Stiff Suit: A Ponderosa Resort Romantic Comedy

by Tawna Fenske

  I already knew about that by then. I also knew damn well that wasn’t the full story. “What else?”

  He didn’t answer right away. Just stared out at the ocean, collecting his thoughts like seashells. After a long time, he sighed. “You ever get tired of being yourself?” He didn’t look at me, eyes fixed on the ocean.

  “All the fucking time.”

  That got a laugh out of him. Tearing his attention off the sea, he dumped a few more fingers of Glenlivet into his glass and gestured at mine.

  I shook my head and put my hand over it. “Continue.”

  He sighed. “Look, I know I haven’t been a great dad. Or a very good husband. Or even that nice of a person.”

  I was probably supposed to argue, but I kept my mouth shut.

  I meant to, anyway. “Have you ever seen a six-five lumberjack sobbing like a baby?”

  My father looked up sharply. “The fuck are you talking about?”

  “Mark. Because that’s what happened when I showed up to tell him you’d died. Did you know Jonathan still wears that medallion you bought him in Italy? That cheap piece of shit you gave him when he was seven? After the funeral, I found him hunched over in the cemetery with tears running down his face just gripping that thing in his hand.”

  My father frowned down into his glass. “You trying to make me feel bad?”

  “Yes.” I took a sip of my own drink. “Is it working?”

  “A little.”

  It was my turn to stare out at the sea. “If you’re determined to do this—and you obviously are, since you went through this much trouble.”

  He didn’t say anything, so I kept going. “You can’t ever tell them.” My voice was firm and commanding. I’d thought about this a lot. “There will be no popping back into their lives because you’re a selfish prick who wants to see how they’re doing. You will not burden them with the knowledge that their father cared so little about them that he’d put them through the hell of his death instead of being a part of their lives.”

  His jaw clenched so tight I saw the muscles twitch. He didn’t speak for a long time. So long I thought he might not answer me.

  “Promise,” I demanded again.

  Another long pause. Then, finally, an answer. “Yeah. Fuck me. I promise.”

  I should have known then.

  The man had no history of keeping promises. He’d said “I do” so many times that I suspect he crossed his fingers behind his back at his weddings. What kind of idiot would believe a man like that?

  An idiot who wanted to believe.

  An idiot like me.

  For years I’ve kicked myself over this. Over this and a million other things.

  I’ve just raised my foot to do it again when I hear footsteps behind me. I’m at my dining room table, elbows on the gleaming wood, head in my hands. I don’t turn, but I can tell by the steady footfall who it is.

  “Hey, bro.”

  Jonathan pulls out the chair beside me and drops into it. His voice isn’t angry, which is more than I can say for the ones echoing from the other end of the hallway.

  “You never showed up for a single one of my soccer games or graduations or restaurant openings, but you come back from the dead to crash my goddamn wedding?”

  That’s Sean, of course.

  And it’s Jonathan sitting beside me now.

  I don’t look up to face him. I can’t. I speak my response to the tabletop, head still braced in my hands. “If you’re here to punch me, you should know that when Dad forced us all to do sports in high school, I chose Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.” This is true, though I doubt I remember much of it. “You were out learning to sail, and I was learning double-leg takedowns.”

  Jonathan laughs, and it’s such a welcome sound that my shoulders sag.

  “Relax, man,” he says. “I’m a pacifist. Besides. I’m pretty sure you’ll beat yourself up enough for all of us.”

  I turn to look at him. His green eyes aren’t as humor-filled as they usually are, but he doesn’t look like he’s here to yell at me. That’s surprising.

  “I’m sorry.” I mean those words more than I’ve ever meant anything in my life.

  “I know you are. I also know you were in a shitty position.”

  I shake my head, undone more by his kindness than I am by Bree’s anger. At least fury I know I deserve.

  “That’s no excuse,” I insist. “I could have found some way to—”

  “I hated you when I was in high school.”

