Ten Good Reasons (21 page)

CHAPTER

F
ifteen minutes later, they all sat crammed in the dinette—Lia dressed, Evan with his pants buttoned back up, Douglas avoiding their eyes, and Drew scowling at all of them.

“So is anyone going to explain what’s going on here?” Drew directed the question around the table.

“It’s exactly what it looked like,” Evan intercepted. He didn’t like how Drew was glaring at Lia.

“You’re fucking my friend, on my boat, while the lines are half undone, and netting is all over the deck?” Drew looked at him incredulously.

Evan sat back and did his best to formulate a sane response. “Look, Drew, I’m sorr—”

“Douglas was just at my place, telling me how much I could trust you now,” Drew went on, his voice shaking in a holding-on-by-a-thread voice. “And I arrive to see how the disentanglement went, and see
everything
to the contrary. You know how much it . . .” Drew’s hand waved in the air toward the back of the cabin where Evan had just been naked with Lia, and his face went a little white. “. . . 
freaks me out
to have your . . .
germs
 . . . all over the . . .” He motioned again, seemingly unable to even finish the sentence. He stared at the
offending area as if he were imagining how he might bleach it down.

“And there’s fish netting all over the deck?” he went on, sweeping his hand back toward the door. “And the
fucking lines aren’t all tied
?”

Evan looked away, embarrassed. What had he been thinking? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so stupid.

“And Lia, what the hell? Didn’t I ask you specifically
not
to get close to him?”

“Leave Lia out of this, Drew,” Evan said, although his thoughts dragged over that last comment.

“Evan, you don’t need to speak for me,” Lia said.

“And Evan, damn it, can you not leave
one friend of mine
alone?” Drew’s hands clenched, and his breathing was labored. If his legs had been fine, he’d certainly be pacing now.

Evan would let Drew vent, have his piece. The main thing he felt bad about was that the lines weren’t all tied. That was irresponsible. He’d truly lost his mind, there. But the rest was just Drew being Drew. Evan was used to his brother’s outbursts, his overreactions, his phobias. He’d wait it out, like he used to, then maybe get to the part where he could apologize for the things he
really
wanted to apologize for. He’d wanted to have this discussion for some time. He just didn’t think he’d be doing it after being caught with his pants down. Literally.

“Drew, you need to stop yelling at your brother,” Lia said. “Especially for being with me. It’s not like I was an unwilling participant.”

“And what about that, anyway, Lia?” Drew said, turning to her. “What about my simple request: to
stay away from my fucking brother?
”

“And why did you ask that? That was a ridiculous request, with no explanation whatsoever.”

“Can’t you just do
one
thing I ask you?”

“Not without a good explanation.”

“She doesn’t take orders well,” Evan threw in.

He resisted the urge to smile at her. He liked her more every minute. Normally he’d jump in with his brother yelling at a woman like this, but Lia was holding her own, and the two of them seemed like they’d done this a million times.

Douglas moved his bottled water around the table and
looked like he wanted to be anywhere but there. “I’m just going to . . .” He gestured with his thumb toward the door.

“No. Douglas, stay,” said Drew. “You were vouching for him earlier. I need you to see why I have a hard time buying into the fact that he’s someone I can trust.”

“I’ll vouch for Evan, too,” Lia piped in. “We all like him. He helped us out tremendously this week, Drew. He’s smart, and he’s a good captain, and—”

“He can navigate a boat—I get that,” Drew snapped. “I never had any issue with that. I’m more worried about the damage he can do to people.”

“I’m sitting right here,” Evan murmured.

“I didn’t want you to get hurt, Lia,” Drew said. “That’s why I wanted you to stay away from him.”

“Evan’s not hurting me.”

“Yet. He hurts people. He only thinks of himself.”

“Evan’s
not
hurting me,” Lia said more forcefully.

“I’m sitting right here,” Evan repeated.

“He just fucked you,” Drew said to Lia, “probably with no thought of—”

“That’s enough, Drew,” Evan said, louder.

“. . . with no thought of you and your boyfriend,” Drew went on, “and he’ll never look back. I imagine he’ll be leaving any day now.”

