and wrap an arm over her shoulders. “That wasn’t so bad.”
“Wait a Whitney Briggs’s minute!” Sabrina sings, pointing wildly at the two of us as if she were a conductor. “Does Daddy know about this little indecent arrangement?”
“No way, no how,” Scarlett grunts it out. Her chest rises and falls as she glares at me a moment. “We’re sort of a new thing—a secret at the moment. We’re only telling the two of you, so if word gets out, we’ll know who to kill.” She gifts them a look that can just as easily slit their throat. There’s the girl I know, right back to her snippy, hostile self. For as much as I can’t stand to be around her, I don’t want to see her beating heart ripped out of her chest by her sister of all people.
“Oh, honey”—Sabrina skirts her gaze up and down my body twelve times fast as if she might be in the mood to swipe another guy out from under Scarlett’s nose—“our lips are very much sealed.”
Mom shuttles us over to the living room, giggling like a schoolgirl herself. Just watching her like this, happy to be here, turns my stomach. “How about we watch a movie like one big happy family?” She dots Bradley’s face with a kiss, and a dull collective groan runs through the room. I don’t think a single one of us can ever get used to seeing their geriatric love connection in action.
Knox and Lawson help narrow down our viewing picks, and while everyone vies for their favorite flick, I pull Mom aside to the hall.
“What’s with the June Cleaver routine?” I glance down at her flour-stained apron. This reeks Halloween costume more than it ever does happy homemaker, especially with my mother dressed the part.
“Would you relax?” She strokes my hair for a moment as if I were five. “Can you just once be happy for me?” Her features relax, beckoning me to do the same. My mother has been through a hell of a lot, I’ll give her that, but something about the way this weekend, this relationship of hers with Brad-the-Fad is unfolding has me feeling a little sorry for the guy. “You know I’ve been through a lot. I deserve this”—she scowls at her choice of clothing—“this Happy Suzy Homemaker delusion.”
“Delusion being the operative word.” The lights dim as Bradley calls us each to take a seat. He pats the space next to him for his Lyn Lyn. God help me or I might actually land my fist through that old coot’s jaw.
“Enough for now,” she whispers as we head on over. “Just forget about the past, Rex. God knows I have.” She struts off and lands next to Scarlett’s father as if he had been holding that seat for her for the last twenty years.
But those last few words of hers sting the most. It’s true. My mother has set the past very far behind her.
After a droning action comedy that most of us have seen one too many times before, my mother doles out room assignments. Knox and Trixie bunk together. They’re twins, two years my junior, and they’ve spent their whole lives bunking together. Even at their age, they don’t seem to mind. Scarlett and her sister are in the room next to mine, and I’m the lucky one who gets to bunk with “Duncky.”
The second the door shuts to our room, he starts stripping down to his boxers, and I toss a spare pillow at him.
“Put the pants back on, dude, before I shank you.” I land on the tiny bed in the corner, and the mattress doesn’t bother to give. Great. Just what the team doctor ordered for my aching back, a slab of concrete to call my own.
“You what?” He winces with his thumbs hitched in his boxers as if they’re the next thing to go. “It’s hot. I’m taking it all off and getting under the covers. I suggest you close your eyes if it offends you.”
“Offends me? It’s going to give me nightmares for the rest of my damn life.”
He freezes midway, and his blinding white moon forces me to turn away. “You kiss her mouth with those lips?”
“Kiss her mouth?” For a second, I’m disoriented, but before I can put the Scarlett pieces together, the door cracks open and Sabrina lands beside me on the twin-sized bed.
“Go on.” She smacks me over the leg until I’m standing. “Scar Scar’s waiting for you! We’re doing the old