Out from Under You Read online

“How long are you staying?” I practically shout after I’ve come up for air. I hardly even noticed that I’ve interrupted Alex mid-sentence and she shoots me a vicious glare.

  Grayson hides a smirk behind a sip of wine.

  “Just until the end of Labor Day weekend.” Alex replies. “This time.”

  “This time?” I repeat, doing little to hide the discontent in my tone.

  “Well.” Alex dabs her mouth with the tip of her cloth napkin, “I was going to wait until dessert but I suppose now is as good a time as ever.”

  My father visibly perks up. Alex glances briefly at Grayson who nods in return. “It looks like we might be making a few more trips into town in the following months.”

  That sick feeling is instantly back in my gut, and something tells me I’m not going to like what’s coming next.

  “Oh really?” Dad says, grinning at me as though I shared his enthusiasm.

  Alex clears her throat. “Yes. We already have a few preliminary appointments lined up but—”

  “What kind of appointments?” My father inserts a forkful of meat into his mouth.

  “Well,” she continues, her face glowing, “we’d like to meet with a few wedding planners while we’re here.”

  My fork drops with a clank against my plate. The room is suddenly spinning. And I can’t tell if it’s because of the wine or the monstrosity of what’s coming out of my sister’s mouth.

  Wedding planner?

  As in marriage?

  As in till death do us part?

  I think I must have blacked out for a few moments because when I come to, there’s a blindingly huge sparkling diamond on my sister’s finger (which I assume she must have been hiding in her purse until now). My father is shaking Grayson’s hand and giving him a manly pat pat pat on the back. And is that a bottle of champagne that has just appeared out of nowhere?

  “You should have seen the first one he picked out,” my sister is yammering on about the ring. “It was...” She lets out a low whistle. “Well, it was pretty awful.” She turns and flashes Grayson a smile. “No offense, baby.”

  I hold my head in my hands, attempting to keep the room in one place. But it’s no use. I feel like I’m on a carousel that just keeps getting faster and faster and faster.

  “So, of course, as soon as I said yes, we went straight to the jewelry store to exchange it for something more...wearable.”

  This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. My sister can’t marry Grayson Walker. She just can’t. They were supposed to be finished! It was supposed to be over! And it was over! For four years. Who gets back together after four fucking years?

  “Lia, are you all right?” I pick up my head to see Grayson’s liquid brown eyes stationed right in front of me. They’re narrowed in concern. And they’re doing that thing again where they search me. Where they penetrate me. Where they mine me for secrets. Secrets that I’ll never be able to reveal to anyone now that he’s going to be my...

  Brother-in-law.

  I feel the bile rising up in my stomach, stinging my throat. I launch out of my seat and dart toward the restroom. I don’t stop running until the door is bolted behind me, until I’m crouched over the toilet, vomiting up the bitterness of a desire that’s been rotting inside me for eight years.

  “Should someone go check on her?” I ask, eyeing the long hallway that Lia just disappeared down.

  Alex looks up from her engagement ring and tilts her head as though she’s not even sure what I’m referring to. “Oh, she’s just being dramatic. Don’t worry.”

  But I am worried. Before she bolted from the dining room, she looked awful. Her skin had turned pale white and she sat so still in her seat, I was afraid she might have choked on her food and stopped breathing. Then she burst out of her chair and ran like something horrible was chasing her.

  Alex must notice me gazing down the hallway because she sighs and says, “If you’re so worried, you go. She likes you.”

  My head jerks back toward her. “Excuse me?”

  “I mean, she practically thinks of you as a brother already.”

  A brother. Of course.

  That’s how she should think of me.

  I crumple my napkin and toss it on my plate. “Right. I’ll just go make sure she’s okay.”

  What I really want to add is, “Because it’s not like I’m actually needed here.” But I restrain myself. Alex is doing an excellent job at making this entire thing about her, even though the engagement is supposed to be between the two of us. But I suppose that’s pretty common among brides.