“
Knock it off
.” Evan shoved out of the dinette. He’d heard enough.

Drew looked up at him with surprise. Maybe he thought Evan might hit him. But Evan wasn’t going to hit him, as tempting as it was. They were through with their competitive boyish tumbles of the past.

“You know he’s been sailing the world, right?” Drew asked Lia, but he kept his eyes on Evan. “Who knows who he’s been with? Or what diseases he’s brought home? I hope you used a condom.”

“You don’t know anything about me, Drew.” Evan was getting pissed now.

“I know you take what you want.”

“That’s not true.”

“So you
don’t
just sleep with whomever you want? I must have been mistaken.”

“You are. And this is bullshit. I’m not going to discuss my sex life with you. Or Douglas.” He motioned to the poor guy.

“What about Lia?”

“I’ll discuss it with Lia if she wants to, in private.”

“We used a condom,” Lia blurted. As soon as she said it, she leaned back against the dinette in a brazen way, but then she glanced at Douglas and her fingertips fluttered to her collarbone.

Evan smiled at her. He was really beginning to love everything about her—her directness, her bluntness, the cute expression on her face when she said something she didn’t mean to.

“Forrest and I broke up anyway,” Lia added, waving her hand.

Drew frowned, his concern playing across his forehead lines. “Oh. Sorry about that, Lia.”

The smile Evan had just had on his face slid away as he watched the interplay between Drew and Lia, the clouds of old-time guilt gathering and hovering over his head. Drew really did care about her. Maybe Drew
was
just looking out for her. Evan could see how Drew could feel protective. He slid back toward the dinette bench. Maybe he should cut his bro some slack.

“But the fact that you had a boyfriend probably didn’t matter to Evan,” Drew said. “That never stopped him before.”

Or maybe not
 . . .

“Watch it, Drew,” he said under his breath.

“He’s using you,” Drew told Lia.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Evan said.

“So you’re
staying
?” Drew threw back at him.

Evan glanced at Lia. Well, sure, he was leaving. But she knew that. He certainly didn’t see himself as
using
her—

“Evan’s right.” Lia turned angrily toward Drew. “I have no illusions here. I’m not dating him, and I don’t expect him to date me. Or stay. We’re just two adults. And we can handle ourselves. It meant nothing.”

Evan snapped his head up. He knew that’s how she felt. He knew that going in. In fact, it was every man’s fantasy to have such a willing partner with no strings attached. But it still gave him a ridiculous tug in his chest to hear her say it. He stared at the table.

Douglas moved his bottled water around and stared at the porthole as if he hoped it would suck him through.

“You didn’t even know her,” Drew said quietly toward the tabletop. “You just wanted her because she was mine.”

The sound of the water lapping the side of the boat was the only sound for half a minute.

“Are we talking about Renece now?” Evan asked.

Drew had aged quite a bit in the last few years. Or maybe it was just the pain of the broken legs and DVT, but he looked haggard—permanent lines crossing his forehead, his hair receding around the temples. Suddenly, Evan was sorry he’d let so many years go by. They should have settled this years ago.

“Doug, Lia, can you give us a minute?” Evan asked.

Douglas bolted out of the booth, leaving his bottled water shimmering on the table. Lia hesitated, but finally moved out too, running her hand over Drew’s shoulder almost maternally.

When the door closed, Evan slid into the bench across from his brother. “Let’s have it.”

The haggard lines in Drew’s face went from anger to fatigue. “What do you want me to say?”

“I guess we both have a lot to say. And we probably should have said it a long time ago. Do you want me to start or do you want to?”

“You look like shit.”

“Thanks, I was going to say the same about you.”

A reluctant smile crossed Drew’s face. He stared at his own water bottle as he twisted it between his palms.

“So you made it all the way around?” Drew finally asked.

“Yep.”

“How long did it take you?”

“Two years.”

“What was the hardest part?”

“I hit a crazy storm near the Maldives. And the Panama Canal was a bitch to get through. But I don’t think this is what we need to talk about.”

