Aftermirth by Hillary Jordan Read Free Book Online Page A

supremely confident, ferociously intelligent former Playboy centerfold played by Angelina Jolie.
    She gave me a compassionate smile, like she was used to reducing men to monosyllable-stammering idiots. “I just hung up with George,” she said. “His house is about twenty-five minutes from here, on the outskirts of Charleston. He gave me directions.”
    â€œWell then, let’s get this show on the road!” I boomed unnaturally, sounding like a game show host telling a contestant they’d just won a BRAND NEW CAR! Elena was looking at me with one eyebrow lifted. I grabbed Catherine’s roller bag and beat a hasty retreat to the trunk.
    To my relief, Catherine not only declined Elena’s invitation to sit up front, but she also kept the conversation light, steering clear of the three-hundred-pound dead gorilla in the car with us. She fussed over Izzy for a gratifyingly long amount of time, and then we chatted about Austin, where Elena had family and I’d done some comedy gigs, and New York, where Catherine once had a teaching fellowship at NYU.
    â€œMy mom’s a professor there,” I said. “Denise Larssen. Did you know her?”
    â€œNo, but I was only there for a semester. What department’s she in?”
    â€œEnglish. She teaches American lit. How about you, what did you teach?”
    â€œHuman sexuality.”
    I glanced at her in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were full of mischief. “Bet that was a popular course,” I said. We all laughed, and I felt myself begin to relax. A feeling that lasted all of ten minutes, until we got to Summerville and pulled up in front of George’s house.
    Elena whistled, and I said, “Mint julep, anyone?”
    George’s “house” was a mansion straight out of some antebellum wonderland: a surreal pink and white confection of a plantation house surrounded by more roses than I’d ever seen in one place outside of Pasadena. He could have single-handedly decorated an armada of parade floats.
    â€œA hundred and eighty degrees from the Harbucks’,” Catherine said quietly.
    Which slammed all three of us head-on into grim reality and our reason for being there. The exuberant flowers and cheery pink paint suddenly seemed heartbreaking, more so even than the shabbiness and neglect we’d found in Durham. I thought of myself, cursing the sun the day Jess died. How could George stand to be surrounded by so much meaningless fucking beauty?
    I started to tear up—just what a guy wants to do in front of two attractive women, one of whom he hopes to make mad passionate love to later that night. I turned my head toward the driver’s side window to hide my face and felt Catherine’s hand come down on my shoulder, and with it, the phantom warmth of all the hands that had touched me there in the last two years: the unyielding grip of the guy who’d pulled me back from Jess’s charred body. My father’s hand and my brother’s, saying with a squeeze all the things they didn’t have words for at the funeral. The hands of worried friends, colleagues, strangers. Esteban’s hand and his relatives’. Elena’s, a mere forty-eight hours ago.
    â€œDon’t,” I said, shrugging it off. I wanted to shrug them all off. I was sick to death of feeling that weight; of being that guy, the guy who induced people’s sympathy instead of their laughter.
    â€œIt’s okay,” Catherine said. “You don’t have to come in with us if you don’t want to.”
    â€œOh, yes he does,” Elena said. Her voice was fierce. “Look at me, Michael.”
    I shook my head and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry.”
    â€œLook at me.”
    I looked. Her face was adamant and impossibly lovely. “You can,” she said, just like she had at the funeral home. Only this time what the words triggered wasn’t