The Fable of Us Read online

  The frustration that was more owed to fate vented out and latched on to Boone. “Oh, give it up, Boone. Your same old ‘The Abbotts Are the Root of All Evil in South Carolina’ speech is old. Find some fresh material.”

  My eyes squeezed shut when I realized what I’d said. Usually I was a seasoned pro at biting my tongue and remembering my manners, but with Boone, that well-honed skill had never worked. Years later and it still didn’t. I said what was on my mind before thinking it through—that was always Boone’s and my way.

  “You’re right. I am in need of fresh material, something that’s never in short supply when it comes to your family.” From his voice, I could imagine the look on his face—one side curled into a scowl, the other flat with apathy. “How about this for fresh? ‘Little Sister Abbott Weds Big Sister Abbott’s Old Sweetheart and All-Around Buttplug Rumored to Have Been Fucking Them Both Until Big Sister Found Out and Dreamed About Castrating ButtPlug, But Instead She Flew in To Wish Them Well in Their Forthcoming Nuptials.’” Boone cleared his throat. “How’s that for new material?”

  My stomach churned. In addition to my breathing problem, now I was having stomach issues. Leave it to Boone Cavanaugh to unleash the all-out body assault.

  Plugging my nose to get it down, I lifted the shot glass to my lips and drank it in one gulp. My body convulsed. The stuff tasted how I’d guess that shower cleaner had tasted too.

  “If you’re going for overdone and sensationalized, then I think you nailed it. Well done.” Sliding a bill out of my wallet, I nodded at the bartender when his eyes dropped to my empty glass. My stomach was still twisting from what Boone had just said, from what he’d just brought up. “I’m paying for my own drinks tonight, so why don’t you give Boone another of whatever he’s drinking for that five he just gave you. I don’t want anything from him either.”

  Down the counter, a harsh huff sounded.

  We were quiet for a moment as Tom poured us each our drinks, but as was typical, that quietness never lasted long when Boone and I were in the same room.

  “Ford McBride is pathetic. You should be thanking every deity real or imagined you aren’t the sister who wound up with him.”

  I tried to exhale in an effort to calm myself. I couldn’t do it. “Who says I’m not?”

  “You do. By showing up for their wedding and plastering on a fake smile for the photographer. I mean, come on, Clara, that was the guy you were planning on marrying, and now he’s marrying your little sister after going behind your back with her for God knows how long.” Boone’s voice rose, every word half a note louder. “If that’s giving the guy your middle finger, then damn, you need a reeducation on the topic.”

  “I think I know where to get one if I decide for myself that I need one,” I fired at him, shifting on the bar stool so I was leaning more away from him than toward him. We might have been ten feet apart, but another two inches couldn’t hurt. “And where do you get off trying to paint me as the villain with everything you’ve got stacked up in your corner?” I tucked my hair behind my ear and shook my head. “Me and everyone else the villain and you the hero. Got that twisted around there, Boone.”

  When Tom slid Boone’s drink in front of him, Boone shoved it back at him, which struck me as strange. I’d maybe seen Boone Cavanaugh turn down a drink . . . never. “Oh yeah. That’s right. I forgot about you knowing everything about everyone. Guess I shouldn’t have let that slip my mind—that being an Abbott family theme and all.”

  My body was so tense, my muscles felt close to snapping. I’d come into this place to find a way to relax, not to get more wound up. Massaging my temple with one hand, I took a sip of my shot with the other. My body convulsed more violently this time. This wasn’t a sip-and-enjoy type of establishment.

  “Is this really how we’re going to do this, Boone?” I asked. “Picking up right where we left off seven years ago? Is this really how much we’ve matured all these years later?”

  Boone’s head angled my way some. He was silent for a moment, watching me. “Where else would you expect us to pick up, Clara?”

  I leaned forward, curling my arms around my drink and staring at the void right in front of me. I couldn’t look at him and talk rationally. That had always been the case, no matter how good or bad our relationship. “Somewhere along the lines of civil.”

