“Hey, Ursula is a queen bitch. You should be honored to look like her.”
A man walks by dragging a cooler through the sand and yelling, “NUT-crack-ERS!” in that way those guys do. I would kill for one of those right now, New York City’s unofficial summer drink. Fruit juice, Kool-aid, and four or five or six different types of the cheapest liquor blended into a tasty slushy treat. A guaranteed good time. At Pride a few years ago, I found myself in the middle of a party, in a complete stranger’s kitchen in the West Village at four in the morning. How many nutcrackers did that take? I’m not sure. I lost count (and consciousness) after the third.
“You got your dress, right?
“Yup. It’s all set, and I got a travel steamer for it, too.”
“When do you leave again?”
Fresh panic. “Uh, the Thursday?”
She frowns. “The day of the welcome dinner?”
“Uh, no. Wednesday.”
She stares at me. “You don’t have a way to get there yet?”
Shit. “I do. Well, I don’t,” I amend, after seeing her face. “But look, Plum.” I show her my phone. “I set an alarm to buy a train ticket tonight!”
“How much are those tickets now?”
“Don’t worry about it, Plum.”
May hums, smelling bullshit from a foot away despite the overuse of her beloved nickname. “Please just make sure you’re there in time for the welcome dinner,” she murmurs.
It stings. Not because she’s asking, but because she has to ask. Because she still thinks there’s a nonzero chance I’ll flake or screw it up. The only thing she said to me after the engagement party disaster was a tight, “Please don’t do anything like that again.” And now here we are, and she’s not wrong.
“Of course I’ll be there for the welcome dinner, May,” I say, trying to sound steadier than I feel. “My twin sister is getting married.”To an asshole.“I’m going to be with you every step of the way,” I add, and I do mean that with every fiber of my being.
“Hey,” Tom suddenly bites, and my heart drops into the pit of my stomach.Did I say that asshole part out loud?
“Uh—”
“Hey,” someone says from behind me, and my heart keeps sinking and sinking and sinking and continues its way down my intestines until it feels like I need to shit it out.
I look up to my right, and for the second time in my life, I’m in Nico Giannuzzi’s shadow. But literally, this time.
May and Tom jump up to give him a hug while I find myself glued to the sand. I start cycling through excuses to leave in my head. Am I sick? I could be sick. I hear the flu is really making its rounds. It spreads easily through… the heat. Of the summer. Very contagious in the summer, when everyone is outside in the open air.
“Annie,” Nico deigns to acknowledge me, sitting below him at his feet, and this with my name in his mouth activates all my fight instincts. Just fight, no flight—like he claws the nasty out of me and all I want to do is be combative and tear his fucking face apart.
This is Sister Annie’s time to shine. You will use every ounce of your strength to stay seated right there on your towel and not climb on his gorilla shoulders and tear his eyes from their orbital bones or strangle him using only your thighs,she says.
“Hi,” I grit out.
May smirks, clearly still entertaining her decades-long running theory that I’m harboring a crush on this overgrown ape.
I give her a tight smile in return.
Thankfully, Nico can probably smell my rage pheromones, some primal warning carried through the breeze, so he lays his towel out as far away from me as possible, on the other side of Tom and May.
Now, the only time I’ve seen this asshole in fourteen years was on a dark rooftop, so I’m suddenly grateful for my sunglasses, a perfect shield for spying and getting a real look at him.
It’s a shame really, because he looks unfairly good, almost aggressively handsome. He’s always been big, maybe he played football or something, but he’s filled out and then compacted and solidified into strong, firm planes, making me think of how easily he could throw me—apologies, a football—around. His hair is still the same thick mess, his face scruffy in a haphazard, lazy way that only accentuates the sharp cut of his jaw. His clothes look expensive and fit him well. His sunglasses (which have the audacity to be Tom Ford) screameffortless ease, as does the nearly sheer white linen shirt draped over his broad frame, sleeves rolled just enough to tease at strong forearms. I can’t wait for him to take it off.
Annie, Sister Annie reprimands.
Enough out of you. I’m temporarily celibate, not dead.
