Chapter Two

 

 

YES, SOMETIMES it took me a minute to put two and two together, but as I stood in the shower that evening, washing off the dirt and sweat and grime of the day, it hit me.

“Holy shit!”

I was fuming by the time I threw open Annalise Renaldi’s front door. I froze, confused, because a man I had never seen before was standing there.

“Hello,” I greeted the stranger.

He was older—I was guessing midfifties—and he looked startled. “Are you another son?”

I was at a loss.

“Yes!” came a yell from the kitchen. “That’s my adopted one—that’s Kelly!”

“Oh,” the man said, smiling, offering me his hand. “I’m Emmett Cheong.”

I shook his hand, because what the hell else was I supposed to do? “Pleasure?” I couldn’t help but make it into a question, because learning the man’s name didn’t dispel the stranger in the house thing. Who in heaven’s name was he?

“Annie and I are seeing each other.”

Annie? Seeing? And didn’t using that word instead of just saying “dating” mean something important? I opened my mouth and closed it just as fast.

“Kel!” Coz bellowed, and because he sounded a bit off, his voice too high, scratchy, slightly frantic, I smiled fast and bolted.

The kitchen was a huge space with one of those islands copper pots hung over and a fridge just for wine, and more open cabinets and shelves than any one person should ever be able to fill. But Annalise Renaldi tried, and to that end: roosters. So many roosters, made out of everything from brass to wrought iron to ceramic to stained glass. They were supposed to be lucky, but dear God, they were everywhere.

“So she’s dating,” Coz muttered, then drained his wine glass as I reached him. “Did you know she was dating?”

“Nuh-uh,” I said, glancing over at Mia. She had the same dark eyes and ochre skin as her mother and brother. “You?”

She inhaled deeply. “Nope.”

My attention was back on Coz.

“Dating,” he repeated.

I had nothing.

Mia poured Coz another glass before taking a swig straight from the bottle.

“Oh, Kelly,” Annalise said cheerfully as she sauntered by on her way to the oven. “Have a glass of wine, dear.”

I leaned sideways as I was trained to do, and she kissed my cheek before grabbing a pot holder and a slotted spoon and opening the door to check on the sausage and peppers. It was funny; people always thought when they met her that the sweet Southern lady would make fried chicken for dinner, but she’d spent most of her life married to an Italian man, and because she loved him, she’d learned to cook all his favorites. Slowly, insidiously, Sicilian cuisine became what she was best at and known for.

“So,” I choked out as Mia put a glass down in front of me and poured from the same bottle she was quickly draining. “Dating, huh?”

“Yes,” Annalise sighed as Emmett came into the room. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

I coughed, took a big gulp of wine, and let Mia top me off before she finished up the bottle. “We need another one,” she announced, walking out of the kitchen toward the wine cellar at the back of the house. “I’ll get it.”

“I need vodka,” Coz whispered, emptying his wine glass for the second time in less than two minutes before passing it to me on his way out.

“I think we surprised them,” Emmett informed Annalise as I chugalugged my Chianti.

“Yes,” she said with a chuckle. “It seems so.”

“How—” I gasped. “—did you guys meet?”

“Well, darling, Emmett and I met at a—”

“Wait!” Mia yelled as she rushed back into the room. She carried another bottle of wine with her, and she moved to her mother’s side, facing me. After grabbing the opener off the counter, she told her mother to proceed.

“Whatever is wrong with you?” Annalise asked her daughter.

“Oh, no, nothing,” Mia said with a belch. “I just want to see Kel’s face when you tell this part again.”

Annalise scowled at her, the very expression she had passed on to her son, the one I saw in my sleep. “As I was saying,” she said, turning to me, “Emmett and I met at a tantric sex education class a year ago, because I didn’t feel that just because Agosto passed on, that he wouldn’t want me to explore my sexuality anymore.”

I actually felt the air leave my body.

“Oh yeah, there it is, that’s the same face I made.” Mia snickered as she peeled the foil from around the top of the bottle and let it drop to the floor before putting the bottle between her legs to go to work on it with the corkscrew.

Annalise remained unfazed. “What began as a purely physical exploration—”

“I found vodka and bourbon,” Coz practically shouted as he walked back into the kitchen.

“—deepened beyond merely extended orgasms—”

“Get ice,” he demanded as Mia popped the cork out of the second bottle of Chianti and took a long pull without letting it breathe.

“—and so it became important to me that Emmett meet y’all, all my children, since clearly we were progressing from a robust physical relationship that included experimentation and shared fulfillment to—”

“Ice!” he barked at me, and I put down the empty wine glass he’d left with me not even a couple of minutes earlier. “Now!”

