Shawn
The next day passes exceptionally quietly. I know, because Aiden texts me.
When did you start grinding your teeth?
I look up across the room and attempt to relax my jaw. Aiden’s always had the keenest sense of hearing out of all of us, but this is ridiculous.
“There’s no way you can hear that,” I say out loud, and he doesn’t look up from the coffee table. He’s spread a bunch of printed-out pages that he’s cutting into name cards for seating. Clearly Mom’s been putting everyone to work.
I’m restless enough that I’ve been considering volunteering to help out, but that would mean talking to my mom, and that’s been off the table since pizza night. Elise actually put a note on the kitchen door not to bother her while she was working on food prep, and Logan’s been Logan.
“Every time you walk around downstairs,” Aiden says, waving the scissors around for effect. “Being in the same room with you is a bit much.”
I’ve been trying my best not to think about Elise, or last night. I’m failing miserably. I’d been so tempted to go back and kiss her breathless and make her whine with pleasure, that I ended up going for a run until I was too tired to think, just following the paths that were as familiar to me as breathing.
With everything going on, I’ve barely paid any attention to the scene I’m supposed to be editing; I just keep playing it through and hoping one of these times I’ll remember what I was supposed to be doing. I hit the spacebar a little too hard to pause the program.
I pull the headphones off and get up from the window seat, moving to leave the room.
“Let me know when you get to the folding stage on those place cards,” I call over my shoulder, to a non-committal grunt from Aiden. Fine, I guess I don’t have to help him if he’s gonna be like that.
“Elise doesn’t need you to keep bothering her, y’know.”
First of all, rude. I’m not that predictable. I stop in the doorway. “Who said I was going to bother her? I could be going anywhere.”
Trying to look casual, I lean against the doorjamb, crossing my arms over my chest. “...I mean, did she say something? Did she tell you I was bothering her?”
Aiden rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t look like he wants to chide me about it. “You’ve got it bad.”
I sigh and scrub a hand over my face. He’s right. Bothering her is the only thing I want to do.
“You know, if you hadn’t told me it yourself, I’d think you two knew each other a little more than just a couple of bad dates,” Aiden says, snagging part of my attention.
I shrug, looking out across the empty hallway. Mom’s probably asleep in bed already, the sun is setting, I don’t see Elise’s car in the driveway.
Maybe it’s safe to practice a tiny bit of honesty. It doesn’t come naturally at this point. Admitting the truth feels more like lying than lying ever did.
“Yeah, alright, I might’ve fibbed a little. It was a little longer. I didn’t want to get her in trouble with the mothership.”
“So, she is that human you weren’t supposed to marry,” Aiden says, and my full attention snaps to him.
This little shit. Did Laura tell him? There’s no way he just figured it out on his own. I would have put money on Logan doing the math for when I left and whenever Elise showed up, putting pieces together.
For my least observant brother, I wouldn’t have thought he’d be the first to figure it out.
Instead of answering, I push off the wall and close the heavy wooden door to the den, its base sliding across the carpet. It’s about as close to soundproof as this house gets.
Aiden looks absolutely delighted with himself. He punches the air, before offering a low whistle and wincing. “Yikes. That’s messy.”
“Yeah. Well, I wasn’t about to tell Mom she was right. ‘Wolves can only mate with wolves’ and all that,” I say. Even years since I’d last heard it, I still say it with the same inflection our mom did when the drama initially went down. She’d become a broken record about it, and that became the only thing she would say on the matter.
“Well, it could have been worse. What if Elise had been a Protestant,” he chuckles, and takes a swig of his beer, “—and Dad was still alive.”
“Well, yeah, I guess itcanalways be worse. Our parents could always have had even more insane, outdated rules.” I throw a flippant sign-of-the-cross and roll my eyes.
Aiden grimaces. “Don’t do that, you’ll give me flashbacks. Remember when he burned my Pokémon cards for being devil worship? I cried so hard I threw up, man.”
A short, dry laugh escapes me. I remember that. I also remember Logan and I pooling our allowances to buy him a couple packs of cards, making him swear he would never take them out at home again.
