Shaun made a face, leaning against the wall while boxing the air. “Do you remember those lock-picking skills I learned when I went to New York for a while? They come in handy sometimes. Besides, I talked James' wife into letting me in. I promised her a fresh grasshopper pie tomorrow.” He smiled. “It's time for the gym, brother. Get up. We also have things to do at Luna’s house. It's a busy day.”
Groaning, Ronan forgot how annoying Shaun could be. “Fine, give me a minute to shave my face and change.”
“Let it be. The ladies love the beard. All that hair, they love running their fingers through it.” Shaun chuckled, following him into the bathroom before he closed the door.
Ronan stared at his reflection in the mirror. “I don’t have a woman, Shaun.”
“Not yet, my friend, but I saw the way you and Luna looked at each other. Nice to see true love hasn’t died yet. She’ll comearound. You gotta just give her a bit of time to get her anger out, then she’ll simmer down. Although, sometimes it’s nice when they’re all fired up.”
Olive peeked around the corner, staring at Ronan in the mirror. He smiled. “Make yourself useful, brother, go let my little Olive out before she pees on the carpet.”
Three
“Morning, Mom.” Jonah was knocking on her door before Luna woke up.
“Goodness, are you all about waking me at the crack of dawn? I would think by now that you could get to school on your own. I don’t have to work until 11 a.m., you know.” Yawning, she blinked her eyes open to see her usually studious son flexing his biceps.
“I think they are getting bigger already.” He smiled. “Also, the guys are here to help clean up the house.”
“What happened to my son? Who stole him away? I want him back. The boy who sits around and plays video games, talks science, and dreams of winning a Pulitzer Prize one day.” Tossing back the covers, she walked to the bathroom and washed her face. “Please tell me my son is coming back.”
"Not a chance, lovely lady.” Ronan’s voice called to her from somewhere not far away.
“Oh no! Don’t tell me you and Shaun are going to turn him into a carbon cutout of you two criminals.”
Jonah was in the room with a big smile on his face.
“I’ll have you know, pretty lady, that neither I nor Shaun have ever spent one night in a jail of any sort.”
His laughter sent a shiver down her spine, and Luna tried unsuccessfully to ignore how good it felt. She smiled despite herself, annoyed and excited he was at her house again. She knew their argument from the night before was a product of the past.
Still, her mind lingered on the fact that Jonah was making friends with his father. It felt deceitful and wrong for her to not stop everything and tell them both. In the mirror, she silently promised to tell them when the time was right until Ronan peeked his head around the corner.
“Are you done yet? I assure you, wearing a burlap bag, you would be stunning. Come on, we have work to do after Shaun takes Jonah to school.”
Abandoning her makeup again, Luna stared at her not-so-youthful face in the mirror. She had a few wrinkles around her eyes, but she still looked pretty good for her age. Biting her lips, she wished Ronan wasn’t watching her so she could put on her morning face cream.
“Do you always watch women as they get ready for their day?”
“No. Just you. I remember sitting in your room across the hall and watching you paint your nails and do your eyes. Phoebe would roll her eyes constantly, complaining that you took so long.”
“What can I say? She looked beautiful, no matter what, whereas I needed a bit of help, even back then.”
“Do you remember the night I let you put make up on me. You kept nagging me non-stop to let you do my nails, and you promised to take it off right away. It was Halloween, I think. I said fine, you could do whatever you liked.”
Luna smiled, remembering that moment as if it were yesterday. “I do! Jonah, your father…” She said something she shouldn’t have, caught herself, felt an odd sense of edgy nervousness, and then recovered.
Both Jonah and Ronan were staring at her oddly, but thankfully, she was quick on her feet. “Silly me. My father laughed so hard that we thought he would never stop.”
“Yeah, I came out of the room. She didn’t even let me look in the mirror before bringing me out to show her parents, Shaun, Nicky, and Phoebe. Phoebe almost fell over. Shaun said he wanted makeup, too, and Nicky just laughed. The things we got away with.”
“Yeah, my mother loved Ronan. She used to say that he was her third child, her son. She’d always say she didn’t like Shaun as much as she liked Ronan and that your Aunt Phoebe should break up with him.”
Jonah smiled. “I wish I’d met Grandma and Grandpa.” There was a look of sadness on his face as he turned away. “I'll be downstairs.
“Hurry, Luna. We’ve got a bunch of things to do, and we need to go to the hardware store.”
Their eyes met in the mirror again, his smile seeming to cause a flurry of excitement and happiness to race through her body. That annoying breathlessness she could recall from her youth was back.