I darted quickly around the kitchen, first to the cabinet for the glasses, then to the refrigerator to push the lever on the icemaker, at the same time retaining supportive eye contact with his mother. I loved her, so I was practicing my active listening, even though I was pretty sure I was about ready to pass out.

“—a journey that we’re taking together of mutual love and renewal,” she finished, beaming at me.

“Here,” I muttered, shoving two tumblers full of ice at Coz.

“So, of course, I felt like it was time to let y’all in on our relationship.”

Coz poured fast, splashing a bit of the pricey Belvedere, which was a shame, but truthfully I had no time to lament—I needed the alcohol in my system. 

“He’s also my gynecologist,” she added cheerfully. “He says I have the vagina of a forty-year-old woman.”

The vodka went down the wrong pipe, and for a long moment, I really thought I was going to die.

Coz thumped my back as I did my very best Gollum impersonation and tried to bring up a lung.

“Oh, honey, are you all right?”

“Same”—I rasped—“hole.”

She nodded kindly, then went flitting around the kitchen, pulling first a Greek salad out of the fridge and then a pecan pie out of the oven.

Once I straightened up, Coz threw back the rest of his drink and poured us each another double as Mia took a gulp from the wine bottle.

“Did you want to let the second bottle of wine breathe?” Emmett asked her.

“Maybe later,” Mia answered, pouring him a glass before taking yet another healthy swallow. “Sorry about that, I swear I’m germ-free.”

“Oh, so am I,” he said kindly, gazing over at Annalise. “And just so you know, your mother and I both got tested so we could have safe sex.”

It was Coz’s turn to choke.

“So, uhm,” Mia began, but then she glanced over at me, her eyes scrunched up, begging.

I knew what she wanted to know, because I did too.

“No,” Coz said hoarsely, his voice burned from the alcohol. “No-no.”

“So,” I choked out, “since it was a class where you met and all, did you guys have sex in front of other people?”

Coz’s whine was loud.

“Well, yes, sweetheart, of course.”

“Pass me the bourbon,” Mia demanded loudly, gesturing at me.

“You want ice?”

“No, just—pour.”

But Annalise finally realized the three of us were well on our way to alcohol poisoning and made us sit down at the table.

Coz needed brain bleach first.

 

 

“I’M CONFUSED,” Mia said as she served herself a third plate of sausage and peppers, much to her mother’s delight.

“Save some for the rest of us,” I groused, which earned me a pat on the back from Annalise as she poured me another glass of wine. We’d finished the Chianti and moved on to Shiraz with our food. I took two more pieces of bread from the bowl Coz held out for me.

“There’s enough here to feed a small army,” Mia volleyed, her voice louder than usual from all the liquor sloshing around in her system. “I don’t think you’re gonna starve.”

“Well, some of us actually work outside in the sun and don’t sit on our asses all day long.”

“Oh? So because I don’t toil all day, I don’t get to eat?”

I shrugged and Coz said, “Yeah.”

She flipped us off one after the other.

“Children,” Annalise admonished. “No more!” After we all went quiet, she turned to me. “Now, angel, tell us about this blast from your past that you ran into today.”

“What?”

“Coz said you had an event happen today.”

It was nowhere near the excitement of tantric lovemaking in front of a roomful of people. “Yeah, I—wait.”

“Tell me what happened,” she insisted.

But I remembered my epiphany as I turned from Annalise to Mia.

“What?” she asked as I glared at her, feeling betrayed for no logical reason. If I was right, she had no idea what she’d done. “Why are you lookin’ at me like that?”

“Your friend from college, the one you went to Harvard with… what was his last name?”

“Oh.” She closed one eye, concentrating. We were all loaded. “Uh, Lassiter. Why?”

“Crap, I knew it,” I grumbled, dropping my face down onto my folded arms.

“Oh, that’s the guy,” Coz trumpeted, just as drunk as me and Mia. “Your guy, the guy, who ditched you and left you crying in your beignets…. Lassiter. He’s Mia’s new partner.”

I sighed loudly. Had the beignet thing really needed to be added?

“What?” Mia asked as I lifted my head so I could meet her gaze. “Oh… the guy, the one, that was Britton? Holy shit, what a small world!”

She knew the story just as well as her brother did; it was one of the first things Coz had––much to my horror––shared with her. It had been the whole “Guess what, Mia, Kelly gets shafted by guys too” declaration. He’d wanted us to bond, and we had, just not over that. Mia and I were close because she was the big sister I had always wanted, the one who loved you unconditionally and would annihilate anyone who tried to hurt you. I was counting on it now.

“Could you, pretty please, ditch him?” I begged. “For me?”

“Who are we speaking of, sugar?” Annalise asked.

I made a noise of disgust as I leaned my head on my fist and regarded the matriarch of our family. Did I have to confess that I knew him in the Biblical sense?

