Gus shrugs and blows out a breath. “I didn’t know that.”
“You didn’t talk about her family?” I ask.
To which he sputters a laugh. “What can I say?”
“Oh nothing. I already knew you were a fiend.”
“But you like me anyway?”
I give him a stare. “When did I say I liked you?”
When I turn back, Grace and Cole are both sipping slowly, watching our interaction with fascination. Ok, fine. So I’m flirting again. It’s just so easy to flirt with him. I could smack my head against the table, instead I sip on my champagne to calm my nerves.
When the waiter comes to take our orders, I keep it simple with a carbonara. “There’s no way I’m spending time in Rome and not getting its most famous dish,” I say to argue my point but, in the end, all four of us get some kind of pasta.
“Are we going to share though?” Gus asks.
I make a face. “Absolutely not. Why on earth would we share?”
“But how do we re-enactLady and The Tramp?”
“We don’t?”
“Such a wasted opportunity.”
Grace is grinning at us again. Cole too, but he seems to be entertained by Grace’s antics as much as ours. In fact, he’s nothing like his characters at all. He’s so quiet and morose.
“What was it like being his little sister?” I ask Grace, to pull her attention away from us.
She groans. “It’s my entire personality, apparently. But if I try to fight it, it only makes me depressed. Nobody gives a damn about me.”
Gus sniffs. “Please! Save the sob story, Sara isn’t going to buy it. As if you don’t reap the benefits.”
“I might as well. I might change my name legally to Gus from Just4Summer’s sister.”
“Sorry if that was insensitive…” I add slowly, but Gus gives me a look that suggests Grace is just messing with me, so I decide to pose a sillier question. “What’s the most embarrassing thing he ever did to you?”
At this her face lights up. She flicks her hair behind her shoulders and leans forward with a familiar twinkle in her caramel eyes. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. When I turn to see what Gus thinks of my question, he looks just as intrigued as I am.
“My twenty-first birthday,” she starts.
Gus throws his hands up, shaking his head. “Here we go.”
“I asked Jax to kiss me because I knew some of the guests were actively filming us. I thought it would be funny. A bit of drama to throw into the mix. The media and J4S fans were weirdly obsessed with my dating history.” She pauses to take a sip of wine. “I honestly got so tired of fighting it, that I just ran with it. I even invited some of the people I knew were involved with spilling my secrets to the press, because they didn’t know I knew it was them.” She shrugs like she’s half-proud of the drama she caused. “Anyway, Jax was afriend,” she adds, eyeing Gus across the table. He clenches his jaw and looks down at his drink.
“What I didn’t know is that Gus and Jax were mid spat about some other girl. Jax didn’t tell me. And, well, let’s just say Gus intervened. He was yelling, pulling atJax’s t-shirt, making a whole scene. And yes, I didwanta scene. But a scene crafted at my own hands. Not my big brother acting all protective at my birthday party. It was mortifying.”
I give him a look. “What did you do?”
“I threw a drink at him,” he says, his expression unreadable. “I should have punched him though, in hindsight.”
“Hmm,” Grace mutters. “Gus was so drunk he missed, by the way, and drenched me instead.On my birthday.”
“I said I was sorry! And besides, Will dealt with Jax before I had a chance.”
Something about this sentence silences Grace, her composure softening. I half expect her to add more to the story, but instead she takes a sip of water and is pleasantly pleased by the waiter arriving with bread to interrupt the conversation.
After we’ve finished our mains and the table is being cleared, the owner comes in again and starts to converse with Cole in Italian. He invites him to follow him into the kitchen and Gus joins too, checking I’m alright with his sister before he goes.
