“I don’t remember discussing exclusivity,” I say, and get to watch Gideon’s face go through several expressions before settling on slightly frowny. “My other boyfriends might be sad about it.”
Gideon just huffs, tosses some cheese into the cart, and shoots me a frowny look.
“Come on, we still haven’t found coconut extract,” he grumbles. “Also, you’re not funny.”
I just grin and kiss him on the cheek.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
GIDEON
“They don’t know,” I’m telling Reid after dinner as he clears the table and I scrub a pot.
“No shit,” he says.
“They don’t know her,” I go on, because I started telling him about this and now I can’t stop. “They don’t know anything about us. They don’t know—”
I cut myself off, because I can’t bring myself to say that we’re in love or how she makes everything brighter or sometimes it feels like I’ve been underwater for years and now I’m surfacing in the sunlight in front of my little brother. Seems awkward.
“—fucking anything,” is what I say out loud.
“Yeah,” he says, and puts two glasses on the counter more aggressively than is really warranted. “No shit.”
“Try not to break things.”
“Are they broken?”
“Not yet,” I snap, scrubbing harder. At this rate I might scrub directly through the stainless steel, which would fucking serve this pot right for getting cheese burnt onto it like this.
“Don’t get pissed at me because our parents are assholes,” he says, and there’s more clinking near the table, and I grind my teeth together and rinse the stupid pot and put it into the dish drain.
Then I shut the water off and lean over the sink and force myself to take several deep breaths because, as always, I’m the adult here. Even when I don’t really want to be. Even when I want to pick stupid fights and storm out of rooms and let someone else come after me to calm me down, that’s not how it is.
“Sorry,” I say, after a minute.
Reid walks over and—gently—puts two plates and silverware on the counter.
“It’s okay,” he says. “I know how bad they can be.”
I turn and lean my back against the sink, fold my arms over my chest, glare at the opposite wall and feel guilty because of course Reid knows how awful they can be. He knows better than me. He probably knows better than anyone.
“I wish they weren’t,” I tell him. He snorts.
“Well,” he says. “If wishes were fishes.”
That one hangs in the air for a long moment.
“What?” I finally ask.
“It’s a kids’ book or something,” Reid says, like I’m the weird one. “If wishes were fishes they’d swim away. Or whatever.”
I give my brother a long, scrutinizing look, because I’m pretty sure he’s just making up some bullshit.
“This is how they are,” he finally says. “You know they’re not gonna change.”
“I know.”
“Sorry you couldn’t get them to.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” I say. “I’m not stupid.”
Reid shifts on his feet, and now we’re both leaning against the counter and staring at the opposite wall, having this conversation without looking at each other.
“I mean,” he says, and pauses. “Isn’t it, though?”
There’s another, longer silence, and I think about telling him he’s wrong again but I don’t bother. Dolly walks in, tail held high, and begins casually examining a spot on the floor.
“I just don’t get it,” I say. “I don’t get how they can be like this and think this shit and it doesn’t eat them alive.” I’m gesturing vaguely in Reid’s direction, and I mean how they’re treating Andi, but I also mean Elliott, and I mean Reid, and I mean Sadie, and I mean every time they’ve forced their will on one of us with the weight of their disapproval.
“They’re not you,” he says, and thank you, Reid, for your brilliant insight. “You always wanted to be there for us more than you wanted to be right, and they’d rather be right.”
I finally turn to look at him.
“You’ve thought about this,” I say, a little surprised.
“Yeah,” he says, all sarcasm and bluster. I tap into my reserve well of patience. “My parents basically kicked me out when I was fifteen and I moved in with my annoying brother, I’ve thought about it once or twice.”
“Annoying? Seriously?”
“I’ve listened to your lecture about how to load the dishwasher so many times, dude,” he says. “And then you adopted this giant murder cat—”
“Mrrp?” says Dolly, from where she’s sitting on the floor. We both narrow our eyes at her.
“—you see?” Reid says, voice hushed, like it proved something. “Murder cat.”
“You were telling me how annoying it was that I let you live with me.”
Reid grins the same impish grin he’s had since he was a toddler.
“Sorry,” he says, not looking sorry in the least. “But, yeah. This is who they are. I was kinda hoping they’d never, like, point the beam directly at you but I guess they did. Or at Andi but that kinda seems like the same thing.” He’s looking away again, doing the thing where he acts like something doesn’t hurt him but it does. I let him get away with it.
“I didn’t think they would,” I tell him, and push my fingers through my hair. I need a haircut. “That obvious, huh?”
“Andi?”
“Yeah.”
I swear to god there is an audible eye roll.
“She’s only over here basically every night and you’re only texting her all the time and everything you say is ‘Andi this’ and ‘Andi that’—”
“Okay, thank you.”
“—and you get all goopy when she’s around—”
I glare at that asshole.
“The other day you giggled.”
“The hell I did.”
Reid shrugs.
“Get as mad as you want, we both know the truth. She’s cool, though. I like her.”
That statement shouldn’t make me nearly as happy as it does, so I try to hide it.
“She’s good for you. I’m glad you’ve got her.”
He’s staring at the opposite wall again, braced against the counter, and in a sudden rush I realize that Reid is trying to take care of me. Sort of.
Reid’s moving on, sooner or later. Probably sooner. He’s been working and saving up and going to classes at the community college up in Blythe, and I know he’s borderline desperate to get out of Sprucevale. I can’t blame him.
But—he’s been worried about leaving me alone when he moves on, and that sudden realization feels a little like hairline cracks in my heart. It feels like I’m in a snow globe, flipped over and quickly righted, waiting for everything to settle.
“Yeah,” I say, wondering what just happened. “Me too.”