“Eyes on the road,” Nate directed and I jerked us back into the lane and gave him a dirty look.
I pulled up in front of my mom’s house, and Nate spoke for the second time.
“You’re on the lawn.”
“There’s space here,” I explained. “My mom doesn’t care.”
He shook his head, but followed me up to the front door.
I hadn’t bothered to tell my mom that I was bringing yet another person, and her eyes nearly popped out of her head when she saw me with Nate and Joey. I tried to stave off her questions by holding up my hands in the universal “stop and don’t ask me anything” gesture. “This is my houseguest, Joey,” I said to her, “and his friend, Nate.”
I could almost see the questions rising up from her mind like cartoon thought bubbles. But all she said was, “It’s so nice to meet you both.”
They said it was nice to meet her, too.
She gave me a look but my lips were sealed in what was meant to be a pleasant smile, so she tried another tack. “Joey, is it? Come sit with me and tell me how you and Scarlett became friends.” She led him and Pia over to a sofa where he would get the third degree.
“I’m getting something to drink,” I told Nate. I went to the bar and helped myself to a Bloody Mary from the pitchers my mom had set up. I drained my glass and refilled it.
“Thirsty?” Nate asked politely.
I handed him a glass, too. “You’ll need this.” A friend of my mom’s called to me and I left Nate to say hello to her. I didn’t need his disapproval when I was already going to get it from my family.
Sure enough, Brooks had plenty to say when he cornered me in the sun porch where I was taking a breather from the party, relaxing my face out of its fake smile. I had successfully avoided my brother for most of the day. “Who are these men you’ve brought here?” he demanded, looming over me as I sat on the couch.
“Friends.” I stood too, so his size wouldn’t be totally to his advantage.
My brother scowled at me. “How do you know them?”
“Why the hell do you care, Brooks?”
“Because I just heard the one with the giant tattoo on his bicep say that he was living with you.”
“That’s Joey,” I explained. “He’s staying with me, not living with me.”
“For how long?” Brooks demanded.
“Why the hell do you care?” I asked again.
He rubbed his eyes. “I don’t understand how you’ve been acting lately, Scarlett. Ever since I got engaged—”
“Again, it all revolves around you!”
“Then tell me what it is.” He waited, but I didn’t speak. “Ok, so, here are the facts, as I see them. I asked Lanie to marry me. Immediately after, you started acting completely unlike yourself. You were in the hospital for what we were told was food poisoning, but I’m assuming was actually you getting your stomach pumped due to alcohol poisoning or getting treatment for some kind of overdose.” He waited expectantly, but I kept my mouth shut, so he went on. “Mom wouldn’t say anything else about it, Zara knows nothing, as far as I can tell. You told me to fuck off when I asked you, like I shouldn’t be worried that my little sister was in the hospital and no one would say why.”
“Food poisoning,” I repeated, but he ignored that.
“Then you showed up for Christmas dinner here, yelled at Lanie and me when we tried to announce our engagement to the family, got hysterical crying, and ran out of the house, scaring me to death. You disappeared from our lives with no notice and I wanted to call the police but Mom told me no, to let you work it out. This went on until you surfaced at New Year’s, and Mom called to let me know that you had wrecked your car but still not to worry, you were just fine.”
“I am. I’m fine.”
“The day after that you disappeared again, and I heard from our mother that you went to Hawaii to ‘rest.’ She wouldn’t tell me anything else, just to respect your privacy. And Juliette told Lanie that you hadn’t told your boss that you were leaving either and they fired you.” He paused. “Where did you really go? Rehab?”
“Hawaii,” I said shortly.
“Rehab in Hawaii?” Brooks pressed.
“I don’t need to go to rehab! I needed a vacation because I was stressed. I’m fine, now.”
Brooks looked so worried, and also like he didn’t believe me at all. “Yeah, right. That’s all there is, Scarlett? You’ve been stressed? That’s why you’ve been acting like you’re going crazy?”
I suddenly had a vivid image of everything inside me, my brain and all my organs, heating up past their boiling point and becoming molten goo inside my skin, like everything inside me was burning lava. “I’m not going crazy!” I told my brother.
I was. I was disintegrating, melting, and I thought that pretty soon I was going to break open and everything would come out.
Chapter 6
“Brooks?”
Fucking Lanie. She couldn’t be apart from him for two minutes. She stood at the door she had slid open, hovering.
Even my brother seemed to get annoyed. “I’ll be there soon,” he said briefly, and she flushed.
“Your mom was looking for you,” Lanie explained. Of course she would know, having an inside track with my mom. My mom.
“I don’t have anything more to say to you,” I told him. Brooks stared at me, hard, but did go, muttering something as he left. I planned to follow him to get another Bloody Mary, but Lanie stayed behind. “Scarlett, can I talk to you?” She squared her shoulders, looking determined.
Oh, awesome. This was exactly what I needed, to deal with Lanie. Suddenly, all the energy went out of me and I sat down, exhausted, on the couch overlooking the pool and the back yard. “What do you want?” I asked her, resting my forehead in my hand.
