My entryway is shockingly free of Reid’s shoes, or his hoodies, or his backpack, or any of the things he likes to leave around.
“Did you eat him?” I ask Dolly. “Come on, we talked about this.”
She stands up and rubs her back against my hand, then walks away slowly until I’m scratching the spot above her tail.
“He said he was feeding you,” I say, and she looks over her shoulder and trills at me just as Reid walks into the doorway.
“Don’t listen to her, I fed that cat so much,” he says, hands shoved into the pocket of the oversized hoodie he’s got on. “And she still bit me like three times.”
“Dolly,” I admonish. She gives me a look that’s the cat equivalent of a shrug.
“Anyway, welcome home,” Reid says. “I’m glad you made it.”
“Same,” I say, and stand. Dolly vocalizes her irritation, and so does Reid when I hug him. But then he hugs me back even as he says are you trying to squash me or something into my shoulder.
“Uh, by the way,” he says, pulling back and sort of gesturing with one elbow. “Sadie and Ariel are here. They can tell you why.”
My sisters give me a bigger and louder welcome than Reid, who was subdued even as a toddler. Sadie’s obviously been crying but she still jumps up and hugs me, lets Ariel do the same, and then orders Reid to get me some spaghetti and meatballs. They go back and forth a couple of times before she rolls her eyes and says please, Reid and he rolls his eyes and says fine, Sadie, confirming my decision to have a vasectomy for at least the thousandth time.
“How is it?” asks Sadie, sitting across the table from me, practically a blur of nervous energy.
I poke the spaghetti a little more, then break a meatball in half and eat it before answering.
“It’s good,” I say. “You didn’t use mom’s recipe?”
Reid snorts and Sadie makes a face.
“I didn’t,” Ariel says, looking quietly pleased. “I didn’t need to feed a zillion people, for starters. Also, her spaghetti is gross.”
I don’t point out that it’s hard to make good spaghetti for fourteen people on a budget of approximately two dollars. I grew up making that recipe at least once a week. I think I know it by heart. I don’t particularly like it either, but Ariel’s spaghetti is actually good.
I take a sip of water, and then realize there’s not only a water glass in front of me, but a whole place setting.
I sigh again, taking it all in. “What happened?”
The three of them look at each other. Sadie takes a deep breath, then lets it out.
“Beth’s not talking to Sadie, and Matt’s been hassling her boyfriend,” Reid finally says. “And Ariel’s panicking because she thinks Drew saw her kiss her boyfriend on New Year’s and he’s gonna tell everyone that they’re also fucking.”
“Reid!” says Ariel, blushing furiously.
“What? Are you not?”
“That’s not the point—”
“It’s definitely the point, are you kidding—”
“Stop!” I say around a mouthful of pasta. Miraculously, they do.
“Sorry,” Ariel says, face still bright.
Sadie, Ariel, and Reid were all born in three and a half years—in that order—and they’ve been thick as thieves ever since they were all old enough to talk. Matt, the boyfriend hassler, is the second youngest, after me, Beth the snoop is the oldest girl, and Drew who saw them kissing is eighteen, the next youngest after Reid.
I still have to draw Andi that family tree.
“This is all still because Beth found …things… in your bedroom?” I ask, twirling more spaghetti because it’s very good and if my siblings are gonna feed me for once, I’m not gonna complain. “And now everyone’s up in arms that you’re having sex before marriage?”
“Yes,” Sadie says, leaning her forehead in her hand, red as a stoplight. I’m pretty sure Ariel mutters nosy bitch and I ignore it, mostly because I agree. “And now they all want me to either break up with him or bring him to church and pray for forgiveness and re-take my purity pledge in front of everyone. And he has to do it too.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have worn your purity ring to church every Sunday until you were twenty-five,” Reid says.
“Maybe you should shut up.”
“I’m surprised it didn’t sizzle off your finger.”
Sadie flips him off.
“Guys,” Ariel says, literally stuck in the middle.
“Thou shalt not lie,” Reid says with mock sincerity.
“What was I supposed to do?” Sadie snaps. “Toss it in the gutter while they were watching?”
“Say you left it on the sink like a normal person,” says Ariel, and Sadie sighs.
“I didn’t, okay?” she says. “Also, they want us to get married, I forgot that part.”
I sigh and scrub my hands over my face, which I still haven’t washed today since I hiked over ten miles down a mountain before being accosted by my siblings. Who, in their defense, did make very good spaghetti.
And, truth be told, I get why Sadie kept lying like she did. I get why she wanted to be the golden good girl for my parents, going through the motions and saying all the right things. I stopped wearing my purity ring when I joined the army at eighteen, but for years, I did pretty much the same thing.
“Do you want to get married?” I ask Sadie.
“Not now,” she says, sounding horrified. “I don’t know, I mean, maybe later? We haven’t talked about it? I mean, I really like James but it hasn’t been very long and it doesn’t seem like a good idea—”
“We know,” Ariel says, putting a hand on Sadie’s arm. “Shh.”
“I’ll ask Matt to stop hassling James,” I say. “And I’ll try to talk to Beth, but no promises there. And Ari, for fuck’s sake, don’t let Beth in your bedroom.”
“God, no,” Ariel says, and Sadie says, “Thanks,” at the same time.
There’s a long pause, and they all look at each other for a moment before Reid pipes up.
“I made cookies,” he says.
CHAPTER THIRTY
GIDEON
I take Andi to dinner that weekend, to La Taverna, a place with cloth napkins and pleasant lighting and a menu without decimal points. I’m strangely nervous about it, as if Andi will see me somewhere nice and realize that I’m barely fit for polite company, but three minutes into the meal she snort-laughs so loudly heads turn and at the end she sneaks leftover dinner rolls into her purse because they’re just going to throw them away, don’t you have some poor rehab critter who’ll eat them and I tell her that refined carbs are generally not good for rehab critters and she says fine, Reid then and starts arguing with me about paying half the bill.
She comes back to my place and meets Reid in person, finally, and we all sit on the couch and watch a movie and after he gets tired of us and goes to bed, we make out until the movie ends. It would be the perfect time to tell her that I’ve had a vasectomy but I’ve never had sex, not technically, not that kind, and instead I pull her on top of me and let myself get lost in her warmth.