“I don’t know, you asked what I was wearing.”
“Well, in that case, can you put your hood up?”
“Why?”
“The sexy Grimace look is kind of doing it for me.”
She snickered, pulling her hood over her head and tightening the drawstrings until there was just a tiny circle of skin visible through the purple fabric, her nose poking out over the edge. When she spoke, her voice was muffled.
“You like that, you sick fuck?”
“Ohhh yeah.” He let out a moan, and she laughed harder, loosening the strings until the rest of her face came back into view.
He was still laughing when they hung up. When he looked down at the screen, he was startled to see they’d been talking for over an hour.
He wandered down to the kitchen, refilling his water glass in the sink. He turned and practically leapt out of his skin when he spotted his mother, sitting silently in her armchair in the living room.
“Jesus, Mom, I didn’t see you.”
His mother didn’t say anything, just looked at him guiltily.
“What? What’s wrong?”
Finally, she exhaled, a giant cloud of candy-scented nicotine vapor enveloping her face. Shane laughed. “I thought Dad doesn’t like you vaping in the house?”
“I think what he really means by that is he doesn’t like me doing it in front of him.”
“Sure. Of course. I’ll be sure to ask him about it tomorrow.” Shane sprawled on the couch opposite her, resting his bare feet against the arm.
“Well, maybe it should be our secret,” she said with a wry grin. “Speaking of, are you gonna tell me who you were up there talking to that’s got you smiling like that?”
Shane felt the grin fade from his face. “Nothing. No one. Like what? I mean…” He fumbled with his words, his mother’s grin widening. “I was just on the phone with Lilah. For a second. About a work thing.”
“At midnight on Christmas? Must have been pretty important,” his mother said, her eyes gleaming with amusement. “I called it, you know.”
“Called what?”
“You two. After you took me to that awards show. Do you remember that?”
He did.
Intangible’s first season had been an Emmy darling, garnering nine nominations covering every major category, including for Shane and Lilah—one of the few times they were nominated for the same award in the same year. Shane had known everyone was expecting him and Serena to make their red-carpet debut at the ceremony, but he’d brought his mother instead, thankfully only inspiring a fraction of the tasteless jokes he’d braced himself for about his affinity for older women.
He’d been seated behind Lilah, both of them on the aisle, so he was forced to stare at the nape of her neck for the entire show. Her upswept hair, the elegant line of her shoulders in her strapless gown—except when Richard’s arm was in the way. Occasionally, one of them would lean over to whisper something in the other’s ear, secrets that would make the recipient smile or raise their eyebrows or crane their head to look at something. He’d tried his best to ignore it, but it was right the fuck in front of him.
At one point, she’d reached over to place her hand on the back of Richard’s neck, and he’d jumped, before shrugging her off. She’d dropped her hand back into her lap, chastened. Shane knew why: the theater was freezing, and her hands tended to be cold even under the best circumstances. He could practically feel her fingers sending chills down the back of his own neck as he watched the two of them. It made sense for Richard to react like that; Shane had done the same plenty of times. Still, for some reason, witnessing the whole interaction had irritated him so much that he’d had to get up and take a lap around the lobby before returning to his seat.
They’d both lost, which hadn’t surprised him. But when they’d announced the winner in Shane’s category, Richard had leaned over and murmured something to Lilah that made her laugh harder than she had at anything all night. That was the first time in Shane’s life that he’d understood what it felt like to literally see red, acid churning in the pit of his stomach.
“I thought you were gonna burn a hole in the back of her head, the way you were staring at her,” his mother continued, dragging him back into the present.
“Well, we didn’t really get along back then.”
His mother just smiled. “And what about now?”
“Now…” He exhaled, shaking his head. “Now we do, I guess. Sometimes. But it’s complicated.”
“It seemed complicated then, too,” his mother said, laughing a little. “It’s funny, huh? The life you’ve made for yourself out there. I don’t think any of us could’ve seen it coming. I mean…” She gestured around at the house. “We wouldn’t be here without it, for starters.”
