He grins and my stomach does that same old topsy-turvy thing it’s done since I was a kid. “I figured the worst part was traveling with me.”
Oh, right.
It definitely is.
How could I have already forgotten?
“Wait,”says Kelsey, coming to a dead stop in the middle of our beach walk a few hours later. “Youagreed?”
I shrug. “I don’t like your grandmother, but it would kind of cast a pall over your wedding if she died en route. Besides, as he pointed out, one stellar way to get Thomas to come running back is for him to think I’m on a road trip with someone else.”
Kelsey has started walking again—she’s strangely paranoid about being able to get into her wedding dress, though she looks the same as she always has, and has been taking these five-mile walks for the past few weeks—but she stops a second time, her eyes widening. “Holy shit, Easton. Are you pulling a fake romance plot with mybrother? You know how this winds up.”
I roll my eyes. “Hopefully it winds up with Thomas on one knee, handing me the ring we chose. Preferably in time for your wedding.”
A grin spreads across her face. “Youknowwhat this reminds me of.”
I laugh. “It’s notThe Wedding Date.”
One of Kelsey’s favorite movies as a kid was about this woman, Kat, who hires a male escort, Nick, for her sister’s wedding in order to make her ex jealous. I’m not sure why we loved it so much, nor am I sure why Judy allowed us to watch it, given the premise and the fact that Kat does indeed pay Nick extra for sex.
“Tell me how it’s different,” she demands.
“Well, first of all, Elijah and I don’t get along.”
She barely dodges a hole someone’s dug in the sand. “Nick and Kat didn’t in the movie either, but please continue.”
“Elijah isn’t a male escort.”
“As far as weknow,” counters Kelsey, and then she doubles over laughing. “Oh my God. Can you picture Elijah as an escort? He’d be so cranky and reluctant about everything. If youdidask him to perform, he’d be like...” She gives a dramatic sigh. “I guess. Whatever.”
My smile is a little forced. As the only person here who’s actually been intimate with her brother, I can attest...he was not reluctant at all.
6
ELIJAH
The girl stretched out on my mom’s couch was all legs.
It was Valentine’s Day, cold as balls outside, but she was in shorts, and was somehow tan. Her hip curved like a figure eight as she rolled in my direction, and heavy bangs obscured her eyes momentarily, so all the focus was on her mouth.
Fuck me. That mouth. For a handful of seconds, I could only picture the things I wanted to do to it, before I asked myself who the hell she was.
These fantasies were followed by twenty-four hours of self-flagellation. Because the girl turned out to be Easton.
I hadn’t seen her since I’d left for grad school the summer before—we’d spent winter break on a cruise with our grandmother—and during those six months, something had changed dramatically. Easton no longer seemed like a kid. She’d always been pretty, pretty enough to earn her attention she was way too young for, but now she was something else entirely—the kind of woman who could look up at you from beneath long lashes and thick bangs and purse her bee-stung lips, the way she was at that precise moment, and leave you struggling to form words.
“Why areyouhere?” she asked, as if I’d walked intoherhome, and suddenly she was Easton again, the one I knew.
And Jesus, the things I’d just pictured...I winced. “Why areyouhere? In my home?”
“Because this is the worst holiday,” she said. “So I’m hanging out with your mom.”
I let my bag slide to the floor. “What’s your beef with Valentine’s Day?”
She raised a conversation heart from the bowl on the coffee table. “These things, for starters. They’re terrible and yet they’re addictive, and every single time I bite into one I worry that I’m going to crack a tooth. Also I’ve given up on men.”
“Well, yes, making Valentine’s plans with a forty-five-year-old woman kind of clued me in, but why?”
