When I was a kid, I never understood what a big deal he was. I didn’t get why people were always stopping us, wanting their pictures taken with him, or to have him sign their ball caps or gas receipts. One lady even asked him to sign her baby. To me, it was weird, and they were all annoying.
My dad though, he ate up all the attention. I’m not sure he ever got over his glory days. And he never, never used the word “retired” when he talked about football. As far as he was concerned, if his knees hadn’t “crapped out on him,” he might still be in the game.
All those car dealerships all over the greater Dallas/Fort Worth area, the ones with my dad’s name plastered all over them, the ones he did commercials for, and that sent him fat paychecks . . . he treated those more like he was endorsing them than the fact that he owned them. He let someone else get their hands dirty with all the day-to-day trivialities of managing the operations.
My dad wasn’t ready to hit the links. Instead of sitting back and enjoying his padded bank account, my dad had Elizabeth Brooks, a woman I’d known all my life and who we called Aunt Bitsy when we were kids. She managed his career. Even though he no longer played ball, she still booked him to appear for local politicians, and to give speeches all over the country at corporations and universities. She even arranged endorsement deals and gigs as a guest announcer on ESPN and FOX Sports.
Maybe I didn’t mention any of that to Lucas because my dad’s career (or rather, former career) didn’t matter to me. Or maybe I didn’t mention it because I was tired of talking about my dad. He was old news to me, even though he was all anyone ever wanted to talk about once they knew who he was.
In short, I’d been worried about this exact scenario.
“Why didn’t you . . . ?” Lucas had run his hands through his thick hair so many times it stood at attention like a straw-colored porcupine. “Your dad is Electric Earl McLean,” he blurted out when we were finally alone.
I’d already shown Lucas around and gotten him settled in his temporary quarters in the pool house. But he’d walked me back up to my room so we could get ready for dinner. It was the first time we weren’t surrounded by my family since we’d arrived. The last thing I wanted to talk about was Electric Earl.
I made a no shit face at him. “So I’ve been told.” I checked my fingernails, which were perfectly polished, and had been since the last time I checked them, when Lucas had told me who my dad was just sixty seconds ago.
“A little warning would’ve been nice.”
Seriously? I squared my shoulders. “Oh, you mean like the way you warned me when you dumped me on your mother’s doorstep? When I was led to believe we were going on a date?”
Lucas stopped pacing and accused, “I knew it. I knew you thought I was taking you out.”
“Of course that’s what I thought,” I shouted back at him. “Why else would I have strippered up and teetered into a ‘planning meeting’ in five-inch heels. I thought you made the whole gala thing up to spend time with me.”
His eyes locked onto mine. At first I thought I’d struck a nerve, and maybe I had, but he didn’t look pissed as he stalked toward me, predator-style. He looked dangerous, all right. But if he was trying to intimidate me, it was having the wrong effect. “If I wanted to spend time with you, why wouldn’t I have just said so?”
I took a several steps back. Adrenaline was flooding my system, making me overly aware of every little detail of him . . . as if it were even possible to be more aware of him. His presence should have been daunting, but instead all I could concentrate on was the heat rolling off him. The scent of soap and aftershave. The way my heart hammered . . . beat-beat . . . beat-beat . . . beat-beat . . . an explosion in the making. “I don’t know, maybe because you have a fiancée?”
“How many times do I have to tell you? It’s over between Aster and me.” The edge of his voice was rough, causing me to halt. We were just inches—heartbeats—apart. I put my hand to his chest to steady myself.
Beneath my fingers, he was charged, sending shock waves straight to my belly. I knew what I wanted, same thing I always wanted. My reaction to him was always the same. I wanted to wrap my legs around him, right here. To lower myself onto him.
To feel him inside me.
Maybe I was bolder now on my own turf, but I stopped fighting it. I flattened my palm, giving in to the urge to touch him . . . really touch him. I moved my hand lower . . . lower . . . lower, skimming, scanning, exploring each sinew and muscular strand of him beneath the cotton of this T-shirt, until my fingertips brushed his waistband.
