“Do you, ah, want me to grab a towel or something?” Adam asked, facing the wall.
“Yes, anything,” I snapped, my arms crossed over my chest, cringing at the visible panty line.
Adam went to move, but stilled hearing the sound of footsteps making their way through the main bar.
Perfect!
Instead of leaving, Adam instinctively stepped in front of me, shielding me from whoever was making their way into the poolroom. Could this possibly get any worse?
Chris appeared through the alcove, coming to a standstill directly in front of us, his confused eyes locking on to Adam in his boxers, me drenched, peeking over his shoulder, standing in a pool of soda water.
No, no, it couldn’t get much worse than this.
Chris placed his hands on his hips, fury building as he took in the disaster before him.
“What the actual fuck?”
Fourteen
“It’s not what it looks like,” said Adam and none too convincingly at that.
“What do you think I think it looks like?” added Chris.
Adam had no words, and neither did I. It was a common occurrence whenever we were caught doing something we weren’t supposed to, which pretty much seemed like our entire upbringing, only this time Tess wasn’t here to do the talking, or rather defending, on our behalf. At best we could only hope that the reaction would dissolve into an eye-roll and shrug of the head, with the old: ‘Oh Adam and Ellie, crazy kids.’ But something told me that judging by Chris’s face, this was not going to be one of those times.
“Seriously, how old are you two?”
“Oh, here we go.” Adam laughed, causing an instantaneous switch of fury that flipped in Chris.
“Yeah, here we go, all right.”
“Don’t start giving me the bullshit lectures on age and fucking responsibility,” Adam snapped. It made me flinch; it was so unexpected, so fraught with anger I didn’t recognise him.
“Oh, yeah, you’re a real hero aren’t you, Adam? One bloody trip to—”
“Shut up,” he warned. I would have shrunk away and begged for forgiveness if he spoke to me like that.
Chris’s eyes flicked from Adam to me and back, breathing out a laugh. “You haven’t told her.”
“Chris, I swear to God,” Adam gritted.
“That’s all right, stick your head in the sand, have water fights in your undies and write yourself off tonight, go for it. Just don’t come to me with your crocodile tears when it all turns to shit.”
“It’s not going to turn to shit!” Adam yelled.
There were a few times when you felt as if the Henderson boys might come to blows: this was one of those times. Suddenly my see-through nightie seemed like the least of my problems right now.
“Hey, come on, Adam,” I said, tugging at his arm. “Damsel in distress here.” I was trying to lighten the mood, break the tension a little. It took a long moment for Adam to break away from the death stare he locked with his brother, but he slowly turned to me, almost like he had forgotten I had even been there. I had no idea what they were talking about, obviously something Adam had been keeping from me, something he didn’t want me to know. I wasn’t exactly in the position to challenge him right now; I had to push down any potential hurt feelings I might have had and just really get these two away from each other.
I smiled, pulling at his arm while still managing to cover myself with some semblance of modesty. “Come on, let’s go,” I urged.
Adam’s head turned to Chris, ready to give him the last word, but thankfully he was gone.
Adam slammed his bedroom door behind him, making his way down the hall, stopping only to open the linen cardboard. He had gotten dressed in record speed shoving a towel blindly at me as he passed me back down the hall. The remnants of anger were still palpable; this was definitely not something that was predictable in him, not something I recognised. Adam was never one to hold a grudge, but more than that, he wasn’t one to take it out on me. I quickly juggled the towel into position, wrapping it around me.
“Hey, where you going?” I called after him.
“I’m heading out with Ringer to help Sean set up out at the lake house.”
