"Cass, I'm at work."
"You're at a bar. I can hear the background noise. Bars aren't work."
"This one is."
"Whatever. I'm sending pictures. Two seconds."
My phone buzzes twice. I tilt the screen — not toward the room, instinct — and look. The first dress is green, structured, high neckline. The second is blue, softer, lower back. Both are fine. Both are perfectly appropriate for a party thrown by someone named Charlotte.
"The green," I say.
"Really? I thought the blue was more—"
"The green. It's more structured, it'll photograph better, and the color works with your complexion. The blue is pretty but it's trying to be casual and formal at the same time and it's not committing to either."
"See, this is why I call you. Priya would never say 'it's not committing.'"
"Priya is being nice. I'm being useful. There's a difference."
"You sound like a stereotype right now, you know that? The gay brother with fashion opinions."
"You called me specifically for the gay brother with fashion opinions."
"Fair point. Okay, green dress. What shoes?"
"The black ankle boots you bought in October. Not the strappy ones."
"You remember my October boots?"
"You sent me fourteen pictures of them from four angles. They're seared into my memory."
She laughs. I forgot how much I like that sound — bright, unguarded, nothing held in reserve. Cass doesn't perform. She's eighteen and she hasn't learned yet that most people do.
"Okay, emergency resolved. Thank you for your service."
"Anytime."
I should hang up. This is a bar full of people who can hear everything she's saying, everything I'm saying, and the longer this goes on the more of myself I'm leaving in this room. But Cass doesn't hang up either. There's a pause — the kind that means she's shifting from the easy thing to the real thing.
"When are you coming home?"
"Portland? Few more days. End of the week, probably."
"No, Nico. Home home."
I lean back in the booth. The bar is very quiet. Not silent — there's the ambient noise of a space with people in it, theclink of Jason washing something, the creak of Silas shifting in his chair. But the kind of quiet that happens when people are listening without trying to look like they're listening.
"I don't know, Cass."
"You said last month you'd come visit."
"I said I'd try."
"That means no. 'I'll try' always means no with you."
She's not wrong. I rub the bridge of my nose. London means Uncle Martin's house. Uncle Martin's house means the guest room that's been "my" room for twelve years and still feels like a hotel. It means Cass across the hall and Martin downstairs and the careful, curated distance of a man who never wanted children and got two of them anyway.
We were born in Atlanta. Grew up there — me until twelve, Cass until six. Then the accident, and suddenly we were on a plane to London to live with our dad's brother, a man we'd met twice at holidays and couldn't have picked out of a lineup. Martin did what he was supposed to do. He took us in, hired nannies, found the right boarding schools. He provided everything two orphaned kids could need except the one thing that would have made it matter. He never asked us how we were doing. Not once in twelve years. Not when I came home from school with a black eye, not when Cass cried for our mother every night for a year. He just — wasn't built for it. Some people aren't.
