I led the way into Shannon’s building and wasn’t surprised when Lauren positioned herself on the opposite side of the elevator, staring at the fire escape map. She waited for me to exit the elevator despite me gesturing for her to go first, and stayed several paces behind me in the hall.
Riley opened the door, a bottle of Heineken between his fingers and an amused smirk on his face as he eyed us. “Look at these happy people,” he murmured. “Is it erectile dysfunction? That’s common in old men like you. I’d never let you down, Miss Honey, literally.”
“Shut up, Riley,” I hissed.
“Hey!” Shannon called from the kitchen. Lauren edged past us and marched toward her.
“What the fuck did you do?” Riley asked.
I shook my head as my sister and Lauren embraced like long-lost twins. “Why do you assume I did something?”
Riley smacked my back and laughed. “Lesson number one: even when it’s her fault, it’s your fault.”
I grunted in response and headed for the refrigerator in search of a beer. Lauren and Shannon were bent over a colander filled with grape tomatoes, baby carrots, and snap peas, and they murmured in collaboration as they arranged them on a tray. I glanced at the stockings peeking out between the tops of Lauren’s boots and the hem of her skirt. They screamed naughty schoolteacher, and if I hadn’t just yelled at her about being an emotionally unavailable workaholic while avoiding the one question I really wanted to ask, I would have whispered something in her ear about getting her out of those stockings when we arrived home.
“Matt, Nick is supposed to be stopping by later today,” Shannon said.
“What?” I mumbled, my eyes focused on Lauren’s legs.
“Nick? Your brother from another mother? I invited him,” she said, taking care to enunciate each word.
“Why?” Lauren’s lips pursed when I slanted a look at her, and I wondered whether some angry sex would help. It might not solve anything, but we’d be in far better moods. And maybe I could spank some honest answers out of her.
“Plenty of reasons, but primarily because he’s really hot.”
Lauren chuckled. It seemed like a normal Lauren laugh, a normal Lauren smile, and I couldn’t tell whether she was still angry with me. I wasn’t even sure I knew what she was pissed about in the first place.
Was it the moving in together? The confessions of love and general hysteria for her? Or something else entirely?
“Your sister would like to bite his ass.”
“I would,” Shannon sighed, her voice husky as she gazed at the tomatoes.
“I’d be good without that information,” I murmured, backing out of the kitchen.
Parking myself beside Patrick and Sam on the leather sectional in Shannon’s den, I stared at the football game without seeing.
My initial clue should have been waking up alone after that first night together. She made her intentions pretty clear by walking out on me then. There were plenty of other clues along the way—her uncommunicativeness while traveling, all her pushing and my pulling. The signs were there. I should have known this wasn’t shaking out the way I wanted.
“Get you another?” Sam asked. I nodded and handed him the empty bottle, ignoring the curious glances around me.
Sam handed fresh beers to my brothers. “Who’s planning tomorrow’s pub crawl?”
We didn’t have many traditions, but the ones we did have—Thanksgiving at Shannon’s, drinking ourselves sick on the anniversary of Mom’s death, and pub crawls on Black Friday and the day before Christmas Eve—were special.
They were also heavily reliant on alcohol, but we’d address that some other day.
Patrick scowled at Sam. “They’re forecasting a blizzard.”
“Let’s do it anyway,” Riley said to Sam. “We’ll get snowshoes.”
“Would you shut up and watch the goddamn game?” I snapped.
I nursed my second and third and fourth beers, my thoughts deep in Lauren while my brothers swapped tales of bachelorhood. All I wanted was to find my way back to her but there was something about the rapid shift—the walls that went up, the defenses she deployed. Those gestures were bright, flashing signs that I was trespassing in forbidden territory.
“Food’s hot,” Shannon called, and my brothers scrambled into the dining room. I continued staring at the game until Riley flopped down beside me with an overflowing plate.
“Go talk to your girl,” he said under his breath.
