Unbound

by Kimberly Derting

  “You’re both wrong. Elephants grieve,” Brock added, shooting down Drew’s perfectly sound theory. “That’s a fact. I saw it on Animal Planet.”

  Looking unconvinced, Earl waved off the notion he might be wrong. “You kids. Always thinking you’re so smart.” Then he was grinning again, because I got the sense good ol’ Electric Earl was always grinning. Especially in public.

  They went around and around like that, lobbing jokes and insults, each trying to one-up the others, until the waitress carried out Earl’s dessert, a mountain of an ice cream sundae topped with a sparkler as a candle. Then the entire restaurant broke out into a rendition of “Happy Birthday” to Electric Earl.

  EMERSON

  “All right, all right. I give up. You win.” I’d always prided myself on my shopping prowess. There was a time when I’d even considered my ability to spend money something of a talent. A world-class skill.

  But now I sagged against the display case inside the luxe Cartier store. I was woman enough to admit that my middle-aged mother could still best me. Surrounding her feet was a flamboyant army of shopping bags.

  “I thought I raised you better’n that.” Georgia McLean had always liked to pretend she was a Southern lady who’d been outnumbered by the heathens in her household . . . me included. That she wasn’t every bit as competitive as the rest of us. But the truth was, our dad wasn’t the only reason we were as dog-eat-dog as we were. The only difference was, she’d bake you consolation cookies after she beat you to the finish line. “College has made you soft, Emerson Monroe McLean.”

  I was shocked at her use of my middle name.

  I’d grown up thinking it was practically a curse word, something that was never, ever dropped in front of my brothers. As if it hadn’t been enough being the lone girl in a family full of boys, my dad had singled me out even further, deciding I should bear his name too. Not Earl—none of us had earned that distinction. But Monroe, his middle name.

  It was among the many offenses my brothers would never let me live down, claiming that on the day I’d been born I’d instantly become Daddy’s All-Star.

  They weren’t wrong.

  “We’ve been at it all day,” I complained to my mother, who seemed hell-bent on setting her platinum card on fire.

  “Hush, now.” She was trying on bracelets, and she held her wrist up to the overheard lights so the string of diamonds clasped around it became blinding. “What do you think?”

  “I think we should head home.” I wanted to find out what level of hell Daddy and the boys had decided to inflict on Lucas. A tour of the stadium, my ass. They’d no more planned to give him an insider’s tour of AT&T Stadium than they’d intended to eat a bucketful of worms.

  Scratch that, they’d eat the worms before they’d be nice to a boy I’d brought home.

  I remembered poor Boone Cameron, my tenth-grade homecoming date. I’d told him to wait for me in the driveway, but I hadn’t gotten down there fast enough. My dad had gotten there first . . . carrying his shotgun. And all the while, my brothers had each taken turns telling him all the places a body could be buried in the deserts of Texas. Boone had spent the entire night refusing to come within three feet of me, and he’d dropped me back off at the house before nine o’clock.

  I was pretty sure Boone was never the same again—my family had permanently scarred him.

  “I think I’m tired and starving. And I think that one looks like every other tennis bracelet you own,” I added, hoping to hide my worries from her.

  “I think you should stop worrying about that young man. He’ll be fine,” she said, going full mind freak on me. She smiled at the jewel-encrusted bauble that probably cost as much as my beach rental for the entire summer. It was the right answer. “I’ll take it,” she informed the elegantly dressed salesman who stood expectantly behind the glass display case.

  While the salesman took my mom’s credit card and wrapped her bracelet in yet another shopping bag, she turned toward me. “You’ve been a trooper. You really should’ve let me get you those Jimmy Choos. They were absolutely darlin’ on you.”

  Somehow I doubted “darlin’” was what Mr. Choo was going for when he designed the strappy gold stilettos. More like smokin’ hot.

  My mom took the rose-colored bag and added it to the collection weighing her down. As we were stepping onto the sidewalk, she grabbed my arm.

  “Don’t look,” she insisted in a hushed tone.

  So . . . of course . . . I looked.

