I nod. “I guess so.”
She smiles. The left side of her mouth curls up a little more than the right—just like Calder’s. Up close, it’s remarkable how alike they are, and in spite of myself, I find my heart softening a little.
But she still showed up uninvited in the middle of my special night with Calder—upsetting him, no less—so she isn’t off the hook just yet.
Lou, however, seems oblivious to my annoyance.
“How long have you two been dating?” she asks.
I don’t really want to get into this right now. I want to get her fed and back out the door so Calder and I can get back down to our little game.
But I smile and say, “A little over six months.”
“Wow.” She seems genuinely pleased by this knowledge. “He must really like you.”
I’m not really sure how to respond to that, so I shrug and say, “I hope so.”
“If not, he’s gotten himself into quite the predicament, hasn’t he? It’s never really a good idea to move in with someone. Unless you’re married, I suppose—but even a lot of those end in divorce, don’t they? It’s a messy situation all around. Living together just makes everything that much more complicated when you break up.” She takes another bite of egg roll. “Six months isn’t a very long time, is it?”
I can only gape at her. Is she serious?
But Lou’s not done yet.
“Not that I know. I mean, I know my brother, but he’s never lived with a girl. Ever. And I don’t know you at all.” She cocks her head. “The main question here is whether or not you’re good enough for him.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve only got one brother. I need to look out for him.” She shoves the final bite of egg roll into her mouth. “God, this is delicious. I’d almost forgotten how amazingly awful American Chinese food is.”
She can chirp about the food all she wants, but I’m not about to let her question my relationship with Calder.
“Listen,” I say. “I know you’re his sister, but if you think you have the right to waltz in here and start making judgments about—”
The kitchen door flies open, and I clamp my lips together. But if Calder notices the mood in here, he doesn’t acknowledge it. He still looks a little tense, but he’s thrown on a shirt and seems to have calmed down significantly.
“I’ve pulled out some blankets for you,” he says to his sister. “You can sleep in the guest bedroom.”
Lou grins and leaps toward him, throwing her arms around his neck. “I knew you’d help me out.” She gives him a kiss on the cheek.
It’s the first physical contact between them since she showed up at our door—heck, probably the first physical contact they’ve had since their father’s funeral, maybe even earlier. Calder looks taken aback by his sister’s sudden display of affection; his shoulders are stiff and his back rigid. After a moment, though, his brow relaxes slightly. One of his arms moves slowly around her back, and he awkwardly returns her hug.
I suddenly feel like I’m intruding. There’s a lot the two of them need to sort out, and they need to do it without me. There’s a year or more of estrangement between them, and my presence in this little scene only complicates things.
I grab a carton of fried rice from the counter and slip past them out into the living room. The apartment suddenly feels very stuffy, so I head to the tiny balcony off of the master bedroom. There’s no furniture out here yet, but I sit on the concrete and slide my legs between the wooden slats of the rail. The breeze feels nice against my cheeks, and even right now, when it’s too dark to see any of the surrounding foliage, the air still smells sweet and green. If I close my eyes and breathe deeply, I can catch the first wisps of the bright, crisp scent of summer. It’s the scent of new things—of growth and life and joy. It’s the scent of hope.
After a moment, I open my eyes and pick at the fried rice. My belly aches with hunger after all the exercise Calder and I have had this evening, but I don’t have much of an appetite. I force myself to take a few unenthusiastic bites before setting the carton aside and throwing my head back to look up at the stars.
There’s a lot of light pollution here, but I can still make out a handful of the brighter constellations. For a moment, I think back to the night Calder and I slept on the lawn at the Cunningham estate. It was the last time either of us visited the place, the night all of Calder’s grief and anger and frustration poured out of him and he trashed the mansion he once called home. We weren’t supposed to be there—in fact, it was probably the very incident that prompted the property’s new owner to hire the same security team that caught Lou in her own act of vandalism—but I’m not about to point that out to Calder. He’s moved on from the person he was that night—though I know some of his wounds are still healing—and he’s only trying to look out for her.
But dammit if I still don’t want to punch her in the face. Just a little.
How could she suggest that we wouldn’t last? That I might not be good enough for her brother? As if I were the one who ran off to the other side of the world when things got tough. Instead, I was the one who stood by Calder’s side through the wild seas of his grief. I was the one who comforted him and supported him and assured him that he wasn’t alone in his anguish. Where was she? She, out of everyone else in the world, might have truly understood what he was going through. They could have—should have—supported each other.
I wish I’d thought to bring the bottle of wine out here. A drink would be nice right now.
The hem of my lingerie has come untucked from my shorts, and I tug sadly at a bit of lace. There goes our little game.
But it’s not just the disruption of our first night in our new home that bothers me. Calder was acting so strangely earlier—bringing up doubts and fears I didn’t know he harbored. I thought I had the whole night to show him the truth, the whole night to prove—through words and touches and endearments—that I believe in what he and I have. Lou’s appearance is more than a pesky little interruption. What if she tells Calder what she told me—that she thinks we’re moving too fast? I don’t want to start this new phase of our relationship with any uncertainties between us.
I’m not sure how long I sit there, gazing up at the sky and losing myself in my worries. I don’t even hear the glass door sliding open behind me, and it’s not until Calder places a warm hand on my shoulder that I realize I’m no longer alone.