“He’s the lawyer who’s going to be sharing my practice, Mom,” Mia answered. “We’ve been friends since law school and”—her gaze shifted back to me—“I’ll tell him it’s not going to work out.”

I sat there staring at her, awestruck, as she reached across the table and took my hand. That she would make that sacrifice for me… but of course she would. She was my sister.

“Are you actually gonna do that? Is that the kind of man you are?” Coz sounded disappointed.

I groaned as he smacked the back of my head.

“Cosimo!” Annalise scolded, rubbing where he’d hit me.

But he was right, and even drunk, I knew that. “No,” I sighed. “No, Mia, don’t do that.”

“I will.”

“I know, but you shouldn’t. Coz is right, that’s crap.”

“You’re sure?” She was hedging. “I don’t want you pissed off at me later.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

She nodded.

“Am I missing something? I thought you told me your new partner was married,” Annalise chimed in. “Whyever did I think that?”

“I told you he was divorced,” Mia explained. “And I guess from what he said, it not only messed up his home life, because he and his wife’s family were so tight, but his practice as well. His wife’s father is the managing partner at his law firm.”

“Ah,” Annalise reasoned. “That explains his need to move.”

“Yes, it does.”

“How long was he married?” Coz wanted to know.

“Five years or so,” she said, visibly searching her memory, slower than usual as she had to do it through the alcohol. “It’s only been like a year or so that he’s been divorced.”

“Did you know his wife?”

“Trudy,” Mia said with a shiver. “Sadly, yes. She was always scary, I never liked her. None of us did. You could see her claws underneath the kitten exterior.”

I nodded.

“And boy, is it lucky his father made him sign a prenup, or he would have had nothing to invest in another business.”

“So the Lassiters are—”

“Rich,” Mia finished. “Yeah. The filthy kind. They’re old country club, ‘would you like to buy a horse farm and some diamonds’ money.”

Perfect.

“So why’d he choose here?” Coz prodded as Mia poured him and me another glass of wine.

Mia shrugged. “He wanted to get away from Manhattan where he was practicing and just start over. I mean, I got the feeling that there was more to it than that, but I didn’t want to pry.”

“Okay,” Coz said brightly before turning to his mother. “So, I’m drunk enough to talk about you now.”

One of Annalise’s thick, perfectly shaped eyebrows lifted as she regarded her son. “And what is it we’re discussing?”

“This,” he grumbled, pointing at her and then Emmett and making a circling motion that meant everything.

“What else is there to talk about, my darling?”

“So,” he began, taking a fortifying breath. “How long have you and Emmett here been shackin’ up?”

“Six months,” she answered smoothly. “But as I said, it started as merely sex but has blossomed from there.”

Mia whimpered and thumped her head down on the table.

Annalise started chuckling, and Emmett—who was actually a very handsome man, now that I was looking at him—joined her.

“Did I not call it? I told you they would all come apart at the seams.”

“You did,” he agreed, “though it might have been a bit of your delivery.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“You’re very blunt, my dear.”

“But they’re used to that, for goodness’ sake.”

The way he was looking at her… I liked. And from Mia’s soft grunt, I was thinking she might too.

“I mean, I know everything there is to know about their sex lives.”

“Oh dear God,” Coz moaned, letting his head fall all the way back.

“Who’s having what and with whom.”

“It’s like a horror movie,” Mia groaned softly. “And it won’t stop.”

“These two,” she said, indicating me and Coz, “are gay. Mia’s straight, though experimentation with a woman might be a good thing.”

“So Mia’s the one who’ll be giving you your grandchildren,” Emmett chimed in.

Her slow pan to him was confusing, I could tell from the look on his face. His brows furrowed and he leaned in close. “I like you ever so much,” she said softly, smiling at him. “But darling, do you honestly believe what you just said, or did you simply speak without thinking?”

He sat back and was quiet as he took a moment and reviewed what he’d said.

You couldn’t beat Annalise Renaldi, originally Annalise Sherwood, from Savannah, Georgia. She was a sweet-tempered, iron-willed Southern debutante who after one meeting with Agosto Renaldi—at a fair when she was eighteen—walked away from her life and into his. She immediately married the Italian transplant who was only a year older than her, with zero prospects and no money. They moved to Chicago where she waitressed and he got a job as a plumber’s assistant. Nine months later, Miranda—Mia for short—was born, and a year later, Cosimo. While Agosto moved up, first becoming a journeyman and then joining the union, Annalise went to school at night and followed her dream of becoming a teacher. It was, by all accounts, a match made in heaven. When they were fed up with the city and the cold, they moved the family to Mangrove to start over. That they wouldn’t grow old side by side was never an eventuality either considered, but stomach cancer had come along and blindsided them.

