Page 160 of My Brother’s Best Friends Entanglement

"I love you, Mum, I'll call you as soon as we have the result," Leon says, and we all blow a hundred more kisses to each other.

I sink into the chair Leon was in, feeling my heart race in my chest, and try not to focus on the empty space inside it, wishing there were three more people I could be celebrating with right now.

"Ready for your gift?" Leon says, tucking his phone back into his pocket.

I eye him. "It better not be a noogie."

"Already gave you one of those this morning. No — this one you're actually going to like."

FORTY-SIX

Alexia

Leon opens a door I thought was just a closet, and it leads into a large meeting room. It looks like a party store exploded in there. There are so many balloons and streamers that it takes me a while to spot the three people behind the familiar voices, all raised in argument.

"...because it's tacky, that's why," Zachary's saying, holding a banner at arm's length, like it's covered in some sort of noxious substance. "'Congratulations Dr Riley' in glitter cursive? We're not at a Year Seven dance. We should've let Aria help."

"It's a celebration! Not a funeral. Therefore, I was going for celebratory." Marcus wrestles the banner out of Zachary's hands. "She got a doctorate, Zachary. Forgive me for wanting the room to reflect that."

"It's reflecting something, alright. It's damn near blinding me," Zachary says, covering his eyes.

"I like the glitter," Rhys says, not looking up from the inflated balloon he's wrestling into a bunch with six others, all of varying shapes and sizes, one of them clearly losing air. Or the will to live.

"Nobody asked you." Zachary rounds on him. "And that balloon's on its last breaths, mate. Put it out of its misery before she gets here."

"It's not dying, it's got character." Rhys holds the balloon up and then, shocking everyone, smiles at it sweetly, eyes crinkling at the corners and gives it a little squeeze. "It's all squishy and cute. I'm gonna call it Lexia." For a second, I think he's going to kiss it, but then he looks over at Marcus and Zachary, clears his throat, and turns away.

I almost laugh. Leon almost bursts a stitch holding his laugh in.

Zachary still looks less convinced. "It's got a hole in it."

"All balloons have holes in them," Marcus says. "How else would you blow them up?"

That just elicits a forehead rub from Rhys and prompts Rhys to say, "I'm no longer on your side, Glitter Guy. You're on your own."

But Marcus has moved on, climbing onto a chair-on-top-of-a-table contraption that has my heart going into overdrive. The moment he lets go of the banner, it hangs crooked. "Does that look straight to either of you?"

"No," Zachary and Rhys say, at exactly the same time.

The harumph that escapes Marcus tells me he might have lived with Rhys too long. “It must be the angle you're looking from. It looks fine from here. I'm gonna leave it."

"Fine," Zachary says. "We'll just fix it after you're down, and tell Alexia you didn't help us."

Marcus gasps. "Over my dead body."

"If you're not careful on that thing, it will be over your dead, mangled body," Zachary says, like it's not the first time he's said it in the last hour. "You're going to fall."

"Dude, I dangle off thirty metres of scaffolding for a living. I think I can manage being a foot off the ground."

Then, as if to prove a point, he leans out too far trying to smooth the crooked corner himself, and the chair leg slides off the edge of the table.

For one long second nobody moves but Marcus, arms wheeling, then Zachary and Rhys lunge together, one catching his arms, the other his legs, streamers raining down after him.

I'm already across the room, one second after.

Marcus, dangling between them like an oversized toddler mid-tantrum, looks unbothered. "Wow." He grins up at them. "There might be something to this whole swooning thing."

Then he tips his head back to look up at Rhys, who's still holding half his weight. "Mate. Looks like that nostril hair trimmer I got you for Christmas is actually working."