by Lex Martin
* * *
Evie: Can’t. Josh and I have to sand the kitchen cabinets. Maybe brunch on Saturday?
* * *
Kendall: I’m meeting a client. :( How about drinks on Sunday?
* * *
Evie: Josh and I are prepping for the show the following week and having dinner with his parents. WTF! I’m never going to see you at this rate!
I sigh. It seems like Evie and I talked more when she was a law student. On the East Coast.
This isn’t all on her. Yes, married life has changed our dynamic, but my schedule is jam-packed too. I just wish I could unload on her in person with a big glass of wine while we veg out in our PJs. That’s the only way to lament the shit show that is my love life. In person. With a pint of Chunky Monkey and the kind of sympathy only Evie can give me.
As much as I’d like to unload it via text, the fact it not only involves a hairy hookup with Lawrence but also that weird interaction with Drew gives me pause.
Because Evie isn’t just Evie any longer.
She’s Evie-plus-Josh.
And Josh comes with an annoying six-foot-something accessory named Drew.
Who you’re still thinking about more than twenty-four hours later.
I scowl at the thought. Stupid Drew and his stupid abs.
Another text interrupts my pity party.
Evie: OH! I almost forgot! What about Thanksgiving? Wanna come up to the cabin with us? We could spend four whole days together!
My lips tilt up in a grin.
Until she texts again.
Evie: Um. One more thing about that…
* * *
Twenty minutes later, I’m still debating what to do as I watch my mother bustle around her kitchen, stopping to stir her mysterious vat of whatever’s fermenting on the counter. She has her “Sunday Funday” apron on over her ankle-length, flowy periwinkle blue skirt. Even though she’s too young to be a Baby Boomer, you’d never know it based on her clothing choices.
“Do you want to try my newest batch of kombucha?” she asks cheerily after dropping the bomb that she and my dad already have plans for Thanksgiving.
Ignoring her question—because homemade kombucha is where I draw the line in my attempt to be healthy—I press my thumb into my temple. “So you don’t care if I spend that weekend with Evie and Josh?”
And Drew.
Holy fudge nuggets, no.
Unless we can pretend it’s Survivor, and I can boot him out of the cabin.
When I heard his bellhop bro yesterday morning ask about the undies, any appreciation I had toward Drew for helping me with the Lawrence situation evaporated faster than my sixty-second quick-dry nail polish.
One good thing came from last night, though. I called it quits with Lawrence. We had The Talk and wished each other well. All very adult-like and respectful.
But it’s irritating I find my thoughts drawn more to seeing Drew in the hallway than mourning the death of a relationship with Lawrence.
Evie-plus-Josh swear Drew’s a changed man.
You mean, he won’t get so stinking drunk, he schedules a hookup in the middle of dinner and then tells me about it? Like he did the first time we met?
Evie thought she was setting us up on a blind date that night. Yeah, he didn’t get the memo.
The Drew I saw yesterday morning had a handful of women’s lacy underwear dangling from his back pocket like notches on a bedpost.
Sure. Drew’s different.
I snort to myself.
Mom shakes her head and waves a wooden stirring spoon in the air. “Your father and I were thinking of going on a retreat anyway. Your sister and Noah have plans with his family, so…” She shrugs. “It seemed like a good time to go.”
Something about the tone of her voice makes me pause with a spoon halfway to my mouth to watch her closer. Is she blushing? My mother, the queen of inappropriate questions and awkward non-sequiturs?
I push my tomato soup away from me at her kitchen table. “What kind of retreat?” Who goes on a retreat over Thanksgiving?
The flush in her cheeks rises.
Maybe I don’t want to know the answer, but before I can retract my question, she giggles.
“It’s this wonderful tantric sex retreat my friend says your father and I will love. It’ll be four days of reconnecting.” She lowers her voice. “You know how I’ve been taking all that yoga? I’m really flexible now.”
I shudder.
My instinct is to run and hide before she can divulge anything else, but my dad strolls in and smacks my mom on the ass. She waves him aside, but her eyes are bright and her expression soft.
