“I don’t think you drove all this way to give me the short story.”
He had a point.
“I don’t think I want to give either, if we’re being honest. Hunter thought you might be someone subjective for me to spill my guts to, but I really don’t want to talk about it at all.” I paused, rinsed my mouth out with some beer. “But I don’t want to think about it either and if I’m alone?—”
“You’ll think about it,” Andrew finished for me.
I nodded.
Andrew tipped up his beer and poured all the contents straight down his throat like a frat boy.
“Let’s go do something then,” he said, jerking his chin toward me. “Finish your beer.”
Pounding half a Corona wasn’t going to kill me, so I finished the rest of my drink and passed him the empty bottle and he tossed them both into the recycle.
“What size are you?” he asked when I stood.
I smoothed my hands over my stomach. “Why?”
“Let’s go to the beach.”
“What?”
“The beach.”
Andrew gestured vaguely toward the back of the house. “It’s right there and you’re right here, and it’s something to do that isn’t sit here and pretend everything in your life is okay.”
Everything in my lifewasokay.
The problem was the okayness was too new of a revelation for me to trust.
“I’m a thirty-four.”
Andrew plucked at his hip and nodded agreeably. “Perfect, come on.”
I was a captive audience as I followed him down a hallway toward what I assumed were the bedrooms. His place was small but didn’t feel cramped, and there were three doors in the hall, two of them open and one closed.. His bedroom, a bathroom, and what I assumed would be a guest room. It could have been an office, an art supply room, a computer room. I realized, listening to Andrew rifle around in drawers, I didn’t know a single thing about him beyond the fact we shared the same father and his mother was infinitely more deserving of love than mine had been.
He returned and tossed a pair of neon swim trunks in my direction, mouth pulling up into an amused grin.
“Bathroom’s here,” he said, thumbing toward the door to my left.
“What’s this one?” I asked, mimicking the gesture to the closed door on my right.
“Art room.”
I raised a brow.
“I paint,” he said simply.
I wasn’t sure what to make of that, and before I could formulate a normal response, Andrew disappeared back into his bedroom, closing the door behind him. Painting seemed like a perfectly normal hobby, just not one I would have associated with the Covington bloodline. Though Smith and Marshall’sartistic capabilities were not to be undersold, maybe it made more sense. Maybe Hunter and I, with the law and with finance, were the outliers here. Frowning at the possibility, I went into the bathroom and changed into the obscenely bright swim trunks, then sent a mirror selfie to Hunter.
I hope you’re happy. This was a horrible idea.
Hunter
Where ARE you???
San Diego