It hadn’t worked, obviously. Just like it hasn’t really worked for my dog, Cookie. So I’d assumed my mother was unhappy because of me. There was probably some truth to that, but it turned out she objected to my father too.
Nine years ago, she went to some kind of motivational lecture, after which she informed him that she’d never loved him, marrying him had ruined her life, and she was taking half custody of poor Daisy.
I didn’t hold it against her. She definitely wasn’t happy, and everyone should at least try to be happy.
Besides, even though it isnota happy coincidence that Mrs. Applebaum is Nora’s mother, there have been some other happy coincidences attached to my father’s unexpected later-in-life pairing with Mrs. Applebaum.
For years, I’ve wanted to be in a band.
I’ve always had an ear for music. Even when I was a little kid, I could memorize lyrics and bridges without trying. Everything about music spoke to me, but I was most drawn to the rhythmic foundation of the songs. Eventually I learned they were made by the bass guitar, which is such an overlooked but necessary instrument. I liked the thought of being the road for other people’s cars. So I taught myself how to play it. My friend Kenji and I used to jam together in his garage before he moved, but I’d always wanted to be part of something bigger. A real band.
I didn’t think it would be possible for me, because I’m not a man who finds it natural to make opportunities.My brain isn’t built that way. But if an opportunity falls into my lap, I can build a fucking skyscraper out of it.
Which is what happened six months ago.
Hannah, who’s standing to my left in a tux that matches mine, set my dad up with Mrs. Applebaum, now Mrs. Applebaum-Peebles. It was through Hannah that I met Travis, the drummer for Garbage Fire. They’d needed a bassist, and in an unusual moment of daring, I told him I played bass.
The rest is history. I love being part of the band, but I still throw up before every performance, especially since our first album just released, and we’ve been steadily booking bigger gigs. We’re performing at the reception, so I’ll probably throw up tonight too, if only for consistency.
I don’t mean to look at Nora, but my eyes stray to the left of Mrs. Applebaum’s bread-boule hair and find the curve of Nora’s cheek, her messy brown bob, and the severe arch of her dark eyebrows. It gives her a look of being perpetually pissed off.
Nora’s wearing an ugly pea-green dress, but it doesn’t makeherugly, unfortunately. It suits her, especially with the bright red lipstick she always wears. That’s no novelty, of course.
Everything suits her.
I had a high school English teacher who loved to compare beautiful women to flowers. Each girl in class had a flower assigned to her. I was the only one who was surprised when he got busted for exchanging text messages with a few female students, but that’s beside the point. He was an idiot, in addition to being a pervert, because flowers aren’t nearly as eye-catching as, say, praying mantises. Or black widows.
Nora has always seemed both beautiful and dangerous. In high school, she talked back to everyone, including all of our teachers. She had dozens of ideas, all of them interesting, everyone raved about her homemade ginger beer, and her witwas a barbed weapon she used to stab everyone—and God help me, I used to want my blood on her hands.
It didn’t help at all that she wore that red lipstick every single day.
Yes, I had a vicious crush on her in high school, so bad I tripped over my words every time she spoke to me—and then revisited every interaction with excruciating agony for months.
But in addition to razing a warpath through the school, she smoked outside of the building with the same assholes who thought it was hilarious to regularly steal my best friend’s gym shorts and mimic everything I said. She went to their parties too, something I knew because I was invited to one of them for helping a jock ace a test. I stayed for all of five minutes before finding a very good reason to leave.
Because no way was I going to make out with the girl I’d been fantasizing about in the same room as every popular kid in school, separated only by a folding door.
We mostly avoided each other after that. Still, it had felt like a particularly hard pill to swallow when she made out with the biggest asshole in our year behind my senior year science project, which was supposed to be a big deal for me for a couple of different reasons, and ended up accidentally crushing it.
She barely apologized, as if I didn’t matter enough for her to feel true remorse. So I lost it and yelled at her.
We both got detention, and the day we graduated, she flipped me off when I got up to make my very short valedictorian speech.
Still…I never forgot that she was beautiful.
I never forgot her at all.
When her brewery opened, I saw the articles. I wasn’t surprised, because her ginger beer had been legendary, even then. Leave it to Nora to figure out how to make it even more appealing to the masses by rendering it alcoholic.
But I didn’t go to The Ginger Station. I knew if she remembered me, it would only be with contempt.
She obviously still holds me in contempt, but I’m consumed by the memory of our discussion in her office. In particular, by?—
It’s perfectly normal to get turned on by your soon-to-be stepsister kneeling in front of you…
Yeah, I’ve repeated it in my head half a dozen times, but I still don’t buy it.
Why the hell did she have to do that? Did she know it would drive me crazy?