  Alex barely gives me a second glance as I get up and follow in Lia’s footsteps down the hallway.

  I approach the ladies’ room door and the sound of low, strangled sobs lurches me to a halt. I rap lightly and the noise on the other side instantly stops, like someone has pushed the pause button in the middle of an emotionally dramatic scene.

  I hear sniffling and then, “Someone’s in here.”

  “It’s Grayson. Are you all right?”

  There’s a long silence. Too long. And then, “I’m fine.”

  But it’s almost a joke because her voice is so strangled and shattered. She clearly isn’t fine. “Are you sure?”

  Another long pause. “Yes.” And just when I think she’s going to leave it at that, she adds, “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  “Do you need anything? Water? More wine? A tranquilizer dart?”

  I hear a small, muffled laugh that quickly turns into a sob. “A tranquilizer would be lovely, thanks.”

  I crack a smile. Leave it up to Lia to lob my joke right back at me. Even when she’s clearly upset. I lean toward the door. “I’ll get right on that.”

  “If you could locate something strong—like for an elephant or a wholly mammoth—that would be great.”

  I chuckle. “One wholly mammoth tranq dart coming right up.”

  Despite our friendly banter, Lia doesn’t emerge from the bathroom until after the check has been paid and we’re preparing to leave. Her eyes are red and puffy and she won’t look at me.

  I want to reach out to her. Ask her again what’s wrong and keep asking until she agrees to tell me. I feel this strange urgency to understand her. To comfort her.

  “I have to close down the restaurant,” she tells us as we head to the parking lot. I’m about to offer to help, feeling a sudden exhilaration at the thought of being alone with her, but she snatches the keys out of Alex’s hand and says, “You guys go back to the house with Dad, okay?”

  Later that night, as Alex showers, I lie in her childhood bedroom, thinking about how strange it is to be back in this house. It’s familiar and yet so foreign at the same time. I haven’t been back here in over four years, and walking the hallway toward Alex and Lia’s bedrooms is like stepping back in time, rewinding the last four years of my life, becoming twenty-two again.

  God, I was a mess back then.

  I was so fucking clueless. So torn between my passionate, deep-rooted feelings for Alex and my yearning to be independent. To experience the world without her. That’s inevitably why I didn’t follow her to New York, even though I had plenty of job offers in the city. And she knew that.

  That knowledge was our ultimate undoing.

  As soon as I told her I wanted to take the job in D.C., she knew what my choice meant. It meant I wasn’t choosing her.

  And least not then.

  And least not yet.

  As it turned out, the single life really wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sure, I had my flings. My share of one-night stands. I kissed other lips. Touched other breasts. Experienced what it felt like to be inside someone other than Alex.

  But something was always missing.

  There was always this emptiness inside of me that those girls couldn’t fill.

  And when I bumped into Alex three months ago after getting transferred to New York, I suddenly knew what was missing.

  It was her.

  The rest was a whirlwin
d. Weeks of nothing but wild sex and talking and eating and more sex. It was as though we needed to make up for those four lost years. And once we did, I wasted no time buying the ring. I didn’t want to risk losing her again.

  But now that I’m back in this house, everything that went on inside these walls comes flooding back. The whispered fights. Alex throwing punches and threatening to leave and me pinning her arms down, kissing her face, begging her to stay until we were both breathless and falling onto the bed, devouring and ravaging each other as though it was our last day on earth.

  The memories hit me like a brick thrown in the face. And suddenly all that pain and panic that it’s going to end any second come rushing back to me, saturating me with a cold, deep-set ache.

  Things are different now, I tell myself. We’re older. Wiser. We’ve lived apart.

  I hear footsteps in the hallway outside and the quiet opening and closing of the door to the next room.

  Lia is home.

