Page 28 of Just This Once (Stone Family #2)

Dante

M y mother is a phenomenal cook, but only if it’s Italian. For the fifth year in a row, she’s ordered Thanksgiving dinner, picture-perfect browned turkey, piled high mashed potatoes, and green beans that are so shiny and angular, they look fake.

It’s almost a shame to dig into it.

I did a double workout this morning so I could eat double tonight, and I plan on stuffing as much sweet potato pie as possible down my throat.

So, it’s another goddamn shame when we’re barely a few minutes in, and my father opens his mouth to tell me, “Rumor has it this apartment you’re living in is owned by the same broad that runs The Nest.”

Broad ? As if he’s Frank Sinatra in some Atlantic City nightclub.

Across from me, Johnny snickers like an asshole. I’m sure he’s the rumor.

I set down my fork and wipe my mouth. “Yeah. She does own it, and her name is Taryn Stone. ”

Dad raises his hands up like he meant no offense when I know he did.

He lives to humiliate me in any way he can.

I’m not sure why… Is the disappointment of his middle son so great he has to prove it to everyone?

Is it some contest he plays with himself, seeing which kid he can pit against the other and who will come out on top?

I don’t understand, and I’m getting tired of it.

“Just don’t shit where you eat,” Johnny warns me, and I roll my eyes.

“Next time I want advice from my little brother, I’ll ask for it.”

“You’re the only one sitting here alone.” Johnny places a possessive arm on the back of Emily’s chair. She offers him a smile, weak and mild. Johnny’s going to walk all over her.

“I don’t think so,” Lauren, my sister-in-law, snaps down at the other end of the table, taking the small plastic fork from her kid’s hand, gesturing for Robbie to do something since it looks like the toddlers—Kassidee and Everleigh—are about to start a food fight.

Mom comes to my defense, but it does nothing except circle the sharks. “Dante will find someone when he’s ready.”

Dad sniffs. “He’s thirty years old. If he’s not ready now, he never will be.”

“Statistically speaking, most people find their spouses in college,” Robbie says academically and completely unhelpfully since I’m the only one of us three who did not attend.

“But being thirty isn’t old,” Lauren adds, almost like she’s trying to convince herself she’s not old. Because if I’m old, then so is she. God forbid, we age.

The kids bang on the table, rattling the dishes, and Dad waves his fork in the air.

“The real problem is we’ve been babying him too much.”

My face flames hot, and I curl my fingers into a fist, sneering at Dad and then Johnny. “I think you’re right. You have been babying Johnny too much. Poor guy’s never done a full day’s work in his life. How will he ever learn?”

“Fuck you. I do more for the company than you’ve ever done.”

“No fighting at the table,” Mom chimes in. “It’s Thanksgiving.”

I split my ire between my father and younger brother. “While you sit in an office all day, I’m the one in the field. I’m the one doing real work. You would be nothing without me, and I’m getting real goddamn tired of having to defend myself.”

“We’d be nothing without you?” Robbie says, wiping mashed potatoes from his sweater, an attack from one of his kids. “That’s a bit hyperbolic, don’t you think? I was the one who helped Dad expand it from Grandpa’s side hustle to an actual corporation.”

Mom flaps her hand. “Yes, you’ve all done a lot to help. Now, let’s move on. Lauren, you said you were going to put the girls in gymnastics?”

“Oh yeah, your big math brain, crunching ones and zeros all day, is what’s keeping us in business.

You’re an overpaid accountant.” I slap my hand to my chest. “ I manage all the sites. I keep us on schedule. I’m the one bringing in new clients because you all and your lunch meetings sure as shit aren’t.

People want to book with us because of me and my work, not because of you!

” I can’t help the rise in my volume. Hearing Taryn speak about me the other night has unleashed something in me that I can’t and don’t want to rein in.

“I’d really appreciate some acknowledgment every once in a while. ”

Across from me, Emily has melted into her chair while Lauren is full-on fighting with her kids to stop them from climbing over her and the table.

Robbie is silently fuming like he can’t believe I’d actually tell the truth, while Johnny’s looking to our father for help because he knows I’m right.

He barely does anything. He’s a yes-man to Dad, who balls up his napkin and throws it on the table, pointing his stubby finger at me, the one he nearly lost in an accident years ago with a saw.

I was the one who wrapped a towel around it and drove him to the hospital so he didn’t lose it completely.

“You ungrateful little shit. You should be lucky I keep you employed. Don’t come into my house and tell me I need to show you appreciation.

I am your father and your boss. You are nothing without me and what I gave you. ”

Yeah, that’s right. What he gave me. Not like Mom had any hand in raising me. Not like I became who I am despite his lack of faith and confidence in me.

And I’m suddenly not very hungry anymore. I stand up so fast, my chair falls backward, but I don’t bother picking it up. Mom watches slack-jawed as I grab my coat from the closet, but when she stands to come to me, I hold up my hand. “Not now. I need to get out of here.”