“You’re making your brother really unhappy,” she informed me.
“Oh, is that right? Did you think he wasn’t capable of saying that himself, so you had to take it on?”
She flushed more. “I don’t want you to make him unhappy,” she said stubbornly.
“Point noted. Goodbye.”
Lanie didn’t leave. She came and stood next to the couch instead, looking down on me. “Scarlett, can’t we get along? I’m going to marry your brother. It would be a lot easier if you didn’t hate me. Or if you tried to hide it better.”
It was just that she was so horribly annoying, like 98% of the rest of the world. But somehow Lanie was worse. I smiled at her, the fake one I had been using all day. “Ok, sounds like a plan. I’ll hide it better.”
Now she looked like she was going to cry, and if she did, Brooks would have a raving fit.
“I don’t hate you,” I hastily said. “Ok? We’re fine.”
“We used to get along. Remember when we were kids? We were friends.”
Yeah, well, I didn’t have any more of those.
“What about your engagement party?” she prompted. “I helped you, remember?”
Yes, I remembered my engagement party. I had sat crying in a room, thinking about marrying a man who didn’t love me and who I didn’t love either, with lipstick smeared on my dress. Lanie had tried to fix it. “Sure, yes. I said thank you.”
She sat on the arm of the couch. “And you helped me, too. Without you stepping in last year, I probably would have lost my job.”
“I remember very well that I did that.”
Lanie held up her hands, all naïve confusion. “So why are you so angry at me now? I thought we had turned a corner or something.”
My heart beat hard as rage rose up in my body. She knew what she had done and pretending that she was so innocent... “You drove a wedge between me and my brother.”
She reeled back. “I didn’t do that. You’ve been acting—”
“You poisoned him against me and now he hates me,” I hissed, keeping my voice under control so I didn’t start screaming.
“Scarlett, no. He’s so worried about—”
“Do you care that Broo
ks and I used to be close? He was like another dad, almost. I always had Brooks and now I don’t. You deliberately ruined it.” Why was I telling her this? My throat ached as I forced the words out and tried to hold the emotion in. “You win, ok, Lanie? You win. You have my brother, he can’t stand me, soon you’ll have my mom. Congratulations. Can you leave me alone?”
Now she was crying. Fuck.
“I didn’t drive a wedge between you,” she blubbered. “I told him how mean you were to me in high school and it made him upset. I’m not trying to take your mom from you, but she’s so nice to me, I—”
I cut her off again. “Whatever. You can run to Brooks now and tell him I made you cry. Make sure to let him know that I’m still here on the sun porch so he knows where to come back to yell at me more.”
She stood blabbering for a while about family and love winning out over problems, or some such bullshit, but finally she left. Fuck, fuck, fuck. That had probably been the final nail in the coffin of my relationship with Brooks. He had said it himself: he would always choose Lanie over me. I put my head down again and closed my eyes.
When I heard the door move, I didn’t bother to open them. “I didn’t mean to make her cry,” I said to my brother.
“Who did you make cry, Scarlett?”
My head popped up, because it wasn’t Brooks. My sister’s husband Bradley slid the door closed behind himself and smiled at me. I should have kept on the baggy shirt, no matter if Nate came along or not. He hadn’t noticed anything about me anyway, except when I almost nudged into the traffic barrier on the bridge. “Bradley, I’m not in the mood.” I got up from the couch and got ready to rumble. “What in the hell is wrong with you? You’re married to my sister.”
“I’m not doing anything,” he said.
“You grabbed my ass at your daughter’s first Communion party. You’re a total prick.”
“You’re gorgeous,” he told me, and took another step closer. “I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“So help me, Bradley, if you lay a hand on me, I’ll knock you into next week.” I reached into my purse and got ready. My heart pounded in my chest, because that would be it. Zara would never believe my side of this story, and my mom would probably want to believe us both but would ultimately choose to see her grandchildren, so I would be out. I swallowed.
The door slid open and Nate was there. “Scarlett.”
I felt a little dizzy. “Hi.”
He walked in, shoving Bradley out of the way. “Are you all right?”
Blood rushed up to my head and my vision got weird. I reached out, kind of grasping for something.
“Get out of here,” he told Bradley. “Now.” I thought the door slid again but before I knew what was happening, I was back on the couch, with my head between my knees. “Take even breaths, in and out.” He tugged at the zipper on the back of my dress and I started to struggle. “Easy there, I’m helping you out.” He started making that soothing noise like he had done in Hawaii when he’d made me take a cold bath for my sunburn. “This is tight, right? Now it’ll be better. Take some more breaths.”
I did, my ribs expanding beyond what the dress had allowed. Then I sat up, blinking and trying to clear my head.
“What was going on in here with him?” Nate asked me. He sat on the arm of the couch and looked me over.
I reached behind myself to try to fix my zipper. “Nothing much. That was my brother-in-law.”
“I know. I asked someone who he was, because of the way he kept looking at you today.”
“He’s disgusting.”
Nate was still watching me. “Have you eaten anything yet, or has your diet been only liquid?”