He inhaled sharply, his muscles bunching like a spring.
There was still this roadblock between us I couldn’t just ignore. She was there, a barrier between us. “Aster doesn’t think it is,” I challenged. “She’s pretty convincing about it. And so is that ring on her finger.”
He stilled, his emotions flashing across his face. “That ring was a gift. I told her she could keep it.”
A gift? Wasn’t that the definition of an engagement, giving a girl an engagement ring? Did Lucas even hear what he was saying? How lame his explanation sounded?
Maybe Aster was right to stand her ground. Maybe she did still have some claim on him.
“So is she your fiancée or isn’t she?”
“Was.” He leaned closer and, in spite of myself, my heart skipped.
I licked my lips. “What is she now?”
I wanted him to say nothing. Nothing.
Nothing, and be convincing about it.
Maybe it would be the truth and maybe it wouldn’t be. I wasn’t even sure it mattered right now, not at this moment. Not when his breath was fused with mine and I could practically taste what I’d been missing since I found out about Aster. I couldn’t think straight. I wanted to tangle my fingers through the soft spikes of his hair. My legs tingled. Everything tingled as I ached to close the gap between us.
He opened and closed his mouth, deciding how to answer. And then he said, “Friends.”
My stomach plunged.
Friends? Wasn’t that what he wanted us to be, he and I? I’d seen the way Lucas looked at Aster . . . the awkward hug he’d given her after Lady MacBitch had threatened to pull the plug on the gala, and as much as Aster might want to think she had her hooks in him, I had a hard time imagining him grinding her against the wall.
But what if I was wrong? What if this whole friends thing was just a charade, and that was just a line he used, a way to string both Aster and me along?
The door crashed open then, slamming against the wall and cutting off any chance to get my questions answered.
“Everything all right in here? Dad told me to check on you,” Seth’s voice boomed through my bedroom, which suddenly felt childish with my swirling wrought iron bedframe and lacy curtains. Had I really considered straddling Lucas in the same place where I’d played with my Barbie Dreamhouse?
Of course I had—hadn’t Barbie and Ken done a little “straddling” in their day?
People always thought my oldest brother was intimidating, even though I’d never seen it. He was my brother. The bully in our house sometimes, but to me he was stupid, just like all my brothers.
But not intimidating. Never to me. Now, watching him standing in the doorway with his eyes narrowed, I caught a hint of the way other people viewed him. He was enormous with his arms crossed over his broad chest, and the look he aimed on Lucas and then me was fierce. He took in the scene in my bedroom, me against the wall with Lucas looming over me.
Lucas didn’t so much as twitch, and I didn’t want him to.
I scowled at my brother. “Haven’t you heard of knocking? Jesus, Seth. Get out!”
But Seth didn’t move either, and my heart was pounding even harder now than it had been before. “If Dad catches you two . . .” He uncrossed his arms, his hands curling into enormous fists at his sides. “It’ll be your funeral.”
Lucas took a step away, flashing me a sardonic grin. “I’ll be in my room.” He
sounded so calm. As if we hadn’t just been about to kiss. As if Aster wasn’t as issue. As if everything was cool between us.
But everything wasn’t cool. Everything was the opposite of cool.
Fiancée or not . . . friends or not, my entire body was still on fire.
LUCAS
Em’s family descended on the restaurant like a swarm of locusts. Incredibly noisy and obnoxious locusts.
Even though there were only eleven of them—thirteen, if you included me and a pretty chill toddler named Ivy Jean—the commotion coming from our table alone shot the volume up from classy-wine-bar to somewhere in the range of heavy-metal-concert.
It wasn’t just that Em’s family was loud, although that was definitely an issue. There was also a heightened awareness coming from the patrons around us. A shift in focus that occurred the moment we entered the restaurant, as everyone from the waitstaff to the customers did their best to pretend they hadn’t noticed Electric Earl had just strolled in. Some practically broke their necks trying to get a glimpse of him as they whispered and nudged and pointed him out.
