“Passable.”
Emma offers me her banana. “Here. Your stomach problems are about to get worse. This’ll settle better.”
“Mama? My babana?” Bash asks.
He’s so fucking perfect. And absolutely irresistible. “Here you go, champ.” I pass him the banana. “All yours.”
I am.
I’m all his.
No matter what happens today, I’m all his.
20
Emma
By the timeBash is done eating, I’m feeling far less awkward.
Jonas keeps up a steady stream of questions that slowly put me at ease. The chickens. If there’s good pho anywhere in town. How much Bash can eat. When Laney and Sabrina and I met.
He doesn’t get the full story on any of his questions, and some of my friends are definitely exaggerating.
“Ugly?” he says to Theo. “You called themugly?”
Not that part. That part is true and not exaggerated at all.
“You didn’t know them when we were eight,” my brother replies.
“Don’t make me put Fred in the bed tonight,” Laney says.
Bash has moved back to the swing set. If he hadn’t, he’d be telling all of us that ugly isn’t nice.
My dad’s keeping an eye on him, along with Decker, who’s undoubtedly absorbing all of this for his next novel.
It hasn’t escaped my notice that Jonas hasn’t offered to watch him. Out of respect for my boundaries? Because he doesn’tlikehim? For some other reason I can’t fathom?
I don’t know.
I do know he keeps glancing over that way though.
Like hewantsto be closer to Bash, but doesn’t want to make one of us—me? Bash? My family?—uncomfortable by butting in.
Or maybe he’s never been around kids before and doesn’t know how to make friends with them.
The Jonas I thought I knew in Fiji would’ve bent over backwards to make sure everyone around him was comfortable. Beingnormalwhile understanding no one else around him thought he was normal.
Maybe he’s letting all of us get used to him being here as much as he’s getting used to all of us being around.
“I was ugly when I was eight too,” Theo says.
“You stayed ugly until you were thirty,” Sabrina replies to a round of laughter.
“Laney decided we’d be theugly heiress society,” I tell Jonas. “Since we all technically stood to inherit local businesses. It sort of fit.”
Laney’s eyes twinkle. “Weownedthat bullshit.”
“And we had a clubhouse,” Sabrina adds.
