I threw in, keeping my tone coy and rough. Acting as though sex was my motive instead of the temptation to silence the little devil on my shoulder.
“I wish,” she muttered. “My parents would kill me.”
Desperate, I groaned out of frustration. “Andy, you're like, thirty fuckin' years old.”
“Right. But I still live under my parents' roof. You can't tell me you don't understand that.”
I did understand it. And fuck, I missed my dad.
“No, I know.”
“I'm sorry,” she added quietly, as if she knew.
“It's all good, sweetheart.”
“Is it, though?”
I smiled weakly to my quiet room, acutely aware of my father's untouched things on the other side of the wall. “Yeah, you don't gotta worry about me,” I replied, wishing so badly I was better at lying.
Especially to myself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ANDREA
“So, what's been going on with you?” Mer asked, pouring a glass of iced tea from the pitcher. “I feel like we haven't seen you in forever.”
“It feels that way because we haven't,” Willa jabbed, waggling her brows. “She's too busy shacking up with her hot, bad boy boyfriend.”
“Oh, yeah, he's a real bad boy,” I grumbled, rolling my eyes. “He works all day in a pizza place, then goes home to the apartment he shared with his dad. What a rebel.”
“Ooh, someone's getting defensive,” my oldest sister teased, smirking as she put the pitcher back into the fridge and closed the door.
I followed my sisters outside onto the deck. Fall should have been right around the corner but summer was still thick in the air. Mom lounged lazily in the bright sun, while my nieces and nephews ran wildly through the thick grass. Dad had gone out golfing with my sisters' husbands, with the promise that they would be back early enough to throw the burgers and dogs on the grill.
“Speaking of your hot boyfriend, what's he doing today?” Willa asked, pulling out a chair from the table.
“Working,” I mumbled half-heartedly.
Mer dropped onto the couch. “You didn't invite him?”
“What, are you worried we'll interrogate him again?” Willa teased.
“No,” I fired back, sitting beside her at the iron table. “And just so you know, I did invite him. But his sister is out on Fire Island with her in-laws, so someone needs to be at the restaurant.”
“He couldn't take off for one day?” Mer looked at Willa and the two shared a smirk. “I mean, it's one day, and how often do you really hang out with us?”
“Yeah, seriously,” Willa agreed. “He could be here golfing with Daddy, Eric, and Tim.”
I snorted and shook my head. Mer raised her brows, asking what was so funny, and I replied, “Oh, it's just that, I can't imagine Vinnie golfing. I don't think he even knows how to be that lame.”
Neither of my sisters were amused. They pursed their lips and looked off toward their frolicking kids, clearly insulted by the unintentional jab at their husbands and our father. It wasn't that I looked down on golf or the men who enjoyed the game, but nobody could deny that it wasn't the most thrilling sport and that it typically attracted a certain kind of guy. And nobody could tell me that Vinnie fit the bill.
“So, if he doesn't like golf, what does he do?” Willa asked, taking our originally playful, albeit irritating, conversation to a more hostile level.
I shrugged, because the truth was, I didn't really know. He worked so much and so often I didn't know if he really had time for any hobbies. Apart from smoking and hanging out at Goose's bar. “Normal guy stuff, I guess,” I replied, knowing it was a cop out, and so did they.
“You mean in between getting high and snorting coke, right?” Mer commented snidely.
I loved my sisters, and all things considered, we had a good relationship. But their care for me was occasionally represented in a catty manner. These underhanded, snarky comments, the jabs at Vinnie's troubled past ... I knew they all came from a place of genuine concern. But I wished so badly they could express themselves in a kinder, gentler way. I wished they could do it without hurting my feelings or distrusting my judgment.
“He doesn't do that stuff anymore,” I said, dropping my gaze to my lap.
“Here's the thing, though, Andrea,” Willa said, crossing her legs and pointing a finger in my direction. “I don't know how you can trust him, period. Drug addicts fight those demons for a long, long time, sometimes forever, and—”
“I'm really sick of you thinking that I don't