“Ty?” His fiancée, Imogen, called to him from over the fruit platter, where she was piling grapes on her plate. “Remember not to drink too much tonight. It has a negative effect on your already compromised ability to get up in the morning, and we have that appointment with the florist for the wedding at nine.”
“I won’t.” Ty set his beer down on the counter and made a face.
“Man up, huh?” Evan told him with a grin.
“Screw you. I guess while Strickland here is bingeing in secret on chips, I’ll be chugging my beer in the bathroom.”
Evan saw that Kendall was coming back through the kitchen on her way outside, her face stormy as she grabbed a brownie and brought it to her lips. He had seen her at the computer with some of the guys, and clearly something had irritated her.
He wanted to touch her. He wanted to put his hand on the small of her back and lean in and kiss the top of her head. He wanted to hold her hand like a teenager and let everyone know that this amazing woman loved him.
It wasn’t planned or intentional, but he couldn’t stop himself. He blurted out, “Hey Kendall, want to be my partner in a game of cornhole?”
She stopped walking, startled, and turned towards them, brushing crumbs off her lips. “No.”
Then she went through the door to the back patio.
“Guess she told you,” Ty said.
Except that Evan had seen what Kendall was hiding by keeping her head down—there had been tears in her eyes.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. He had a text from Kendall.
Sorry, guys are giving me shit. Kinda wish you could give me a hug.
Evan was both touched that she had confided in him and wanted comfort from him, and seriously pissed that anyone was giving her a hard time. He sent her a reply.
There’s a hug with your name on it.
But she didn’t answer, and Evan found himself eating chip and dip and worrying.
This secret relationship crap was not a good time, and he didn’t like it one freaking bit.
EVAN was definitely feeling the cold sting of rejection all the way around.
Kendall had avoided him at the Jeffersons’ housewarming party completely despite her text, always leaving a room when he entered it and only staying an hour and a half before she just up and left.
He had wanted to point out to her that acting like he was contagious was just as noteworthy and obvious as a public make-out session would have been. But he hadn’t been able to tell her anything because she’d taken off like the hounds of hell were at her feet.
Now sitting on the patio at his brother Elec’s four days later, he was being ignored by his entire family except for his sister-in-law, Tamara.
The news of his firing Eve hadn’t gone over well.
So while he had still been invited to Easter brunch, no one was throwing any warm fuzzies his way.
Which was bad enough, but the burden of seeing Kendall in secret was also wearing on him. After a week of pretending they weren’t together, weren’t completely crazy about each other, he was wondering how in the hell he was supposed to pull this off long-term. It wasn’t natural to have to play it cool when you were in love. Not that he wanted to recite poetry to her or jump on a couch about it, but he wanted to not have to pretend that she was just a casual acquaintance.
Like here it was Easter and all he really wanted to do was spend the day with her, showing her off to his family. He wanted to claim her, around the people who mattered the most to him, and in public. Like a normal couple.
But Kendall hadn’t even answered the text he had sent her an hour earlier, and the other people who mattered the most to him, his family, were acting like he was the devil in a navy blazer anyway. Nothing felt easy or normal, and he was aggravated with the whole thing.
When his phone vibrated in his pocket, he eagerly pulled it out, only to have his hopes dashed when it saw it was Sara, Nikki’s friend he had slept with that one night on the guys’ camping trip. She had texted him a couple of times over the last few months and he had politely deflected her interest. It was kind of weird she was contacting him on Easter, but he didn’t even bother to read the message.
It wasn’t Kendall, that’s all he cared about.
Tugging his tie off, he wondered why the hell he had even bothered to dress up. His mother demanded it, but then she’d said all of two words to him all day.
Elec, wearing his own monkey suit, plopped down on the chaise chair next to him, holding his hand up against the sun. “Damn, it’s bright out here.”
Evan just grunted and took a sip of his beer. Elec’s stepkids were in the yard playing on their swing set, and Evan figured they had about three minutes before their mother realized and came to holler at them about ruining their Easter clothes.
Women were difficult. No two ways about it.
“You’re being a douche bag, you do know that, right?” his brother asked.
Evan glared at him. “Me? I’m the one getting treated like an infectious disease.”
“You fired Eve, man, that’s heavy-duty shit. And you didn’t even bother to talk to anyone about it.”
“It was overdue. She and I don’t work well together, and I don’t know on whose behalf she’s strategizing, but it sure in the hell wasn’t mine. She basically handed me over on a platter to Carl.”
“I can appreciate that she’s difficult to work with, trust me. But Eve’s intentions are always to sell you and me to the team owners and to the public.”
“Look, I don’t really want to talk about this.” The truth was, he knew Eve wanted to advance his career. But she was also calculating and underhanded. There was no reason to argue over it. “What’s done is done and I bet we’ll all be happier once everybody gets the hell over it.”
Evan could hear the women chatting in the kitchen behind him and he watched the kids romping around. He wanted this for himself someday, this domestic simplicity, a family of his own.
The pathetic thing was that he’d always wanted it with Kendall. When he’d lost her, he’d given up on that dream. Now he wanted it again, full force, with an ache that sat in him like a serious case of indigestion.
He knew he couldn’t have it. Not anytime soon, anyways. And that sucked.
“Uncle Evan, look at me!”
Elec’s stepdaughter Hunter, who Evan thought was seven or eight by now, was dangling upside down off of a trapeze swing on the play set, her pink poofy dress falling over her face, exposing her tights.
“Hey, that’s awesome,” Evan called back to her. “You’re like a little monkey. Without a head.”