Her eyes well with tears, and she nods silently. I’m texting Taryn before I’m even out the door.

Where are you right now?

Duchess

At my brother’s. Why? What’s up?

I need to talk to you

Duchess

Ok? Is everything all right?

not really

Duchess

Come to Griffin’s. Dinner’s almost ready.

She sends me a pin as I put on my helmet then rev my engine extra long just to piss them all off inside.

The drive is about fifteen minutes to a development of homes probably from the ’80s or ’90s, all of them built in the exact same way, with siding and stone, attached double garages, and neat front yards.

I park my bike behind a row of cars out front of the house with an American flag, mums in pots, and a big yard sign that reads My favorite season is the fall of the patriarchy next to a bunch of turkeys stuck in the grass.

After I ring the doorbell, a woman about my age answers, smiling widely with long light-brown hair, ripped-up jeans, a sweater falling off her shoulder, and bare feet. “Hi, you must be Dante. Come in.”

When I step inside, she takes my leather jacket, hanging it in the closet, and I perform a quick appraisal of the house. It’s a well-maintained Colonial with pictures all over the walls and stacks of shoes next to the door, so I shuck off my boots.

“I’m Andi,” the woman says. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“You too,” I say reflexively, surprised she knows who I am, and she must see something on my face that makes her explain, “I’m Griffin’s girlfriend. I think you met him in passing.”

“Oh yeah, yeah.”

She waves for me to follow her. “Everybody’s here, but don’t worry about remembering anyone’s name, including mine. I won’t be offended.”

I’m good with names and faces, but I don’t tell her that as I round the corner to the living room and kitchen, where a dozen people are scattered around. Maddie jumps up from where she was on the floor and pulls on my hand. “You’re here! I didn’t know you were coming.”

“I didn’t know either.”

She smiles. “Are you gonna eat with us?”

“I guess so.”

“Mom! Dante’s here! ”

I wave to Taryn at her place by the sink, and she waves back with a knife.

It’s more threatening than I think she means it to be, and I muffle a chuckle with my hand before Jake holds his hand out for a dap.

I’m reintroduced to Taryn’s older brothers, the men from that day at The Nest. There is Griffin, a guy who could legit play a superhero, and Ian, the tattooed and grizzly bear of a man.

There are also a bunch of kids besides Taryn’s.

Griffin’s got twins, and Ian has a bunch, biologically and a few who just hang around, apparently.

With all the talking and laughing and arms slung around shoulders, it feels like a family. One that accepts and loves as much as they give one another shit. I don’t sense any competition or jealousy. Only affection. Clear and obvious affection.

“Dinner’s ready,” Griffin announces eventually, and I hop in line behind Jake to fill my plate.

The food is set up as a buffet in the kitchen, and Taryn stands by the sink, answering questions on where to find extra napkins or to retrieve some ice from the freezer in the garage.

It’s not her house, but it might as well be from the way she takes charge.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Griffin asks, pushing her toward me. “Get a plate and sit down. Your hovering is annoying.”

I hold out a plate for her with one hand while tucking her in front of me with the other, her ass brushing up against my groin.

No one notices except for us—Taryn, me, and my dick.

I shake my leg out like I’m a twelve-year-old with his first boner as she arches her eyebrow.

Which, of course, makes her look meaner and hotter. “You all right?”

“Mm-hmm. Yep.”

“Famous last words,” she teases, and I love her.

I love her so much my bones ache with it.

“How are you, really?” she asks, and I exhale the stress from my family dinner and inhale the delicious scents of the food spread out in front of us.

“Better now.”

“Good.” Then she scoops me the biggest serving of mashed potatoes, and I am putty in her hands.

Multiple folding tables are set up in the living and dining rooms, and we find open seats between one of Ian’s tatted-up sons and Andi, who animatedly tells stories about her recent time spent in LA.

She’s a songwriter, and she names a bunch of people I’ve never heard of, but they are her idols.

Griffin sits across from her, staring at her like I imagine I stare at Taryn.

Like she’s a double rainbow.

The northern lights.

The sunrise and the sunset.

Throughout the conversation, I learn there is a fourth Stone sibling, living in upstate New York, who hasn’t been home in years.

Taryn is highly respected by her brothers and also protected, if their reaction to a throwaway line about Craig was any indication.

Both Ian and Griffin go off on a four-letter-word-fueled tangent about him as soon as the little kids leave the room.

I decide I really like them both.

I like them all.

After dinner, board games get pulled out, along with Andi’s guitar, and everyone finds spots to lounge, helping themselves to second and third servings or pieces of pie. I play a round of Clue with a couple of the kids, Andi, and Taryn, who is, predictably, a terrible loser.

But once nine o’clock hits, everyone starts making plans. Maddie asks to sleep over with her cousin and best friend, Grace, and Jake heads out to a late-night movie with Ian’s boys, which means Taryn will be home all alone tonight.

And what a coincidence. So will I.