Page 83 of Switch
I run a hand through my hair, itchy and restless to get this over with.“It’s better to come clean now.Between PJ and the job, I’m choosing him.”
“Fallon.”
“It’s my decision.I know you don’t trust him; I know you think he’s too young.You didn’t like Marina because you thought she was too controlling.Except I told you over and over that the control was something I consented to.So I don’t expect you to understand my relationship with PJ, either.Lucky for you, you’re not the one dating him.”
Across the way there’s an opening.Dean Sutton slaps one of his friends on the shoulder and gets up, ambling toward the open bar for another drink.
This is a good chance to grab him.Wet shirt be damned.Before I can second, third, and fourth guess myself, I shove away from the tall cocktail table I’d been standing next to and make my way toward the opposite corner of the ballroom.
“Fallon, wait.”Barely ten feet and Wes catches me by the arm.“Don’t do it, okay?Don’t.”
Likely due to our age difference, my brother and I didn’t squabble the way I’ve heard some siblings do.We didn’t fight, or wrestle.Never punched each other or shoved one another’s faces in the dirt.I’m sorely tempted right now.
“Wes.Stop.Were you not listening to everything I just said, or were you still distracted by that dead fly in your drink?”
“I know.I know.But…” He fidgets for a moment, like a child who can’t think of what to say when caught in a lie.
“Okay, you know what?Tell me later.”Once again I turn to walk away.
“He’s a whore,” Wes blurts.Loudly.Too loudly.“Did you know that?He bones other guys for money.”
I knew, because PJ told me.How did Wes know?The question is a punch to the gut.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly.“Don’t call him that.I know he’s an escort.He told me.He takes lonely people to weddings and charity events and sometimes, in the case of a guy who says he has trouble dating because of his busy career, out for coffee and bagels one morning a week.He doesn’t have sex with any of them.”
“Y-you actually believe that?”my brother sputters.
“Yes, Wes.I believe him.What’s the alternative, spending the rest of my life not trusting anybody?If I think he’s cheating on me, then I’ll talk to him about that.Him, who I’m in a relationship with, not my interfering older brother who’s manufacturing reasons to break us up.”
“I’m not manufacturing shit, Fallon.He’s lying.”Wes’s chest puffs with the force of a deep inhale.“I know he’s lying because he got paid to have sex with you.”
My brother’s face is red.His chest is heaving.I have only a split second of gloating over the fact that my brother blurted out something he didn’t intend to say before the impact ofwhathe said slaps me across the face.
All at once I’m underwater.Everything is blurry.My brother’s lips are moving, his words are muffled, and I can’t make anything out.This has got to be a sick joke.
“What the hell do you mean he got paid to have sex with me?”The world rushes back to me with the clatter of a waiter dropping a bin of beer and ice, and another bumping me from behind on his way to help.The dean, nearly forgotten in my confusion, shouts a joke at the waiter about committing alcohol abuse.Funny fucking guy.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”I ask my brother again.It’s so interesting how for the last however many minutes he’s been pestering me with all the subtlety of that fly when it was still alive, and now he’s strangely, eerily silent.
“I didn’t set you up on a blind date,” Wes finally says, his voice low.“I called a guy.A pimp.Thought it would do you some good to get laid.It was only supposed to be one night.”
Someone drops a fork.It’s the last thing I hear before the sound of blood rushing in my head is so loud that I can’t understand anything again.
“What do you mean you called a pimp?”
Brennan’s my pimp.
Wes tugs at his collar.“Elliott, the events coordinator at the hotel, gave me a name and number.He had trouble getting back into the game after his wife died, and he said this nice young woman named Alexis helped him out.I thought…I thought it would be good for you.I didn’t expect you to bring a damn moving van to your first date with the guy.”
“I didn’t—” I can’t finish the sentence because I can’t say anything.My throat is so tight I can hardly breathe.“You know what?Fuck you, Wes.I have to go.”
My brother reaches for my arm again, and I take a healthy step backward, narrowly missing a collision with the door that leads out to the main hall.
“Don’t.Don’t you dare grab my arm again.Don’t say another word.You’ve done enough.”
ChapterTwenty-Six
PJ
