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  “Jill also cried about how if only Susan had waited for the planning meeting, she could’ve been there. Planning meeting. Like it’s a fucking committee thing, like one of those boards she sits on.”

  “What did you tell her?” I asked.

  Evan shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean, nothing? Why didn’t you tell her to back off?”

  “It’s a fucking hassle,” my brother said. “You know how they are anyway. Just let them talk, and it blows over.”

  I frowned. “They’re trying to steamroll Susan about all kinds of things.”

  “I told her to just ignore them. The way I do. It’s not worth the argument, you know? Smile and nod and go on and do your thing, whatever you want to do, that’s what I told Sue.”

  Somehow I doubted that was the answer his wife wanted to hear. “The shit storm, she has begun. Hopefully, it won’t be a repeat of your wedding.”

  My brother didn’t look amused. For a second, he looked drawn and weary, and I wanted to hug him across the table the way I used to when we were small, and he’d fallen down and scraped up both his knees. I settled for squeezing his hand for a second.

  “I just want my kid to do well and have a good time at his party,” Evan said. “I don’t really care what Mom and Jill want.”

  “So maybe you should tell them that.”

  He shrugged. The waitress came with more coffee, but we both declined. I was already about to float away.

  Evan hugged me hard in the parking lot, which surprised me. I let him as long as he needed to.

  “I got your back,” I said into his ear. His arms tightened for a moment before he let go and stepped away. “You know that, right?”

  “Yeah. Get out of here.” He punched my arm lightly, and for a moment his smile looked genuine and not strained.

  “Oh, hey, by the way, can you ask Susan if she needs me to get William from Wednesday school?”

  Evan looked confused. “Huh?”

  “She has that yoga class or whatever it is on Wednesdays. I guess it runs late? I told her I’d help out...?” Clearly, my brother hadn’t received the memo. I sighed. “I’ll call her.”

  “Since when does Sue take yoga?”

  “Dude, I don’t know. She’s your wife, not mine.” Once, I’d overheard my sister-in-law complaining to one of her friends on the phone that her husband never listened to her. Never paid attention. I’d been annoyed at the time, taking my brother’s side, but now I thought maybe she had a point.

  Evan frowned. I punched him on the arm. He tried to grab me around the neck and knuckle-rub my head, but a quick jab to the stomach with my elbow got him to release me, fast.

  “Shit,” he complained. “Where’d you learn that?”

  “Self-defense class. I took a course.” It had been offered by one of Cubby’s friends especially for people in the BDSM community. Too many people assumed all women were submissive, or all sub guys liked getting beaten up. Stuff like that. After one of our friends had been severely beaten into a coma after some unsafe play with someone she’d met through a mutual friend, I’d opted to spend an afternoon in a stinky gym learning how to toss people around.

  “Well, you’re not supposed to use it on me!”

  I laughed and poked at him. “You can dish it out, but you can’t take it, baby bro.”

  “Whatever. Hey.” Evan jerked a thumb at me. “Listen. About Niall...”

  I gave him a wary glance. “What about him?”

  “He’s a nice guy, Elise.”

  “Yeah? And?”

  “Just that he’s a nice guy. That’s it.” Evan looked away.

  I stepped back. “So...I shouldn’t go out with him again? Is that what you’re saying? Because he’s too nice for me?”

  “That’s not what I meant.” My brother squirmed a little, rubbing at his mouth, though he didn’t have any food on his face.

  I poked him. “So what did you mean?”

  “He’s maybe not your type, that’s all.”

  “Uh-huh.” Frowning, I crossed my arms. “Maybe that’s my business. Or maybe you should tell him that. I mean, he’s the one who chose the picture of me, after all. Did you have this conversation with him?”

  Evan looked at me. “Not yet, but I guess I’ll have to.”

  “You’re not the boss of me,” I blurted. Ridiculous. Childish. Yet true.

  One side of my brother’s mouth quirked up. I didn’t want to laugh but I did, though I still felt the sting of his words. Evan shook his head.

  “It’s just a picture,” I told him. “He’ll probably donate it to a thrift store, if he even bothers to take it out of the wrapping. I’ll be in his garage until he has a yard sale, that’s all.”

  “I shouldn’t have taken him to that art show,” Evan said sourly.

  “Shoulda coulda woulda.”

  He sighed. “You’re not even interested in him, are you? That way?”

  “I don’t know.” I scuffed the gravel with my toe, eyeing him. Evan had met George, of course. We’d been together a year, after all. Evan knew it had ended badly. He’d also known, vaguely, about the other men who came after, the ones who let me tie them up and blindfold them. “Would you rather I date a guy who isn’t nice?”

  “I want you to be happy, how’s that?”

  I grinned. “Aww, garsh, how sweet.”

  My brother scowled. “Well, it’s true.”

  This touched me. I’d have hugged him, if we hadn’t already reached our annual hugging limit earlier. Instead, I settled for a fist bump. “I don’t have any designs on Niall Black, Evan. Okay? Does that make you feel better?”

  “Marginally.”

  I laughed. “And I doubt he has any on me.”

  “He’d better not,” my brother grumbled.

  16

  George had made me fifteen again, yearning and desperate and lit up with the knowledge I was wanted; and like I was fifteen again, desperate and yearning, my light had dimmed when he’d stopped wanting.

  I should’ve been over it by now. Nearly four years later, not a word from him in all that time. Not since the last time, when he’d said good-night and I’d said goodbye.

  I was stupid with this love. Not so stupid that I didn’t understand that he’d become something else to me. A symbol, maybe. An ideal. Something to yearn for but never have, in some twisted self-denial kind of thing I’d need years of therapy for to untangle my reasons for craving it.

  But it wasn’t like I thought about him every second of the day. I had the rabbit tattooed on the inside of my wrist to make sure I didn’t forget him, but there were long stretches of time, sometimes days, when he barely crossed my mind. There were many times, too, when thinking of him felt like something I’d read in a book or had seen in a movie. Something that had happened to someone else. Something not real. It was only in the dark when I was alone and unable to sleep that the memories churned up like some kind of monster that normally stayed hidden in the bottom of a lake among the mateless tennis shoes and broken beer bottles from 1978.

  Like a junkie trying to distract herself from needing a fix, I tried to stop myself from messaging him. I really did. I tossed and turned and punched my pillow, flipping it to find momentary coolness. I counted back from one hundred, then again, and still, sleep eluded me. Still, my mind turned to the memory of his touch and the taste of him.

  My fingers slid between my legs. I was already wet. My hips rolled when I dipped my fingers inside my slickness and drew them up to circle on my clit.

  I thought of his mouth. His tongue. The way he’d slide his hands under my ass to lift my pussy to his mouth, and how he’d feasted on me. How once he’d made me come three times in a row with barely a break between, until I’d had to beg him—me, beg!—to stop long enough for me to catch my breath.

  I murmured his name, his real name, not George, and it caught on the emotions stuck in my throat, snagging out of me like it had been ripped by thorns. Stuttering, shuddering. I fuc