Man, these two never stop. I’m grateful, though, that they have a good relationship.
“Hey, pumpkin. Nice to see you.” He ambles over and kisses the top of my head.
“Hey, Dad.” I smile up at him. “How are you feeling?”
His health has been improving over the last several years, since he had that scare when I was in high school. After that, my parents got into a huge fitness kick and turned around their sedentary lifestyle with proper nutrition and exercise, but I haven’t seen him in a few weeks, and my old fears creep up on me.
“Did your mother tell you? My cholesterol is at an all-time low. She put me on this herbal concoction, and I’ve never felt better.” He lifts his sleeve and flexes his bicep. I chuckle.
My mom mumbles something to him I can’t quite hear, and he wiggles his eyebrows at her. I look away, not needing to see my parents flirting.
Since my dad recovered from his heart attack, my parents can’t keep their hands off each other. As scary as that period was, it gave them a new lease on life, so even though they embarrass the hell out of me when they break out the touchy-feelies, I’m really happy for them.
People would be so lucky to have a relationship like Karen and Thomas Greer.
They downsized our big suburban house and now have a quaint two-bedroom overflowing with my mother’s art projects and my dad’s woodworking, but without that huge mortgage hanging over their heads, they’ve never been more content.
Staying nearby for college seemed like the prudent thing to do while he recovered. I figured one of his kids needed to look out for him. Although my overachieving big sister now works as the artistic director for the Portland Ballet, at the time she had just graduated from Juilliard and was dancing for the New York City Ballet, which had always been her dream. While she has a decent relationship with our parents, Brooke’s priority is herself, and it probably never crossed her mind to come home to help Dad recuperate.
The benefit of going to school nearby meant I didn’t rack up too much debt, which I’d kept low through my early twenties. Well, until I started my own PR firm with one of my best friends from college. I’ve done my best to keep start-up costs down, but it’s been a challenge.
Being my own boss is worth it, though. At least that’s what I tell myself, because after five years at my old job, I needed a change, and I wanted to call the shots.
Besides, everyone else I know was suddenly being promoted or getting married or having babies, and I wanted something for me. Something I could nurture and love and watch flourish.
Just because I don’t want kids for a few more years doesn’t mean I’m worthless, Bobby.
Not that I started my own firm to prove something to my ex.
My dad settles into the chair across from me. “How’s work? I saw you at that press conference for Howard LaRoe. You looked fantastic. So poised.” He winks at me, and my heart fills with his approval. After a moment, he reaches for his cup of green tea and frowns. “But he looked shifty.”
“Tell me about it.” I sigh and shake my head. “I keep telling him he needs to stop fidgeting.”
Dad unfolds The Oregonian, because he’s old-school and likes the feel of newsprint in his hands.
After taking a few sips of my tea, I circle back to what’s bothering me. “So I guess I’ll spend Thanksgiving with Josh and Evie?�
��
I’m still perplexed. What happened to us always spending the holidays together as a family? My parents drilled that into me when I was a kid. Brooke might blow us off from time to time, but I’ll always opt to hang with Team Greer.
My mother reaches across the kitchen table to pat my hand. “Sounds wonderful! This is working out better than I expected. Who all will be there again? Evie and her dad?”
I nod, trying not to feel glum. I’ll have a good time with Evie, and her dad is like a surrogate father to me. Except… “And Drew is coming. Josh’s best friend.”
Maybe Josh’s cabin is huge, and I can sequester myself in one end of it from time to time. Because committing a homicide over the holidays is frowned upon.
“Which one is Drew? Did I meet him at Evie’s wedding back in February?”
“He was the best man. The one acting like a dumb frat boy.” He spent half the evening getting trashed and the other half trying to toss M&Ms down my cleavage. I spent most of the night wanting to punch him in the face for being an idiot and the rest wanting to smack myself for thinking he looked hot in that tux.
