And now I’m hard as a rock, remembering what she did in public yesterday.
I rush through finishing with the kittens, then toss Laney over my shoulder and haul her to the bathroom, where I teach her the fine art of the best kind of shower sex.
Means we have to rush through breakfast.
She doesn’t order me to eat.
I eat all on my own. I’m starving.
Over breakfast, we talk about everything and nothing. Not our jobs. Not our families. But which TV shows we’ve watched. If skiing or snowboarding is better. Why she’s only gone white water rafting once in her life and why it’s been three years since she hit the slopes. Where I get my tattoos. What she’d have inked and where if she’s brave enough.
And all too soon, we have to leave breakfast so she can help Emma get ready for her wedding.
Everything that felt so right at breakfast suddenly feels so wrong.
She grabs me by the cheeks before she slips out of the Jeep once we’re back in the parking lot. “Are you okay?”
I could lie. Brush it off. Say I’m fine. I was ten minutes ago when we were having what felt like a totally normal breakfast date.
But I’m not.
At the end of today, my sister will be tied to Chandler Sullivan theoretically for life. He’ll be at every holiday. I’ll go to his kids’ birthday parties. He’ll be there every time I drop by to see Emma, and even if he’s not, I’ll know it’shis housetoo now.
And tomorrow, we go back home and back to normal.
Butnormalis gone.
Bean & Nugget is in trouble and if Chandler’s solution to the problem doesn’t work, then I need to talk to Sabrina about how I can anonymously help her. Because Iwantto.
Laney might stick with me for a while but then get bored of me and move on after getting through her belated rebellion stage.Ifshe takes it well when I tell her about my side hustle.
And I will never be themethat I was before this trip ever again.
“I don’t want Emma to marry him, but I can’t be the reason she doesn’t,” I confess to Laney after I’ve parked the Jeep when we get back to the resort. “And I’m—after the fire at the pool, and how he reacted to the gift the other night, andallof the other shit—she’s waited so long for this, and I keep waiting for him to leave her and find a way to make it my fault so he doesn’t have to deal with the consequences.”
She studies me in a way that says I’m not crazy or paranoid, that she sees it too, and even if she doesn’t, she understands why I do.
“It’s so hard to watch someone you love do something that you understand but don’t like,” she says. “And even harder when you’re afraid it’ll hurt them.”
Exactly. “That’s how she’s felt about me for all of our school years. That she loves me but I do shit she doesn’t like.”
She shakes her head. “The number of times I’ve heard her sayI wish I was more like Theo… She admires you for living your life on your own terms.”
“Now.”
“No, then too. I remember because I didn’t understand then. But she did. She thought you were everything. I wish—”
“You could fix this,” I finish for her.
She smiles. “I don’t think I’ll everfunmy way out of wanting to fix things.”
“Fixing things is a superpower. Don’t apologize for it.” I nod past her. “Speaking of…looks like your getting-pretty bus is here.”
She turns, and then she laughs.
Don’t think it’s at the sight of Emma and Claire talking to the driver of the limousine hired to take them to get their toes and fingers and faces and hair all done at a spa before the wedding.
Pretty sure the double take is at the sight of Sabrina in statement-making sparkly sunglasses, a pink boa, and a neon flashing necklace. She’s carrying an oversize bag that appears to have more boas. Probably more sunglasses and necklaces too.
