Page 1 of The Sunday Brothers Novellas
CHAPTER ONE
TEAGAN
“The guy’s not coming,” I told my friend Fern in a slightly panicked tone, holding the phone to my ear with one hand while yanking at my hair with the other.
“I have been waiting in the lobby of my new apartment building for forty-seven minutes, exactly as agreed. Forty-seven minutes does not suggest ‘oops, I was stuck in traffic.’ Forty-seven minutes suggests my brother’s friend forgot he was supposed to help me.
Or that Jace forgot to ask him in the first place.
Forty-seven minutes means I have been forsaken , Fern.
Forty-seven minutes means my sofa is in peril . ”
Fern sighed in my ear, like the fate of my hand-tufted green Chesterfield was of no particular importance to her. “Teagan, babe, are you sure you need to be worrying about this right now? You’ve had a hell of a week, and in the end, it’s just a sofa. Replaceable.”
She had a point. But that point was not my point.
“No, Fern.” I tugged my hair harder. “It’s not just a sofa.
This sofa is a symbol , okay? This sofa is the perfect combination of form and function.
This sofa is firm, it’s supportive, and it cradles my ass lovingly, which is more than I can say about any man I’ve ever dated, especially Martin.
This sofa is the proverbial line in the sand between what I am willing to forego and what I refuse to give up.
It’s bad enough that I came home early from my Intro to Creative Writing TA hours Tuesday to make soup for my flu-ridden boyfriend, only to find him being ridden by someone who was blond and twinky and decidedly not the flu .
” I sniffed. “I refuse to let the bastard have my sofa, too. Martin doesn’t deserve hand-tufting. ”
“Martin doesn’t deserve to keep your apartment,” she retorted. “As I explained to you at length.”
Oh, she had. She most definitely had. Through our entire shared shift at Campus Connection on Wednesday, even the part where I ended up sorting stock in the back because I’d been crying off and on—she’d simply raised her voice so I could hear her.
The “Come to Jesus” discussion was Fern’s preferred love language.
“You should’ve made him move out,” she concluded.
“I know, I heard what you said. But then I’d have had to pay to live in that building, and grad school stipends and part-time work at Coffee Connections would not make that happen,” I reminded her.
“I’d be another innocent ingenue forced to sell my body on the street, and anyone who’s ever seen a Broadway musical could tell you how that would end.
” I paused, then remembered Fern was a biology grad student when she wasn’t a barista and probably hadn’t been listening to show tunes since high school. “Death, Fern. It ends in death.”
“Teagan.” Fern said my name like it was a complete sentence, expressing exasperation and warning and fondness all at once.
“Besides,” I went on quickly, “this way I get to show Martin how utterly unaffected I am by his treachery.” I stared at my reflection in the lobby’s plate-glass window and assumed a calm, distant expression.
“I plan to stay cool and remote and slay him with my quiet dignity. Let him writhe in guilt.”
“Oh, honey. The man cheated on you in your own bed. You really think your quiet dignity will get him?”
“It might.” I sighed and curled in on myself again.
“I mean, yes, what Martin did was unforgivable. And to be perfectly honest, things between us hadn’t been right in a while, no matter how hard I tried, so I’m not sorry things are over.
But he was a kind, caring person at one point.
” I stared out at the distressingly empty sidewalk.
“He still has those qualities, deep down.”
“No,” she said flatly. “He doesn’t. He never did.
The day you met, he ordered a latte, paid in exact change, said one witty thing about Shakespeare that I swear he didn’t even intend to be funny, and said your hair was ‘seriously sexy.’ Then all of a sudden, your brain started churning like a broken ATM spitting twenties, filling in all the blanks that made him your personal Prince Charming. ”
“But… wait, really?” I frowned. “I don’t remember this! And if you knew it all along, why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“Oh, for— You’re kidding, right? Dude, I staged an intervention in August before you moved in with the guy, but you wouldn’t listen.
You told me, ‘Pick one, Fern: potentially losing your greatest chance at happiness or potentially losing your heart’ when you know how I feel about your ‘this or that’ questions?—”
“I think you mean my amusing philosophical conundrums,” I teased.
“I think I mean your false dichotomies,” she retorted. “Because humans almost always have more than two choices. But anyway, then you quoted some poem at me about buds of love?—”
Ugh. Now that sounded like something I would do. “It’s Shakespeare,” I said grimly .