“The one with those really big green eyes and thick lashes?” I frown because I don’t like the excitement in her voice. “Oh, he is so handsome. Thomas”—she nudges my dad’s shoulder—“isn’t Drew handsome?”
She only thinks that because she and my father left before Drew started dirty dancing with two bridesmaids.
Dad mutters yes even though he’s not listening.
Mom chatters on, and I automatically tune out as I tend to do whenever Drew becomes the topic of any conversation, but then she giggles again. “You know, he watched you all night. I think that boy likes you.”
I snort, caught completely off guard. “Mom, number one, Drew Merritt hates me. Otherwise, he wouldn’t try to annoy me to death every chance he has. Two, he’s not a boy, he’s almost thirty, but you’d never know it because he acts like a horny teenager.” He wouldn’t know what discretion meant if it hopped up and bit him on the ass. The publicist in me cringes when I think back to all of the ways he’s made an ass of himself or his friends over the last few years. “And three, when we’re in the same room, I want to stab him with an ice pick.”
He thought he was God’s gift to women before he got in shape. I’m even more annoyed with him now that he has abs and is genuinely sexy. Yes, he has a gorgeous face, and yes, that flirty smile could take down a whole sorority house of women at ten paces, but he’s as unpredictable as Kanye West at an awards show and flakier than a pie crust.
I chalk up my fleeting attraction to him at the wedding as shock from seeing him in something other than ratty T-shirts and jeans.
But the attraction shriveled up and died when I overheard those two bridesmaids giggling about their after-wedding late-night plans with Drew.
My mother sighs and pats my hand again. “I’m not saying you have to marry him and have his babies, but maybe he’d be fun for a romp.”
I nearly aspirate my tea. Did my mom…did she just tell me to hook up with Drew “Demerit” Merritt?
Whereas most people who pull the kind of shit he does end up with a felony count and a “no ragrets” tattoo, he gets splashed on celebrity websites and tagged with a cute nickname. Just the thought of all the crap he’s gotten away with since I met him is enough to make my eye twitch.
She motions toward my face. “Are you still having those migraines?”
I blink slowly, trying to make sense of my mother’s train of thought.
“Yes. Probably from too much caffeine.” It’s best not to mention my seventy-hour work week, or that her damn buckwheat pillow nearly incapacitated me. I was so sore after sleeping on it, I couldn’t turn my head left for three days.
“I’ve read that a good orgasm helps with headaches.” Her voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper. “Maybe Drew could help with that.” I choke down the rest of my tea, and I get another hand pat while I try to keep my brain from exploding thanks to her outlandish suggestion. “Plus, I bet a well-to-do guy like that would wine and dine you. Not a bad way to spend an evening or two.”
Unwelcome images flash in my head of Drew in the Huntington Hotel hallway, looming over me, making me shiver. The weight of his arm around my shoulder.
Suddenly, I can imagine Drew’s ripped body above me. All those muscles bulging with tension and dripping with sweat. His big emerald eyes searching mine. That killer smile aimed at me.
But then he’d open his mouth and undoubtedly ruin everything.
And that seals the deal.
I shake my head, willing those unbidden thoughts to disappear. Because I’d rather shave off my eyebrows than let him take me out, and I don’t ever plan to be so hard up for money that I need someone like him to “wine and dine me.”
Turning to my dad, I wait for him to interject since my mother apparently is fine with pimping me out, but he’s five pages deep in his newspaper and not coming up for a breath.
“Let me put it this way.” I tap on the table, rattling the mug in front of me. “It would have to be a cold day in hell for me to consider going out with Drew Merritt.”
5
Drew
As I reflect upon my life, two truths stand out. I am forever, irretrievably in love with my Bee to the extent that I will do anything she asks without question, and I can’t seem to stop finding myself in the most challenging predicaments.
Like now.
I’m clinging to a maple like a stripper on a pole, but I’m being showered with dead leaves instead of dollar bills.
Because it’s Tuesday, so naturally I’m up a tree.
