“Nate? What the hell kind of a name is that?”
“Mom, please. It’s short for Nathaniel.”
“Oh, that’s a very old-fashioned name,” she says. “I think it’s Hebrew.”
“Ooookay,” I say impatiently. “Do you want to hear the rest of this or not?”
“Yes, yes. I’ll stay quiet.” She’s precisely where I get my compulsive lying gene from.
“So, we all work together and I see them together every day.”
“Oh, honey that’s so hard,” she cuts in, proving my whole compulsive lying theory to be correct. “Did you—”
I wave my hands in the air to get her to stop. “Listen, just listen because this is my life and it gets even more twisted.” I rub my hands down my face, and now somehow there’s sticky syrup in my hair. “They’re together, right? But he sometimes says and does these things that are very flirty with me. Like he has feelings for me but just doesn’t want to hurt Julia with them.”
My mother sits with her lips sucked into her mouth and expectant eyes.
“I’ve been trying to get over him and I can’t shake it, Mom. Last night I went to the magazine’s masquerade party and I got tipsy and ended up fooling around with someone who I thought was someone else and Nate saw it.” I sigh loudly and tuck my hair behind my ears. “Everyone saw it, actually, and then I ran home and waited for Julia or Nate to call or come over worried about me, but all that happened was a ton of noisy sex from the both of them on the other side of our shared wall.” I look up at her and I feel the hot stab of tears welling at the corner of my eyes. I blink them away. “It felt like they wanted me to hear them.”
“Oh, Janie. Something like that happened to me as well.” Her tone was soft and proper, but hinted of secrets and layers of unknown tales.
“What?” I don’t believe her for a second, but…
“Oh yes, Janie.” She nods her head, gravely. “Before I met your father, I had the biggest crush on my own sister’s boyfriend.” Her hand is over the top of her apron again, patting what I could only guess is her broken heart. “It was heartbreaking, Janie. I couldn’t get over him. We once made love in a drunken frenzy the night of my twenty-first birthday celebration. Oh God, I was infatuated with him.”
I sit back down and slide to the edge of the seat. “So, what happened? Did you tell Aunt Lauren and she broke up with him? Did you have a fight?”
“Oh no, nothing like that,” she chuckles.
“Sowhat happened?”
“Well…Aunt Lauren married him two months later, you know they had to because Aunt Lauren was pregnant with Sofia, and then I met your father.”
“Ew, Uncle Mike?”
“Umm,” she murmurs, smiling down at the floor. “And just like your Nate, Uncle Mike caught me and your dad too, in a movie theater.”
“What do you mean? Did Uncle Mike look jealous that you and dad were on a date at the movies? Did he say anything? Does Aunt Lauren know any of this?”
Her cheeks flame. “No, he caught me on your father’s lap with my pants down.”
“EW! Why would you tell me that?”
She laughs.
“That’s not funny. How did you finally get over Uncle Mike? And does Aunt Lauren know any of this?”
“Aunt Lauren never found out. God, she’d kill me.” She covers her mouth and her face blushes redder than it was before. “And I got over Mike with time, but it helped a lot that your father was, well…more well-endowed than Uncle Mike ever wishes he was.”
I’m going to vomit.
My dad walks in at that very moment. His pajama pants sag down across his ass and he farts loudly, blaming it on a dog we don’t have. He smiles up at the both of us, raises up his mug, and pours himself a cup of coffee.
“See how things just work out?” Mom says with a wink. “To this day, Back to the Future is still my favorite movie.”
My dad smiles deviously at my mom. “Hey now, lovey. I got that upstairs in the DVD player right now, want to get back up there and press play?”
Chapter 13
