Wallflower In Bloom Read Free Page B

magazine about a cool lingerie store in Austin called Petticoat Fair. Maybe I’d stroll right in like I owned the place and buy a whole wardrobe. So the next time a guy walked in on me, he’d stop and say, Whoa, baby .
    Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. I’d sunk to a point in my life that my only hope for a good time was to be better prepared in case another hotel accidentally gave somebody a key to my room.
    I shoved my suitcase and its splayed contents over to one side of the vast, unnecessary expanse of bed. When I slurped the remnants of my margarita through the straw, the sound it made was so loud I could almost imagine I had company.
    “Say, ‘Excuse me,’” I said out loud.
    “Excuse me,” I answered in a deep, sexy male voice.
    “There’s no excuse for you,” I said.
    Then I crawled between the sheets on the other side of the bed and pulled the covers up over my head. Screw the walk.

 
    Morning, noon, and night, my brother is pretty much a chiasmus machine, and a chiasmus machine is pretty much my brother, morning, noon, and night .
    S o, my life being my life, fast-forward to the next day and there I was at my brother’s Austin gig.
    Steve Moretti held out his hand.
    I ignored it.
    “I thought you looked familiar,” he said.
    “Cute,” I said. I tried to will the heat that was creeping into my cheeks back down to wherever it was that it was coming from.
    I grabbed my brother’s tunic-clad forearm. “Come on. You should be at the signing table by now.”
    Two women with long blond hair pushed their way in front of Steve. “Tag?” one of them said. “Do you remember me?”
    A brunette wearing jeans and a T-shirt that read I BRAKE FOR ANGELS cut in front of the two blondes. She stood next to my brother and held out her cell phone with one hand to take a picture.
    I inserted myself between them and held out my hand to block the shot. “Pictures at the signing table only.”
    “Wow, I like your earrings,” she said to me.
    I kept my hand up. “Nice try,” I said. People had been kissing up tome to get to Tag my whole life. I hadn’t fallen for nice earrings since the Beatles were still together.
    My brother smiled at the woman apologetically, good cop to my bad cop.
    I yanked his arm. “Come on.”
    Tag yanked back. “Where are you staying?” he called out to Steve.
    I pretended I was invisible.
    “Right here,” Steve called back.
    Tag dragged me a few steps toward him so he didn’t have to keep bellowing. “How about a late dinner? As long as you don’t mind hanging out with my family.”
    I gazed off in the opposite direction.
    “Wouldn’t miss it,” I heard Captain Underpants say.
    The thing about my brother was that he had only two speeds. He was either completely on, or he was asleep. And he couldn’t stand to be alone. Not even for a minute. He collected people, and once he had them, he never let them go.
    All by way of saying that I knew there was no way in hell I could get away with skipping dinner with my family and the guy who’d last seen my underpants, so I didn’t even try.
    “Ma’am?” the waiter said.
    I glanced up from my menu. “The ChocoVine looks good.”
    “ The taste of Dutch chocolate and fine red wine ,” Tag read. He shook his head. “It’s like Yoo-hoo with fourteen percent alcohol, Dee.”
    I shrugged. “That’s what I’m counting on.”
    “So,” my father said once everyone else had ordered a chocolate-free drink, “tell us about yourself, Steve. Always a big treat to meet one of Tag’s old friends.”
    “Actually, I think I’ve met some of you before,” my brother’s old friend said.
    I looked around for the nearest exit. I didn’t think he’d actually tell our story, but you never really knew what people might do for a laugh.
    Steve smiled. “We’d stopped at your house on the way to a party on the Cape one weekend freshman year. Remember, Tag?”
    “Hey, that’s right.” Tag laughed like they were still back in college. “I