As the boat rocked gently, Drew’s smile was replaced by a terrible sadness. “I can’t seem to stop hating you.”

The words were delivered in almost a whisper, without
malice, matter of fact, but they held so much honesty Evan couldn’t help but recoil.

As many problems as he and Drew had had as kids, they’d always loved each other. There had been fistfights and silent treatments, toothpaste wars and demolition derbies on bikes, but that had all been just normal brother stuff. There had also been the time little Drew had stood guard over Evan’s aquarium when some younger cousins came to visit, or the time he’d collected signatures at school to get Evan voted as junior campus police. Once, Drew rode his bike all the way into the next city to tell Evan he was going to get in trouble if he didn’t come home by five, and another time Drew had made a terrible “carrot soup” for Evan when he stayed home with the flu and their mom had to go to work. It was just boiled water with carrots in it, but Drew had thought he was helping.

Evan stared across the table at the little brother who had always loved and admired him, and realized how much he’d really hurt Drew when he’d left with Renece.

“I’m sorry,” Evan finally said. “Look, Drew, I didn’t know you were in love with her. It had never come up between us, and you introduced her to me on the boat. I honestly thought you were introducing her to me as a possible date.”

Drew looked up at him quizzically. “You’re insane.”

“That’s how it looked from my perspective.”

Drew stared through the porthole and seemed to consider that for a second. “That’s stupid. I’d invited her there because I’d had a crush on her for a million years.”

“You never told me that.”

“Why didn’t you back off once I
did
tell you?”

“We’d already gone out every day for two weeks. I fell hard, man.”

Drew looked up with surprise. “You fell in love with her? You didn’t just sleep with her?”

“Who do you think I was? I was a geek. I didn’t sleep with girls. She was the first. She made me feel like I mattered to someone.”

“She was the first?”

Evan just shrugged.

“I thought you were a dog, man.”

“What made you think that?”

“You got
everything
you wanted.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your own bedroom, a normal life with no OCD, your own boat, you got to live with Dad, he
took you with him
—I was just the ‘disappointing kid.’”

“I was always jealous that you got to stay with Mom.”

They both stared at the table. A patrol boat sounded a horn in the marina, and the festival crowd erupted.

“Well, whether or not you’re trying to take everything from me, I don’t want Lia or my boat to be part of the collateral damage,” Drew said.

“
What
? I don’t want to take everything from you. And I would never use Lia that way.”

“Why did you come here, then, Evan? Why are you on
my
boat? And why
her
, of all the women in the state?”

Evan looked away. That, he didn’t know.

“I didn’t know why I came here, to be honest,” he said, deciding just to answer the part he understood. “Lia thinks I secretly wanted to apologize. And she’s probably right. I know I pulled into Sandy Cove when I could have easily gone to San Diego. And I know it’s late to apologize, but now that I’m here, I just want you to know that I never meant to hurt you.”

“And why Lia?”

Evan shook his head. His first instinct was to say nothing about Lia, but keeping things to himself when it came to Drew had gotten him into this mess in the first place.

“I know it looks bad,” he said, “but there was no intent there, to go after her because she’s in your life. I even asked her if she ever dated you. A few times, actually.”

“What’d she say?”

“She said you kissed once, and that was it.”

Drew snorted. “Yeah, that was a disaster. But seriously, man, I’ve always been half in love with her.”

Evan looked up sharply. “What?”

“Yeah. So to see you two together . . . I just . . . I can’t figure out why
you
always get the girl. And to think you’re doing it just for kicks—or just to
use
her to pass your time here—kills me.”

“Wait, you’re in
love
with her?”

“Well, not anymore. Exactly.”

“She said you have a girlfriend.”

“Yeah, I’ve moved on.”

“But you still hang around with her?”

Drew shrugged. “We have the same friends. And I’ve come to terms with the situation. I know she has a type, and it’s not me. It’s not you, either, by the way. Usually suits, guys with lots of money—I get that. I just want her to be happy. But to see her with
you . . .”
He shook his head. “And you’re just using her.”

“I’m not using her.”

“You’re fucking her until you leave in a few days? With no plans of a future? I think that’s the definition.”