None of my other friends knew enough about my inner workings—my hot mess, my control freak, my crazy Commodore Halsted stories, my good girl, my rebel with good causes—to serve as proper sounding boards, and I didn’t want to start from scratch with them.
My mother offered some well-intentioned advice about following my heart, but bringing her in required intensive editing because Mom and I didnottalk about sexytimes. In the end, my mother realized what I was doing, and her all-knowing chuckle gave it away.
“All right, Lolo,” she laughed. “I don’t need the whole story. But you have a lot of love to give, and you should let yourself give it.”
When I stepped back to think about my relationship with Matthew, every turning point was inextricably linked to those sexytimes. We communicated through dirty talk and touch and need, and every time I tried to convince myself that was crazy, I realized it was also perfectly right. Everything I needed to know and everything I needed to say were offered between the sheets—and against walls, in showers, and on the desk in his office—and nothing more was necessary. Not now, not yet.
Shannon and I were tight, and though we often talked about everything and nothing, she was altogether too close to this situation. We weren’t talking about biting and we weren’t talking about whether I was falling for her brother.
I was on my own with this one, fumbling around in the dark.
“Don’t worry about Thanksgiving, Lauren. I order the meal from an organic farm, cooked and everything, and my assistant, Tom, will drive out to Boxboro to pick it all up on Wednesday. Less of a salmonella risk that way.” Shannon rolled her eyes. “Besides, it’s not like the boys ever bring anything.”
“Exactly. So what I can do? Wine? Flowers?”
She leveled a serious gaze at me. “This is not a classy event, Lauren. The Walsh children do not do classy. My brothers are well-educated, well-dressed brutes, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I’ll be happy if the cranberry sauce stays out of the rugs. Did Matt ever tell you how this all started? The ‘let’s raid Shan’s place on Thanksgiving’ tradition?”
I refilled our glasses and shook my head.
Shannon dropped her gaze. “We basically stopped doing holidays when my mother died. Sometimes my father’s sisters would have us over, but not always, and my father turned it into a shit show. He does that a lot.”
Where Matthew never mentioned his father, Shannon and Sam often talked around the issues with him, and his tenuous role in the business, and I knew things were getting worse. The bruise on Matthew’s face was the work of his father, though the exact turn of events was still unclear. Matthew wouldn’t discuss it, and Sam struggled to talk about the most recent incident without lapsing into incoherent swearing rampages. It all made the Commodore’s quirks that much more tolerable.
“Thanksgiving at my place started the year Patrick finished college. The rest of the tribe was either still in school or at home with my father.” She paused to sample the olives, and turned back to me. “Erin had a huge fight with my father and the situation was shambles—which is how she leaves most things—so she was staying with me. Somehow everyone else ended up camping in my five hundred square foot apartment. Patrick and his stiff upper lip convinced me that we needed a family holiday. Just once I’d like to see these events in his pristine apartment.”
I nibbled an olive, waiting for Shannon to continue. I couldn’t imagine a childhood without holiday celebrations and the traditional trappings of family. Mine might be scattered and engaged in our own pursuits now, but my best memories and everything I knew about family came from holidays and trips.
“Riley convinced me to cook, and there are more exaggerated stories about me giving everyone food poisoning that year than I care to recount. But it was the first time we actually had Thanksgiving together since my mom died. And aside from everyone puking all over my apartment, it was nice.”
I covered my face with my hands and leaned away from the table, trying and failing to conceal my laughter. “That’s a terrible story, Shannon! ‘Aside from the puking it was nice’? Oh my friend, what are we going to do with you?”
She smiled and glanced around the wine bar. “We’ve done it every year since, but with far less food poisoning.”
“We need to stop talking about this.” No wonder this girl was starting to prefer Soul Cycle to connecting with the opposite sex. Ball-busting was her national pastime, and she couldn’t find a polite topic of conversation with two hands and a flashlight. “New topic: getting Shannon some action. Last week you were meeting Charlie for coffee. How’d that turn out?”
“Oh my God,” Shannon groaned.
“That bad?”
The number of men who could go up against Shannon and hold their own was woefully limited—Matthew could probably construct an equation and give us an exact number—and it was no surprise her online dating endeavors met with little success. She required an unshakable alpha male who could handle every ounce of her alpha girl without expecting her to yield in the least.
“He had this white phlegmy thing on his lips. I spent the entire time staring at his mouth, silently willing him to wipe it off. I even started wiping my own mouth excessively as a hint. Nothing.” She groaned. “And he lacked the most basic social skills, in addition to zero awareness of white phlegmy stuff.”
“How’d you leave it?”
“Eh, you know. ‘Maybe we’ll grab coffee or a drink after the holidays.’” Shannon rolled her eyes. “Remind me to stop seeing club guys outside of clubs. They’re like trolls: they need to stay under their bridges.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
MATTHEW
From: Erin Walsh
To: Matthew Walsh
Date: November 16 at 01:51 CEST
Subject: RE: answer your phone
