It sounds fucking awful, and I’d tell her so if I felt like arguing. “Here’s the thing,” I start, clearing my voice. “You being here all the time isn’t good for business. Even the guys at work think it’s weird. I moved here to start a life of my own.”
“Shut up. You aren’t a child. Why do you care what they think about your family?”
Because it’s interfering with my life.
“We are your family. That means we’ll always be a part of your life no matter where you move.”
“Can we limit visits to weekends only?” I ask, opening the water and drinking half. “The food and cooking are appreciated. Your ugly mug in my kitchen is fantastic, but Sundays only That’s fair.”
Her eyes go wild. After countless hours of training in interrogating suspects, I know what the feral look in her eye means. “We are adults, Eva. You’re married. My house,” I say, waving an arm around the room. “Your house,” I add, pointing at the door. “Please.” Manners might get me out of a fight with Celia, but Eva is a fucking shark, so I steel my nerves.
She shakes her head and starts muttering under her breath. “You don’t even ask about me. How I’m doing. You move right in to how I’m making you feel. It’s not always about you, Leif. Despite what the rest of the world leads you to believe.”
My cell phone vibrates in my pocket, and as subtly as possible, I slide it out and read the text from Sutter. They’re heading to Bobby’s Bar and want to know when I’ll be there. Swallowing hard, I look at my sister, her back facing me. “If you want my friendship and for me to wonder how you’re doing, you probably need to go away for a while. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that. You call me every day. You come over uninvited. There’s no guesswork involved.”
She spins, the frying pan in her hands. “The IVF didn’t take. Again,” she says, eyes glassing over. My breath lodges in my throat. “I’m bleeding out $19,500 worth of fertilized eggs that won’t attach to my uterus right now.”Oh, fuck.
Where the fuck is Celia? She’s good at this. She’s the sincere sibling. A lump of dread lodges in my neck, and I work to clear it. “I’m sorry,” I reply, voice low. “That must be tough.” She can’t expect more than that from me. When it comes to emotions, I’m stunted. I block out everything in favor of feeling nothing. I’dblame my job and what I sometimes have to do, but I think I’ve always been like this. An emotional robot.
I round the island and pull my sister into my arms. “I’m sorry, Eva. Maybe next time?”
Her face buried in my chest, she shakes her head. “We’re out of fertilized eggs. I don’t want to go through all of that again, and he told me he doesn’t want to use someone else’s. I haven’t told him it didn’t take yet. He had an important business dinner tonight. It would have upset him.”
Eva is rarely emotional. In fact, this whole process with her infertility is the only time I’ve seen her upset to this degree. Probably because she always gets what she wants, and for the first time she can’t control the outcome. I’m not completely sure she doesn’t want a baby so badly because it’s harder for her to have one. While we were growing up, she always waxed poetic about never having kids because they’re messy and take up too much time. We were all shocked when she announced that not only were she and her husband trying to have a baby, but they were also going through fertility treatments to give them the best chance possible. Celia called her a liar, and a massive fight broke out. Our parents were happy at the prospect of grandchildren, but even they were wary of her drastically altered plans.
Sighing, I try to be sympathetic because I know how hard she’s been trying to have a baby, but in the same breath, personally, I think she’s fucking insane for wanting a family. A baby. A child. An actual human being that depends on you in all ways. If you’re lucky it’s eighteen years, and if you’re not, it’s forever and ever. That tether is something I never want. Parenting isn’t a no-fail mission, and that’s a risk I’m not willing to take.
Ever.
TWO
Malena
“I sawCaroline and Tahoe in the parking lot,” I tell Shirley, after taking a large swallow of my tonic water. The lime is just for looks. I have to sleep with one eye open tonight. The night nurse called in sick, and the last thing I need is to have my mind clouded by alcohol. No one has time for that. I have a couple of hours before I need to get back to relieve Mom’s daytime caretaker. “That man is really something to look at, isn’t he? Caroline was all flushed,” I add.
Shirley loves to talk about men. She likes to talk about them in any form. Even if they belong to someone else. From what I’ve seen, it’s mostly harmless. Everyone knows she’s secretly hung up on Caleb, the cook from the diner she is a waitress at. They have torrid sex, see other people, and end up back in bed together.
Shirley shakes her head while gulping down her beer. She wipes her mouth on the sleeve of her fishnet sweater sleeve and shakes her head before saying, “His name is Tahoe for fuck’ssake. That girl isn’t going to know what to do when he kicks that thing into four-wheel drive.”
