She confirms that this was the right decision by dropping her chin and addressing the floor. “It’s too hard, sorting it all out. What’s real, what’s fake. The fact that I even have to ask means this was a bad idea. And I’m tired.”
Silence fills the room as I wait for her to say more, but she doesn’t.
“Do you want me to sleep somewhere else tonight?” I’m dreading her answer, and my heart sinks when she nods.
“The couch in the den should work.” She says it so softly that I almost can’t hear her, but the words still scrape along my skin anyway.
I snatch my T-shirt from the floor, then grab a blanket and pillow and ease out of the room, shutting the door behind me with a gentleclick.
* * *
The next morningI wake up to the sound of shrieking children. It is undoubtedly a punishment of some kind.
I untangle myself from the blanket that got all twisted around my legs thanks to my restless sleep, and I fold it up and drop it on top of the pillow next to the couch. No need to hide it; I doubt a single person in this house is unaware of where I slept last night.
Darby must be thrilled that her plan’s working so well.
“Morning.” I keep my tone subdued when I walk into the kitchen to find Margaret and a younger Margaret clone sitting at the table sipping coffee while four children bounce around the kitchen, shrieking and laughing.
One of them charges me at full speed with one of the sugar cookies Darby and I iced yesterday clutched in her fist. I catch her, swing her around twice, and set her back down. She giggles as she continues her dash around the kitchen as if I hadn’t briefly turned her into an airplane.
“Coffee,” I say, heading for the collection of holiday mugs arrayed on the counter. I dodge another sugared-up child on my way, filling the most sedate option I can find. Candy cane-striped drinkware in hand, I join the adults at the table.
“Gabe,” Margaret says, “this is Darby’s older sister Celeste.”
“Hi. Married to your college sweetheart, mother to four children, right?”
“That’s me.” She smiles and raises her mug in salute. It’s shaped like Rudolph’s head, and its very shiny nose is pointed aggressively in my direction. “And those are my Christmas angels.”
Two of them race by, sword fighting with empty wrapping paper tubes, and I grin at the general volume and intensity. “Cute.”
“Mmm. I see what you mean,” she says as an aside to her mother before turning back to me. “It’s so nice that you could join us for Christmas. Is your family not in the area?”
“My parents are in Hawaii with my brother and his wife. They just had a baby boy.”
Both women gape at me in shock, which enhances the similarities of their round faces and no-nonsense haircuts.
“And you’re not with them for your nephew’s first Christmas?” Celeste asks.
It’s pointless to explain my family dynamic, that feeling of being loved but also being an outsider, so I just shake my head. “Maybe next year.”
The boy child comes running past, and Celeste snags him, using the hem of her shirt to wipe his nose.
“Do you want kids someday, Gabe?”
I glance around the kitchen, hoping against hope that Darby will appear to derail this matriarchal inquisition. But I appear to be on my own. Even the kid wriggles out of his mother’s grasp and darts away.
“Uh, maybe. It depends.” I’m so unbalanced after last night that it’s a struggle to scrape together much Bad Gabe energy, and when I look over at the four tiny siblings howling with laughter together, my mask slips. “Yeah. I do.”
“That’s wonderful.” Margaret’s eyes crinkle at me over her Santa mug. “It’s lucky that you’re sure, given…”
She slides her eyes over to Celeste and mouths “tick tock,” and Celeste raises her brows in agreement. No wonder Darby’s squiggly about our age difference; they’re openly discussing her fucking expiration date. My first instinct is to shut them down, tell them I’d think Darby was spectacular if she was twenty-four or sixty-four, but that would be a supportive boyfriend thing to say, so I rally and try again.
“I mean, that’s years away.” I sprawl in my chair and quirk my best asshole grin. “Nobody’s getting serious around here.”
Margaret’s mouth droops before she squares her shoulders and tries again. “So how did you sleep after your night out?”
From one sore subject to another. “Fine,” I say shortly, aware that she’s probably burning with curiosity about what I did to get ejected from the bedroom. I drain my mug and set it on the table. “I don’t suppose you have any more gardening for me to do?”
