Chapter 15
“Stephanie, I thought you were bringing your boyfriend this weekend?” Laura asked her sister. It seemed that not much had changed in the Bexley family, they were all still out for blood between themselves.
Stephanie’s eyes instantly found Court conveniently across the table before turning to the man. “We broke up.”
“Stephanie can’t keep a man. No matter how she tries, they seem to run away from her after a few months.” Aaron informed her, as if his sister couldn’t hear what was being said about her.
Per Marlene’s instructions, she was seated between Dylan and Aaron, who had decided that they needed all the room at the table, and she could barely move most of the time.
Not that it mattered, she wasn’t paying much attention to those around her and what they were doing.
Despite the close quarters, she tried to pay attention to the stories going on around her.
As they were telling her events from their lives, she had missed as if she cared.
Of course, she hadn’t been there for any events in their lives, so missing others didn’t matter one bit.
Her brother had said a man? Did that mean that Stephanie wasn’t out to her family, or that she wasn’t actually gay?
Court knew that there were women who came to the bar looking for something new and exciting.
Just an experience and then go back to their lives without looking back.
Court had always been very willing to show them what they were missing.
Stephanie hadn’t seemed the type, but looks could be deceiving.
Court could have let the comment go, but decided to get Stephanie back for the obvious trip that had happened in the doorway when she arrived. And she wanted to know if what she had told her at The Button had been what had really happened or that was a line, “Were you together long?”
“He didn't run away! We just started wanting different things. And we decided to see other people.” Stephanie told her brother, ignoring Court’s question completely. But her answer was the one you gave when the real reason was either stupid or embarrassing. Probably embarrassing.
“Were you together long?” She pushed, even though she didn’t care. All that mattered right now was that they weren’t together anymore.
“A few months. Nothing too serious.” Her words made it sound like it was a throwaway relationship, but Court could tell she had thought it was more.
“Are you heartbroken?” Court questioned, and knew she shouldn’t show so much interest in Stephanie’s love life. But she was.
Even if she’d known Stephanie was at the bar the previous week, it was to get over someone. She’d assumed at the time it was a woman. Usually, she didn’t care about being used to get over someone, but tonight it sort of pissed her off. She had felt there was more between them than that.
Stephanie glared at her for a moment, as if she was telling her it was none of her business.
Which it wasn’t. since it was Court who had ghosted the woman.
What did she care if their night together hadn’t meant anything to Stephanie?
It wasn’t supposed to mean anything to Court.
And it didn’t, which she had to remind herself.
Stephanie turned to Calvin without saying anything about the state of her heart, but trying to turn everyone’s attention away from her by asking, “Are we going boating this weekend? We can’t not boat on your birthday. It’s a tradition.”
“Of course, I even got a new reel to try. Didn’t I, Marlene.” Calvin glanced at his wife, who was looking at Stephanie and not her husband.
“Did you bring your rod and reel, Courtney?” Shane asked, his eyes looked at her, but not at her eyes.
Not that her breasts were all that great to draw as much attention from the man as they had since she first saw him.
So, what if she was wearing a V-neck shirt?
So was his wife? And she had something to look at in that department.
“I don’t fish, never have.” Biting her tongue at her dead name, she stated the truth.
Never had she been invited, and never would she had gone if she had.
Not that she had anything against the activity, just no interest. There were things she just knew about herself, and one of those was that she wasn’t a fisher.
Beside her, Dylan laughed and slapped her on the back, a little too hard.
“You can’t say that around here, Courtney.
You can tell strangers that, but everyone here knows that Dad was constantly taking us fishing when we were growing up.
There is no way you spent over ten minutes in this house and not been taken out on the boat fishing at least once. ”
Court shifted away from him, but ran into his brother’s hard body as she did. “It’s Court, and I don’t remember doing anything when I was here. No boat either.”
Which had always been over the week of Calvin’s birthday, so the fishing trips must have started after she stopped coming.
Or it was something the family did when she left.
She was sure even back then that the family didn’t do more than sit around the house when she was gone, because that was all they did when she was there.
The only place she had ever been in this town had been this house.
Even the lake beyond it had been mostly off limits when Calvin and Marlene were working, and they were always working when she visited.
“Don’t you remember Dad’s old blue boat?
He loved that thing, and we were forced to spend hours on it every weekend all summer.
I got sunburnt every time.” Aaron said to her, and she knew all eyes were on her as his arm went around her chair, which caused her to instantly move forward, away from the touch.
It was like both the men were insistent on touching her, and she wasn’t the type of person who welcomes strangers touching her. Even if it was mostly innocent.
“I don’t recall a boat of any color. But I wasn’t actually here much.
” She turned her attention to her plate.
Because the entire group was staring at her.
As if it was her fault she never saw a boat.
It wasn’t even like she had forgotten, because she remembered dating a girl in college whose family had a boat and she had loved it.
At that point, she shouldn’t have thought it was her first boat ride, if Calvin had a boat that she rode on as a teenager.
So even if she wasn’t going to argue it anymore, she knew the truth. She hadn’t been on that boat.
“Tomorrow we will go boating, for anyone who wants to go,” Calvin announced to cheers from almost everyone, but the loudest were the little kids, even though there were three of them. It seemed the adults weren’t as into boating and fishing as their stepdad thought.
Court didn't join in, and to her surprised neither did Stephanie.