June choked on her swallow. “You’re going where?” She scratched her ear like she couldn’t have heard me right.
“Yoga. Well—if it’s on. I’ll have to check. I’ve never been before,” I shrugged. “Do you think I need special clothes, or will this do?”
She looked over my skinny jeans and white t-shirt. “You’re asking the wrong kind of human. Are you sure you’re okay to be on your own? I could come back with you.” She looked seriously concerned.
I shook my head. “Rick’s still here.”
I wasn’t going to let her know that he wouldn’t be caught dead in a yoga class.
“How about you? What are you going to do?” I nodded toward the empty cigarette packet in her hand.
She exhaled. “Start all over again. Quitting, that is,” she added quickly at my alarmed expression.
“Good. We’ve hit our quota of traumatic events for this family.” I held my only sister by the shoulder, making us look more like adults on even ground than the competitive siblings we’d once been.
“We'll have to outsource future suffering to another family,” she joked, chewing the inside of her cheek. June’s face crumbled, and she grabbed me in her arms, hugging me tight. I didn’t stiffen. Neither of us did.
“I love you,” I whispered into her coconut-scented hair.
“I love you too,” she squeaked. “More than you could ever know.”
“Oh my God, get a room,” Rick teased, emerging from behind the Jeep. I’d wondered where he’d gone.
I rolled my eyes, but his face was soft.
Wit was our love language.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The closed signon the café was swinging towards us by the time we got back to Glades Bay. I had no idea where the day had gone, and all I wanted to do was spoon Taco and watch films on my laptop.
on my laptop.
“You have to tell her,” Rick said as I unlocked the front door to Steamy Sips and the bell jingled.
I groaned, even though I knew he was right. “Can’t you do it for me?”
“Remind me how old you are again?”
“As old as the man I feel?” I wiggled my eyebrows.
“So, no one?”
Ouch.I hadn’t told Rick about the ill-fated attempt with Jono—I didn’t want to give him yet another reason to worry. A failed sexual conquest for Riley? He’d have me under medical surveillance immediately. And there was no way I was telling a soul about kissing Dax.
“Prettiest lady in all the laaand,” Rick called loudly from the downstairs kitchen.
I elbowed him. “She could be busy!” I hissed. “And I’m offended.”
“You’ve seen her, right? You’re second, no doubt—but that girl has all sorts of nature’s gifts.”
He wasn’t wrong. Breeze was easily one of the most beautiful humans I’d ever met. The fact that she seemed blissfully unaware of it—and was just as lovely on the inside—only magnified it.
“So long as I’m still second,” I muttered, lips bunching. “But when I have more energy, I’m filing an ageism complaint.”
He rolled his eyes and leaned his hip against the butcher’s block. At this point, it had basically become our unofficial gathering spot.
“And I’ll remind you about that drunken night we shared after I stopped seeing Tony,” he replied.
