Everyone Thinks I'm Thirsting Over My Own Brother novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Toast
At the rehearsal dinner Haley toasts Clarissa's drunk confession about the man the town calls her brother; Clarissa hands back the ring in front of sixty guests, and Cal says in the car park he has to tell her what he saw in March.
Haley tapped her fork against her glass, and sixty guests at my rehearsal dinner turned to watch my best friend stand up.
I sat at the head table in the club's lakeside room, between my fiance Dean and his mother.
His mother had pinned my corsage on me herself, and she had told me twice how well I looked.
An hour earlier Haley had hugged me at the door and fixed my left earring.
"Tonight is all about you," she had said.
Her phone was propped against the centerpiece with the camera pointed at me.
I thought it was for the video she had promised to make for the wedding.
"I've known Clarissa since we were fourteen," Haley said. "So I'm the one who gets to tell you the truth about her."
The guests laughed.
Dean squeezed my knee under the tablecloth.
"Three weeks ago she called me at two in the morning, drunk and crying," Haley said.
She waited a moment and let her voice go soft.
"She told me she has wanted her brother since her twenty-first birthday."
Nobody laughed this time.
"She said she thinks about Cal every time Dean touches her."
A fork hit a plate somewhere behind me.
Cal sat alone at the end of table four with a glass of water in front of him.
He had come straight from his shift, still in his work boots, and he had told me in the doorway that he'd written a few words to say tonight.
I could see the edge of an index card folded small in his breast pocket.
He was the only person in the room who was not looking at me.
He was looking at the tablecloth, and his hand was flat on it, very still.
"Oh, sweetheart," Dean's mother said, and she laid her hand over mine.
Her name was Deborah Aldrich, and she ran the club, the church flowers and the town's Facebook group.
Her voice carried to every table.
"We all forgive you. It's the grief about your father, and it's a terrible thing to feel for your own brother."
A woman at table two whispered, "Her own brother," and the whisper went around.
Dean stood and buttoned his jacket.
"I've already forgiven her," he said. "Clarissa needs support, not shame. We'll go ahead tomorrow at four, as planned."
A few people clapped.
I looked at Haley.
She was still holding her phone up, and her eyes were wet.
"I'm only saying it because I love you," she said. "I want you to get help."
Everything she said sounded kind, and every word of it was true.
I had said all of it, in the dark, with a bottle of wine open and my phone on speaker.
I had said it to her because I trusted her more than I trusted myself.
I stood up, and my chair scraped the floor.
"It's true," I said.
The room went quiet in a new way.
"I said it to you, Haley, at two in the morning, because I thought you were my friend."
Deborah's hand tightened on mine. "Clarissa, sit down. You're making it worse."
"And Cal is not my brother," I said. "My parents took him in when he was eleven and his mother died."
"Nobody signed a paper. Nobody in this room ever asked."
"Dear, he's right there," Deborah said. "Have some dignity."
I took the ring off.
It was a pretty ring, and Dean had chosen it with his mother.
I set it on his bread plate, next to the little pat of butter shaped like a swan.
"You said you'd forgiven me," I said to Dean. "Then forgive this, too. I won't be there tomorrow at four."
He opened his mouth, and I did not wait for what came out of it.
So I stepped out.
I walked the length of the room with phones rising on both sides of me.
My shoes were the ones I had bought for the wedding, and they made far too much noise.
At table four, Cal stood.
His chair went back, and he looked at me for the first time all night.
He did not say anything.
He put his hand over the pocket with the card in it, and he followed me out.
The car park was cold, and the lake smelled like October coming.
I stopped at the edge of the light with my arms wrapped around me and my teeth chattering.
I was not crying yet, and I did not want to start with him watching.
Cal's truck was parked across two spaces, the way it always was.
He opened the passenger door and stood holding it.
"Get in," he said. "I have to tell you what I saw in March."
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