His smile is smug, deservedly so. “You like me.”
“Shut up.”
He laughs. “You really like me.”
“You’re just being mean now pointing that out.”
“You really like me so fucking much.”
“Oh my god, just play Beethoven instead,” I say.
He hits the button on the console and blasts something with joyful piano and violins as he drives me home.
That evening, I wash my face and scrub off my sunscreen after working on the farm all afternoon. Then, with my hair pushed back in a lavender—naturally—cotton headband, I settle onto the couch with Banks. As we’re forgetting all about last night thanks to the dinner I ordered which he picked up—a chicken sandwich for him and an artichoke and cheese for me—Haven calls.
I lunge for it. Her tone’s an apology. “There’s a photo of you and Chris going viral.”
“What?” I ask, sitting up straight on the couch. Hudson lifts his snout from where he’s lounging on the floor. “There weren’t photographers in the store.”
But Banks drags a hand down his face, grumbling, “Everyone’s a photographer.”
A minute later, I’m staring at a shot on some random person’s social media of New Chris and his “new woman.” Since the mockturtleneck with the short sleeves means that Haven doesn’t know about myallegedly amazing new skin care routineon my neck, but also that no one knows I’m not my sister. The sleeves hit at my elbow, and they hid all my birds.
Because the caption reads:Little did I know who was in the produce aisle! And he looks at her like she’s the one!
31
RULE NUMBER FOUR
BANKS
A dose of red-hot anger courses through me. “I should have been there,” I mutter, pacing around the cottage.
“Banks,” Ripley says, popping up from the couch. “You couldn’t have stopped it.”
“But I could,” I say, hissing out a sharp breath. “I could have been near you instead of waiting outside.”
“It was just a flower delivery. I wanted to be able to do it,” she tries to reassure me, reaching for my arm with a calm hand.
I shake my head. “But if I were there, I wouldn’t have let that happen.”
“What were you going to do? Take some random person’s phone?” She waggles the phone she’s holding, showing me the shot again of her and Chris hugging. A shot that was clearly taken from a distance. Maybe twenty feet away? Ten? Possibly snapped as someone turned into the aisle and spotted the star and his supposed new love?
“Maybe,” I mutter.
She puts her phone back in her shorts pocket. “Banks, you weren’t going to take someone’s phone.”
“I would have if I’d had to,” I insist, still fuming.
“Are you really going to make a habit of taking random strangers’ things? I feel like maybe that’s illegal,” she says dryly.
“I should have done something. Could have stopped it. Should have stopped it,” I say as I pace away from her toward the sliding glass doors of the deck, stopping at the glass to stare at the night sky and the stars twinkling in it.
Here, I can replay this afternoon. Find the moment when I failed. Then never do that again.
She follows me, sets a hand on my shoulder. “You couldn’t have,” she says, her voice soothing. “It’s no big deal. They didn’t hurt me or him or anyone. It’s fine. It’s only a picture. I wasn’t scared in the store, and you couldn’t have stopped it.”
But those words grate at me. They remind me of years ago. When I was younger.
