She sighs, obviously disappointed.
Fuck. I gotta come clean. If this woman’s gonna be who I think she is, I’ve got to make sure there’s no room for future misunderstandings. I disengage from her. “There’s something I need to tell you,” I say, shifting on my stool, trying to rearrange my hard-on. “It’s not a big deal, okay? I just want to be sure you know you can trust me going forward, Samantha.”
Out of nowhere, her face drains of color. Her hand absently shoots up to the cute little scarf around her neck. “Crap. Ryan, there’s something I need to tell you, too—something I should have told you—”
A shrieking voice behind my shoulder screams my name, cutting Samantha off mid-sentence.
“I knew it!” the voice shouts. “You motherfucking cheater!”
I close my eyes.
Fuck my life.
Olivia.
12
Ryan
“Ahab and anguish lay stretched together in one hammock.”
I’m at Josh’s jaw-dropping house (or, as Kat dubbed it when I arrived, “the cozy little mud hut” she now calls home), playing pool with Jonas, Josh, and Sarah (the current game being Josh versus Jonas) while my poor, beleaguered sister sits crumpled on a chaise in the corner, a blanket wrapped around her slumped shoulders, her face the color of Kermit the Frog.
“Anybody need a refill?” Josh asks from behind a fully stocked bar. “What about you, Captain Morgan, can I interest you in a little Captain Morgan?” He holds up a bottle. “I’ll make you a spiced mojito that will change your life.”
“Thanks, Lambo,” I reply, handing him my empty glass. “Forget drinking ’til I can’t feel my face or toes—tonight, I’m drinking ’til I can’t feel my soul-searing pain.”
“That’s precisely what Uber’s for,” Josh says.
“So, finish your story, Ryan,” Sarah says from a stool at the bar. “The whole thing’s like a car crash I can’t look away from.”
“There’s not much more to tell. Olivia blasted into the bar and started spewing all kinds of crazy bullshit, Samantha bolted, and that was that: the heaven I thought I’d found with the flight attendant of my wet dreams turned into the soul-searing hell of my worst nightmare.”
“Tragic,” Josh says, and everyone joins him in expressing sympathy.
“Meh,” I say, doing my best impression of a dudenoton the verge of a nervous breakdown. “That’s life. Sometimes it sucks ass. I just gotta wipe off my knees and move on, right? Nothing I can do about it now.”
I’m totally full of shit, by the way: I don’t feel the slightest bit ready to “wipe off my knees and move on” at the moment—but there’s no way in hell I’m gonna admit that to this crowd. I’ve known Josh a matter of weeks and I’m just now meeting Jonas, and neither of them seems like the kind of dude who’d be able to relate to a guy feeling this wrecked over a woman this fast. And so, rather than whine and wail in front of my soon-to-be brothers-in-law, I clamp my lips together, grab the spiced-mojito-that’s-gonna-change-my-life from Josh, and drag my weary ass to an armchair next to my green-faced little sister.
“Hey, Kum Cake,” I say. I pat her head like she’s a little doggie—something I’ve been doing since Mom brought her home from the hospital when I was three-and-a-half—and settle into my chair.
“Hey, Rum Cake,” she replies. “Thanks for not telling everyone it was me who told Olivia where to find you.”
I take a long sip of my drink and remain mute.
“You hate my guts right now, don’t you?” Kat says.
“No.”
“Yes, you do. If you didn’t hate my guts, you’d be teasing me about it. Teasing is how we Morgans show our love; silence is how we show our barely contained impulse to commit murder.”
I take another long, slow sip of my drink, resisting the urge to lay into Kat for ruining my fucking life. “Your face is the color of Kermit the Frog,” I say evenly. “And I’m not the kind of man who kicks a frog when she’s down—especially not a pregnant one.”
Kat pulls her blanket up around her shoulders and exhales. “I’m so sorry, Ry. I replied to Olivia’s text without thinking. I wasn’t trying to torpedo your life, I swear.”
I sigh. “I know, but it’s basic Morgan Bro Code, dude: if a woman has to ask where your brother is, odds are high it’s because your brotherintentionallyfailed to mention his whereabouts to her. Duh-motherfucking-duh, Kum Shot.”
“I know. I just... Gah.” She touches her tiny baby bump. “It’s hard to think clearly when the human you’re crock-potting is poisoning you from the inside out.”
