“You do,” I said. “Make me happy, I mean.”
A month ago, it was something I never would have admitted to him. I used to twist myself into pretzels trying not to let him see just how much I liked him. How much I liked that he saw me. But everything had changed with this ruse he’d come up with.
It was strange how easy it all felt. Like we’d done this before. Like we could do it again and again for the rest of our lives.
CHAPTER 19
lilah
By the timeTino pulled up the house, the sun had long gone down and the stars were bright in the night sky. We pulled up to the gate at the driveway and when he lowered the window to press the intercom, I shivered at the cold breeze coming from outside. I’d taken off my jacket while we were in the car, but clearly I’d need it once we got out again. The intercom buzzed and then the gates slowly pushed inward on their own. For a moment, I was surprised by how nonchalant Tino was about it as he pulled forward until I remembered that his brothers’ house was probably just like this too.
Before either of us could open our doors, someone knocked sharply on my window. I startled on instinct—my heart leaping straight into my throat—then laughed when I saw Luca leaning down to look in the window, laughing his head off.
I should have guessed.
“Wow,” he said, straightening as I opened the door. “You actually made it without crashing.”
“Hi to you too,” I said, stepping out and immediately getting pulled into a hug.
He squeezed tight, the way he always did, like he was making sure I was really there. I hugged him back the exact same way.Even after years of living apart, every time I saw him again, I was reminded of how much I wished we didn’t have to be so far apart. I hoped that the next time he went on tour, I wouldn’t be in school and could follow them for at least part of the trip.
“You’re late,” he said into my hair.
“We’re not,” I said. “You’re just dramatic.”
He snorted but didn’t argue, pulling back at last. His eyes were already flicking past me toward Tino, curiosity sharpening his grin into something more familiar, more mischievous.
“Michael.”
Tino stepped around the car, smiling easily. Relaxed. Like this didn’t faze him at all. “Luca.”
There was a beat—one of those unspoken moments where two people sized each other up, not as strangers, but as acquaintances circling familiar territory.
“Did you bring her in one piece?” Luca asked.
“Barely,” Tino said. “She threatened to haunt me if I crashed.”
“As she should,” Luca said solemnly, nodding like this was entirely reasonable. Then, to me, “You hungry? We already had dinner but Megan and Hudson brought so much takeout for us that you’d think we had no food in the house at all.”
“Good, because I’m starving. Tino tried to starve me by only giving me these weird chips from a gas station,” I said, joking about the one snack Tino had bought that wasn’t one of my favorites. They were black pepper and lime chips, which he’d insisted were the best flavor in the world and I’d pretended I didn’t like to annoy him.
“You said you liked them!” Tino argued. Except he wasn’t standing next to me like I thought—he’d already moved to the trunk of the car and was pulling out both of our bags. I stepped forward to help him, but Luca held me back with a hand on my arm and went forward instead. They seemed to size each otherup. Luca came up to him, but Tino finally conceded in handing over my bag, though he didn’t look especially happy about it. I turned my face away so he wouldn’t see my grin.
Luca clapped his hands together once, already turning toward the house. “Come on. Everyone’s out back already. Or… mostly out back. You know how it is.”
There was never a moment here where everyone was in the same place at the same time. Someone was always grabbing drinks, someone else was arguing over music, someone was probably barefoot despite the cold.
As if summoned by his words, the front door swung open and my sister Nina stepped out, pulling a blanket tighter around her shoulders. Her hair was loose, her cheeks pink from the chill, and when she saw me, her entire face lit up.
“You made it!” she said, breaking into a smile when she saw me. She came down the steps and hugged me hard, the blanket tangling around both of us. “I was starting to think you’d bail.”
“Never,” I said.
She leaned back, still holding onto my arm, eyes flicking to Tino with an easy curiosity. “Hey. You must be Michael.”
Luca snorted and I punched him lightly in the arm. He knew that Tino preferred to go by his nickname, so naturally he must have told Nina to call him Michael just for this. But Tino just took it in stride as he started making small talk with her.
Finn Parker, one of Luca’s bandmates and Nina’s boyfriend, appeared in the doorway next. I realized after a moment that he and Nina were in matching black sweat sets that read “The Next Great Boy Band” on the sweater and the pants, and I grinned to myself. Until a few months ago, Nina would never have been caught dead in old merch from the reality show, but I guess things really did change when you got into a relationship.
