“What?” Luna calls.
“Come here, Luna!” he says, and now the smile is taking over his face.
“Why?” she yells, which is so Luna. Her husband is yelling for her to come and she doesn’t. Instead, she just has a full-blown conversation from across the house.
“Zee’s finally realized he wants Zo!”
“No fucking way!” I hear my sister yell, and then there’s thumping, things being thrown aside before I hear her feet on the hardwood floors. “No fucking way!” she shouts, running in our direction. Her blonde hair peeks around the corner, and her face is completely split with a smile. “Are you for real?”
“I don’t—”
“He came here to talk to you.”
“To talk to me?” she asks, confusion crossing her face. “Why would he come here to talk to me?”
“Because he wants to know how to win over your best friend.”
“You think?” she asks.
“You know I’m right fuckin’ here, right?” I say, waving my hands as if I’ve somehow gone invisible. Both of them look at me.
“I’m gonna go get you that beer, man. You’re gonna need it,” Tony says, disappearing toward his kitchen. My sister crosses her arms on her chest and looks at me like I’m about to disappoint her big time.
“Are you serious, Zander?”
“I don’t know how I could be serious or not serious, considering I’ve not gotten more than three words in.”
She stares at me.
I stare back.
She raises an eyebrow at me.
The problem is, I know this girl can hold this stare down until she dies and turns to dust.
And I only have a week.
I sigh.
“Joe Thomas gave me a week off.” She furrows her brow, not understanding my words. “Told me to figure out how to keep Zoe in Springbrook Hills. How to convince her not to take some fancy new job in the city.”
Luna pauses.
She’s got a face on like there’s a puzzle in front of her and the pieces aren’t fitting.
Finally, her face clears, and her eyes go wide. “The box,” she whispers like it all makes sense.
Absolutely none of it makes sense.
“Lune.”
“The box, Zander! The damn box I found the other day when Tony forced me to clean out that guest room.”
“Because it was a fuckin’ trash heap,” Tony says, walking in with a beer and handing it to me.
“Not now, Tony, Jesus.” My best friend rolls his eyes at my sister, and I try not to heave thinking about them being together.
It’s a fine line between happy they’re happy and barfing everywhere because they’re together.
Such a fine fucking line.
“The box. We made this box when we were kids—one of Mom’s manifestation nights.”
“Oh, I remember that box. It was under your bed,” Tony says, and Luna’s eyes shoot right to her husband.
“What?”
“Oh, we went through your shit as kids. All the time,” I say, remembering the pink bedazzled box. “Really, under your bed isn’t a great hiding place.”
“Neither is your sock drawer,” Tony says, and the looks they give each other make me dry heave.
“Can we please move on? I’m still here.”
Luna rolls her eyes, and Tony smiles.
“So, we made this box and added to it over the years. You know, little shit. Friendship bracelets and pictures.”
I look at her with an okay and . . . ? look.
“I found it, and when Zoe came over for a sleepover the other night—”
“You guys still have sleepovers?” I ask, staring at my sister. They’re both thirty and apparently do little-girl shit regularly.
“Shut the fuck up, Zee.” She throws a pillow at me before she continues. “Anyway, when she was here, I pulled it out. I was laughing because we had this little game we played where it would predict your future. And we put our perfect one in the box to try and make it happen. Mine was pretty much dead-on minus four kids.”
“Four kids?” Tony says with a smile.
Tony wants a big house and a big family.
“I was young and stupid. Shut up.”
“Just saying. Big family sounds like your dream, not mine,” he says, and she glares at him.
“Okay, look, you two can be all lovey-dovey and talk about making babies when I’m not in here with a task to make Zoe stay in Springbrook Hills in less than a week. Can we please finish this damn thing?”
My sister rolls her eyes but continues on.
“Anyway, when we looked at Zoe’s, it was very much not her life now.”
“What was it?” I ask, and Luna’s eyes get . . . guarded.
“This is best friend shit, Zee.”
“Yeah, and I’m being tasked to win over Zoe by her father.”
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why? Why are you being tasked with that?” my sister asks, crossing her arms on her chest.
“No idea. He says that his wife is tired of Zo being so far, and he needs her to have a reason to stay.”
“But why you? There are a hundred people he could have asked.”
“I . . . I don’t know,” I lie. “I was free? He’s got control over my schedule?”
“I don’t think that’s it, Zander,” she says.
And for some reason, the way she’s looking at me has me willing to spill.
She’s right.
I move to the couch in the sitting room next to the front door and plop down, Luna and Tony following suit.
“Because he knows there’s always been something there between us.”
“Ding ding ding,” Luna says. “But why didn’t you ever do anything about it?”
“The time was never right. She always had some boyfriend or was living out of state, or I had some girl.”
“No girl you’ve ever dated has been serious,” Luna says. “Why not dump them when Zoe was single?”
“Like it’s that simple, Luna.”
“It could have been.” I sigh.
“I tried once. When she was nineteen. There was . . . There was a thing, and I offered to dump my girlfriend at the time.” Luna groans.
So does Tony.
“Jesus, man,” he says under his breath, running a hand over his face.
“What?”
“You just don’t offer to break up with your girlfriend like that. Fuck, man, use your brain.”
“Why not?”
“Because women read into shit.”
“What the fuck could you read into that other than I wanted to be with her?”
“Uh, maybe that you easily drop girlfriends?” my sister says. “Or that you’re a cheater?”
“She’s known me my whole life, Luna. She knows I’m not like that.”
“In high school, you were always with a new girl.” I roll my eyes and look at the ceiling.
“That was high school!”
“That shit sticks with women, Zee,” Tony says, his voice low.
He had his own shit with my sister years and years before they got together that made Luna do everything in her power to avoid Tony, so he would know.