Page 166 of The Holy Grail
When there remained silence in the room, David asked, “What’s going on right now?” as he stopped at the island where the liquor was laid out. Malcom, Jules, and Evan all had matching deer-in-the-headlightsexpressions on their faces.
When it was clear Dolly was waiting for either Evan, Jules, or Malcom to speak, Evan stepped up. “All right. Look, we—” he paused to indicate him, Jules and Malcom, “—were going to do this at a better time, like not in the middle of a dinner party. But here we are, in the middle of a dinner party, and I’m not sure what the best way is to say this, but—”
“The three of us are together,” Jules announced in a rush.
“I was getting to that,” Evan said.
“You were taking too long,” she chastised, before turning her focus on Paige and David. “Anyway, obviously now isn’t the time to really get into this, so why don’t we talk about it later, after everyone leaves?”
“Talk about what later?” Everett asked from the kitchen doorway, Evelyn at his side.
There was another long silence, which again got broken by Evan. “About the three of us being together,” he answered, indicating him, Jules, and Malcom again.
“What?” Everett couldn’t have looked more shocked. “The three of you are together?”
“Yes.”
“Together,together?”
“Yes.”
Everett pointed a finger at Evan. “I thought you said you weren’t banging the accountant.”
Jules gave Everett a dirty look, who quickly defended his choice of words. “I was simply referring to that specific moment, when you were just the accountant.”
Evelyn put a hand on Everett’s arm, as if to silently tell him to quit talking. “Evan, is this true?”
Evan kept his focus on his brother. “I wasn’t banging her then, but now, obviously I am.” Then to his sister, he said, “Yes, Ev, it’s true.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“A couple of months.”
Paige adopted a shocked expression and locked eyes with Jules. “Are you crazy?”
The question was delivered without any of the honest disbelief and indignation in which it had originally been delivered the other day, instead coming out sounding stiff and completely not believable. It was also more than a little delayed, and Jules gave Paige aWhat the almighty fuck was that?look.
“Is who crazy?” Valerie asked, as she entered the kitchen with Nate following behind her, momentarily distracting David as she sat down on one of the bar stools in front of the island and slid her empty wine glass over to him. “Just a half-glass, please.”
“Jules,” he answered, pouring his mom the requested half-glass of Pinot Noir, then sliding it back to her. “And the answer is, and always will be, ‘Yes’.”
“Do you need help making those drinks, or what?” Nate asked as he joined David on the other side of the island. “I don’t remember you being this slow in college. I mean, after you turned twenty-one, of course,” he added, with a quick look at Valerie.
Valerie nodded with as much seriousness as she could muster. “Of course,” she said, turning her attention to the three in the corner, where Evan was giving Jules a hard look.
“When did you tell Cat Lady?” he demanded.
Looking slightly annoyed at the nickname for her daughter-in-law, Valerie murmured, “I wish he wouldn’t call her that.”
David gave her aYou must be jokingsmile. “You might as well wish for a million dollars, Mom, because that could actually happen.” Then to Nate, he said, “Why don’t you make yourself useful and grab a Moose Drool out of the fridge for me?”
With a shake of his head and a muttered, “Still a beer snob,” Nate went to do as requested.
Jules couldn’t help but notice David seemed to be having zero reaction to the ‘announcement’. Added to that, his singularly focused attention to making drinks seemed out of place, as if he was trying to look innocently clueless, which led her to believe he must have already been told. Because she’d seen him clueless many times, and this didn’t look anything like that.
“When did you tell David?” she counter-demanded of Evan.
His eyes narrowed. “What makes you think I told David?”
