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“She seemed interested to hear you had a twin. And I think she was especially excited to find out she has half-siblings because she was an only child. She also wanted to know about my parents.” As always, the thought of my parents caused my chest to tighten painfully.
Donal squeezed my shoulder. “How are your parents? You said your dad has Alzheimer’s?”
“That’s right.” I slipped out of his arms and sat up to retrieve my whiskey glass from the coffee table.
“Tess?” Donal’s voice was soft with concern.
I washed away the burning in my throat with a swallow of whiskey and cradled the glass in both hands. “We had to put him in a residential facility last year.”
“That must have been hard. How’s your stepmom taking it?”
“She, uh, she passed nine months ago.” Goddammit, I hated being this emotional.
Donal sat up. His hand stroked my back again as he pressed a kiss against my temple. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“How are your parents?” I asked, desperate for a change of subject.
“They’re good.” He let go of me and shrugged. “Both of them are retired now. My dad got remarried a while back. My mom’s as busy as ever with church and volunteering and everything.”
“How’s Shannon doing? I haven’t talked to her since the last reunion.” I’d always liked his sister, who I remembered as a slightly more subdued and intense version of Donal.
His mouth twisted. “My twin sister continues to outshine me. Currently, the State Department has her assigned to the US embassy in The Hague.” He took the glass out of my hand and helped himself to a sip of my drink.
Now that we were sitting side by side where I could look at him up close, I could see how much silver there was at his temples and in the stubble along his jaw. I hadn’t noticed it before, because it blended with his light brown hair. He had deep lines in his forehead as well, and lots of crinkles around his eyes and mouth, but they only made him look more handsome. Distinguished. Sexy, even. It was so unfair, the way men got better-looking as they aged.
Donal glanced at me, and his eyebrows lifted when he caught me staring.
I took my whiskey back and tried to pretend I hadn’t been blatantly ogling him. “Does Shannon have kids?”
“Three. She’s beating me at that too, as my mother delights in reminding me—although now I suppose technically we’re tied.” His lips spread in a slow grin.
Wow. His smile was still as intoxicating as ever. Other than a slightly sad, half-hearted smile the other night, Donal hadn’t smiled around me in a very long time. I wasn’t used to being confronted by the full force of it anymore, and it caught me unprepared.
A squirmy, ticklish sensation erupted in my stomach. It had been so long since I’d felt anything like it that it took me a second to realize it wasn’t a sign of impending stomach upset, but rather the fluttery feeling that accompanied a crush. The fact that this particular man had triggered it was deeply unnerving.
Get a hold of yourself, McGregor. Under no circumstances are you allowed to be dazzled by Donal Larkin’s smile.
Fun fact: that butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling is a side effect of your body’s fight or flight response. When it senses danger, the sympathetic nervous system releases adrenaline and cortisol to divert blood away from your digestive system and into your heart and leg muscles in order to help you flee. Hence the fluttery tummy as the blood flow to your stomach suddenly drops. I’d always found it amusingly apropos that our bodies considered the appearance of a potential mate as much of an emergency as a ravening predator snapping at our heels.
Tearing my eyes away from Donal and his stupid smile, I took a large gulp of my whiskey, praying it would dull the electric boogaloo my nervous system had set off in my stomach. “That means Erin has cousins.”
Donal nodded as he took the glass back from me. “But they’re all in the Netherlands. I haven’t even seen them in…” He tilted his head, squinting as he thought about it. “Two years?”
All this talk about his family brought home how much more he had to offer Erin than I did. He could give her siblings, grandparents, cousins, and an aunt who looked just like her. Whereas I had no family left except a father who no longer recognized me and barely spoke anymore. If Erin was looking for family connections, Donal had me beat by a long shot.
I reclaimed my glass and finished it off. When I reached for the bottle to refill it, Donal leaned forward and picked up the yellowed hospital wristband sitting out on the table.
After Erin’s birth, I’d packed everything that reminded me of the pregnancy into a box and carried it down to the basement of my parents’ house. I’d found it again when I was going through the house after my stepmother’s death. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to get rid of it, so I’d brought it to my apartment and shoved it in the back of my closet. But I hadn’t opened it until today.
My head had been reeling and my emotions in chaos when I got home from meeting Erin this afternoon. I’d dragged the box out of my closet and thrown myself a pity party for one, picking through it and crying over all the memories I’d tried so hard to forget.
That was what I’d been doing for the last two hours when Donal called and insisted on coming over.
His expression grew pensive as he ran his thumb over my old hospital wristband. After a moment, he set it down and poked through the other mementos lying out. He picked up a cassette tape with a handwritten label and looked at me in surprise. “I gave you this.”
It was a mixtape he’d made of his favorite songs. At the time, I’d wanted to believe it meant something, that he’d intended it as a romantic gesture. I’d secretly hoped it was a sign he wanted us to be more than just a dirty little hookup.
But then I’d gotten pregnant and…yeah. So much for that.
