Natural Love Read online

  “I was going to swim some laps. But I didn’t know you guys were out here.”

  “Laps, huh?” Grant said. “Looks like you put on the right swimsuit for that.” When I glared at him, he winked at me. “How many laps do you normally swim?”

  Avery shrugged. “As many as I want to.”

  “As many as you want to.” Grant raised his Heineken bottle to her in a mock toast. “Well, I’ll drink to staying in shape. Feel free to swim as much as you want, Avery.”

  “I will.” She put her big toe back in the water. “And feel free to mooch off of us and drink as much of our alcohol as you want, Grant. I’m sure you need to pregame before you hit the bars tonight trolling for girls to sleep with.”

  When I laughed, she grinned at me and shook her head. Then she dove into the water, splitting it with her body. Grant settled back into his chair and didn’t say anything else about her.

  “AH, MR. CHADWICK,” Henry said from behind the breakfast bar when I staggered into the expansive kitchen two days later after an early-morning run. He held a black coffee cup and wore his typical summer uniform of dark pants and a lemon-colored polo shirt. “I just put on a fresh pot. Want some?”

  “No, thank you.” I shook my head and sat down in the middle one of the three white chairs at the bar. “Still don’t drink that stuff. And don’t call me Mr. Chadwick, okay? I told you, it’s Spencer. Mr. Chadwick’s my father.”

  Henry paused. “Spencer.”

  “Good,” I said, still breathing hard from the last five miles, which hadn’t cleared my head at all. That bothered me a lot. In South Africa, I ran five times a week, always in the early morning; my body, and more importantly, my mind, loved it. My salty sweat had mixed with the stagnant heat and left a grimy film all over my body. I’d told myself it was penance for my sins, and that every run took me closer to forgiveness.

  Now that I was back in Ohio, though, I didn’t feel any closer to forgiveness at all. The runs transformed into short, sputtering fits of starts and stops, and my breathing never evened out as the miles passed. Five-mile runs took me forty-five minutes in South Africa. They took an hour in Ohio.

  And I didn’t know how to fix that.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking. You left for the Peace Corps a boy.” Henry turned to the large coffee maker on the counter behind him. “And you came back home a man.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “You’re 24 years old.” Henry poured the fresh coffee into two cups. “A man. Ready to make his way in the world, right?”

  “And where is my place in this world?” I knew the correct answer to this question, but I wanted to see if Henry did, too.

  Henry sipped some coffee. “Helping your father run the business?”

  “Did you expect anything less?” I said, satisfied. So far, Henry seemed to have signed up for Team Spencer, and I liked that. Team Spencer needed as many members as possible.

  “No.” Henry put his coffee cup in the sink and leaned against the counter next to the stove. “He’ll let you do more than just help.”

  “He better,” I said. “You know, I’ve got a five-inch thick binder on my desk waiting for me to read. All about the ins and outs of Chadwick Properties.”

  “Mr. Chadwick loves his details. Although I’m sure that’s easy for an Ivy League grad like you.”

  “Wharton undergrad. Just what my father wanted.”

  “But not what you wanted.”

  When I didn’t reply, Henry gestured to the second cup. “Miss Avery likes coffee now, in case you were wondering.”

  I wasn’t, but I found this little fact about her very interesting, and more than a little annoying. Before I left for South Africa, I could have sworn I knew everything about my beautiful stepsister. And I mean everything. Right down to the small things, like the kind of lipstick she liked best: a silver tube of Black Honey from Clinique. Now, though, her life had millions of little details that had grown like weeds in my absence. Some of them needed stamping out; others needed recording.

  “She does?” I said. “Avery drinks coffee and likes it?”

  He nodded. “Straight. No sugar. Black. Since last summer.”

  “Really?” In my head I cursed myself. No need to sound like an overly interested teenage boy. Not about her. When I spoke again, I had control over my words. “I see. So tell me, what else about her has changed?”

