She grins, going in for the hug. “Thanks.”
Leo gives her a big brother bear hug, and I’m about to crawl out of my skin. “Wanna eat this on the couch?
“No,” Mia and I shout in unison.
“We squeezed a dining table into our tiny kitchen for a reason,” Mia continues. “Let’s pretend to be real adults and eat there.”
He walks into the kitchen.
Mia shoots me a look, eyes wide and mildly horrified. I don’t know what my face looks like. A mix of food poisoning and terror, maybe.
“Put a shirt on,” she mouths at me.
I grab a random shirt from my floor and go to throw it on, but it doesn’t fit over my arms. Because it’s Mia’s shirt. Because all of our fucking clothes are scattered all around our fucking apartment and in each other’s fucking rooms. I sigh, walking to my dresser to pull out one of mine. I see one of the vibrating plugs resting on the side. I slam the drawer shut. My stomach continues its climb into my throat.
“So how’s it going?” I ask my best friend as I walk into the kitchen, as if I wasn’t just balls deep and bare in his sister two hundred and forty seconds ago.
He throws the bag on the table, digging through the plastic and taking out three sandwiches. “Not much. I was in the neighborhood?—”
“Slumming it in Brooklyn?” Mia jokes.
Leo grins, sheepish. “Yeah. I’m kind of seeing someone. I was on a date.”
“Wait a second. You were on a date at noon on a Saturday?” Mia asks with a mouthful of Italian sub.
“Well, the date was last night,” he mutters.
Mia squeals again. “That’s great, Leo. I can’t wait to meet her.”
“We’ll see. We’re taking it slow. Just getting to know one another,” he admits.
I make eye contact with Mia from across the table, and I know we’re thinking the same thing. We didn’t really have to get to know one another, because we already knew one another, so we took it fast. Super fast. Too fast? Well, at least, that’s what I’m thinking. I’m also thinking that this was all probably a really bad fucking idea.
“I also wanted to come over for something else. I wanted to apologize for something, Meems,” he tells his sister.
“Wha?” she says, mouth full again.
“I feel like… My… this new person… She’s also a younger sister. She’s been telling me how she’s always been brushed off by her older brother. That he treats her like a child, like she’s still his kid sister. And she made me realize that I’ve been doing the same to you for a long time. With the… dating, and your career, and the choices. And then at dinner, with Elias pushing me… with our parents… You’re an adult. You need to make your own choices. I just want you to be happy.”
I’m pretty impressed.
She smiles at him, beaming, radiant. “Thanks, Leo. I’ve only been trying to get you to see that for twenty-nine years.”
He scratches his head, sheepish.
“Nice to know that it took one date with someone else who happens to be a little sister to get you to realize that,” she says with dripping sarcasm. “But whatever. I’m actually really happy right now. And I do feel really confident in my choices,” she says, looking at me, turning that radiance towards me.
I shrink under the force of it.
“Good,” Leo says, blowing out a breath. “I feel… weird, asking you this, but?—”
“Yes,” she tells him confidently. “Well, kind of,” she amends. “I’m all in, though,” she says, eyeing me.
“Has Elias met him?”
“Yep,” she says.
“Well, as long as he approves,” he says. “And as long as he’s nothing like Elias,” he laughs, slapping me on the back.