After she lost Agosto, Annalise devoted her life to her children and carried his spirit with her into everything she did. So when one of them told her he was gay, she decided to keep on loving him even though it wasn’t the path she would have chosen. When that same son brought home his gay friend, I became to her merely another child to love. I would be forever grateful to Annalise for accepting me into the fold, for giving me a family to replace the one that rejected me when I came out to my biologicals, and for raising a son who would become my best friend in the world. I was part of the Renaldi family and that was, so far, my greatest blessing.

“Oh,” Emmett said softly, bringing my attention back to him. “I see. You’re wondering if I thought that Cosimo and Kelly, being gay, can’t be fathers.”

She nodded.

“Oh, no, of course not,” he assured her, taking her hand in his. “I wasn’t thinking—thank you for pointing that out. It was a silly thing to say. Both your sons can give you grandchildren, my dear.”

She was very pleased with him. I could tell by the way her eyes brightened, and she gently squeezed his hand before she leaned sideways and kissed his cheek. Emmett’s face glowed in response. They were very sweet together.

“And now,” Emmett announced, giving me his attention, “let’s hear about this Britton fellow. Why on Earth would you run from this man?”

All eyes on me and all of a sudden I was nervous. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Mia says he’s a nice, smart man,” Annalise reminded me. “So why are you running from him? That seems odd.”

“I—”

She prodded her daughter. “Is he a good man or not?”

“He is,” Mia promised her. “A very good man.”

“And is he out to his family?”

“Yeah, see, that’s the thing,” she replied with a burp. “I had no idea he was gay, and he was married, like I said.”

“So he’s bi, then,” Coz offered.

“I actually thought he was straight.”

“Oh, well, I see the issue now,” Annalise surmised, glancing around the table. “That’s why you ran from him, because he’s not out and proud.”

“Mom, he might not even identify as bi or gay,” Coz explained.

Mia squinted at me. “I still don’t get why you’d run from Britton. The thing between you two was ages ago.”

“Running implies that I was scared, and I’m not,” I defended. “I was more circumventing him to avoid any unpleasantness.”

From the looks on all their faces, no one was buying my explanation, including Emmett, who didn’t even know me well enough to judge.

“He probably doesn’t even remember me.”

“Because you’re so forgettable?” Annalise smirked.

“You just think everyone will fall in love with me because you love me.”

“No,” she countered, “it’s because you’re beautiful inside and out.”

“Oh, I’m gonna throw up,” Coz commented.

“We were young,” I explained, ignoring him.

“What does that have to do with anything? Youth is no excuse.”

Annalise wasn’t going to let it go. “I just mean, he invited me to go to Boston with him, and then the day we were supposed to go, he never showed up.”

“Pardon me?”

“That’s what happened.”

“Oh!” She was horrified and turned on Mia. “Your friend broke Kelly’s heart. You certainly can’t go into business with such a man.”

“Mom––”

“For heaven’s sake, Mia.” She was aghast. “The man’s a cad.”

Mia made a pained sound. “We already settled this. Were you even listening?”

Her mother tsked in that judgmental way she had.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Mia muttered.

“I don’t like him.”

“Mother!”

“Don’t ever bring him to my house!”

“Oh, that’s just great,” Mia mumbled as I smirked at her. “How do you know he didn’t have a phenomenal explanation for ditching Kel?”

“Like?”

“I don’t know,” Mia said dejectedly.

“Dead,” Annalise said flatly. “I would accept dead.”

Mia threw up her hands.

“Maybe he does have a good excuse,” Coz said to me, yawning. “And maybe you’d get to actually hear that reason if you ever allowed him to see you.”

“No thank you,” I replied petulantly.

“Oh yeah, no, of course not,” Coz returned snidely. “Then you’d have to, like, have closure or something.” He shivered dramatically for my benefit as he shoveled food into his mouth. “That sounds horrible.”

“Leave him alone,” Mia defended before her gaze slid to meet mine. “It’s hard to know things sometimes. You want to and you don’t, all at the same time.”

And she was right. While half of me wanted to hear why Britton Lassiter had not shown up, the rest of me didn’t want to know.

She shrugged. “Maybe you just let sleeping dogs lie.”

“Or,” Coz said, clearly annoyed with both of us, “you walk your ass over to where he’s staying and ask if he remembers you, and if so, inquire as to the explanation of his whereabouts on the day in question, which was what—ten years ago now?”

“Oh God,” I whined, thunking my head down on the table again. “I need to drink more.”

“I think y’all have drunk enough,” Annalise stated. “Let’s go into the living room and I can tell you about the nude beach Emmett and I went to.”

“Where’s the rest of the vodka?” Mia asked her brother.