  Boone’s laugh rolled through the room. His malicious laugh, not the one I used to love. “What you did to me, how you treated me. . . you’re not the person to be going on about civility. Don’t you dare preach to me about being civil.”

  I felt the first flash of alcohol in my system, dulling my inhibitions and heightening them at the same time. “And you can just get down from that high and mighty stool down there and stop lecturing me about right and wrong. Nice try.” I lifted what was left in my glass and chugged it. This drink was better than the first two—a sure sign the alcohol was doing its job. “You want to bring up the past, I’m willing to bring up a few pieces of it too.”

  From the corner of my eye, I noticed him shift on his stool. He was obviously under the same impression that another couple of inches of distance couldn’t hurt.

  “Why don’t you finish your drink and leave?” he snapped, motioning at the screen door I’d come through. “This used to be the one place a person could go without worrying they’d run into an Abbott, and I’d like to keep it that way. I’ve put up with enough from all of you to have earned my sainthood a decade ago, so beat it.” He waved again at the door, waiting for me to run off like I wanted to.

  But I wasn’t going to run. Not yet. I’d cut and run from Boone enough times that I wasn’t going to add to that list. Besides, I wasn’t leaving until I was good and marginally intoxicated so I could endure the reunion with my family.

  When I slid my empty glass across the counter, Tom didn’t need the nod from me. He knew what I wanted.

  “Don’t worry, Boone. I’m not planning on ransacking the place and spoiling your retirement plan of ruining your liver.” That was, if it wasn’t already permanently damaged from the bottles I’d seen him empty as a teenager. “And I’m only in town for the week, so the likelihood of us running into each other again is next to none.”

  “Which would be too soon for me,” Boone announced to himself, though he didn’t mutter or mumble. It wasn’t his style to say something under his breath. If Boone had something to say, he said it for everyone to hear.

  The heat pressed in around me, making it impossible for me to think straight. “Okay, you hate me. I get it.” I grabbed the refilled shot glass out of Tom’s hands so quickly, half of it splashed across the counter. The particle board lapped it up like it was as desperate for the drink as I was. “You’ve made that exceedingly clear. But why don’t you stop acting like you were the only one who got hurt? You paid me back. And then some.”

  When I noticed my hands trembling, I tucked them into my lap. I didn’t want to seem weak around him. Not after all this time. Boone already knew all of my weak parts and pieces from childhood and adolescence. I didn’t want him having an education in my adult ones.

  “Are you about ready to go face your ex-sweetheart and little sis, who are about to exchange I dos in a few days? Because from what I recall of your little-to-no alcohol tolerance, by now you should be shit-faced enough to do what you Abbotts have made an art form of and Pretend Everything’s Just Fine and Dandy.”

  I stared at the screen door, wishing I’d never come through it. Part of me wished I’d never met the guy sitting six stools down from me. Right then, I was willing to sacrifice the good memories for the sake of having none of the bad ones. “Stop, Boone. Just stop. I can’t do this again.”

  “Just getting started, Clara.”

  Before I could snap something back, my phone vibrated in my shorts’ back pocket. The cut-offs and tee I’d slipped into in Santa Barbara had seemed like a good choice at the time, but now I was wishing I’d gone with a light, airy sundress. This heat was like nothing else, an
d it had been so long since I’d been in it during the summer, I guessed I’d purged those memories from my brain.

  I had a new text. From my little sister. The youngest of the three Abbott girls—Avalee. In it was a picture of her hand, her nails perfectly polished in some shade of petal pink, a diamond the size of Delaware flashing on her ring finger. It was so large, it covered up most of her middle finger and all of her pinkie. The words, Sterling asked! This was my answer! were all that accompanied the photo that knocked whatever air I was still clinging to from my lungs.

  Avalee was twenty-one. She’d graduated high school three summers ago. She was the youngest, the one who should have been the last to get married if chronology had anything to do with it, and here she was, engaged before I had one solid prospect in the queue. The middle sister, Charlotte, was getting married in six days, which left me, the oldest, as the last daughter to marry off. Or else fulfill the opening of old spinster.

