They did not.
We take the bus back into the city, and Hope talks non-stop about how things are going in Halifax. She’s in the middle of finishing her undergrad, and she’s the lacrosse star of the campus. She answers my brotherly and slightly menacing questions about her boyfriend and has just finished telling me about all the drama in the lives of her three roommates when we get off the bus and switch to the metro that will take us to my place.
“So!” she exclaims, loud enough to turn the heads of half the people in the metro car. “Tell me about you!”
“Ah, me.” I shrug. “Same old, same old.”
“Zach!” she complains.
“What? We talk all the time on video. You already know what’s up with my life.”
“Yeah, and you already knew everything I just told you. It’s different when you say it in person.” She stops talking for a moment and squints at me. “You’re hiding something.”
I huff. “Me? Hiding something? You know I have a bad poker face.”
“Yeah, exactly.” She rolls her eyes. “Spill.”
“I can’t spill if there’s nothing to spill.”
“Hmm.” She pats her suitcase where it’s sitting between her knees. “Good thing I brought some east coast liquor with me. You’ll be telling me everything in no time.”
I fake a gasp. “My own sister, trying to drug me into a confession.”
“Ha! So you admit there’s something to confess.”
We continue like that all the way to my apartment. Paige’s lair is firmly closed off, but there’s a light shining through the crack under the door.
“Do I get to meet her?” Hope asks in a whisper. The last time she visited Montreal was before I’d moved in with Paige.
“If you remain very still, she may choose to emerge,” I whisper back. I laugh at Hope’s wary glance at the door and continue in a normal voice. “She usually comes out for a late dinner. She also always has headphones on, so don’t worry about making noise.”
I give Hope a quick tour of the place before pulling a lasagna out of the freezer and turning the oven on.
“Mother would be ashamed of you,” she informs me, nodding at the cardboard box.
“Yeah, well, I was going to grocery shop this morning, but—”
“But what?”
“I, uh, ran out of time.”
Hope gives me a look to say she’s having none of my shit before leaving the kitchen and plopping herself down on the couch.
“Oh! You know what you should tell me about? Your business! How’s it going?”
“It’s, uh, it’s good,” I answer distractedly as I slide the plastic tray into the oven.
“Zachary Hastings, you are being infuriatingly evasive today.” She pats the cushion next to her, and I make my way over to collapse down beside her. “Come on. Give me the deets.”
As an economics major, Hope is one of the few people I’ve met who can keep up with my ecommerce explanations. By the time I get past the concept with most people, they’re either too confused or too bored to listen to any more. I reel off some of my latest accomplishments and nerd out over the traction I’ve been gaining as Hope congratulates me.
“Let me show you this drop shipping meme about—”
“Wait. No.” Hope holds up a hand to cut me off. “No more of your memes. You’ve already sent me like, five memes today.”
“Yeah, but they weren’t about drop shipping,” I protest.
“I’ll just take your word for it that it’s funny.” She pats me on the shoulder, and I resign myself to shoving my phone back in my pocket. “Seriously, though, that’s incredible. Are things still moving as fast?”
“Well...”
It’s not like she’s my boss; I’m my boss, but I can’t help feeling guilty admitting how much I’ve been neglecting things lately.
“I’ve been working at the bar a lot, so I’m not as on track as I’d like to be, but as soon as I have a little more time on my hands, things should get back to where they were and keep growing.”
Hope frowns. “I thought you went down to part time at the bar?”
“Well, that was the plan.” I shrug and chuckle, but her frown only deepens. “Things got a little crazy after Dylan left, and Monroe only just got a new manager fully trained. I’m one of the most senior staff members now, so it’s been important to have me around.”
“Your business is important.” She jabs a finger at my chest. “You always do this, Zach.”
“Do what? Help people? That’s not a bad thing, Hope.”
The words come out sharper than I meant them to. Hope raises her eyebrows.
I blow out a breath. “I’m sorry. You’re here to visit, not fight. I’ve just...I’ve had a lot going on lately, and I already feel bad about not working on the business. Can we talk about something else?”
“Of course.” Her face softens. “How about you tell me more about your friends? You mentioned Dylan came to visit. How was that?”
“It was great. We didn’t get much time together since it was a quick trip and he was mostly here to see Renee, but we grabbed lunch. We actually almost got kicked out of the diner. We were sitting next to this family, and Dylan asked, like, really loud if I’d had sex with DeeDee—”
I cut myself off mid-sentence, but it’s too late. Hope’s eyes are already bulging out of her head, and her mouth has dropped open.
“What?”
“Okay, let me expl—”
“DID YOU HAVE SEX WITH DEEDEE?”
I sigh. “Well, not at that point, but—”
“OH MY GOD, YOU HAD SEX WITH DEEDEE!”
She shouts it at the exact moment Paige decides to walk out of her room, oversized hoodie hanging down to the knees of her leggings and headphones slung around her neck.
She pauses, blinks twice, and then shrugs.
“Huh. About time.”
Sixteen
DeeDee
SOUR: term used to describe a drink made with a lime-flavoured mix
I pull the green-stained gloves off my hands and throw them into the trash in Zach’s bathroom.
“Okay, ma belle, now we wait.”
Hope beams at me before jumping up off the toilet seat to check her hair out in the mirror.
“This is so cool! I’ve always wanted to do this.”
Zach pokes his head into the doorway. “I can’t believe I let you dye my sister’s hair green.”
Hope walks over and punches him in the arm. “One: you don’t get to let me do anything. Two: it’s teal, not green. How many times do I have to tell you?”
Zach picks up a piece of her hair, and Hope smacks his hand away. “It looks pretty green to me.”
“That’s because the dye is still on—and don’t touch it! You’re going to wreck it. Right, DeeDee?”
I watch the two of them argue and joke around the same way I used to watch the sibling characters in TV shows when I was a kid, after my sister got taken away. I would sit in front of our old box of a television and repeat all the lines, acting out the same body language. I’d imagine what it would be like to have someone I could tease and hug and tackle whenever I wanted. Even now, I feel like I’m memorizing everything Zach and Hope say, soaking it up and storing it away like I do with Zach’s stories about his home town.