  Henry placed the pot back on the coffee maker. When he turned back to me, he’d narrowed his eyes. “She’s growing fast.”

  “I’d say she’s already grown.”

  Henry tapped his fingers on the counter while he studied me. “That, too. What I mean is, she’s really changed in the two years you’ve been gone.”

  “So I hear. That’s what Grant said.” My sweaty hand grabbed a banana from the wire fruit basket on the bar. Maybe peeling it would help keep my expression in check. “But what makes you say that?”

  “She likes to host parties. And go to parties. She’s becoming quite the socialite.”

  “That’s a good role for her.”

  “Is it?”

  “Well, she’s twenty-one.” I bit off the top of the peeled banana. “Isn’t that what 21-year-old girls do? Drink? Party? Try to find guys? Go out all over town? Take selfies and post them on Instagram?”

  “True. That’s also what 24-year-old guys do, too, right? Only with girls?” Henry laughed at his own comment. “Do you want anything besides the banana? Pancakes? Cereal?”

  “No, thank you.” I bit off some more of the banana, but the fruit tasted salty and bitter in my mouth. “Back to Avery.”

  Henry turned around and opened the cabinet next to the double oven Linda loved. The cabinet held an array of china and crystal my dad and Linda picked out in Prague last year and our longtime house manager grabbed a bowl. “She’s having cereal.”

  “Isn’t she up yet? It’s past 9AM.”

  “No, she’s not.” Henry paused. “I worry about her sometimes.”

  “I worry about her, too.”

  “She hides her true feelings. She thinks people don’t notice.”

  “But you notice.”

  Henry nodded. “And lately, it’s been about something else.” He frowned. “She brought up her dad the other day.”

  “She usually doesn’t talk about him.”

  “Exactly,” Henry said. “Odd.”

  Avery’s father died when she was three, in a car accident one night in mid-February during an ice storm. He flipped his car on an exit ramp off I-275 and rolled down an embankment into the woods. No one knew until the next morning, when a trucker spotted the car and found Lawrence Jackson’s dead body in the driver’s seat. The coroner said he died on impact. Avery didn’t like to talk about it, but a large picture of him hung in her room next to her nightstand. Her mom, Linda, married my dad two years later.

  Henry walked over to the pantry and pulled open the door. When he came back out, he held a box of Corn Flakes. I tried to figure out his expression, but I couldn’t. Henry had a gift for stoicism, and he always knew just when to use it. Unwavering expressions made him the most valuable staffer in the house. Everybody thought they could trust him with their secrets.

  And I mean everyone.

  “Do you think she’s okay?” I said

  Henry shrugged. “Are you?”

  “Now that’s an interesting question.”

  “You know, you can win your dad back,” Henry said once he got back to the breakfast bar. “Just show him how responsible you are. How much you want to succeed. How you’ve changed. What you’ve learned over the last few years.”

  “Right.” I remained unconvinced.

  “And then there’s all that business knowledge you got from that expensive education of yours.”

  I shrugged. “You sound confident.”

  “I am.” Henry poured a few of the Corn Flakes into the bowl, but he didn’t look at me. “You’re just like your father. You have his same drive. I see it.”r />
  I laughed without humor. “Tell that to him. He’s still angry about what happened.”

  I remembered when I got into Wharton. I gave him the acceptance letter at dinner over a plate of salmon Linda made for special occasions. He read it with no expression, then tossed it on the dining table and took a long swig from his wine glass. He graduated from Wharton, too, back in 1990. My grandfather did the same in 1968. Wharton represented the minimum in our family. And at least I had met that.

  It was just a shame it didn’t mean what I thought it would.

  “Mr. Chadwick has a long memory.”

  “You’re telling me. Sometimes I think he hates me.”

  “Because of the accident?”

  “Yep.”

  “He doesn’t hate you. He’s just angry. You’ll have to show him that he can trust you.” Henry placed the box on the table and his large eyes settled on me. He’d grown much older in two years; it wouldn’t be long before he slowed down and retired. “Now. Miss Avery’s still upstairs. I guess I need to go wake her up.”

