new. “Too new to bring him to a family wedding,” I stressed.
Emily snorted. “Well, you better either get serious or get ready for Grant Dupree, because Mom isn’t messing around. She wants you two at the altar next.”