For Earl’s part, he tried to play it cool, like he didn’t notice.
But I saw right through his charade. I got the sense he was more than aware of all the commotion his presence caused, and that it didn’t bother him in the least.
Once we were seated at our large table, I found myself envious of the robust McLean clan, and how easily, if not earsplittingly, they found their rhythm with one another.
No one waited for anyone else to finish talking. It was the exact opposite of the rare family dinners I’d had growing up. Those had been stoic affairs with only the occasional words exchanged, mostly when there was news to be announced, or someone needed the salt.
Instead, in Em’s family, there was no such thing as gaps in conversation or pleasantries or common courtesy. Everyone talked at once, seeming to carry his or her own discussions, talking right over the top of the other. If someone was telling a story, you told yours louder. They shoved the person next to them to emphasize their points. They laughed at their own jokes . . . and then they laughed harder at someone else’s.
Because that was the weird part. Somehow, they heard everything. They nodded when they were supposed to, and answered questions when it made sense. Even when it all just sounded like white noise to me.
It was like watching a well-orchestrated symphony. Or a comedy sketch, where everyone knew their part and responded on cue.
They understood one another that well.
Earl McLean presided over the table like the king I supposed he was.
Emerson nudged me to get my attention. “When I was little, I thought these guys were the worst,” she explained about her brothers. “They liked to make fun of me until I’d go a’cryin’ to Mama. But she’d only tell me to hush up and stop tattlin’.”
From Em’s other side, Drew patted his baby sis on the head. “Your tears sustained us.”
She glared in return. “Big words considerin’ y’all are a bunch of half-wits.” But her accusation only cracked him, and the rest of her brothers up.
It was hard to keep track of her brothers. Of all the boys, Seth was the oldest, followed by Drew, and then Tony, who was only twenty-six but already married. He and his wife, Maddie, were already expecting their second child. Brock was the baby of the bunch, younger than Emerson.
Emerson stood out for more than just being the only girl; she was also the only blonde. The boys, all four of them had the same jet-black hair their old man did.
“You think you had it bad?” Tony shouted above the ruckus. “One time these sons o’ bitches convinced me to climb inside a suitcase when we were playing hide-n-seek. Then they shoved it under a bed and left me there until Mama finally heard me screaming for help.”
Seth leaned back in his chair and grinned. “And you ain’t never gonna stop cry-babyin’ over it, are ya?”
Emerson’s mother sat at the opposite end of the table from her husband. The day Emerson had moved into the beach house next door, there’d been no mistaking that sexy-as-hell drawl of hers, even though she’d tried her best to cover it up. But that wasn’t the case with Georgia McLean—she sounded like she’d taken diction lessons from Scarlett O’Hara herself. She shared a meaningful look with me as she patted her youngest son’s hand and said, “Boys.” Like we were in on some secret, the two of us.
I got it. Really, I did. I’d had an older brother—one who’d gotten me into plenty of jams. Only we didn’t have the family to back us up.
And now I didn’t have the brother either.
I’d known what I was getting into coming here like this, but suddenly it was all too much. Being surrounding by Emerson’s brothers . . . her uninhibited and blunt family, only reminded me of what I’d lost.
“What about you, darlin’? You got siblings?” Em’s mom asked, her Emerson-like stare landing on me as she dabbed her bright-pink lips with her napkin. Her shiny blonde hair was where the similarities between the two seemed to end. As far as I could tell, Em was her father’s daughter—loud, competitive, and single-minded.
Emerson tried to intercept the question with a pointed: “Mama . . .”
But her mother balked. “What? I’m just curious about your young man’s family.”
“First off, he’s not my young man. And second, nosy, is more like. You don’t need to know about his family.”