  “No, please.” I stood up from the table. “Let me do it.”

  AVERY’S ROOM LAY at the other end of the long second floor hallway. Just like me, she had her own bathroom, and when I left for the Peace Corps, she was still begging Dad and Linda to let her change the Pepto-Bismol pink paint of her childhood and redesign the rest of the room. Growing up, I didn’t often go into her room, and she didn’t want me there. She liked her privacy.

  Most of the time.

  I knocked twice on the door when I reached it. “Avery,” I said when she didn’t answer. “Are you awake?” Then I added another knock.

  “Come in,” she said, sleep still coating the words.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, Spencer. Come in.”

  I pushed open the door and what I saw made me step back. Again, right in front of me, was a change in Avery’s life that needed to be recorded. Somewhere in the course of two years, the room had transformed. Pink still dominated the decor, but now Avery’s room looked fit for a pop princess or minor European royalty. A sculpted crystal chandelier, brocade window treatments, off-white furniture, and an artful mix of gold and glitter combined to make this room look like something a modern Marie Antoinette would appreciate.

  There, centered against the far wall of the room, lay Avery’s queen-sized bed. It had a disheveled gold and white damask comforter on top of it, and Avery stood right next to it. She wore a blue V-neck top and black pajama pants. All I focused on, though, were her breasts.

  Jesus.

  “Sorry,” I said. Maybe I shouldn’t have walked in there at all. She didn’t look ready for me; she looked like someone I should have seen in the back of a Victoria’s Secret catalog.

  Not that I minded.

  “I can . . . What’s your . . . breast—I mean, break . . . Henry just . . . he had . . .”

  “What?”

  “Breakfast,” I managed. “Henry made breakfast downstairs.”

  “Good.” She walked into her bathroom, and I allowed only my eyes to follow her. The water turned on, and then I heard the sound of her brushing her teeth. “I’m so tired,” she said over the sound of the bristles. “Exhausted.”

  “It’s already almost nine thirty,” I called back to her. “And Dad and Linda don’t want you sleeping in all summer and wasting time.”

  “Is that what they said?” She reappeared at the bathroom door with a yellow towel in her hands. What I saw of the bathroom over her shoulder confirmed that it got a major overhaul in the last two years, too.

  I shrugged. “I have my marching orders all laid out in an email from Dad that I got the other night. All the things I have to do before I start work at the company.” I pulled my phone out of the pocket of my pants, unlocked it, and opened the email. “I mean, this thing has everything in it, right down to the board meeting schedule for the rest of this year.” My eyes skimmed the endless paragraphs. “Ah, here it is. Reminders for you. He wants you to find a job this summer. And he wants me to make sure you keep it.”

  “Graduate school isn’t enough, huh?” She laughed but I didn’t think she really found anything very funny. “I’m capable of finding and keeping a job all on my own.”

  “He doesn’t think so.”

  “This is my summer before grad school. Summer. They give you a break for a reason.” She turned and tossed the towel onto the counter near the sink. “And after grad school, everything’s going to change.”

  “Everything already has changed, Avery.” I leaned my left shoulder against the doorframe to her room. “They changed two years ago. Longer than that.”

  Her eyes locked with mine. “I know that, Spencer.”

  “Dad’s worried—”

  “I’ll get a job. Probably at the same place I worked last summer, that boutique owned by Mom’s friend Marsha. I’ll call her today.”

  “Just appease him. Do what he asks.” I tilted my head and gave her a knowing look. “He didn’t say you have to work a bunch of hours. Just that you have to have a job before you start at UC.”

  “Any job?”

  “Yeah, any job.”

  A sad smile floated over her face. “He says I was lucky to get into UC’s program, since I got such a horrible score on the GMAT.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t mean that.”

  A few seconds of silence floated past as we studied each other.

  She cocked her head. “Marching orders? Really? Is that what he called it?”