  I could only imagine what my mom would say when I rolled up to the curb tonight. Starting and ending with, when are you going to get serious and settle down?

  I forced myself to stop thinking about what my mom would say, and the increased pressure, guilt, and scrutiny I’d be under from the moment I trudged into their presence until the moment I fled from it. I forced myself to type back, Congrats! So happy for you both! and hit send before I could change my mind.

  I should have been happy for my sisters, but being happy for one another was not an Abbott sister trait. One-upping was more the thing to do, and a big reason why I got out as soon as I could. Charlotte might have wound up with Ford, and he might have been a handsome, rich son of a bitch, but there was far more to him than that—far more of the undesirable qualities in a lifetime partner. And Avalee might have landed the biggest diamond I’d ever seen, even after living in coastal California for seven years, but what good was a big precious gem if your husband worked all day and spent most of his nights with his mistress(es) as Sterling Beauregard Senior was infamous for?

  After making sure the message had gone through, I flipped my phone over on the counter, willing it to stay silent for the rest of the night. I could have turned it off, but that seemed too easy.

  Boone twisted on his stool and angled himself in my direction. “How much longer are you planning on staying tonight? Because if you’re not leaving in the next five minutes, I am. I came here to forget my problems for a few hours, not resurrect a whole shitload of them.”

  My phone buzzed again. Repeatedly. I kept it flipped over and tried to ignore it. When I noticed the full shot glass in front of me and couldn’t remember ordering it or how long it had been sitting there, I knew better than to drink it.

  I knew better—but I didn’t do better.

  The chemical cleaner smell and taste had disappeared. Yet another sign that I’d exceeded my goal of getting tipsy. That might have been the reason my mouth opened and out came words I hadn’t planned on saying. “Listen, I’m sorry, Boone.” I twisted on my stool so I was facing him. “I’m sorry for how things went down between us. I never wanted to hurt you . . . but that didn’t change that I did.” I bit my lip when certain memories came flickering back to life. “And I’m sorry.”

  He was quiet, his expression flat and his body still. Around us, the bar echoed with noises and voices, the air filled with the scent of alcohol and body odor. This should have been the last place in the city limits I’d go to. The person sitting down from me should have been the last I’d find myself with.

  I didn’t know what any of this foretold about the next week, if anything at all, but I found myself wishing I could plan on more of the unexpected. What I expected was a whole lot of what I’d lived, breathed, and drowned in for eighteen years.

  “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you apologize.”

  Boone’s voice cleared my head some, bringing me back to the here and now instead of the there and then. No matter where I was and who I was with, I far preferred the here and now.

  “Well, feel free to do the same. I’ve never exactly heard a string of apologies from your lips either.” I twirled my hand in a proceed kind of motion, and he lifted a brow in disbelief.

  “What exactly do you want me to apologize for?”

  The blood pulsing through my veins heated. It was already at an ungodly temperature—I did not need to start heating myself from the inside out as well. Another degree or two up, and I’d be passing out.

  When Boone’s brow stayed elevated, implying he was innocent on all counts, I reached for the refilled shot. Screw it. “Nothing, Boone. Absolutely nothing.”

  After that, I twisted back around and finished my shot in one drink. When the bartender meandered over, bottle at the ready, I covered the glass with my hand and shook my head. I was already showing up alone, late, and dressed in what my mother deemed “scrubs intended for the homeless, not for an Abbott daughter.” If I showed up drunk too, heads would roll. Starting with mine.

  After a minute of silence, my phone started going off like a fireworks display on the Fourth of July. It was buzzing so much, so non-stop, it rocked across the counter. All I could do was stare at it and clasp my hands in my lap. I couldn’t deal with them right now. I’d be forced to deal with them soon, but they weren’t going to ruin my last half hour to myself.

  “Your phone’s about to blow up,” Boone piped up, still angled my direction.