  She slapped my hand. “I said don’t look! Do you see her? Right there? Sandy Martins?”

  I gave my mom the side eye. “You said don’t look. How can I see her?”

  “Fine. Quick peek.” She leaned her head in closer, in case the woman she was talking about, a woman with long auburn curls and ample curves, who was already half a block away from us just happened to overhear and glance behind her. “You remember Sandy and Robert? Lived in Maple Glen? Near the Stalingers?”

  I made an I’m not sure face, like I was trying real hard to place them, when all I could really think about was the way my stomach was trying to consume the rest of my insides.

  “Has the boys with . . .” She tried to lift her hands to make air quotes, but the bags dangling from her arms defeated her. “ . . . ‘twin telepathy’” Her face was a mask of disbelief.

  I scrunched up my nose as if the memory came back to me. “Oh yeah. I remember. That was . . . weird. So why didn’t you say hi?”

  “It truly was odd. And I would’ve, except, from what I hear, she’s goin’ through some stuff.” Her voice dropped again. “You know me, I’m not one to talk outta turn, but from what I hear she’s getting a divorce.”

  There it was. That was the thing that had my mom all worked up. That was why she was pointing out the buxom redhead—a woman she barely knew. A woman she’d probably only run into once or twice, at the club where my mom played tennis once a week, or maybe at one of her church socials.

  I did not want to hear about Sandy Martins’s divorce. Frankly, I didn’t want to hear about her strange twins and their even stranger form of communication, but my mom was on a roll.

  “Caught her husband cheatin’, using one of those apps, one that matches sugar daddies up with younger gals. Guess he was keeping some young thing, less than half his age. Can you believe that?” She sounded superior, my mom. Smug, even. And my growling stomach wrenched.

  “Mom, don’t.”

  “Poor woman . . .”

  I couldn’t do this, not here. Not now in the middle of the street. I held up my hand, hoping to stop her, but she batted it down.

  “Emerson, what on earth has gotten into you today? You are as white as a sheet.”

  I could practically taste the bile coming up the back of my throat. “Is Bitsy coming tonight?”

  It was a jerk move, and I should feel guilty about going there. Instead, a certain smugness settled over me as I watched the color drain from her face. “Bitsy has nothing to do with this.”

  “No?”

  My mom’s nostrils flared. I thought maybe she wouldn’t say anything else—she was good at that. Both of my parents were. Then she rallied and said, “Your father loves me.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, as if somehow that simple action would hold me together. “I didn’t say he didn’t.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  She was right—I didn’t. I loved my parents. But that didn’t mean I understood them. Maybe it wasn’t even necessary to understand them.

  I recalled all the time my dad’s manager had spent at our house when we were kids. All those late nights and long weekends, when she was the one staying in our pool house, and not Lucas. All the times my mom went to bed and left the two of them alone to “talk business.”

  It wasn’t until I was older that I realized there was business and there was business . . . and that Bitsy had her hand in both kinds.

  That’s when I’d decided my mom had a right to know—why
shouldn’t she know my dad was keeping a lover right under her nose? So I’d gone to her with my suspicions. I’d confessed to what I’d seen the night I’d walked in on them, catching Bitsy in my dad’s arms.

  They’d lied to me, of course. Tried to play it off as two old friends just goofin’ around.

  Right.

  If I’d have been four instead of fourteen I might’ve bought my dad’s on-the-fly story. But I’d known better. Goofing around was when Drew hacked the autocorrect in my phone so that every time I tried to type LOL it changed it to “screw you.” Goofing around wasn’t a grown man shoving his tongue down the throat of a woman who wasn’t his wife.

  But Georgia McLean refused to listen to me. She didn’t come straight out and call me a liar, nothing so obvious as that. Instead she acted as if she’d suddenly gone deaf. Like she didn’t hear me. Couldn’t hear me.

  At first, I didn’t get it and I’d refused to back down. I insisted she leave him. I explained she could sue him for divorce, take him for everything he had. I promised to testify on her behalf. But the more I talked about it, the more my more my mom acted like I was spewing nonsense . . . until eventually, she got fed up with me and ordered me to stop.

