He ignores my question.
I put down the dinner roll and reach down, pressing my breasts together to form the Grand Canyon.
“Why Andrew, well fiddle-dee-dee,” I say in my best Scarlett O'Hara imitation. “How nice of you to drop by.”
Hamish is watching us from across the table and nudges Amy, pointing. “Is this a party trick in the U.S.? Do women actually make their breasts talk?”
She gives him a hard look. “No. Most of us just double knot a cherry stem with our tongues.”
Hamish sprays a fine mist of what I now realize is Glenfiddich scotch whisky all over his arm.
“I need to spend more time with my American cousins,” he mutters, eyeing Amy with renewed interest as she reaches for the Maraschino cherry in her amaretto sour.
And promptly bites down, hard, on the fruit’s flesh, tearing it in half with her teeth.
Hamish flinches.
“Or not,” he declares.
“Why are you making your boobs sound like one of the women in Duck Dynasty?” Andrew says with a sad little look. “I’ve lost respect for them.”
“You apologize to my boobs,” I demand. Maybe a little too loudly, because suddenly everyone is looking at me.
Shannon’s face ripples with horror. Her eyes skip to my wine. She makes a throat-cutting gesture with her finger.
“She wants you to stop drinking,” Andrew hisses in my ear.
“Or cut off your balls,” I say pleasantly. “It’s hard to tell which one would make the world a better place.” I reach for my butter knife and Andrew shifts away from me, turning to try to speak with no one, because he’s at the end of the table.
I overhear Terry saying something about Farmington Country Club to Carol.
“Last time I was there was for my mother’s funeral.”
She flinches and puts her hand on his wrist. “I’m so sorry. Is the location going to be hard for your brothers and your dad? Because I can talk to my mother and—”
Terry’s deep laugh makes his eyebrows go up, and he sits back in his chair, stretching out, like he and Carol are old friends.
“We’re all fine. Farmington isn’t ruined for us. And you’re about as likely to change your mother’s mind as you are to find my dad dating someone who was born before Reagan was president.”
Declan stands abruptly, Carol interrupting her own laughter as his movement catches her eye.
“Well,” says Declan, in a voice I can’t read. Either he’s overcome with emotion, barely holding himself back from strangling Marie, or pissed as hell.
Sometimes you just can’t tell the difference with him.
Most of the time you can’t tell the difference with him.
“I found the perfect woman for me,” he chokes out as the toast ends and we all smile.
Overcome. I see. I’ll learn to read him eventually.
He and Shannon share a sweet kiss. Marie looks like she’s a split second away from chiming her wine glass with a spoon again. I catch her attention and give her a wide-eyed stare that I hope looks earnest like Thumper the rabbit in Bambi, but also deathly, like one of those scary prison women from Orange is the New Black.
It works.
My hairstylist shops are back, and I’ve returned to my onyx hair color. I need to rock this black hair look more. When you look like a dominatrix and walk like an Ice Queen Warrior, people defer to you.
Especially Jason, which is kind of disturbing.
“And Shannon looks great naked,” Andrew adds with a smile and a voice that carries.
All movement, all breathing, all linear thought halts. Splat. Like dropping a watermelon from James McCormick’s office window.
All the air leaves the room like a (c’mon, you knew this was coming) New England Patriots football.
Shannon’s face contorts like something out of a circus show. Declan looks like he’s about to leap across the table and give Andrew a vasectomy with a shrimp skewer.
This is my best friend. My bestie. The woman I can call at 5:47 a.m. on my way to a 7 a.m. appointment and beg to bring me tampons after my period makes an inelegant appearance mid-night. The woman who knows my secret passion for marshmallow treats made with Cheetos instead of Rice Krispies. The friend who I could, seriously, call to help me move a body and who would dance on the grave if the person was bad enough.
She may help me move Andrew McCormick’s body at this rate. And not in some male fantasy FMF kind of way.
No one makes a sound. All eyes are on Andrew, who is obliviously chowing through his salad. He stabs a pecan and eats it, then reaches for his glass of white wine. My white wine, in fact.
I imagine Andrew’s ankle is his crotch.
And then I jab it, hard, with my high heel.
He yelps, wine spilling down his wrist.
You know that one note in The Star Spangled Banner? The one no one can ever quite nail when they sing it before a Red Sox or Patriots game?
Yeah. He should change careers, because that sound is pitch perfect.
“You’ve seen Shannon naked?” James asks Andrew, who is reaching under the table to rub his ankle and muttering curses in three different languages. Ah, the rich. They even curse better.
“Who hasn’t?” Marie says in a too-chipper voice.
Terry’s eyebrows hit a CNN satellite orbiting in space. He’s been quiet so far, the only McCormick brother at the table who seems to avoid power or attention. I like him the most. He is my new best friend.
Marie continues, very obviously counting heads at the table. Me. Andrew. Declan. Marie. Jason. Amy. Terry. Carol. Hamish. James. Shannon. Declan. “By my count,” she adds, “about seventy-five percent of the room has.”