  And suddenly my mind becomes inundated with thoughts of her on the other side of the wall. Only one room away. This awareness never used to be bother me before but for some reason now it seems to be all my brain can fixate on.

  What is she doing? What is she thinking? Is she feeling better?

  The toilet flushes in the bathroom that sits between Alex’s and Lia’s bedrooms, and a few seconds later the door opens. Alex stands there looking unbelievable in some barely-there black leather teddy that is cut so low, the fabric just manages to cover the nipples of her perfect C-cup breasts.

  She pauses, one hand propped against the door frame, the other hand seductively working its way down the length of her body, stopping only long enough for her fingertip to draw slow circles around strategically covered areas. She cocks her head to the side and flashes me her “I want to ravish you” look. Surprisingly the look hasn’t changed much in four years.

  My entire body tenses as she closes the bathroom door and struts toward the bed, kneeling down on the edge and then crawling the rest of the way to me. Her hips swing seductively from side to side like a cat looking for attention.

  She stops in front of me for a moment, and then her lips descend toward my stomach. Her hand pushes up my undershirt as her tongue flicks against the waistband of my boxer briefs.

  Under any circumstances, yes, I’d be as hard as a rock right now, letting her take me into her mouth, my breath becoming shallow and ragged—a guaranteed side effect of Alex’s skillful tongue.

  But all I can think about is that wall behind my head.

  That flimsy piece of plaster dividing this room from Lia’s.

  And it’s enough to make me wriggle out from under Alex’s lips and sit up. “Baby,” I say as gently as I can, knowing this will only lead to a fight. “Not tonight.”

  Alex looks like I just admitted to murdering her grandmother. “What?”

  I glance around helplessly. “We’re in your father’s house and—”

  She traces a polished fingernail across my hip bones, and my body automatically shivers. “That never stopped us before.”

  I reach down and clasp her hand in mine, bringing it to my lips and kissing it tenderly. “Yeah, but that was different. We were careless teenagers. Now we’re—”

  “Engaged,” she spits back. The fury has already settled into her features. “Engaged, Grayson,” she repeats. “I think that entitles us to do whatever we want in here.”

  “I know,” I admit, “I just...don’t feel comfortable.”

  “You don’t feel comfortable?!” she echoes, her voice rising.

  I cringe, knowing it’s no use to try to quiet her now. She’s already over the edge. Anything I say will only make it worse.

  “Or you don’t want to fuck me?”

  I shake my head. “That’s not it. You know that.”

  “Because I saw how hard you got in the car. So don’t try to tell me that you’re not feeling it.”

  Suddenly the memory of Lia’s pink bra peeking out under her tank top rips into my train of thought, and I can feel my erection returning. I quickly will it away and attempt to cup Alex’s face in my hands but she violently pushes me away.

  “Baby,” I try, “of course I’m feeling it. I’m always feeling it. I just...” I flounder, wondering if I should just have sex with her to stop this argument from escalating out of control. I could always cover her mouth with mine to keep her from making too much noise and pass it off as passion. But knowing Alex that’ll never fly. She’ll want to do it backward and forward and all over this room. Somewhere along the way she got it into her head that good sex has to look like a porno flick.

  “You just what?” she demands.

  “I just...” Without warning, Lia’s face flashes in and out of my mind and somehow, in that moment, I know I’m making the right decision. “...not tonight.”

  The walls of my house are thinner than they look. Throughout freshman year of high school, I would lie awake at night and listen to them fight. They thought they were being quiet. Whispering heated pleas (Grayson) and lobbing hushed insults (Alex). But I could always hear it.

  I used to silently pray that this fight would be the last one. That it would all end after tonight. I would dream up scenarios in my head where Grayson would storm out of Alex’s room, all flushed and angry and hopped up on testosterone. He would slam the back door on his way out and I would tiptoe out of my room, down the stairs, and find him on the beach behind our house, where he taught me how to play rugby that first summer.