In my house, this simple verbal hand slap by Emerson would have been enough to escalate a conversation into a full-scale battle. And that was the last thing I wanted, for Emerson or for her dad on his birthday weekend.
“It’s okay,” I told Georgia politely. “I had a brother. But he passed away earlier this year.”
The entire table—hell, who was I kidding, the entire restaurant—went silent.
This wasn’t what I’d wanted either, to make everything awkward as fuck.
Em’s brothers were the first to recover, rallying by tossing some of the standard phrases my way.
“Shit, man,” said Drew.
“Sorry,” added Tony.
Not to be left out, baby brother Brock threw in a quick, “That blows.”
Seth signaled for the waitress. “Can we get another round?” Apparently, he was the brother who thought all of life’s problems could be fixed with booze.
“I didn’t realize,” Georgia said.
“We all knew it was coming.” I could never quite say the other words, the ones my mother added next, the part about how it was probably a blessing, Adam’s suffering being over with. Because that part was bullshit. There was no blessing about it. “It wasn’t a surprise.” That much was true.
“He had cystic fibrosis.” Hearing Emerson say it for me, matter-of-factly and without adding any explanation or embellishments, loosened something inside me I hadn’t realized was knotted. Aster always had a way of saying it like she was trying to evoke sympathy . . . although for me or for her, I’d never been quite sure.
But not Em. Em just laid it out there. Acknowledged and accepted it without asking anyone for anything.
Her mom reached over and put her hand on top of mine. Her touch was warm. I guess that was what motherly felt like. It was nice.
Emerson found my other hand under the table. Her touch was nice too, but in a less-than-motherly way. “Lucas is putting together a gala, to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation,” she announced. “I’m on the committee.” Her fingers pinned my hand, palm up, against my thigh. She squeezed, and suddenly that’s all I could think about. The proximity of her hand to my junk. Not a good thing to be thinking about with her parents and her protective brothers sitting just inches away from me.
“Is that where y’all met?” Her mother asked in her heavy accent, as she watched me intently.
It took every ounce of willpower not to shift in my seat as Em’s fingers gripped again, this time edging just the slightest bit higher. Or maybe that was only my imagination. Maybe I only wanted them higher.
Regardless, I wouldn’t be getting up from the table anytime soon.
“No, ma’am. We’re neighbors, actually.” I was surprised this would be news to her. I figured Em had covered this with her family. “At least for the summer.” Emerson’s pinkie went rogue, skimming my inseam and I cleared my throat.
“Right, California. I keep forgetting about that,” Georgia McLean replied. Thankfully, she turned her attention to Emerson. “How much longer you plannin’ to stay there, anyhow?”
I couldn’t tell if the smile on Emerson’s lips was for her mother, or for what she was doing to me under the table. “Lauren and I signed our lease through the end of August. But the gala isn’t until Labor Day weekend,” she shot me a quick sideways glance. “The landlord said I could stay an extra week. That’s when I have to be back in Arizona anyway.”
“That’s comin’ up right quick,” her mother said, as if she had something more on her mind than just the logistics of Emerson’s housing situation. “Have you given any more thought to Bitsy’s offer? To do an internship at her agency?”
Emerson’s fingers went as still as a statue, and for the second time, an uncomfortable silence settled over the table.
But Electric Earl refused to let anything put a damper on his night, and he threw the spotlight back on me. “Well, I, for one, think it’s very admirable, young man. Giving back by throwing that big party o’ yours. You just let me know who to make the check out to. That’s what separates us from the animals, you know, our compassion for others.”
Em shot her dad a critical look. Two of her brothers made choking sounds, or maybe they were laughing, it was hard to tell.
“I thought it was our opposable thumbs set us apart,” Seth said, leaning back in his chair.
But Tony shook his head, still chuckling. “Nah, man. What about monkeys? They got thumbs.”
“It’s our ability to grieve.” This was from Drew, who despite having to take a sip of water to clear whatever had lodged in his throat, was making an attempt to sound totally credible.
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