The Real Deal

“Oh, let me elaborate: the one where he assigns me feats and challenges that he thinks I can’t complete to break me down and send me home with my tail between my legs.”

She laughs at the same time she rolls her eyes. “More ‘sleep on the lawn in a tent’ stuff?”

“Yep,” I say, then explain my new assignments.

“You don’t have to drag up two dozen chairs, Theo.”

“Oh, but I do, April. I do, and I will.”

“You do have great guns.” She squeezes my right biceps. “Is this why you’re so good at arm wrestling?”

I part my lips to speak, and I’m tempted to spin a tale, to tell her something false, as I did last night. But for some reason, I decide to opt for honesty. To test it out. I can say things to her that I can’t say to anyone else since we aren’t real. “I used to arm wrestle for money on the Jersey beaches when I was a teenager,” I say, my eyes locked on hers as I answer. “My brother was like a coach. He’d place bets on me, too. He’d get the college guys to take me on, but I almost always won. I was fast, determined, and underestimated. We won a lot.”

The words tumble out in an unformed pileup, and I check her reaction. The slow spread of her smile and the sparkle in her big green eyes tell me she’s not judging me. “You were quite resourceful.”

“Yeah, we were.”

That’s the best way to describe my brother and me. Resourceful. The arm wrestling hustle was only the beginning. The next three years we grew smarter, slicker, and more determined.

Our bank account swelled.

College wasn’t free, and all the money that would have covered it was snatched away, thanks to my father’s last decision.

We did what we had to do.





Chapter Fifteen

April

“Left. Hand. Red.”

Theo’s hand reaches toward my boob.

Sadly, I can’t enjoy the grazing of his knuckles against me, since I’m in a downward-facing dog as his left hand slides onto the red dot in the lawn under my breast. He brushes his fingers against me as he plants his hand on the grass. He shoots me a look that says he knows he’s being a little risqué.

“You devil,” I whisper.

His eyebrows waggle.

“You’re trying to cop a feel amongst kids, you Lawn Twister perv,” I whisper, loving the easy banter and teasing we’ve slid into so comfortably.

He laughs, and that knocks him off-balance, a hand skittering off the red spot. “Thanks. Now I’m out.”

“Serves you right,” I tease as he stands and walks off to the sidelines, and I smile inside. I’m a bit amazed that we play pretend boyfriend–girlfriend so well.

The game of Twister zooms on for another fifteen minutes as my mother spins and calls out the combos while we turn and twist across the yard in a mélange of bizarre and laugh-inducing poses in the late afternoon sun.

Jeanie plops down on the grass when she has to stretch too far. Katie falls next when she’s twisted up in Emma. One of Bob’s big sons goes kersplat as he moves his big left foot up two dots. A handful of contestants remains.

It’s my turn again.

Five years of three-times-a-week yoga come in handy when my mom shouts, “Left. Foot. Green!” and I have to slide into reverse tabletop to reach the green dot … right over there.

Foot goes down, and I’m a table now, my belly is the top.

Take that, all the limber little eleven-and twelve-year-old girls who are pretzeled across this huge patch of lawn spray-painted by yours truly with yellow, red, blue, and green dots. I stare upside down at my seventeen-year-old niece, Libby, who was ousted a few minutes ago. She’s on the sidelines. “I’m a table. Come sit on me,” I say.

She decides to take me up on my offer. “You’re a good table, Aunt April,” the towhead says, parking her butt on my stomach.

I crack up, but I remain strong. She hops off me.

Dean’s still in, and when my mom barks his combo, he parks his hand underneath my rear and smacks a red circle. “Under the butt counts!”

My arm muscles strain as I hold the pose, but lugging that bag of paintbrushes and paint has paid off. Dean is half under me. I glance at Theo, on the sidelines, trying to get his attention so he can see what I’m pulling off. I kind of want him to be impressed, as I was when he told me about his arm wrestling prowess.

When I find him, his arms are crossed and his brown eyes are hard. He’s not impressed with my skill at all. He’s staring at me like he’s pissed. What the hell? Then I realize he’s not staring at me. He’s staring at Dean’s hand, so damn close to my butt.

He’s staring at it like he wants to laser it off with his eyes.

Like he can ward it away from me in the strength of his white-hot glare.

Holy moly.

He’s jealous of Dean.

I barely know what to make of his jealously except—I kind of love it. My heart springs into a silly jig. As though I’ve just been injected with a new dose of flirty confidence. It’s a lovely drug. It spreads, floods into my veins, and lifts me up. A natural high.

It’s the high of possibility—the possibility that maybe, just maybe, there’s something more brewing.

My arms wobble.

What the hell? I don’t want anything more, so why do I want him to feel jealousy? Or to feel anything at all? But when I steal a glance at Theo, something stirs inside me. Something makes my belly flip when those dark brown eyes of his stare intensely at me.

I have a game to win, though, and ten minutes later, I do just that, taking the Lawn Twister prize.

My father ambles over, clasping me in a huge hug. “I love you always, but I love you extra right now,” he says as he embraces me.

“Thanks, Dad. I love you always, but I love you extra when you sneak chocolate chip cookies into my room instead of leaving mints on the pillow.”

“That sounds more than reasonable. Want to help with the dinner prep?” he asks, nodding toward the kitchen.

My father’s the cook of the family. My mom is, admittedly, a whiz at making toast. She can brown bread of all kinds like a world-class toaster operator. Her boiled water is top notch, too. Beyond that, she’s rubbish in the kitchen. She’s not the innkeeper who cooks—she hired a chef to handle the kitchen, and since the chef is off for the reunion weekend, my dad is on kitchen detail.

Which will mean grill detail.

I glance across the grass at Theo, and wave to him as he chats with Tess’s husband. Cory’s mouth is turned up in a smile, and his arms flap as he talks. Funny, I haven’t seen Cory so animated in a long time. With two kids under the age of two, he’s mostly been tending to babies and baked goods in a half-awake stupor for the last few years. As for Theo, his eyes are softer now, and the jealousy seems to have vanished. My heart sinks the tiniest bit. I should be glad he’s no long perturbed. But the traitorous heart flapping around in my chest found his jealousy wildly appealing.

Hearts are such dumb organs. That’s why I’m glad whatever I’m feeling won’t matter in the end—this is all pretend, and it’s precisely what I ordered on GigsForHire.

My father drapes an arm around me. “What’s his deal?”

I startle, and give him a look. “Cory?” I ask with a tilt of the head. Then, like a cartoon character slammed in the belly with a ten-ton bag of bricks—that’s even been labeled TEN TONS O’ BRICKS—I realize who he means.

“Theo. Your new beau,” my father corrects, annoyance coming through loud and clear.

“What do you mean, ‘what’s his deal’?”

“Do you really like him?”

“Yes. I do.” My answer is emphatic.

He harrumphs, and I decide to dive into the fray. We’re living in close quarters for the next few days, so I’d rather know what I’m up against.

“I think the more important question is why don’t you like him?”

My father grumbles something about “boys.”

“Because he’s a boy?” I ask, laughing.

He taps his nose. “Bingo.”

I laugh again. “You’re ridiculous, Dad.”

“But I know how boys are.”

“Is that why were you so difficult last night when we arrived?”

“Difficult?” He points at himself, his brow furrowed. “How was I difficult?”

“Dad,” I sigh as I gesture to the chairs on the deck, “about the whole couch thing, and now having him do all the manual labor.”