“We never even heard from you the whole time you were gone,” Jules adds.
I explain about the tropical storm knocking out power that first night, and how cell service and Wi-Fi remained down the next two days.
“Oh my god, please tell me you met a hot stranger at the bar and had wild sex with him to get over that douchebag you were seeing earlier this summer,” Audrey says, and I love the protective way she doesn’t even mention Carter by name.
My friends don’t need to know that I let him back into my life again before this vacation because they’d probably hunt him down if they knew he was just using me for a hookup. I bite the inside of my lip as I wonder if I essentially let Danny do the same thing, while convincing myself thatIwas the one keeping it casual between us.
“Basically, yeah,” I say.
“And?” Jules asks.
“And then the next morning, my mom’s flight came in and the two of us spent the day getting ready for the wedding. And that evening, when I walked down the aisle, guess who was standing there next to my new stepfather?”
“No!” My friends all gasp at once.
“Yeaaaah,” I say, drawing out the word. “My new stepbrother.” It sounds even worse coming out of my mouth in front of my friends than it sounded all the times I reminded Danny of our new connection.
“No fucking way,” Audrey says through a laugh before sweeping her long, dark hair back behind her shoulders.
“Oh my god, Morgs,” Lauren says, using the nickname only she and her sister, Paige, call me. “Only you!”
“I have the most shit luck of any person on the planet,” I groan and shake my head.
“So what did you guys do?” Eva asks. I can only guess that she is trying to imagine the shitstorm of awkwardness that ensued.
“Swore it would never happen again, and then tried to avoid each other as much as possible.” Even as I say it, I know it’s not true. We kept being drawn toward each other, and we didn’tfight it very hard. I’m disappointed in myself, to be honest. As someone who specializes in PR and fixing people’s messy lives, I knew better than to step into a messy situation like that myself.
“Sodidit never happen again?” Jules asks, her voice revealing how much she wants the details of this situation.
“Uhhhh...” My tongue darts out as I lick my lips and look away, out the wall of windows that overlook the Back Bay and the Charles River. What the hell is wrong with me? Could I possibly make it more obvious? “There may have been a slip-up,”or two, “but it’s fine. I’ll probably never see him again. I doubt this marriage will last any longer than my mom’s three other marriages after she left my dad.”
Eva balks at my mom being married five times, and Lauren asks, “But what if theydostay married?”
“You know my mom,” I say, waving off that idea. “They won’t. The weird thing, though, is this guy—my stepbrother—it’s like he doesn’t exist. I Googled him on the flight home and couldn’t find anyone with his name that looked anything like him.”
“That’s odd,” Audrey says, and asks for his name as she reaches for her phone.
“Believe me,” I say, “if he existed, I would’ve found him. Social media is literally my job.”
I glance down at my phone, thinking about how the minute the plane took off this morning and I was able to connect to Wi-Fi for the first time in days, I immediately searched for Danny online.
And, according to the internet, he doesn’t exist. I even went back to some earlier texts with my mom to confirm that his last name is Heinberg, but whether I search for Daniel, Dan, or Danny Heinberg... I came up with nothing conclusive.
It occurred to me after about half an hour of searching that, since Max was insistent that Danny not call him “Dad,” so asto not try to replace his father, maybe he didn’t change his last name when Max adopted him? I have absolutely no idea what his biological father’s name was, and no way to find out unless I ask my mom to ask Max.
“Why don’t you just ask your mom for more info?” Jules asks.
“And make her wonder why I’m asking? No, thanks. Plus, he’ll be easier to forget if I can’t stalk him online.”
“Wouldyou stalk him online?” Eva asks, an eyebrow lifted as she brings Gigi up to her shoulder to burp her now that she’s finished breast feeding.
What would they think if they knew how long I’d already spent searching for him? Maybe it wasn’t internet stalking—yet—but if I had found him online, the temptation would definitely be there.
“I mean... I might be curious and go looking, which would be bad. It might have been the best sex of my life, but he’s my stepbrother. And to be honest, he was kind of an asshole anyway.”
Even as I say it, I know that isn’t quite accurate. He had the air of an asshole after the wedding, for sure—but given that we’d just found out we were related, maybe he was processing. But the way he was concerned about my allergy at dinner, took care to keep me comfortable on the boat, made me feel safe in the storm, took me out for my birthday after my own mother forgot it... would someone who wastrulyan asshole do that?
“Why’d you sleep with him if he was an asshole?” Jules asks, but my friends know as well as I do that it’s a rhetorical question. Dating assholes is sort of my brand.
