“Yeah. I missed all of you, too. Like, a lot.”
“I’m sorry that I didn’t notice.” He sounded so sad and dejected, full of blame he was putting on himself.
“No, Moon, it’s nobody’s fault but Jude’s. Jude is who we should blame. Not me, not you, not Cres, not anyone.”
Crescent wrapped his arms around my shoulders, pulling me against him. “That’s really great that you can see that, baby.” He pressed a kiss to the side of my head.
“Ew.” Moon opened his mouth, sticking his tongue out. “Get a room, guys. I don’t need to see none of that PDA.”
“Oh, shut up. You know you’re just jealous.” Crescent stuck his tongue out, too, blowing a raspberry at the screen.
Moon put a hand over his heart dramatically. “Me? Jealous of my itty bitty brother? No fucking way.”
I leaned over, grabbing the phone away from the stack of books it was propped up against. “Okay, that’s enough. We love you, Moon. We’ll think about talking to Mom and Dad.”
“Fine. I love you guys too. Just let me know when we can get together again, yeah?”
“Of course. Bye.”
I hung up the phone and handed it to a giggling Crescent. He looked far too charming for what had just happened. “What are you laughing at?”
“Just how much I love you and how good it feels to hear you and Moon talk again. And at how relentlessly my parents are trying to get us back in their lives.”
Rolling my eyes, I leaned against him, laying my cheek on his shoulder. “I’m glad to be back in their lives.”
He hummed, rubbing his hand up and down my arm. “Do you think it’d be worth it?”
“What, moving to Heaton Springs?”
“Yeah.”
Sighing, I took a moment to think it all through. Crescent had some really good points about leaving the bakery and our therapists behind. Moon had some good points too, though. I couldn’t say I didn’t like the idea of being closer to all of them, either. “I think if we did, it’d have to be for good reasons. Not just because of Jude or anything like that. I mean, what would we do about our therapy? And you, with the bakery?”
He grabbed me by the waist, his palm touching the skinmy crop top wasn’t covering. “Okay, let’s think about it objectively. Like a pros and cons list. I wouldn’t say I’m the most excited about the idea, but I’m willing to go through the list.”
“That could work. Do you want to do cons, or pros?”
“Let me flip a coin.”
I looked around, trying to find a coin, but I couldn’t see any.
“Heads or tails?”
Still a bit confused, I pushed past it. “Um, heads.”
He pulled his phone out, typing something into it. “Okay, I have Google ready. I’ll be tails. If it lands on heads, you’ll be the pros; if it lands on tails, I’ll do the pros.”
Peering over his screen, I noticed the little coin in the middle of it. It all sounded far more complicated than it should’ve been, but I let him do his thing as he touched the coin on the screen. A little flipping animation started, going back and forth for all of five seconds before landing on tails.
“So, you get to do cons, and I’ll do pros. But you can go first.” He was smirking as he said it.
“Seriously? You went through all of that only to make me go first still?”
“Maybe.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, pushing my body further into his side as I huffed. “Okay, fine. For starters, you’d have to find a new job, and we’d have to find a new apartment, along with moving all our shit down there. That requires money, too. I mean, what if we don’t find a job for you? Or what if we have issues finding a place to stay? And then, our therapists, of course, which we both desperately need in our lives. And don’t forget that I don’t want Jude to run our lives, and what about Sarah?”
“Okay, all of those are good points.” His head suddenly turned to the side, right toward one of the corners.