  She told me once and for all it was none of my business.

  Told me I was never to bring it up again. Ever.

  I went to my brothers in hopes of forming some sort of united front against my dad. I mean, he might be our dad, but how could he do that? To us? To our mother? But none of them so much as flinched when I dropped my bombshell.

  But I realized why. It was because they already knew.

  It hit me then: maybe Bitsy wasn’t the only one. Maybe my dad was a serial cheater.

  That notion sent me spiraling. I’d spent that entire summer reading The Scarlet Letter and Emily Dickinson and watching The Notebook on an endless loop. I wore black . . . so much black. It was as if my dad had cheated on me, and not just on my mom.

  It was Seth who’d finally had enough of my she-woman-man-hater’s-club-for-one. He’d forced me to face the truth—it was Mom’s decision, and she was content with the way things were. Of course she could leave, he told me. But to her it wasn’t about the house or the alimony, or even about custody of us kids. All of that was hers for the taking, if she wanted it.

  For her, it was about Dad.

  Same went for him. Bitsy probably would have taken him on full time, if he’d offered her any of that. Hell, she’d been around long enough she practically already had him full time. But for whatever reason, this arrangement of theirs worked for them.

  Mom and Dad loved each other, Seth said . . . in their own super-dysfunctional, super-adulterous way.

  But that’s when I made my own decision. I didn’t want to end up like them. I would never be like my mother—devoted to a man who couldn’t be faithful to me. That’s when I’d built the walls around myself, distancing myself from other girls who acted like my mom. Making sure I could never . . . would never . . . be hurt by a guy. Because I refused to let myself get attached.

  I would treat them the way they deserved to be treated: like they were disposable.

  Then came Lucas.

  Lucas, who chipped away my defenses. Lucas, who made me want to crawl out of my own skin and made me breathless with a simple glance. Who caused me to check my phone for messages from him whenever we were apart. And who, now that I knew about his loss, made my heart ache with stories of his brother.

  So when Aster had barged in on us that night, it was like déjà-vu all over again. Only, in this fucked-up version, I’d been stuck playing Bitsy-the-homewrecker.

  Talk about a karmic-bitch slap.

  Logically, I knew that wasn’t the case. Lucas told me he was no longer attached to Aster, that their engagement was over.

  But I still couldn’t move past my old hang-ups. To me, there were only two roles for women—victim or perpetrator.

  And I would never be the victim, like my mother. Frankly, right now I didn’t even want to be around her.

  I pulled out my phone.

  “What’re you doing?” My mother’s voice spiked with disapproval as she watched me open the app on my phone. “I thought we were grabbin’ lunch.”

  “I changed my mind. I’m getting an Uber. I’ll see you tonight at the party.”

  I refused to look up from the little blue dot on my phone as it moved closer to our location. My mother didn’t say a word. I waited until she finally gave up, and then I listened as her heels clicked heavily against the sidewalk, moving away from me.

  I would never be a victim.

  For as long as I could remember, my dad had one rule for his one and only daughter. And despite the fact I was a full-grown woman now—had graduated from college and everything—this weekend was no exception to that rule. He’d made himself perfectly clear the second he’d laid eyes on Lucas.

  No boys in my bedroom.

  But here’s the thing: he didn’t say anything about Lucas’s room.

  I wasn’t stupid. I knew I was walking a thin line, one made of razor blades and rattlesnakes. He’d tear Lucas a new one if he caught me in the pool house. This place was just as off-limits as my room.

  Still, my dad only had himself to blame for my being here. If he and the boys hadn’t put Lucas through the wringer this afternoon . . .

  I’d known the moment I’d come busting through the front door and the lot of ’em had clammed up, looking as shamefaced as a bunch of mischievous schoolboys. Whatever they’d done, they must’ve been pretty proud of too, because I’d heard their whooping and hollering the second the Uber driver had let me out in the driveway.

