Chapter 35

The girls timed their arrival to correspond with the end of the cooking, or so it seemed to the guys. Walt, the grill master, had just turned the burgers for the last time and added the cheese when Rachelle and Mary came giggling through the doorway. Each carried a couple of bags of groceries, not that many were needed at the upper apartment.

"Chips and soda," Mary announced, bumping Walt with her hip. "No picnic is complete without chips and soda."

"And some ice cream for dessert," Rachelle put forth. "I was sure we bought some chocolate sauce but I'll bet those other three appropriated it."

She winked at Adam and laughed.

"They'll be up in a couple of minutes," Mary answered his unasked question. "They had to put a couple of things away and to get a couple of things out, I think. Do you guys mind if they eat up here with us during the week? Adam and Shelly have already chipped in for groceries up here and Sarah and Allie said they'd help out, too."

Walt and Sean shrugged.

"More the merrier," Walt said.

"You've got all the Mary you can handle," Sean teased. "Which is probably more than most men could handle."

"You better believe it," Mary answered Sean. She turned to Walt. "And you better remember it."

"Yes, Dear," Walt responded in his usual fashion.

The five set about placing items on the table and breaking out the paper plates and cups. Adam noticed a little more sway in Mary's hips than usual, a byproduct of the compliments she had received earlier if Walt was to be believed. He also noticed Rachelle had touched him a lot – but in a friendly manner, not in a flirty way.

She had guided him out of her way by putting an arm around his waist. She had held his forearm when she spoke to him. She had put her hand on his shoulder when she reached across him to put something on the table. For his part, Adam joked with her by pretending to take a bite out of her arm when it crossed in front of him. She laughed and gave him a companionable squeeze on the shoulder.

The residents of the lower apartment arrived just as the burgers were being brought inside, also smiling and laughing. Mary and Rachelle looked at the newcomers and broke into laughter, too. Sean, Walt and Adam simply shrugged and went on with their lives.

Dinner, as with the two previous nights, was a lively, friendly affair. The people around the table kept the topics lighthearted and poked fun at each other without regard to gender or who was dating whom. It was almost 8 p.m. when the group finished eating but Mary and Rachelle each hooked Adam's arms when he tried to leave with his group.

"You need to hang out up here for a while," Mary said. "Spend some quality time with your friends, you know. You've been chasing around after those girls for three days like a dog chases a car."

"And like a dog and a car, you wouldn't know what to do if you managed to catch them," Rachelle joked. "So, what did you guys discuss while we were shopping?"

"Sex," Adam said, hoping to draw a rise out of the pair. He was usually reluctant to discuss such things if a woman was near.

"Oh," Rachelle said, sitting up straighter. "Anyone we know about?"

"Probably everyone you know about," Adam replied, smiling but disappointed his answer hadn't even drawn a blush from either girl. "Did you know Sean's sister is staying here after break?"

Mary and Rachelle exchanged glances.

"No," Rachelle finally answered. "But it doesn't surprise me. She'll be at USC this summer. She would have been here last summer if she wasn't such a dumbass."

"That is no way to talk about your doppelganger," Adam said with a smirk.

"My what?" Rachelle said. She knew what a doppelganger was, but she didn't see how it applied to her.

"Your double," Adam said. "Walt and I decided Sean only dates you because he has latent incestuous feelings for his sister. She looks like you if you were put on the rack for a week or so. Or so I've come to understand."

Rachelle rolled her eyes.

"Like the rest of the family, and all sensible people, she worships the ground I tread upon," she said in a snooty voice, her nose in the air. "She adapted her appearance to approximate mine only after Sean and I started to date."

"A likely story," Mary said, choosing to support Adam in this instance because he didn't usually poke fun at Rachelle.

"It's true," Rachelle protested in her normal voice. "She was a bleached blonde with a pierced nose when Sean and I started to go out. She was in a bimbo phrase that apparently started when she was 12 or so and lasted until last summer. She had to take 10th grade twice because she skipped so many days to hang out with her friends – her college-aged friends."

Adam shook his head.

"I'm not kidding," Rachelle said. "She probably would have quit school if her mom would have signed off on it. She was a real handful and no one really knew how to handle her. You should have seen the way she would parade around the house. The first time I visited, she walked out of her room and down the hall to the kitchen without anything on. It didn't matter than Sean was sitting there, talking to me and his Mom. She just paraded in, made sure she bent over to pick up something in the bottom of the fridge and sauntered out."

"Sean must have freaked!" Mary exclaimed.

"I gather it was not an unusual occurrence," Adam commented.

"It apparently wasn't," Rachelle said, pursing her lips. "Because neither he nor his Mom batted an eye. He told me a little about her, uh, proclivity for shock tactics and warned me just to ignore her. Well, I ignored her antics for about a day and then I put the word on her."

Rachelle got a harsh look on her face that Adam hadn't seen before.

"She was a mess," she continued. "I mean, she was tall but she was chubby. She was content just to lie around all day and do nothing. I told her if she took care of herself, it might not be a bad thing for her to go naked or to wear tight clothes. But since she looked like a trailer park whore, she should cover up as much as she could. She got shitty, so I peeled down to my bra and underwear to show her how a real woman attracts a guy – a good guy like her brother, not the toothless losers she was hanging out with. By the end of the week, we were friends."

Adam nodded slightly.

"Sean said his Mom takes a hands-off approach to parenting," he said. "Maybe she just needed some guidance and someone she knew wouldn't put up with her shit."

"Maybe," Rachelle admitted. "That might be it. Honestly, Sean is a great guy so I doubt his Mom had any trouble with him. Even if he did get into a lot of shit, he was smart enough not to get caught. Erin was too arrogant and too stupid not to flaunt it. I don't think Nora was prepared to have a rebellious child – any more than my Dad was."

"Rebellious. You?" Adam asked. "I find that hard to believe."

A sad look crossed Rachelle's face and Adam felt a pang of remorse. She put her hand on his wrist and gently rubbed his arm with her thumb.

"I'll tell you about it sometime when we have an hour or so," Rachelle told him before he could apologize. "But yes, when I was 13 or so until I was about 16, I did some really stupid things that hurt my Dad dearly."

"I'm sorry, Rachelle," Adam said sincerely. "I didn't know. I didn't mean to make a joke of something that obviously hurts you."