"Okay, sit still or I’ll poke you in the eye," Dee warns, leaning in with the kind of concentration normally reserved for bomb defusal or threading a sewing machine. “And no one wants a burned eye. Especially not for Mom’s famous game night at The Timberline Inn!”
“I still can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” I mumble.
“You say that every time,” she says, dabbing something shimmery onto my cheekbones. “And every time, you end up looking like a goddess and eating half a pie. So really, you’re welcome.”
She’s not wrong.
About the pie part, anyway.
The rest? I don’t know.
I feel like I’ve been living in grayscale lately, and she’s trying to drag me back into color. I appreciate it, I do, but it’s hard to pretend everything’s normal when I’ve got a secret the size of a jellybean with a heartbeat.
“You’re gonna knock ‘em dead,” she says, stepping back with a proud smile. “Hell, I would date you… you know, if I weren’t your sister.”
I raise an eyebrow. “A little forward, Dee.”
She snorts. “Please. I’m trying to impress someone else tonight.”
I pause.
“Oh really?” I turn in my seat, grinning. “Do tell.”
Dee immediately flushes. “Nope. Not happening.”
“Nova?”
Her ears go red. “Shut up.”
“You shut up! You’ve been weird around her for, like, weeks.”
“I haven’t been weird.”
“You spend almost as much time at The Marrow as I do.”
She crosses her arms, clearly regretting this whole line of conversation. “Are you done being nosy?”
“Are you going to tell her how you feel?”
She hesitates.
“That’s what I thought.”
I let the silence stretch, the air thick with unspoken things. The old me, well, the me from three weeks ago, would’ve kept teasing her until she caved. But right now, I don’t have it in me to play matchmaker, even for my sister.
Dee picks up on the shift almost immediately. “Okay, your turn. What’s going on with you and Knox?”
And there it is. The question I’ve been dodging like it’s radioactive.
I stand abruptly and move to grab my jacket. “Nothing.”
“Josie.”
“I said it’s nothing, okay?”
Dee holds up her hands, softening her voice. “Hey. Sorry. Just asking.”
I nod, already regretting snapping. It’s not her fault I’m a hormonal disaster. But I can’t do this tonight. Not when everything is so raw, so fragile.