  He would be standing in the sand, staring up at the moon over the ocean, letting the fury evaporate off of him into the thick winter air.

  Then I would slowly approach, careful not to startle him. He’d turn around, take one look at me and march determinedly in my direction, his rage melting into passion with every step. When he reached me, he’d grab my face fiercely between both hands, not even bothering to be gentle, and crush his lips against mine. Pull my body into his. Mold his fingertips into the back of my head, compelling me closer. He’d force my mouth wide open and push his tongue inside. Tasting me. Drowning me.

  I would imagine him peeling off my clothes right there on that beach, lying me down on the freezing cold sand and rushing into me, unable to control his desire any longer.

  And as he slid deeper inside, filling up all the empty space, his lips would brush against my ear and he would whisper, “You don’t know how long I’ve been wanting to be right here.”

  But then the soft moans of their reconciliation would float into my room, punching holes through my fantasy, ripping it to shreds. I’d pull my hand from between my legs, half-finished, half-satisfied, and drag the pillow over my face, pressing down with all my strength. Trying to block out the sounds of them ravishing each other only a few feet away.

  I would shove noise-canceling headphones over my ears and blast music until my eardrums hurt and threatened to bleed.

  But nothing worked. It was like I could feel them. Like their passion was a toxic gas that slipped through the cracks in the wall, wafted through the air vents, slithered under my door and into my lungs to poison me.

  Their insatiable thirst for each other was suffocating me slowly.

  I had no right to ever think of him as being mine. I knew that. The fact that I found him first, that I’m the reason he and Alex even met in the first place, shouldn’t have made a difference.

  But it did.

  The memory of that night somehow always managed to infiltrate my brain like a virus. Multiplying. Spreading venomous, destructive thoughts to the far corners of my mind.

  Reminding me that, for one sliver of a moment, Alex didn’t exist in Grayson’s world.

  What would my life be like if that night had ended differently?

  Would he be in this room right now? Making me cry out in pleasure instead of Alex?

  Thoughts like these never end well. They only lead to anguish and resentment. A sour taste in your mouth and a dull ache in your chest that never seems
to go away. That you somehow learn to live with.

  When Alex left for college it was a bittersweet relief.

  Sweet because I never had to worry about hearing the sound of their sweaty naked bodies banging against each other. But bitter because I still couldn’t stop picturing everything they were doing, only a hundred miles away. In a cramped NYU dorm room.

  And because no matter how many times I tried to forget it, the truth was always there. Lurking like a shadow.

  After leaving Union Bistro, I was dreading having to deal with the table I’d set for us at La Bella Vita. Especially given my somber state. But when I arrived back at the restaurant and saw that the four-top had already been cleared and cleaned, a sob of gratitude bubbled up in my throat. I swallowed it down, casting my gaze toward Blake who was wiping down the bar with a wet rag.

  I mouthed a silent “thank you” and he saluted me in reply.

  The restaurant may be on its last leg, but at least I have really amazing employees.

  Looking back, I probably should have guessed this would happen. That Alex would refuse to eat here. It’s not that she despises Italian food, as she claimed earlier. It’s that she despises this Italian food.

  Alex never supported my mother’s passion for Italy and all things Italian. She used to say it was just the silly obsession of a small-town girl who grew up in Connecticut and never left.

  And yes, my mother was a small-town Connecticut girl who had never even been to Italy. Who taught herself how to cook Italian food by watching too much Food Network. Who always had Italian language CDs in her car.

  Who gave her two daughters Italian names.

  Natalia and Alessandra.

  Of course, Alessandra had insisted we call her “Alex” from the time she was ten. And when she turned eighteen she had her name legally changed to Alexandra.

  It’s only a few minutes after I get home, undress, and collapse onto my bed that I hear the argument begin next door. My heart starts to slam against my ribcage. The horrid memories of my freshman year come colliding back to me. And I know I won’t be able to live through yet another Alex/Grayson tornado.