  Well, that came out of left field. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “When I found out about how Dad was nailing your mom and mine at the same time, then ran off with my mother before he kicked her to the curb for the next wife? You knew all of that years before I did.”

  “So you hated me?”

  “I barely knew you,” he says. “And it was easier than hating my own father. I hated you because you knew him—the real him, our dad—and I was over there in the corner with my head up my ass.”

  Huh. That actually makes a certain kind of sense.

  I’m still mulling it over when Jonathan speaks again. “It got easier to hate him as I got older. I loved him and I hated him and I really hated the fact that I looked exactly fucking like him.”

  “It freaks me out sometimes,” I admit. “The fact that you’re his spitting image.”

  Jonathan makes a face. “You know what I realized eventually? Why I decided to stop hating you?”

  I’m relieved to hear he actually has. “What did you realize?”

  “That it must suck like nothing else to be the one stuck doing Dad’s dirty work,” he says. “Yeah, you knew all the secrets. He trusted you with shit he didn’t trust any of the rest of us with, and that pissed me off sometimes. But that was really more of a curse than a blessing.”

  I’m not sure what to say to that. “It wasn’t a picnic.”

  “I’m guessing it wasn’t easy being you,” he says. “So I’m thinking maybe we should go easier on you. And maybe you should go easy on yourself.”

  I study his face to see if he’s yanking my chain. The earnestness in his eyes hurts my chest. “I feel like I let you guys down.”

  The tiniest grin flickers in his eyes. “That’s a judgment. When you say ‘I feel like,’ you’re expressing a judgment instead of an emo—”

  “Fuck you,” I mutter, fighting the urge to grin back. This is a serious situation, goddammit. “How’s that for expressing emotion?”

  He grins for real this time. “Better.”

  I hesitate, thinking about all the ways I’ve screwed up today. Botching the job of telling my siblings about Isabella. Holding back information they would have wanted to have about our father still being alive and telling myself it was for their own protection.

  But mostly, I’m sorry about how I handled things with Lily.

  “I should have said ‘I love you.’”

  Jonathan doesn’t miss a beat. “Why do I think you’re not talking about family anymore?”

  Shit. “I do love you guys. So much it kills me sometimes.”

  “We know. And we love you, too. But that’s not what you meant just then.”

  I don’t say anything, so he slugs me in the shoulder. “Lily, right?”

  “I was a dick to her.”

  “Yeah. You were.”

  His honesty is weirdly touching. At least I know he’s not bullshitting me with the rest of what he said. “I didn’t want her to have to see that. To know I’m capable of being such a—such a—”

  “Coldhearted, deceitful son of a bitch?”

  I glare at him, but I don’t argue. I can’t.

  Jonathan shakes his head. “You think she doesn’t already know?”

  I frown. “This is supposed to be helping?”

  He shakes his head slowly. “She’s a smart woman. I listened to her speak at a career day thing. Do you know she’s got a PhD?”

  “Of course.” Her brain has always impressed me way mo
re than her body, and the fact that she has both—

  “So you know how smart she is,” Jonathan continues. “Do you really think she’s not aware you’ve got a big, icy streak of Cort Bracelyn running right down the middle of your soul?”

  The words hit me like fists. None of what he’s saying to me is wrong. That’s the hell of it.

  “But she’s seen how hard you work to keep that in check,” he continues while I’m still reeling. “She’s watched you struggle to shove all that shit aside and be the kind of leader, the kind of man our father never was.” He grimaces. “Is.”

  “Yeah,” I mutter. “I’ve been real successful there. Keeping the asshole tendencies at bay?”

  He quirks a brow. “You think you haven’t?” He folds his hands on the table and shakes his head. “Look, I’m pissed I didn’t know about Dad. I’m pissed about what he did, and I’m pissed that you couldn’t find a way to tell us so we wouldn’t spend years mourning the bastard.” He pauses there and clears his throat. “But don’t think for a minute that I don’t understand why you did it. That I don’t realize you did it out of love and not malice.”

  There’s that word again. Love.