  “I know,” I said, shrugging one shoulder and putting the phone back into my pocket. “But that’s what he said in this email. The same one where he apologized for not being here when I came home.”

  “Apologized? He apologized?”

  “It was one sentence. As a P.S. at the bottom,” I said, then decided to switch the subject back to her. “I’m sure grad school will be easy. You’ll do great.”

  That was the dutiful, kind, supportive thing to say, though school had never come very easily for Avery. I tilted and swayed toward academics, preferring to best my classmates and prove my worth by winning competitions and beating everyone else’s grades. Avery made good grades, too, of course, but never ranked in the top 10 percent of her high school class. Instead, she conquered her classmates with her personality, and this uncanny ability to make everyone who ever talked to her feel important.

  “Plus, life’s about more than GMAT scores,” I said.

  “You’re right about that, Spencer. We can’t all be like you,” she teased. “We can’t all sleepwalk through school and still make perfect grades.”

  I shoved my hands into the pockets of my Adidas pants. “You saw how much good that did me.”

  “He’ll forgive you.” She walked over to me. “I promise.”

  “Everyone keeps saying that.”

  “Because it’s true.”

  She stood close enough to me that I smelled her body lotion—something floral and fruity that coated her skin. I wanted to lean over and sniff her arm, then maybe trail my nose up to her shoulder and then her neck, but I didn’t. That would have just been weird.

  “He can hold a grudge,” I said instead. “And he has a very long memory. We both know that.”

  “I know.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “But he will forgive you. Once he comes back. He will.”

  “Come on,” I said, knowing better than to argue about it with her. She’d win, anyway. “Henry has your breakfast downstairs, and some black coffee, just the way you like.”

  “My favorite.”

  Then she left her room, and I followed, staring at the curve of her ass as we walked back to the kitchen. When I saw Henry still there, I thanked God. Being alone with Avery had changed. It had a charge I could taste. I wondered if she noticed it, too.

  AFTER SIX TEXT messages from Grant and a plea on Facebook, I gave into Grant’s demands. That night I agreed to meet him at nine for a drink at Ovation, a nightclub and craft cocktail joint in do
wntown Cincinnati he assured me featured the pretty people of the city as clientele. He’d gone there every weekend since the place opened six months earlier. We’d both graduated from high school with the wine manager, Tim. Ovation, Grant said, needed more Spencer Chadwick.

  How could I argue with that?

  “Where are you going?” Avery asked when I walked by the study around twenty to nine that night. She sat in one of the overstuffed chairs with a book in her left hand.

  “Ovation.” I stopped in the doorway. She wore a short green bathrobe and black pants. “You’re not going out tonight?”

  She closed the book and put it on the side table under the reading light. When she did, I saw she wore the bracelet I’d given her. In fact, when I thought about it, she’d worn the bracelet I gave her every day since I came back from South Africa.

  Interesting. Good. More than good.

  “I think I’m staying in,” she said. “I’m pretty tired.”

  “Really? You? Tired?”

  “Sometimes it’s nice to stay in.” She shrugged. “My friend Patience is having a party at the boat club tomorrow. So I’ll probably go to that. But tonight I’m watching Netflix.” She held up her book. “And reading.”

  “You know, I’m not going to tell on you if you go out both nights on the weekend.” I pulled my keys out of my pocket and began twisting them in circles on the end of my finger. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  She nodded in the direction of the kitchen. “Nice to know someone else in this house can be trusted, besides Henry.”

  “You can always trust me, Avery. You know that.”

  My words hung in the air for a moment, loaded with innuendo and subtext. Once again, we danced around a subject neither of us wanted to discuss, one that boiled and bubbled underneath every encounter we had. Someday we’d have to discuss it.

  But not right then.

  Thank God, Avery changed the subject.

  “You look nice, Spencer.” She cocked her head. “I like that polo. Burberry?”

  “Yeah. Found it in the back of the closet. Can’t believe it still fits.”