“Right. And at that point, I washed my hands of you.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said sadly. “It’s not even a particularly good poem.”
“Yes. Uh-huh. That’s the takeaway here, Teagan. Your judgment of poetry was skewed.” Fern huffed. “Honey, have you ever considered just being less…” She broke off.
“Less?” I prompted.
“I don’t know how to say this without it sounding shitty, and I don’t mean it that way, but less… volatile? Less emotional? Less likely to jump in with both feet.” She sounded frustrated. “Just… just less .”
Ouch . I leaned back against the bank of mailboxes that lined one wall of the lobby.
“Not everything has to be sweeping and dramatic and overly gushy. You need stability more than you need romance. So next time you meet a guy, approach with caution. Chill. For your own well-being. Because next time, you might not find an apartment on short notice or coerce your brother into finding someone to help you move your couch. Next time, you might lose something that’s not replaceable. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” I said in a small voice.
This was not the first time I’d heard this speech from someone in my life.
More like the billionth. My dad used to angrily inform me that people would “take advantage of me” if I insisted on being so “high-strung.” My mom told everyone in an only half-joking way that I was her most exhausting child—which was particularly funny if you knew that I was the only one of the three Donahue brothers who’d never been arrested.
My friends loved and appreciated me, because they knew I was loyal to the death…
but they also never seemed very surprised when my boyfriends tossed me over because I’d gotten attached too quickly and moved too fast.
“Just contain yourself, Teagan,” they’d say. “Don’t laugh so loud. Don’t speak so passionately. Don’t be so extra . Moderation is the key.”
But it wasn’t that easy. I felt things deeply, and it was hard to hold back. I hated approaching life that way. Plus… even knowing that Fern meant well, it hurt to be told that I was always too much or too little of something to please the people in my life.
I liked myself the way I was. I wanted other people to like me, too.
“Fern,” I said softly. “When in the entire eight years, five Star Wars releases, and two Adele albums of our friendship have you known me to chill?”
She made a noise that was half grumble, half sigh. “Never.”
“Exactly. I am a man who has been blessed with a few specific talents,” I reminded her. Then I counted them off on my fingers. “I make a mean sourdough.”
“The best,” she admitted.
“I can analyze Prufrock like nobody’s business.”
She snorted. “Whatever that means.”
“I can suck a man’s brains out through his dick in under twelve minutes.”
“Did not need to know that.”
“I come up with the most amusing philosophical conundrums?—”
“Once again, I argue that your ‘Pick One’ games are not conundrums, they’re logical fallacies that contribute to your very black-and-white view of?—”
“But they’re the most amusing logical fallacies.”
Fern laughed helplessly. “Okay, yes. Granted.”
“And I haven’t missed a Trivia Night question in three years, except for that weirdly worded one about the marmosets, which you agreed was robbery.”
“It was,” she confirmed loyally.
“But chilling is not a talent of mine,” I informed her seriously.
“Indeed, legend says that when the tiny fairies went flying through the hospital nursery, flinging out talents to the newborn babies like Mardi Gras beads, the Chill Fairy passed directly over my crib and shook her head. She said, ‘Oh, no, sisters, I cannot bless this one.’ And do you know why, Fern?”
“I’m going to regret asking this,” she muttered, but I could hear the smile in her voice. “No, Teagan, please tell me why legend says you were not blessed by the Chill Fairy.”
“Because the fairies must pick and choose the gifts they bestow to provide balance. So the Chill Fairy said, ‘Sisters, this child has already been given a fondness for crop tops that makes a mockery of his love of sourdough. This child shall have an eidetic memory for Broadway show tunes and the vocal abilities of a cat in heat so that his friends will refuse to karaoke with him. This child—” I threw my head back, squeezed my eyes shut, and lifted both hands toward the ceiling, lost in my own vision. “—will be given an unquenchable thirst for love and be doomed to one day have his heart shredded and mangled, sacked and pillaged, burned and salted, by a man he’s devoted the best six months of his life to, until nothing remains but a desiccated husk barely useful for sustaining life and utterly incapable of nurturing romantic affection ever again. There is no room in this child for chill! Indeed, it is his very un -chill-ness that will save him!” I lowered my hands, cleared my throat, and concluded in a normal tone.
“So, like, who am I to argue with the Chill Fairy?”
“Amen,” a deep voice said from way too close to me.