  “What are you clowns up to?” I asked skeptically, doing my best to pin each of them down with an I know you’re up to no good stare.

  “He called you, didn’t he?” Drew wanted to know.

  “Ratted us out, I bet,” Tony said, shrewdly.

  It only took me a second to realize Lucas was the only one missing from this little testosterone-fest. But I wanted to hear my brothers admit whatever they’d done. “Who?” I narrowed my eyes on them. “What did you asshats do to him?”

  “Aw, he’s fine.” Brock was the first to pipe up.

  “He’ll be okay . . . ,” Drew added.

  “Kind of a pussy, if you ask me.” This from Seth.

  “You were supposed to take him on a tour of the stadium. Show him around the locker rooms. Take him inside the announcer’s booth and maybe go get drinks afterward.” I stalked forward. “Tell me you didn’t take him down on the field.”

  The grin on my dad’s face said he was enjoying this way too much. “We gave the kid pads.”

  “He’s not a ball player!” I shouted at them.

  “Neither is Tony, but you don’t see him belly achin’.”

  Tony nodded eagerly in response, looking none the worse for wear.

  I shook my finger at them, reminding myself a whole lot of Miss Coats, my second-grade teacher, who’d had something of a breakdown the year she had me in class. My parents assured me it had nothing to do with the snakes I used to carry back from recess in my pockets and set free in the cloakroom. But with hindsight, I was pretty sure it had more to do with the snakes than they let on. “You better not’ve hurt one hair on his head . . . ,” I threatened my brothers.

  Drew sucked a breath between clenched teeth, making a hissing sound. “Define hurt.” And then they all lost it, busting a gut over that one.

  I fixed my sternest glare on them.

  “Relax, Sis. He didn’t break nothin’.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better? That you didn’t break him? You boys are idiots. You, too, Daddy. You oughta be ashamed.”

  I stalked away then, leaving them to their fits of laughter. Even my own father had tears streaming down his face.

  I had to knock on the pool house door several times, and was starting to get worried. Maybe they were wrong. Maybe they had broken Lucas, given him a concussion and he was in
there now, lying on the floor, unconscious.

  But by the time I stopping knocking and started pounding, the door swung open and Lucas answered, looking not at all concussed but freshly showered, a towel cinched around his waist.

  Only a towel.

  Ho-ly shitballs.

  Lucas in just a towel almost made me momentarily forget how to breathe.

  He grimaced. “I think this is against the rules.”

  “Uh . . . no. I mean, sort of. Probably.” I held up the bottle of ibuprofen I’d brought. “I thought you might need this.”

  He stared at me for a second, and stepped aside, cringing, like it was more effort than it should have been. “Come on in.”

  I silently cursed my brothers.

  As I slipped past Lucas, I could feel the steam from his shower still coming off his body. I found myself drawn toward it, like a gravitational pull. “Lucas, I’m so sorry. They swore they’d be on their best behavior.”

  “Who? Your brothers?” His eyebrows drew together. “They were fine. They showed me around. We had . . . a nice time.” He said that last part through gritted teeth.

  I studied him for signs of damage. “They told me they made you suit up.”

  His dark eyes studied me as I set the bottle of pain reliever on a counter in the small kitchenette. “No one made me do anything,” he said. “It’s not like I can’t hold my own. You make it sound like I’ve never played football before. Besides, we just ran some drills.”

  “Never said you hadn’t. But the boys have played pretty much their whole lives. All of ’em but Tony.” I shrugged. “And my dad . . . my dad might be old, but he can still play.”

  He drew in a breath, and I swore I heard it hitch. “I noticed.”

  “Seth and Drew,” I went on. “They not only played college ball, but Drew got drafted and went pro for two years. They’re animals on the field.” I chewed my lip, letting him see the worry on my face.

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. “It’s not that bad, really.”

  “Liar,” I told him, giving in and pressing my hand to his hot, bare chest. Fire erupted beneath my palm and my focus shifted. Suddenly all I could think of was the feel of his skin. The pounding of his heart. “That’s not what I heard,” I whispered.