I stretch my arms up high, taking my time answering the ice queen, trying to shake off my inconvenient lust. “True, we do have only two days, but I’m pretty sure you said you’re devoting one mere day to the cause. That’s what you said in your text. So, looks like we have twenty-four hours. But don’t worry. I know math is hard.” I give her a sympathetic smile.
She rolls her chocolate-brown eyes, then adopts a plastic grin. “Yes, and it’s been typically challenging for you too. Differentiating between a weekend and a day was never your strong suit.”
Sighing heavily, I stand. What’s the point in arguing with her? We hashed out this little was it a day, was it a weekend issue back when my lacrosse team captains decided to steal the team away for a weekend instead of an afternoon.
The timing sucked.
The night before, Lola and I had been hanging out, as we often did. That night, though, hanging out had turned into a soft and tender kiss, which had turned into a hot and heavy kiss, which had turned into something more as she fell apart beneath my fingers.
And that turned into me asking, Can I take you to the department dinner on Saturday night?
The one with all the professors?
Yes.
With delight in her pretty brown eyes, she’d said, I’d love to go with you.
Then Saturday came, and my teammates showed up at my door and said they were taking us away for the afternoon for team bonding, no phones allowed.
The afternoon turned out to be the whole weekend.
The net result? Technically, I stood her up. I wasn’t able to make what would have been our first official date, and I’d had no way of reaching her.
I’d felt like complete and utter shit. But when I returned and tried to explain what happened—the captains kidnapping us, the camping and fishing trip—well, Lola said it was no big deal and that we were better off as friends anyway.
Okayyyyyy.
Hell if I was going to let on that I was hurt. Or that I wanted to make it up to her, to take her out again and properly say I was sorry.
No fucking way.
If she wanted to friend-zone me, I wasn’t going to fight for more. Fine, I’d said. It was just one night anyway.
Yeah, that comment didn’t go over so well. But hey, we were going to be friends again and our friendship could withstand a little awkward moment.
Only, we weren’t a rubber band that snapped back into friendship shape.
We are this—the older brother and sister of a pair of crazy young lovers, and also rivals in business. Even more so now with the design competition next week.
I point to my watch. “As the man himself said, ticktock. What do you want to tackle first?”
“The first item, I presume.” Reaching into her back pocket, she grabs her phone, taps on the screen, then scrolls.
But I don’t need to look up the email. I remember it. “If memory serves, the email from the Ringmaster listed where they first met as item numero uno,” I say.
She glances up from the phone, the corner of her lips quirking. “‘Ringmaster,’” she says, like she’s testing the word on her tongue. “That works. Though personally I like to call him ‘The Happy-Go-Lucky Sadist.’”
I scrub a hand across my chin, considering this nickname. It’s not bad. Not bad at all. But I can’t give an inch to this woman. She is a ferocious tiger, and she’ll pounce. Like she did when I ran into her at an industry conference a year ago. Checking out the paperback jacket on display at one of the booths, she’d said my design for the memoir If Found, Please Return was a top candidate for the new award category Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery, since she claimed it was the spitting image of a cover from another publishing house.
My cover had released first, I pointed out. Then I told her that her cover for Fashion Roadkill looked like it was drawn by a pigeon on speed.
That was a red-hot lie. That cover was earth-shatteringly good.
“I’ll stick to ‘Ringmaster,’” I say, furrowing my brow as I laser in on the mission. Trouble is, I’ve been noodling on the first item all day, but I’m not positive where my brother and his girlfriend met. Hell, does Rowan even know? Doubtful. But I bet Lola knows, since that’s the type of stuff girls gab about. “So, do you know where Luna and Rowan met?”
“Of course I do.” She parks a hand on her hip, like the answer is so obvious. “The Cute As A store.”
I lift a doubtful brow. “What are you talking about? What store?”
She huffs, flapping her arms, pointing down the tree-lined street. “It’s ten blocks away. The button shop,” she says, taking a beat like she’s waiting for me to connect the dots. But the dots remain disconnected. “As in, ‘cute as a button.’ Luna was hunting for a new plaid dot button to go with her good-luck plaid skirt, and Rowan needed one for his Anakin Skywalker costume for a party he was going to. A Halloween party.”
I blink, shaking my head like I can clear the ridiculous from it, though it’s hard to know where to begin sorting out that infodump. I start at square one. “Is there actually a store called Cute As A instead of Cute As A Button?”
She laughs lightly, the gold flecks in her eyes twinkling as she does. “It’s a pretty bad one as far as names go.”
I gesture to the sidewalk in the direction of the store. “I’d say it’s officially trying too hard.”
“Right? No one knows what it is when you first say it. You always have to fill in the gap,” she says as we walk past the brownstones then a gourmet mustard shop tucked between two buildings. “Just call it what it is, right?”
“There is definitely way too much let’s-try-to-be-clever going on in this world. Like specialty mustard shops.”
“And toe-ring stores,” she adds.
I swivel around, scanning for such an offensive jewelry boutique. “Please tell me there is no such thing.”
She snaps her gaze to me and lifts a hand like she’s taking an oath. “I swear on a stack of Anne Rice novels. I actually passed a store in Soho the other day called This Little Piggy, and it sells all sorts of toe rings. Coral, platinum, and rose gold. They size your toes, measure them, and custom-make toe rings too.”
I cringe. “I feel like I might need to unlearn everything you just said.”
“Oh, trust me. I’d like to go back to the days when I was more innocent too. Alas, I’ve had to accept we live in a world with This Little Piggy. And Mightier Than.”
My mental wheels turn, trying to place that name, then it clicks. “The designer pencil shop? The one in Queens? With carpenter pencils? Vintage pencils? And pencil sets with all colors of the palette?”
“Don’t forget you can buy an old-fashioned schoolhouse pencil sharpener there too,” she says.
“How could I forget that? Especially since I’m always in the market for something that reminds me of elementary school,” I deadpan.
“Next thing we know, there will be Play-Doh shops for adults.”
I shudder. “Stop. Make it stop.”
We reach a walk sign at the crosswalk, scanning left and right to make sure it’s safe. “We can’t make it stop. The world only spins forward, and next thing you know, the Play-Doh shops will have wine and spaghetti-hair-making classes too,” she says as she steps into the street. Out of nowhere, a motorcycle whizzes toward her, hell-bent on running the light. Pulse spiking, I grab her arm, yanking her hard out of the street and smack back onto the sidewalk.