Page 75 of The Spider & the Storm

I squeezed my eyes shut at the sound of my brother’s loud, obnoxious voice, followed by the door closing behind him, and shook my head as Jersey took a step back.

“Sorry,” I grumbled for some reason.

“No, it’s fine,” she said, laughing gently. Her cheeks were flushed, her lipstick smudged. “I’ll take a rain check. Show me your room later.”

“Oh shit,” I said, grinning like an excited teenager as she checked the mirror once again to fix her makeup. “I’ve never had sex in my room before.”

She turned to me with mischief and anticipation, taking my hand. “Oh, no? I thought you had a girlfriend before.”

“Yeah, but we never did that in my room. Usually the living room or basement when my brother wasn’t home,” I said, remembering Amanda for the briefest moment and pushing her away just as quickly. “Luke would’ve tormented me back then.”

We climbed the steps to the door as she laughed, and I found myself chuckling along with her.

“Oh, but he won’t torment you now?”

“Oh, he will,” I said along the waves of laughter. “But I’ll mess with him right back. The guy sounds like an ape when he’s getting laid. It’s about time I told him.”

I took a page from Luke’s book and winked at her as I pushed the door open. She was grinning and holding my gaze with a desire I couldn’t believe would be directed at me, and yet there it was. It never failed to astound me. Someone so beautiful, so confident, so put together in ways I could only dream to be … she could’ve chosen anyone. Yet she had chosenme, and I knew I’d never stop thanking the fates at hand for making that happen.

But then we stepped into the living room. Her sparkling eyes left mine to survey the room, only to land on something—or someone maybe—and that smile dropped immediately, and the twinkle in her eyes dulled to nothingness.

“What?” I asked, turning to follow her gaze, only to find Luke standing there with his hands stuffed into his pockets.

“Hey,” he said as he walked toward us, pulling one hand out to extend toward Jersey.

I didn’t know what was happening. Didn’t know why she was so instantly taken aback by the sight of my brother. But I pretended not to notice as I placed a hand on her back.

“Jersey, this is my brother, Luke. Luke, Jersey.”

“Nice to meet you, Jersey,” he said.

She was slow to accept his hand, but when she did, they shook. “Hi, Luke. Nice to meet you too.”

He pulled away, tucking the hand back into his pocket, and turned to me. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

Then, he walked away.

No goading.

No jabs about making out in the driveway.

He just … walked away, leaving me there to wonder if I should thank him for being normal for once or demand to know what the hell was wrong with him … or was it something else? Something I didn't want to acknowledge, something I knew would break my heart and obliterate my soul. And if that were the case …

Maybe I was better off not knowing at all.

***

Luke was a lot of things, but a good actor had never been one of them.

I'd realized that when we were kids and he shattered the glass panel in Mom's clock. The baseball had ricocheted off the pendulum and rolled beneath the dining room table, causing it to stutter, but it kept on ticking as shards of glass sprinkled all over the floor. Luke had stammered in the face of our enraged mother, trying weakly to blame something else, including a ghost that never existed within our walls.

His skills in bullshitting hadn’t improved since. But he probably wished they had though, as he now tried to act like nothing was going on while going out of his way to not look in Jersey’s direction.

And honestly, it wasn’t as if she was any better. I could count the number of words she’d spoken on two hands since we’d sat down to eat.

Melanie and I had so far carried the entire conversation with mundane, robotic small talk neither of us gave a single fuck about. Things like, “What’s the weather going to be like tomorrow?” and, “Did you see that the McDonald’s on thehighway got a new sign?” and, “How’re things?” and, “Seen any good movies lately?”

We spoke like strangers. Like people who hadn’t seen each other every day for nearly a decade. It was weird and uncomfortable. But I guessed there wasn’t much else to be said when our focus was more on our significant others and their sudden inability to act like the people we knew them to be.

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