The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (The Devils #2)(22)
I barely recognize myself, yet I also look like me again, like the girl I once knew, the one who had plans for herself before they all got co-opted. Davis is going to have a fit. Everyone will have a fit. I care, but not as much as I thought.
I think about the look on Josh’s face, the way he said I like it, and feel the oddest thing in my chest unfurling. I look in the mirror to discover I’m crying and smiling at the same time.
I’m getting ready to meet the Baileys to watch the sunset when Sandra calls. She is married to my stepbrother, Richard, and has a stick up her ass even larger and longer than his.
“I’m hosting a small dinner to celebrate Steven and Maria’s anniversary,” she tells me. She sounds fatigued, as if the words are being dragged from her unwillingly. “Can you be in New York the weekend of February 18th?”
I want to say no, because I don’t want to celebrate their fucking anniversary and because every visit with my family winds up hurting. But every visit also offers a chance at redemption. The childish part of me thinks Maybe this will be the time they’re okay with me, when I’m not the brunt of the joke, not the part of the family they look on with distaste. And it never works, which is probably why it always hurts in the end.
“I’ll have to check with my team, but I’ll try.”
“Great,” she says, though her tone implies the opposite. “I’d really appreciate it if you’d try to stay sober this time.”
Her words flip a switch inside me, one I’m always about to flip when dealing with my family. The fury is almost instantaneous. “And I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t act like a raging cunt,” I reply, “but we can’t always get our way.”
I enjoy her shocked silence for only half a second before my stomach sinks. I took it too far, the way I always do. My family keeps a bucket labeled terrible things Drew has done and I’ve just added to it. I can’t seem to stop.
“You know,” she says between her teeth, in that voice she uses when her rage is glittering and lethal, “I try so hard for your family while you don’t lift a finger and yet when I try to include you, this is how you behave. You push everyone away. Don’t be surprised if we just stop trying, Drew.”
She hangs up—to go complain to Richard, I’m sure—and I sit here with the phone, feeling ashamed and pissed off at once.
Not two seconds later, my stepbrother’s text arrives. They’re so unbelievably predictable.
Richard: Did you seriously just call my wife a cunt because she invited you to dinner?
Of course that’s how the conversation was relayed. I invited Drew to your parents’ dinner and she called me a raging cunt. Like that’s a normal order of events—polite invitation met with profanity and nothing occurring between the two.
Me: No, I asked if she could not act like one DURING the dinner. Very different.
I laugh at my response, knowing I’m only making things worse. But honestly, how much worse could they be?
Richard: If you ever use that word with my wife again, we’re done.
Me: Done with what? All those heartfelt talks we have? I can live without the humblebrag Christmas card your wife sends every year, believe me.
Richard: You know what? Don’t come to the party. You’d just ruin it anyway.
I wish that it would all just end here, but it won’t. Richard will complain to my stepfather, Steven, who will complain to my mother, who will call me to tell me how wrong I was. This has been the pattern since we moved into Steven’s upper east side apartment when I was nine. Richard was in college at that point but would come home on weekends, seething over nothing at all—because he thought I’d looked at his phone, or drunk his Gatorade, or swiped his charge cord. And my mother always took their side. Never once did she suggest that Richard was a spoiled, petty asshole who’d gotten a far better deal than I had. Never, not once, did she say I’m sorry I ruined our family. I’m sorry I did this to you. But why would she? She wasn’t sorry, and it was so much easier just to blame it all on me.
It still is. That’s how I know she’ll call, and I’m already bracing myself for how much it will hurt when she does.
17
DREW
January 26th
“Tell me something real, Drew,” Josh says quietly, staring straight ahead.
The Baileys leave tomorrow for Lanai, and since Six promised last night he’d have his passport back today, I guess I’ll be going with them. I’m not sure what happens to our morning runs and cappuccinos at sunrise once Six is around. Maybe it would have stopped anyway, but I doubt it. Josh and I have both adjusted to the time change and yet here we are, after all.
I turn to look at him, at that perfect, sharp jawline, that luscious lower lip. God, he could really have anyone he wanted.
“Something real…The sky is blue?” I reply. “This sunrise is okay? I’m not sure what you’re looking for from me here.”
“Tell me something no one else knows,” he says. “You could tell me how you got that scar on your nose, for instance.”
I nod. “There was this hurricane, and sharks were whipped up into the air, so suddenly it’s raining sharks and…”