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He should ogle my ass. He should look at my ass and feel filled with regret. Overflowing with regret. A literalmoundof regret that he could have had my ass in his bed whenever he wanted it if he hadn’t placed the importance of friendship above sex.
Huh. When put like that, it was hard to argue with his logic.
He was a nice guy. Who valued his friendships. Why couldn’t he be a total asshole who just banged at will regardless of the consequences?
Because then it still would have just been a bang and run. He wouldn’t have wanted to date me. At least this way I could continue my fantasy that if I weren’t Cash’s sister, MacKay would, in fact, want to date me.
All the hardcore mental justification was giving me a headache. I handed Sera an enormous gift bag with little footballs on it and tried to find joy in the occasion. This was a baby shower, for fuck’s sake. Sera and Cash were having a boy, and I was genuinely excited to meet my little nephew. That’s what I should be focused on.
Not MacKay Lennox.
I should also be worrying about the fact that I couldn’t seem to find a job to save my life. I was living with Sera and Cash and working part-time at Sera’s bakery, Sugar Lips. Essentially I was surviving on my brother’s charity.
Get a college degree, they said.
You’ll have a world of opportunities, they said.
So far all it had gotten me was a piece of paper that suggested I was qualified for a career in marketing. Getting anyone to believe that was obviously a different story entirely.
I stepped back, ready to log in my phone what the gift was and from who, so Sera could properly thank them. I wondered where the hell my brother was. He was supposed to be up here with Sera. A glance back showed he was talking to MacKay, who was nodding.
I wrinkled my nose. This was harder than I’d been expecting.
“Faith, are you paying attention?” my mother asked, appearing beside me like smoke.
I jumped. “Jesus, Jenny, you scared the crap out of me.”
“Don’t call me Jenny,” she said automatically.
It was our little joke. Me being the youngest of seven kids, I had a slightly different relationship with her than my older siblings. She had been less of a hard-ass with me, and more of a friend, which irritated my five older brothers to no end. My sister, Patsy, the oldest, didn’t seem to care as much, but then again she was off saving lives in Haiti as a doctor so maybe she just didn’t have time to give a shit about youngest-child-perceived-favoritism.
But I loved the dynamic with my mother, and the fact that she had given up trying to rein in my impulsiveness a long time ago.
“Is he here?” my mom asked, trying to pull off casual, but mostly sounding nosy as hell.
“Is who here?” Everyone was there. My father, who looked like he’d rather be gambling or watching football, my brothers, who had taken up residence in the back of the courtyard where the bar was and were drinking beer. Sera’s sisters. All of Cash’s football buddies and their wives or partners. My grandma. Even Jolene Hart, the country music star, was there in a very tiny sundress, because she was friends with Cash and Sera.
“The boy whose suit jacket you were carrying at Cash’s wedding.”
Typing “Dak and Eloise” into my phone as the gift givers, I looked over at my mother. She looked ridiculously pleased with herself. “If you don’t know who he is, I’m not telling you,” I said, not even bothering to pretend she hadn’t seen me with tangled wet hair and MacKay’s jacket over my arm. He’d forgotten it was around my shoulders when he had left me and returned to the reception before me so that no one would know we had been together behind the barn. Half-naked and giving each other orgasms.
“Oh, I know who he is and all about him and you. Your brother does not know anything, though. That’s obvious.”
I stared her down, hard. Jenny looked smug. But was she telling the truth or not? It was very possible she was bluffing. “And what do you think about him?” I asked, feeling her out.
“I think you could do worse. He’s always been a nice, polite boy.”
“Mom, he’s like thirty-two. He’s not exactly a boy.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh, is he now?” she asked. “Interesting. That confirms my guess.”
Shit. I had walked right into that. “You’re evil. And that doesn’t confirm anything. A lot of men at this party are in their early thirties.”
“I’m a mother. I have eyes on the back of my head.”
She’d been saying that my entire life. As a kid, I’d been convinced she had eyes that came out like a periscope from under her dyed blonde bob.
“Well, now, what are those back of the head eyes telling you now?” I didn’t think she actually knew it was MacKay I was mooning over. Because, yes, frustratingly so, I was mooning over him.
