“Did you get my email about the Mets game on Wednesday?” Ben asked from further down the table.
“Ben, they’re four and six this month. They’re not making it to the playoffs,” Knightley replied with a sigh.
Ben’s brow furrowed. “Hey, you don’t know that.”
As Knightley and Ben sparred, Nadine turned to Emma. Her eyes had gone impossibly wide again, but now there was a smile to match.He’s so hot!she mouthed.
It took Emma a moment to realize she meant Knightley.Huh.
She stole a glance at him as he listened intently to Ben’s critique of the Mets’ starting lineup, his elbows on the table and his large hands fisted together. It made his T-shirt stretch around his arms, highlighting the sharp definition in his biceps, the roped lines of every muscle. Emma knew he was a runner, but for the first time she contemplated the fact that he went to a gym, that his broad shoulders and toned physique were the result of long hours of hard work and sweat and—
“Is there a problem?”
Emma blinked, suddenly aware that Knightley’s attention was on her again.
She darted her eyes away from him and scoffed, pretending to be more interested in her glass of wine than his forearms. “I don’t have anywhere near enough time to list all the problems I have with you.”
He smirked. “Well, considering your school schedule, that’s saying something.”
Nadine watched them from the other side of the table like they were the most interesting spectator sport she had ever seen. “How long have you two known each other?”
Emma sighed. “All our lives.”
“All of Emma’s life,” Knightley corrected her. “I was seven when she was born.”
“Knightley and Ben were already friends with Margo, so they kind of adopted me.”
“Yes, well, we didn’t really have a choice,” Knightley replied, nodding out into the garden. “There had been a gate up between our yards, but Emma found a way to rip it off its hinges.”
“I didn’t rip it off. I was five.” Then Emma turned to Nadine. “The fence was decrepit, and the gate fell off on its own. I simply stepped over it.”
Knightley shrugged as if the details didn’t matter. “And nobody ever got around to replacing it.”
Nadine’s gaze drifted back to the house across the yard. “It looks very… modern.”
He smiled. “Too much?”
“No!” Nadine said. “I love it. So much… glass. Must be lovely in the morning.”
“I finished renovating it last year. It had been pretty dark and stuffy, so we opened it up a bit. Tore down some walls, expanded the windows. Even redid the garden.” He took a sip of his wine. “We kept the path though.”
He said it indifferently, and Emma tried to keep her expression impassive too, not wanting to hint at how anxiously she had watched from her bedroom as the landscapers gutted the entire backyard. She was sure that a new fence would be erected, a new gate installed. But then one day the workers were gone, the project complete. And even with all the changes, the well-worn path still connected the two yards.
It was just about the only thing that Knightley hadn’t touched.
“And you all just went back and forth your whole lives?” Nadine asked, looking between the two of them.
“Well,” Knightley leaned back and motioned to Ben and Margo at the other end of the table. “Those two were secretly in love the whole time and made us unwitting enablers.”
Margo overheard and stuck out her tongue at him.
He smiled again, but it dimmed a moment later when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and glanced at the screen, his expression becoming a grimace.
Emma waved her hand as if to bat the phone away. “I know we’ll never convince you to stop working on the weekends, but can you at least put the email away during dinner?”
He didn’t look up from the screen as he typed. “Let’s have that conversation when you find a job that carries some level of responsibility.”
Emma rolled her eyes.
