“What about work?” he asked.
“We’re all still remote. I think we always will be. I can do my job in my pajamas if I want. If I have a meeting, I’ll just pull a sweater on or something, and turn on Zoom.”
I took another sip of my wine cooler, draining the bottle. “What about you, Nathan? Last I heard, according to Mom, you were doing well.”
“I’m good. Yeah,” he said. “The company takes care of me, and my bonus this year was… sweet. Still, I’ll admit that I got lucky. Trust me, Gigi, you could do my job and run rings around me at the same time.”
“I doubt that.”
Nathan tilted his head, looking at me in a way that was unfamiliar. And a little unnerving. But I also liked the way it left my body humming.
“He really fucked you over, didn’t he?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he gaslit the fuck out of you,” he said, frustrated. “The soon to be ex. Got you feeling like you don’t even deserve what you’ve got. I know guys like him. I can’t stand them. And this one deserves an ass whipping.”
An ass whipping. I wanted to laugh out loud at the thought. But Nathan had a point. Peter had done a number on me, and since he’d left, I’d wondered on more than one occasion how much of what he’d said was true, and how much was manipulation.
But it didn’t really matter, because it didn’t make me feel any better. I still wanted to shrink. Disappear. Forget. And be forgotten.
“I guess you could say that he was full of shit to an extent. But he wasn’t completely wrong. Seriously, I don’t belong here at this reunion.”
“What? Why the hell not?”
I drained the rest of my drink, noticing that Nathan had done the same with his. He popped the tops on two others, handing me a refill without even asking, before upending and downing his own second beverage.
I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed, remembering how I’d been so entranced by that at the dinner table when we were teens.
“I don’t know. I’m just a fuck-up, really. All the people here are happy and successful. On the other hand, my life is in shambles.”
“Hey, Gigi, I don’t want to interrupt you, but… my shirt is damp from rowing,” he said. “Mind if I take it off, hang it up on a tree or something?”
Was he fucking kidding?
“Yeah. Go for it,” I said, trying not to sound too excited.
He stood and pulled his damp T-shirt over his head, his gorgeous upper body glistening in the spotty sunlight.
And inside me, a long neglected, unused part of me said that Nathan was… well, he was every fantasy a woman could have.
I mean, not me. Of course not. He was my freaking stepbrother. But a girl could always dream.
Right?
* * *