I take in his sex-flushed skin and messy hair that sticks up at all angles. He’s relaxed against the pillows, a lascivious glint in his eye. I return it with a look of warning.
“Nope. Not again until we’re home.” With a yelp, I jump out of bed and high-step it to the bathroom before he can grab me. “I mean it, Pickle.”
Again, August groans and drops back against the bed dramatically. “I’m gonna kill him.”
“We can get March together,” I tell him from the safety of the bathroom doorway. “It can be one of those couples’ activities advice columns are always going on about doing.”
A brilliant grin lights up August’s face. “Penelope Morrow, I fucking adore you.”
“Ican’t believe you stood at their door and harassed them to get up.” June stabs a sausage and shakes her head. “You’re such a brat.”
“Hey!” March gives his best “innocent yet outraged at the accusation” face. Not that anyone buys it.
May narrows her eyes. “Ma, are you certain March isn’t the baby in the family? I have doubts.”
Margo chuckles and sips her coffee—a pointed gesture of refusing to answer that has March scowling. But there’s humor in his eyes as he looks at her before addressing his sisters.
“Every family vacation we’ve had, this—” he points his fork at August “—assho—er, aspirational player, wakes me up at the butt crack of dawn to go jogging.” He takes a bite of apple pancake. “Payback was in order.”
“Just remember,littlebro, one day it’ll be you.” August leans back in his seat. We’ve been at the table for all of ten minutes and his plate is already cleared. The man can eat after a workout, even if that workout is me. I unfortunately blush like one of the guilty. While August idly plays with the ends of my hair, unrepentant.
“You keep saying that like it will make it come true.” March salutes him with a sausage. “Not gonna happen.”
My mom laughs lightly and pats March’s shoulder as she walks by on her way to the sink. She’s wearing a fabulous scarlet silk muumuu embroidered with fireworks bursts of hot pink chrysanthemums. She pulls it off with effortless elegance. If I wore that, I’d look like a walking tea cozy.
“You haven’t watched enough theater if you’re saying those famous last words.” She rinses her glass and sets it in the dishwasher. “August, dear, that green smoothie was lovely.”
He made it for her when Mom announced she was off complex carbs for the duration of her upcoming play.
“I’ll give you the recipe.”
She rests a hip against the counter, clear Lucite bangles on her wrists clinking musically, and her attention homes in on August’s fingers carding through my hair. A speculative light enters her eyes. “I can’t quite get over seeing the two of you together. It never even occurred to me—”
“Mom.”
August’s hand stills in my hair, then slips to my shoulder.
Mom gives me an innocent look. “I’m only trying to explain that it’s a bit of a shock seeing you together.”
As if we didn’t know. Her continuous “shock” has moved from irritating to insulting. Temper rises like a geyser. August’s warm hand curls over the back of my neck, the edge of his thumb stroking my pulse. He must feel it beating in agitation, for he strokes it again as if to soothe.
“I agree,” Margo says, jumping to Mom’s defense. “It’s a trip to see. From adolescence on, they were barely in the same room together without one of them soon leaving it.”
“Exactly! Frankly, I thought they hated each other. Pen, at the very least, professed total indifference—”
“And this,” June announces sotto voce, “is the downside of your mothers being best friends.”
“They’ll just have to get used to it, won’t they?” August says with deceptive ease. His gaze, however, is hard with warning.
His mother’s expression softens as she reaches over the table to touch his arm. “We’re looking forward to that, Augie.”
“Hear! Hear!” my mom says, waving a hand as though she holds a scepter.
I’m still irked and feel massively exposed, but Neil comes into the kitchen with a troubled expression. Oddly, his gaze goes straight to me before winging to August and then his wife.
“I think you should come and see this,” he says to the room. He glances at my mom and then me again. The concern in hisface sets off my own. At my neck, August’s hand clenches just once, and I know he’s noticed as well.
Quietly, we rise and go into the great room where Jan is standing in front of the massive TV set on pause. Jan’s gaze darts to mine and holds the same queer look his dad had. Without comment, he lifts the remote and hits the jump rewind button.