  “Well aware of that. Thank you.” I glared at the phone, still jumping around like it was alive.

  “If you wanted to avoid your family, why the hell did you fly down here for the wedding?”

  I went back to rubbing at my temples. I couldn’t put this off for much longer. Rip off the bandage and suck it up. It was only a week. Seven days. I’d endured eighteen years; what was one week?

  “What do you know about any of it?” I said when my phone almost vibrated off the edge of the counter, forcing me to grab it before it careened to the floor . . . also made of particle board.

  “I know more about you and your family than any of you care to acknowledge, that’s what I ‘know about it,’” he replied, his voice calm and even. He’d always been better about controlling his emotions . . . or masking them.

  I hadn’t meant to look at my phone, but after catching it screen-side-up, I’d already read a few texts before I realized I’d done it.

  Avalee just told me she told you! Isn’t it fabulous? Mom’s first message read.

  Followed by Charlotte’s, Can’t wait to meet your Plus One. Where are you two? It’s late.

  Followed by another from Avalee. You’re next. I know it.

  Followed by three more from my mom. Who is this mystery man you’re bringing with you? Do we know him?

  Followed by, Is it serious? As in your father and I should keep the caterer on retainer serious?

  Followed by, Everyone’s waiting for you and your date. Please don’t keep us waiting much longer.

  Followed by another half dozen messages I refused to continue scanning.

  I powered off my phone, slid it into my back pocket, and let my head fall into my hands. What a fucking mess. I hadn’t even shown my face at home yet and everything was in crisis mode. I knew better than to expect anything to get better once I did see my family. I knew better than to hope they’d be understanding and keep their comments and opinions about my lack of a plus one to themselves. I knew better than to expect the best when the opposite had been the theme of my formative years.

  My head was swimming both from the alcohol and my family pressing down on me like a hot iron, and that might have been what was responsible for the plan formulating in my head being verbalized.

  “Boone?” I said, twisting my neck to look at him. He hadn’t stopped looking at me. “What are you doing this week?”

  He reached for his replenished drink and lifted it in my direction. “A whole lot of this.”

  I swallowed when he did, but I was fighting the voice in my head that warned me this was a bad id
ea—quite possibly my worst idea to date. “How would you feel about earning some extra money?”

  Boone settled his glass on the counter, keeping it clutched in his hands. “Who says I haven’t already earned so much of it I couldn’t possibly be interested in earning any more?”

  Now it was my turn to lift an eyebrow in his direction. While the Abbotts were known for the wealth spilling from their ears, the Cavanaughs had been known for the past few generations for the opposite.

  From his worn brown boots that probably should have been tossed out last summer, to the plaid button-down shirt I had a distant memory of him wearing back in high school, I had my answer. Plus, there was the whole issue of . . . “That last five dollars in your wallet that is now in Tom’s pocket might say something about you not having so many more of those you wouldn’t be interested in making more of them.”

  Finally his face gave way to emotion. Just a flash and only for a moment, but his eyes narrowed at the same time his forehead creased, like he was almost insulted. “You Abbotts think you can buy the world and anyone in it. I’ve known that about your family for years, Clara, but I guess I didn’t realize that gene had been passed down to you.”

  I refused to back down, not after bringing it up. Besides, Boone’s impressions of me couldn’t get much lower.

  “Ten thousand dollars,” I said and shut up after that.

  Boone was clearly as shocked by the number as I’d guessed he’d be. Ten grand was a lot of money to anyone anywhere. Especially to earn in one week. Down here though, working the kinds of jobs Boone had worked back in high school and probably still did, that was a third of a year’s salary.

  He looked away for a moment, glaring at the wall across from us, before his gaze cut back to me. His shoulders were tense, his neck so rigid that his veins and muscles were showing. Part of me knew he felt insulted that I was offering him money in exchange for a favor—part of me felt ashamed for the same—but Boone’s and my relationship had been severed years ago. This was nothing more than a business transaction between a couple of acquaintances.