“Wait, so . . . if your sister lives in Europe, you work with a different sister?” He murmured in agreement. “You’re one ofsix?”
He released a dry, humorless laugh. “Yeah, we’re the last of a dying breed of homegrown Irish-Catholic basketball teams.”
“I didn’t realize you were one ofthem.”
He smiled, set his bottle down, and brushed his knuckles over my knee. “Indeed. My mother was from a little town in County Antrim. Northern Ireland, near Belfast. She wanted a huge family. She had a dining room table built to seat twenty, and I think she expected to fill half of it with kids.”
“Six is damn close,” I said. “Do your parents live around here?”
“My mother passed away when I was young,” he said. “My father died last December.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, the words rushing out in a gasp. I’d wanted to know whether he was beholden to a Sunday dinner routine, or often found himself with a list of chores, or was secretly a nice boy who took his mother to church every weekend. I never expected this. “Sam, I . . . I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s nothing to say. It’s a point of fact.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m not still sorry about your losses,” I said. He shook his head, scowling as if it was ridiculous to express my sympathies. “Are you tight with your other sister?”
The way he rolled his eyes was so extraordinary, so exaggerated, so epic that I worried his eyeballs were going to pop out of their sockets. It came with a full body sneer that was positively adolescent, and he said, “Usually, yes. She stepped in and raised us when my mother died, and she’s always been my biggest supporter. But Shannon and I aren’t on the best terms right now.”
Grabbing the keychain from his pocket—my hand found reasons to get in his pocket with frequency—I flipped open another beer. “You can’t say that without expecting me to ask why,” I said. “You’re just baiting me.”
“There’s something going on with her,” he said. “I think she’s unhappy with herself and taking it out on the people around her, primarily me. Lauren—my brother’s wife—is far too sweet to abuse. Andy—my oldest brother’s girlfriend—won’t put up with anyone’s shit. Shannon hasn’t spoken to Erin in years, and that issue is simply asinine. So all her angst is fired at me right now.”
“Oh,” I said, trying and failing to manage my reactions. “So there area lotof women in your life.”
“That’s one way to interpret it,” he said, frowning. “I’m not exactly hanging out in the women’s shoe section at Nordstrom or getting advice on eye shadow, if that’s what you’re thinking. I mean, not usually.”
I shook my head, attempting to brush aside Sam’s response but I couldn’t ignore the dread building in my chest. I didn’t get along with families.
The fireworks eventually ended but we stayed there, watching the city lights. I couldn’t usually manage this kind of quiet, but today had been the enjoyable type of draining. Yawning, I felt the humidity sapping the last of my energy.
“All right,” he said. He pushed to his feet and collected the empty bottles and caps. “I should go.”
“Do you like movies?”
Sam glanced at me, his brow furrowed as if it was a ridiculous question. “Yeah. Don’t most people?”
“Some don’t,” I said. My ex-husband hated movies. If it wasn’t performed live and on stage, he wasn’t interested, and it was unbelievably comical how a fifteen-minute marriage was still dominating my thought process nine years later. “Stay. Watch a movie with me.”
He squinted at me, repressing a smile. “Is that what friends would do?”
There was an opening and an out in that question, but neither were quite right. Friends didn’t kiss in alleys and wake up together, half-naked, butmore than friendsdidn’t exist for Sam. He was crystal clear about it last night, and I didn’t need to hear that story twice.
But while I still didn’t understand it, I was the magnet to his metal and I was opting for something over nothing.
“Friends do whatever the hell they want,” I said. “Obviously, you need a friend to guide you and teach you some of the non-rules. You’re very lucky to have me.”
“As afriend?”
“Ofcourse,” I said, my voice overly cheerful to hide my lie. “What else would we be?”
He gazed down at me, pausing as he considered this. There were any number of things we could be together: tennis partners, duet singers, international jewel thieves, the top-ranked music reviewers forThe Phoenix,but I didn’t suggest any of that. It was too easy to slip lovers into that list.
He extended his hand, and when my palm connected with his, he pulled me tight to his chest. “All right, my friend. You pick the film.”
He was on the sofa, his limbs tangled with mine, and asleep within the first half hour ofStepbrothers.I laid there, listening to the movie and feeling every inch of his beautiful body pressed against me and narrating every filthy fantasy I could imagine as his chest rose and fell.
What if I snuggled into him, my bum tucking against his shorts and the form-fitting boxers just beneath? Would he pull my hips tighter against him, grind into me, harden on contact?
