My eyebrows crinkled together over my nose. Hadn’t he just turned Will down because of his busy day? I could joke all I wanted about being the first-place English sibling, but I knew better than that. He’d walked in here moping about losing his friendship with Will. I wasn’t first place. Not really. I was a consolation prize.
“I thought you had a busy day? Didn’t you just turn down Will for his weird estate sale adventure?”
Some light faded from his face, and his eyes narrowed in thought. “Well, yeah, but I didn’t want to rifle through some dead guy’s booze. Tacos are different. They’re delicious. And not musty.”
“At least you hope so,” I teased. “Nobody wants a musty taco.”
We both realized what I’d said at the same time. It was impossible to grow up with brothers and not constantly hear words and phrases in the most perverted way possible.
Jonah’s head tipped back as a burst of laughter rolled out of him. His whole body joined in, shaking from head to toe. His hair hung over his shoulders. And his eyes closed and crinkled at the corners.
God, he was so good-looking. How had he not found his Lola first?
My cheeks felt as though they were bright red, and I could hardly meet his amused gaze when he finally stopped laughing at me.
“I don’t think truer words have ever been spoken, Liza. Nobody wants to eat a musty taco.”
I pointed a finger at him. “I didn’t say anything about eating. That was all you.”
He waggled his eyebrows and shrugged again, but it was good-natured and relaxed this time. He was such a cad.
Well, okay, I wasn’t sure if cads still existed in this day and age. But if they did, he was their leader. The king cad. Probably breaking hearts and embarrassing women every day.
He lifted his arms over his head, stretching. His shirt pulled up, revealing a thin sliver of his hard stomach. I allowed myself a peek, but just a quick one. “So no lunch?” he asked.
“Not today, Mason. I don’t want to be stuck here all night, so I have to actually work today.”
He stood and walked to the edge of my desk, straightening one of my picture frames. It had a snapshot Mom had taken of Charlie, Will, and me when we were kids at the park. I was sitting on a swing, my long dark hair a tangled mess around my shoulders. Charlie had somehow wedged his feet into the swing under my butt and stood behind me, tongue sticking out and nose wrinkled. And Will was standing on the swing next to us. He had been swinging it side to side, and my mom had caught the moment when his swing had sidled directly next to ours. We looked so happy.
And I supposed at that moment we were. My dad had been in a dark mood that day, and my mom had taken us to the park to escape his cutting words and booming rage. She was probably as tired of walking on eggshells and defusing mood bombs as we had been. The picture didn’t show how we’d all cried the whole way there. Or that I had forgotten my jacket in our rush to leave the house and I was freezing.
It was one of my favorite pictures because it perfectly summed up our childhood. Simultaneously painful and beautiful.
The three of us together.
“You okay, Eliza? You’re kind of quiet today.” He tapped the desk with a long finger, snapping me out of my childhood memories.
I looked up at him, a small smile tugging at my lips. “Just thinking. You put me in a weird headspace with all your talk about Will getting serious with Lola. Now I feel like I’m losing my brother, and my whole world’s ending. That’s all your fault.”
He smiled at my blatant teasing and leaned over me, resting his weight on his hands. “Chin up, English. You still got me.”
Holding his gaze, I wondered if that was true. But I liked that he’d echoed my sentiment from a couple of minutes ago, making our friendship feel solid. Important. “Good.”
We stood there a second longer, searching for the truth in the other person’s face. His eyes were a deep, dark blue that twinkled when he was happy and clouded when he was upset or mad. His driver’s license claimed gray eyes, but that was because Jonah hadn’t taken the time to thoroughly examine their nuanced color.
Not like I had.
I used to be mildly obsessed with his shifting eye color. Okay, probably more than mildly. But those days were long behind me. Back when I would wear short shorts to get his attention and pretend to love college basketball just so he would notice me.
Now I actually enjoyed college basketball, but it was only after countless hours of pretending that I appreciated the sport.
“Good,” he repeated, pulling back into himself and releasing me from his hypnotic charm.
“Come back tomorrow if you want,” I told him when he stepped toward the door. “I’ll go to lunch with you then.”
“I have a new account meeting tomorrow. But I’ll take you to dinner if you ask nicely.”
I batted my eyelashes at him playfully, “Please?”