I giggle. “She’ll manage, I’m sure.” It will be a relief if she finally loses her virginity. Maybe the appeal of Caroline May will dull a touch. We all reside inside of Caroline’s shadow of innocence. After this long, you can’t help but think she’s doing something right.
Alternatively, Shirley tells me a story about a fling last night, all the while casting glances at the bartender slinging drinks to customers—his pants baggy and his shirt wet with sweat. Shirley’s bleached-blond hair has black roots creeping up a few inches from her scalp, and her makeup looks like she put it on three days ago and forgot it needs to be washed off or redone on a daily basis. I love her, but the woman doesn’t love herself. Not enough, anyway. But isn’t that the problem every woman faces in different aspects? “His friends are here,” she says, flying from one subject to another as I nod along. “The SEALs.”
I’m not sure who she means until I glance in the direction she tilts her empty glass. Bronze Bay has some handsome locals, don’t get me wrong, but these small-town waters don’t produce the type of handsome that the SEALs rolled into town with. They look out of place in surroundings so quaint. Their muscles on display without being ostentatious. It’s not like they’ve cut the sleeves off of T-shirts or something. They have serious bulk, and there’s no hiding it regardless of what they are wearing. I’ve seen them sulking around in uniforms and, from a distance, in their wetsuits getting off their boats and heading up the docks. Every time it takes me back a bit. It’s one thing to hear about the SEALs and what they’re doing on the news, it’s another thing completely to view them up close, in our local bar, infiltrating our world in all ways. I home in on one guy in particular right away because of the color of his hair.
It’s blond. Light blond. Like the surfers in my favorite movies from years ago. He’s broad and tall like the rest of his friends, but he’s leaner—a self-confident swagger to his walk as he surveys the bar in a wide sweeping glance, not taking in any one thing or person longer than another. He’s indifferent, and little does he know that’s one of the main qualities I’m looking for right now.
“The tall one,” I whisper under my breath to Shirley, glancing away before his gaze sweeps over us.
She clicks her tongue three times in rapid succession. “The tall one,” she repeats. “If my research is thorough, which when is it not when it comes to hot dudes with muscles who bleed testosterone? His name is Leif. L-A-Y-F,” she drawls, and then spells his name to explain the difference between what it sounds like and the letters that form it, and then continues. “He comes into the diner with Tahoe a lot. I haven’t heard any gossip about him bed hopping like his friend there on the left. The brown hair and deep dimple,” she explains, using her eyes to talk as much as her voice. “That’s Sutter. He fucks like the Energizer Bunny and doesn’t spend the night.” Shirley laughs when she sees my expression. She shrugs. “What? Not from personal experience, that’s what the girls said at the diner. I overheard it,” she says, smiling sheepishly. “They really should have kept their voices down if they wanted it to stay a secret.” I glance at Sutter and automatically see him naked and fucking like a jackhammer.
Swallowing hard, I shake my head. “Nothing about the blond one, then? Leif?” I ask, trying out his name. I haven’t heard it before, but that doesn’t mean much. I have spent most of my years in Bronze Bay, where the residents have simple, ordinary names. My name was always the weirdest, and I hated it. When I was a baby, my parents moved us to this small town to get out of the city. After my father left, I thought it was because he missed the city, and Mom’s dementia was just the excuse. It’s easy tohate him even more that way. Drop me off here with my city-ass name and then disappear. I hate him for too many reasons to count at this point.
“Nothing. He’s clean at the moment,” Shirley says. “I need to go give Britt this card.” She pulls an envelope out of her purse.
While this is a bar and we’d all be here anyway tonight, it’s also a couple of our friends’ engagement party. Britt is one of my good friends, but her fiancé, Whit, is absolutely rotten to the core. I’ve lost count of how many times he’s come on to me. He is a redheaded demon that Britt is too comfortable with to release into the wild. It’s a sad state of affairs.
With my track record, I’m in no position to tell anyone how to drive their relationship, though. I steer clear of anything serious, and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a man naked, let alone been touched by one. My friends assume I’m prolific like Shirley, and I don’t care to correct them. It makes it easier to explain why I have to skip out on plans. Taking care of my mom is only an acceptable answer for so long before those that care about me try to give me advice. I know she needs more care than I can give her, and I feel awful about it.