  That’s what it all comes down to, doesn’t it?

  Thinking about love makes my throat clench up tight again, and I’m not thinking about family again. I’m thinking about the shattered-glass look in Lily’s eyes as she slipped out the door and vanished from my house. From my life.

  “You want some unsolicited advice?” Jonathan asks.

  I look up at him. “About what?”

  He scrubs a hand over that cleft chin, looking thoughtful. “See, when you were busy learning how to cover Dad’s tracks and be the perfect little lawyer son, I was learning about women.”

  I frown. “You’re giving me sex tips?”

  “No.” He slugs me in the shoulder. “I’m talking about my sisters. Show some respect.”

  Sisters. That’s right, Jonathan was raised with six half-sisters. His mother had the good sense to marry a decent guy and spawn six beautiful daughters who share no DNA with Cort Bracelyn. Lucky them.

  “So what’s your advice?” I hope I won’t regret this.

  “She sees the real you,” he says simply. “Lily. You think she doesn’t, but she does, and she loves your big, dumb ass anyway.”

  “She doesn’t—”

  “She does,” he says, cutting me off there. “I’ve seen the way she looks at you and the way you look at her, and the only time I’ve seen two people so crazy in love is when my mom and stepdad are in a room together. I know goddamn well what love looks like.”

  He’s right. I’ve only met his mother once, and even then, I saw how his parents acted like the sun rose and set in each other’s eyes. Of all the fucked up Bracelyn kids, Jon’s the one who’s seen firsthand what a loving relationship looks like.

  “I don’t know if I can fix it.” I practically whisper the words, afraid to say them out loud.

  Jonathan shakes his head. “You’ve spent your whole life fixing Dad’s fuckups,” he says. “Fixing things for this family. It’s time to fix your own shit.”

  “How?”

  The desperation in that word stabs me with shame. But not as much shame as I feel for letting Lily walk out the door. For letting her think I didn’t want her by my side for the most difficult moment of my life.

  “That’s the part you’re going to have to figure out for yourself,” Jonathan says. “But I trust you, bro. You’ll think of something.”

  The shouting gets louder at the end of the hall, followed by footsteps. Things are breaking up, or maybe someone killed our father for real this time.

  I should probably care, but I don’t.

  It’s not my problem anymore. I won’t allow it to be.

  The hyper-quick tap of Bree’s footsteps jerks my attention to the hallway where my sister is marching our father into the dining room. She’s got his arm in a white-knuckled grip and looks like a furious, pregnant prison guard.

  “Say it!” She spits at our dad. “To him this time.”

  My father frowns at me, genuinely baffled. “I told her that her mom blew up like a fucking blimp after she got knocked up, so it’s great Bree’s staying nice and trim.”

  My sister whacks him on the back of the head. “Not that, you insensitive prick. The other thing you said.”

  Mark and Sean trudge in behind them, folding their arms over their chests as they glower at our dad. I have this weird sense they’re poised to tackle him if he makes a run for it.

  Our father heaves a beleaguered sigh. “Fuck.” Rubbing a hand down his face, he addresses me with something I’d mistake for remorse if this weren’t Cort Bracelyn talking. “Look, I heard the shit you and your girl were saying. Right before she got ready to suck your—”

  “Dad,” Bree warns.

  “Oh, come on.” He frowns at me again. “Look, James—you didn’t fuck this up. I did. That’s on me, not you. Don’t be so fucking hard on yourself.”

  This is the closest my father’s ever come to apologizing to anyone, ever. I stare at him for a few beats, processing his words.

  “Don’t just sit there with your thumb up your ass,” he grunts. “I just said I’m proud of you. Aren’t you supposed to react?”

  “You didn’t actually say that,” Sean points out. “Not to him, anyway.”

  “Well, he said it back there.” Bree jerks a thumb toward the office. “And I heard him. Not that his opinion means a damn thing, but I thought James should know.”