I shrugged, but when he stood up and said he would get me something, my hand involuntarily shot out and grabbed his jeans.
“Ok.” He made his clucking noise again, which made me laugh. But the laugh caught and sounded a little like a sob. “Ok,” he repeated, and sat down next to me on the couch. “How long has this Bradley been bothering you?”
I hesitated before I answered. “He’s always said things. Like, borderline inappropriate, but they could be jokes, you know? But then he upgraded to trying to touch me some. And the last time I saw him, he grabbed my butt.”
Nate’s whole face got hard. “What did you do?”
“I told him to leave me alone. Then I put glass in his tires.”
“What did your sister do when you told her?” he asked.
“I didn’t tell her. I didn’t tell anyone. She doesn’t want to see anything wrong with him and I—” I stopped dead. It was hard to explain that I was afraid of losing her.
“You think she won’t believe you?”
I shook my head.
“Tell your big brother, then.”
I shook my head again. “I won’t tell him anything. He probably wouldn’t believe me, either. He doesn’t like me anymore.” I sounded like a pathetic idiot. “Whatever. Let’s go back to the party.”
“Hang on a second.” Nate pulled my hand from where I had tucked it in my purse. “Are you wearing brass knuckles? What the fucking hell?”
“They’re mine.”
“What are you doing with brass knuckles?” he ranted. “This would be carrying a concealed weapon in Hawaii, and I’m betting they’re illegal here, too.”
I wiggled them off my fingers and stowed them back in my purse. “Just in case, I have them.”
“Were you going to hit your brother-in-law with them?” he asked me incredulously.
“He deserved it! No one is going to touch me,” I said furiously.
“I don’t want to get farther onto your bad side,” Nate told me. “Jesus Christ.”
“You’re not on my bad side,” I said, and then I just kept talking. “I know you don’t like me, but you’re not on my bad side.”
“Thank you,” he said, and then studied me. “I’ll tell you, Scarlett, you don’t make it easy.”
“You called me a bitch in Hawaii.”
“You were acting like one.” Nate frowned at me. “Is that you? Because then you do something else, like let a drunk guy literally cry on your shoulder, or then let him bunk at your house and spend all kinds of money and time trying to make him comfortable.”
I shifted uneasily. “He needed a place to stay.”
“I don’t think that ‘bitch’ all there is to you,” he continued. “But you do make it hard. Is that why your brother is angry with you?”
I ended up telling him the whole story. Part of the whole story. I started way back, when Lanie and I had been little girls and our mothers had tried to make us be friends, how much I had resented my mom always fawning over poor little Lanie. Then in high school, when everyone had hated her and teased her, I hadn’t done anything about it. “I wanted to, sometimes,” I said, and felt that rush of shame. “I didn’t. I was just so…I was just trying to keep myself together. And then she and Brooks got engaged, and she poisoned him against me. She made my brother hate me!”
“She made your brother hate you because of what you, yourself, had done.”
The shame was choking me, along with the anger. “But that was so long ago!” I said furiously. “I tried to make it up to her. I stepped in when she was going to lose her job. I stood up for her. But still, Brooks…he thinks I’m trying to ruin their magical engagement or something. He thinks that I’m acting out because he’s marrying her.”
“Are you?”
“No!” I snapped. “It’s all just…coincidental.” I shook my head. I didn’t want to talk about this anymore. “Where’s Joey? Is he ok? He wanted you to come with us today because he was concerned.”
Nate frowned again. “I’m not sure. I’m a little worried, too.”
“Do you think it would be better for you to be nearer to him?” My heart started to pound.
“Like if I called him in here to sit on the couch?” Nate asked.
“No, I mean if you stayed with me, too. I don’t care if
you do. If it would help him.”
Nate looked at me in his steady, calm way. “I’m surprised you’re saying that.”
I could hardly understand it myself. “I think it would be better for Joey.” I wanted Nate to say yes. I found a little fold in the leg of his jeans near my hand where he couldn’t see and held on to it.
He nodded at me. “I agree. I think it would be better, if you’re sure.”
I pinched the denim more tightly between my fingers. “I’m sure.”
Nate reached down and picked up my hand, away from his pants. “Do you want to tell me what happened?” His eyes looked straight into me.
My fingers squeezed convulsively around his. “What?” I was trying to sound surprised, confused by his question, but my voice rose dramatically on the word and I sounded a little hysterical instead. I tried again. “What do you mean by that? Tell you what? I don’t understand. Bradley was being annoying, that’s all. That’s all!”
“Ok, take another breath.” Because I was practically wheezing. “Scarlett, take a breath. What’s my name?”
“Nathaniel Tor Lange.”
“And yours?”
“Scarlett Wolfe.”
“Still won’t tell me your middle name?” He smiled and rubbed his thumb across the back of my hand. My fingers relaxed a little. “Keep breathing,” he told me. I did, focusing on the in and out, and the way his hand felt holding mine. “I’ve been looking all around at the people at this party. It’s a different crowd from what I’m used to back home,” he told me. “Explain who this Juliette March person is, the woman who acts like someone made her the Queen of California.”
Lovely You Page 9
