By the time class finishes, Chloe’s right back to talking in that animated, mile-a-minute pace from her apartment the day Teddy and I met her, smiling so broadly and riffing off a dance move so enthusiastically that she knocks someone’s sweater off the hangers at the front. I swipe it from the ground and hang it back up before she notices.
“That was so freaking fun,” says Chloe, her cheeks rosy and her eyes bright. “I just gotta pee, and then I’ll be ready to go.”
“I’ll be here,” I say, gathering up my shoes to leave.
“Hey.” Farrah’s tone is so abrupt I’m worried we’re about to get in trouble for being disruptive, but when I turn around she’s got a sly smile on her face. “Great work today.”
I can’t help grinning back. “I didn’t take anyone’s eye out.”
“And you nailed the last sequence, if you didn’t notice,” she says. “See what I mean? Sometimes you just gotta shake a few screws loose.” She does a little shimmy to emphasize it, and I laugh and do one back. I open my mouth to say something else—I’m not even sure what—but then Chloe’s back and showing me a musical theater meme on her phone, and we’re off.
We stop at the doughnut place under the studio on the way out, because it seems like the potential-half-sisterly thing to do, and pick up extras for Heather and Beth. We’re about to tuck into them on the L train when I notice three things in rapid succession: one, that this may be the most beautiful old-fashioned sour cream doughnut I’ve ever laid eyes on; two, that Chloe is approximately a foot from my face and looking very anxious; and three, that Farrah is also on this train, and just spotted us and started milling her way over.
“Are you and Teddy dating?” Chloe blurts.
I’m so stunned by the question that I laugh. “What? No. God, no. We’re best friends.”
Farrah sidles in next to us, and Chloe is so surprised to see her that she jumps and I have to grab the doughnut bag from her hands before it gets sacrificed to the L train floor.
“Fancy running into you two here,” says Farrah.
“You live in Manhattan?” I ask. It’d be unlike Teddy not to know that.
“Nah, I’m just grabbing a late dinner with a friend.” Farrah deftly pulls her hair into a messy bun without holding onto any of the subway poles, moving with what I’m guessing is years’ worth of dancer’s grace and MTA savvy. Then she looks at each of us in turn. “So. Who’s Teddy?”
Farrah, I’m coming to understand, is a lithe mover, but one very blunt conversationalist. From the curve of her close-lipped smile, though, it’s more than intentional.
“He’s Millie’s…” Chloe looks at me to fill in the blank.
“Friend,” I emphasize.
There’s a beat when Farrah seems to be taking the temperature of the conversation. “Well, don’t rule it out,” she says, mischief in her eyes. “Some of my best and messiest relationships were with friends.”
I feel like I’ve just unintentionally hit a pressure point. “Messy?”
“Ugh. College,” she says almost nostalgically.
Screw pressure points. I may have just hit a tectonic plate.
“What was messy about college?” I ask. “I mean…” I backtrack, trying to sound less like a journalist on a deadline, but even then I can’t help myself. Farrah’s the potential mom I know the least about, and any time I can get alone with her is in perilously short supply. “Messy in a good way?”
“Messy in all the ways.” Her eyes flit to the side, and the words are just cryptic enough that I’m wondering if I could have been one of those ways. “But maybe that’s a ‘me’ problem. I’m usually friends with someone before I’m with them, so I just sort of ended up … well. For better or for worse, being with friends,” she says, when she realizes she’s veering into a PG-13 zone. To be fair, Chloe looks about twelve.
But Farrah’s not looking at Chloe. She’s looking at me.
“Well, believe me, Teddy and I could never date,” I say. “It’s not even that we’re friends. We’re like siblings.”
“Fair enough,” says Farrah.
“So he’s not dating … anyone?” Chloe persists.
I snort. “His parents’ coffee machine, maybe.”
“Sounds like someone has a crush,” says Farrah.
I’m about to laugh again, but then I look over and see that Chloe has clapped her mouth shut and gone redder than a tomato.
“On Teddy?” I exclaim.
Okay, it’s not that Teddy isn’t crush-worthy. He’s smart and he’s funny and when he’s not stealing the last sleeve of Ritz crackers out of your apartment and pretending it was a ghost, I’m sure he’d be considered a catch. But as far as I know, Chloe’s only met Teddy once.
“Is that stupid?” Chloe asks, her voice wobbly. “I mean, I know he’s a year older, and way cooler than I am, but—”
“I’m gonna stop you right there, because Teddy’s idea of ‘cool’ is talking like a pirate whenever he gets a good cache on that GeoTeens app.”
“But what do I do?” says Chloe miserably.
Farrah answers before I can get past the idea that my Polly Pocket–size maybe half sister wants to make out with my best friend—yet another thought I never anticipated having before this summer began.
“Well, how well do you even know Teddy?” Farrah asks.
“Not super well,” Chloe admits. “And I guess I could text him, but I just … get nervous.”
“Try being friends with him first. See how that goes,” says Farrah encouragingly. The train rolls to a stop at Union Square. “I gotta bounce. See you later this week, my stars!”
She flits out of the subway, leaving me on the train deciding how to play this. I wish I could say something to Teddy first, but whipping out my phone and texting him in front of Chloe would be about as subtle as yelling at him from across a crowded street.
“It’s dumb,” says Chloe, blowing it off before I can get a chance to think. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
I weigh my options, but with Chloe looking at me with those sad puppy eyes so weirdly reminiscent of Teddy’s, I don’t really have any.
“It’s not dumb,” I assure her. “It’s … well, maybe Farrah’s right. Just—hang out with us. We’re coming to Broadway Bugs again. And Teddy’s hosting some kind of GeoTeens shindig at his place next week. You can be my plus-one.”
“Yeah?”
“For sure,” I say. I figure this can go one of two ways: it doesn’t work out and Teddy and Chloe become friends, or it does work out and I end up third-wheeling my pseudo-brother and long-lost half sister for the rest of my life. But at least with the two of them, I’m relatively certain it wouldn’t end badly. They’re both such cinnamon rolls that I can’t even imagine them in a pillow fight that didn’t start and end with profuse apologies.
“Thanks, Millie. You’re the coolest.”
Chloe beams at me, and I feel this unexpected ache blooming in my chest. The idea that I might have had a lifetime of “the coolest”—of being the kind of big sister who took Chloe out for doughnuts and listened to her bubble over about crushes and tried to make the scary things seem less scary.