Page 59 of The Usual Family Mayhem

Now Celia looked as confused as I felt. “But you call your boss Big Ego Man.”

“I do but that’s not the name his parents gave him. It’s Brock. Same guy.”

“You’re dating your boss?” Gram whispered the words like some people did when they talked about cancer or something equally horrible.

“Oh, Kasey.” Celia sounded disappointed. “What have we always told you about men in power?”

Time to kill and bury this conversation. I could not endure another round of this. “We aren’t dating. I promise. I will never be that desperate.”

“Your conversation with him looked a bit heated. We were about to come out and hit him with a plate,” Gram said.

Celia nodded as she dropped my hand. “Mags originally suggested using the vacuum cleaner, but we agreed a smaller weapon would be less awkward.”

It was nice to know they had a boundary. “He’s in town because of golf. He was with friends and decided to swing by.”

“Good gracious, no.” Gram shook her head. Wagged her finger. Even stomped a foot. Her fullabsolutely notrepertoire. “I do not appreciate anyone justswinging by. Honestly, what is wrong with this younger generation?”

Gram opposed any and all visits without an invitation. Courtesy demanded you get permission before you showed up at a person’s house. I’d always believed this was more of a Gram rule than a general society rule, but she really got pissed when people violated it.

She continued to vent. “When did schools stop teaching manners?”

I didn’t have the energy for an etiquette discussion. “Probably in the eighteen hundreds.”

“And that strut of his.” Gram’s finger kept wagging. “It was off-putting.”

“The point is she isn’t cheating on Jackson.” Celia smiled at Gram. “I knew she wouldn’t.”

This might be the most confusing family conversation in the history of family conversations.

“I’m not sure what you think you saw, but Jackson and I aren’t together.” A sharp pain stabbed my chest. I pretended it was from heartburn and unrelated to how hard it was to say that sentence out loud.

Celia’s smile fell. “But for years—”

“Celia, no.”

After all the back-and-forth they stopped talking. “Now you two clam up?”

“If you’re not...” Celia visibly swallowed. “Why kiss?”

“It just happened. We didn’t plan it.” I couldn’t give a better answer because I still didn’t know what the kiss meant or howit fit into the rest of my life. If I could get ten minutes of peace I might be able to figure it out.

Celia’s questioning stare hadn’t eased. “And the dinners?”

“I like to eat.”

“I thought Jackson would...” Celia stopped talking when Gram touched her arm. “Never mind.”

They thought they could just throw those words out there and not follow up. Nope. We babbled about Brock for fifteen minutes, which was fourteen more than necessary. This topic—Jackson—needed more attention.

“It’s your life, dear. You’ll figure it out.” If Celia thought she’d sold that as an offhand remark she was dead wrong.

“Let me get you a cupcake.” Gram said something to Celia without using words and they scampered off toward the kitchen.

Weirdly enough, I didn’t want a cupcake.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Abigail was at the house.” Jackson repeated my point for the third time. “Standing in Mags’s kitchen?”

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