  Sean stares daggers at our father for a few more seconds before shaking his head in disgust and turning to me. “Look, we’ve had a couple huge shocks today, and we probably said some shit we didn’t mean.”

  Mark doesn’t take his piercing glare off our father. “I meant it.”

  “Not about Dad,” Bree says. “To you. James.” Her expression softens, and she steps aside like she doesn’t trust herself not to kick our dad in the shins. “I’m angry and pregnant, and those factors may not bring out my sweet and sugary nature.”

  Jonathan lifts one eyebrow. “You have a sweet and sugary nature?”

  Sean and Mark do their best to stifle matching snort-laughs, but Bree ignores them all and continues.

  “My point is that I understand why you did what you did,” she tells me. “I might not like it, and I might require a helluva lot of therapy to untwist it all.” She pauses to glare at our father, who is busy polishing his fake eyeglasses and doesn’t seem to notice there’s a conversation happening around him.

  “Anyway,” she continues, looking at me again. “I forgive you. And I’m sorry about the things I said when I was pregnant and hungry and processing the fact that our father faked his own death.”

  “There’s a T-shirt slogan for you,” Mark grumbles.

  “That means a lot to me.” My voice comes out hoarse and wobbly. “You mean a lot to me.” I direct my words at Bree, but I take my time making eye contact with each sibling, acknowledging them like hostile jurors I happen to love with all my heart.

  That’s a new one for me. All of this is new, and so fucking terrifying I don’t know how to handle it.

  Or maybe I do.

  “Pardon me.” I stand up and push in my chair. “I know we still have things to sort out here, but there’s something pressing I need to do.”

  Sean lifts an eyebrow. “Get Lily back?”

  “Get Lily back,” I repeat as my heart swells painfully in my chest.

  “Atta boy.” My father grins and opens his mouth to say more, probably something sexist and offensive. But Mark clamps a beefy hand on his shoulder, and our dad has the good sense to shut the hell up.

  I push through the barricade of siblings and move into the hall as Jonathan calls after me. “Where are you going?”

  “To stare at furniture.” I march into the living room, stepping into the crowded press of heirlooms and history and so many ghosts I can’t breathe.

  At least
not until Lily showed me how to.

  Bree’s worried whisper echoes from back in the dining room. “Do you think he’s gone crazy?”

  But I haven’t. For the first time in my life, I’m totally fucking sane.

  And I’m ready to burn some fucking baggage and wave goodbye to it with Lily by my side.

  Chapter 17

  LILY

  I shouldn’t be surprised that I don’t hear from James the rest of that day. Or the next morning, for that matter.

  It’s not like I expected him to come riding up on a white horse with a bouquet of flowers in one hand and his dick in the other.

  The thought of James on horseback makes me think about that damned zebra and I whack my thumb with a hammer. Hard.

  “Mother f—”

  “Here, sweetheart.” My grandmother leans down to hand me an icy glass of greenish liquid. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to drink it or stick my thumb in it, so I look up from my spot on the storage room floor of Laminaxes Antiques.

  “Margarita,” she says helpfully. “Extra tequila.”

  “Thanks.” I set it on the edge of the bookshelf I’ve been assembling and stick my thumb in the cool liquid. I know better than to drink alcohol when I’m emotional, but the icy beverage soothes my achy, throbbing digit nicely.

  I wish it could do something about the achy, throbbing organ in the center of my chest.

  “I remember when your mother and father broke up.”

  My grandma’s words snap my attention so fast I crack my head on the antique armoire behind me. “Ow.”

  We never talk about my father. Never.

  “Was she heartbroken like this?” I rub my head and choose my words carefully, conscious of the fact that we’re in uncharted territory.

  “Not at all.” She eases herself onto a folding chair beside me, her gaze fixed on something far away. “Good riddance to bad rubbish, as far as she was concerned. We threw a party.”

  I lift my thumb to my mouth and suck off the bitter tang of margarita. “Is this meant to be helping?”

  She leans forward and flicks me on the forehead, thwapping a spot just inches from where I whacked it on the armoire.