The rough bark scuffs my palms as I reach around the trunk, my Vans-clad feet balancing on the thickest branch I can find. Rain clouds threaten overhead, and my heart pounds in my throat from the exertion of scaling this thing. I look down to the ground below. It would hurt if I fell.
The wind blasts the leaves at the end of the street and spins them around. This tree wobbles.
I’m not gonna fall. I can do this, no problem. Just a bit farther.
Below me, my Bumble Bee—my maternal grandmother Beatrice—calls, “Almost. You’ve almost got it.” She’s bundled up in a lavender tracksuit she wears with flair no one else can pull off.
“Meow,” says the bottlebrush-tailed jerk, piteously shivering two inches from my fingers.
I hate cats, I think as I take a deep breath and lunge, grabbing the little bugger by the scruff of his neck and shoving him under my gray T-shirt. As I pause to breathe out a sigh of relief from a successful mission, the tree limb I’m standing on makes a dubious-sounding crack.
Shit.
Zipping up my North Face jacket to my chin with the kitten tucked inside my clothes, I make my way back down the tree, my jeans straining against my thighs. For some reason, the cat ceases to struggle as I climb down, curling his tiny body against my torso, his cold paws pressed on my skin. Maybe he can sense that he’s made a dumb move and is now on his way to safety so his best plan is to shut up and hold on.
I know that feeling.
A few more feet down, and I swing from the lowest branch and land on the strip of dead grass in front of my Bee’s modest 1930’s cottage. Dusting off my hands, I extract the scraggly feline and hand him to my white-haired grandmother, whose eyes light up like she’s twelve.
“You got him! Here, here, little guy.” With a sure hand, she cuddles the now-wriggling gray cat and heads into her house. “I thought we were going to have to call the fire department.”
“No need. You’ve got me to handle it.” I wipe my brow and follow her up the three stairs edged with potted yellow and orange chrysanthemums that lead into her warm brick home. Once inside, she sets the little monster on her linoleum kitchen floor. He hisses at her, his back arched and tail fluffed, with a mohawk of hair going down his back like a tiny Stegosaurus. “Ungrateful bastard,” I mutter. “You were nicer to me.”
“Language, Andrew.”
I shove my hands in my pockets and lean against the kitchen counter. “Sorry, Bumble.”
There are only two people authorized to chastise me at will—my Bee and Josh.
I blow off everyone else who gets all Judgy McJudgerson. Which means someone like Kendall makes my inner dickwad come out to fight—not that she’s been around since I saw her at the hotel. But based on how often she’s starred in my dirty dreams these last few weeks, it’s like I’ve seen her daily.
And since Josh called this morning and said due to weather our four days at the cabin are now five—we need to leave tomorrow afternoon to beat the snowstorm—I’ve been dreading this trip even more.
With a smile and a nod, my Bee accepts my apology, and sets down a bowl of water, clucking at the animal. The cat drinks, its little pink tongue darting down into the dish.
With its white feet and big tiger eyes, it’s almost cute.
But still, I hate cats. Haughty, standoffish. Cats judge you.
Like K-noodle.
I wonder if Kendall likes cats. Or do they drive her crazy?
Why am I thinking so much about that little redhead?
Unzipping my jacket, I lay it on the kitchen counter. My grandmother stares at my chest and gestures at my T-shirt. “What does that say?”
“Nothing,” I say sheepishly and cross my arms over my pecs.
“That doesn’t look like nothing.”
“It’s my company.” I’m not letting her see the logo emblazoned across my shirt. I’ve managed to keep it away from her for this long, I’m not changing that now.
She laughs and reaches down to the cat, who recoils and spits at her. “Nothing you could do would shock me these days.”
“When did you get the feline?” I ask, needing to change the subject. “You didn’t have him a week ago.”
My petite grandmother fills up a kettle with water and sets it on the stove, flicking on the gas with a click. “Oh, he’s not mine. In fact, I’m not even sure he’s a he. His mother gave birth in the neighbor’s basement a few weeks ago and took off, leaving him alone.”
