Rose heads around the couch and stops in the gap between my sister and the coffee table. “You’re talking about yourself in the third person.”
“She’s probably still a little bit drunk.” Eliza sniffs her smoothie. “Ew.”
Shaking my head, I swing the front door closed and grin as three women startle and moan as one. Even Rose. “Poor choices lead to painful consequences, ladies. Drinking in the afternoon was dumb. You’re lucky Tommy saved your asses and didn’t let you out of the house.”
“Here.” Rose sits on the coffee table and taps Raquel’s leg, handing the smoothie across to my sister. “Is he always smug like this?”
“I’ve never understood how he could get his horse so unbelievably high.” Eliza shuffles around and plops onto the single recliner. “He’s the idiot who ended up on the front page of our local newspaper, naked as a baby, but with a weird little blur sticker covering his junk. Arrested by our own father.” She gingerly flips the latch on the recliner, the footrest coming up to cushion her feet. “He was the family embarrassment.”
“At leastwekeep our drunken shenanigans private.” Raquel scowls down at her green smoothie. “Tommy and Chris don’t hardly count.”
“You should probably check your call log, then.” Digging my hands into my pockets, I come around and stand in front of my switched-off television. “You called your boss last night.”
Her eyes jump to mine. Wary. Suspicious. Then bored. Shrugging, she closes them and exhales a long, noisy sigh. “She’s fine. She loves me, and she already thinks I’m weird. This is just another day at the office for her.”
“What exactly do you do?” Rose peeks over her shoulder and latches sad puppy-dog eyes onto mine, then she hooks her fingers in my pocket and drags me closer. I could wonder for a moment if she wants to be near me. To hug. To be held. But when she positions me to her left, nudging me forward a step and placing me exactly where she wants, all so she can lean, I understand what I am to her.
“That’s better,” she moans. Then back to Raquel. “A doctor of something.”
“A doctor who lives in a cold, dark laboratory with no friends, no social life, no respect, but too much excitement when I solve a case that everyone else in my building couldn’t.” She brings the cup to her lips and grimaces. “I’m a toxicologist. It’s my actual job to understand what happens when we expose living organisms—us—to toxic chemicals—alcohol.” She sips the green concoction and gags. “I knew better, but I did it anyway.”
“Is there a reason you’re here?” I slide my fingers along the column of Rose’s neck, stroking until she purrs. “Besides needing to be a pain in my ass.”
“Here, in Plainview?” Steeling herself, she brings the cup higher and chugs half in one go. Choking and heaving. Groaning and, when she’s done, audibly mouth-breathing as she uses her other hand to wipe her lips. “Or here at your house?” She burps, snapping her lips closed so hercheeks puff andmystomach turns. “Though really, the answer is the same for both.”
“She had a chance to escape the dungeon she calls work.” Eliza melts into her recliner, turning to the side and tugging her knees to her chest. “She knew you’d adopted a stray.” Without looking, she waves her hand in our direction. “She was worried, ‘cos she knows how you get attached.”
“I wanted to make sure the stray was, in fact, an adorable little kitten and not, say, a feral skunk that kinda resembled a kitty.”
“I’m a skunk?” Rose tilts her head back and looks up at me with big, doe eyes. “Do I still smell?”
“Nah, you’re cool,” Raquel answers. She stares at the remainder of her smoothie, sour-faced and unimpressed. “He’s my brother, so I had to check. Getting someone drunk is, in my genius opinion, the best way to figure out who the hell they are. Angry folks get angrier, weepy chicks weep some more. Liars tend to forget which lies they’ve told, and if you had something important to say, you’d say it.”
“So this was your fault?” Eliza moans. “You opened the first bottle.”
“What did I say?” Rose wraps her arm around my thigh.
It’s childlike in a way. Adorably innocent, if I were to ignore how trashed she was less than twenty-four hours ago.
“Did I say anything worthwhile?”
“Just kept on going on about how disgusting my brother is.”
“What?” I stare down. “You said I was disgusting?”
“No.” Raquel plops her feet onto the coffee table by Rose’s leg. “She said how amazing and sweet and selfless and kind and blah, blah, freakin’ blah you are. That translated to disgusting in my head. Then she said you guys accidentally banged, but that it was a secret and I can’t tell anyone. ‘Cept, she announced it to everyone.”
Rose’s cheeks burn bright red.
“We asked why it was a secret,” Eliza adds. “And she said, ‘cos all of Ollie’s friends are worried about him, and she didn’t want them to think she was a sneaking, lying slut trying to take advantage.”
“Eliza!” I growl.
“That’s what she said!” She hugs her smoothie and closes her eyes. “That she likes him.Liiiiikeshim,” she yawns. “And it would make her sad to think anyone thought she was a bad person.”
“Even though she herself thinks she’s a bad person,” Raquel adds.
Frowning, I drop my gaze again and study Rose’s sickly expression.
