You, With a View(3)
God, same. My good eye strays back to my phone as a slew of notifications bubble up onscreen. I’m desperate to check, but I don’t dare in a room full of Shepards who don’t know about any of this.
Thomas rebounds, his sea-green eyes turning sharp with curiosity as he sees my lit-up screen. Looking at him is like looking in a mirror, minus the eleven months between us; we have the same honey-blond hair and dark eyebrows, but my eyes are the color of coffee dregs.
He nods his chin toward my phone. “What’s going on?”
I flip it on its face. “Nothing.”
“Your Tinder blowing up, Beans?” He smirks. “What a catch.”
Dad has disappeared to start on the eggs Benedict, and Mom is busy celebrating the end of her ride, along with her PR. I take a risk, putting both of my middle fingers in Thomas’s face.
“Knock it off, you two,” Mom says, out of breath.
Thomas cackles, sliding out the door. If I didn’t have chronic back pain, I’d swear I was fifteen again. Being in this house makes us both regress.
Mom jumps off the bike, an exhilarated smile on her face. She turns to the be awesome sign behind her, pulling the string. It only gets illuminated if she feels it’s deserved. It zaps on, the pink light turning her face even redder.
Her dark hair is damp around the edges of her ponytail, and her eyes go soft when they meet mine. Same as they always do lately.
“You good?” she asks, and it’s not perfunctory, exactly, but we both know I’m not.
Still, I say my line with ease. “Yep.”
Her quiet sigh indicates she doesn’t believe me. Fair. I don’t, either. “Well, it’s eleven, so maybe you want to get out of bed?”
Be awesome, indeed.
* * *
The unread comments whisper urgently all through brunch. I shovel my dad’s eggs Benedict into my mouth, nearly choking.
Just what I need, death by Canadian bacon.
I’m tempted to pull my phone out no less than one million times, but it’ll invite questions I’m not prepared to answer. My family is nosy on a regular day. Since I had to move home, they’ve turned into helicopters, clearly concerned that I’m one job rejection email away from losing my shit.
I finish my breakfast in record time, slamming my fork down like I’m the winner of a Benny-eating contest no one else entered. “Done, see you.”
“Why, do you have plans?” Thomas asks over the screech of my chair and around a mouthful of food.
“Why, does it matter?” I shoot back.
He lifts an eyebrow. “I just got here, and you’re already ditching me?”
“Mas, you slither up from the city whenever Sadie has plans that don’t involve you. I’m sure I’ll see you in mere days.”
“I don’t slither,” he grumbles, though his expression softens at the mention of his longtime girlfriend—and my best friend. The softness is replaced by mischief as he pulls a magazine from his lap, curled open to a specific page. “We didn’t have time to discuss this.”
“What, that Maxim still exists or that you’re still subscrib—”
What I’m looking at sinks in, and I snatch the magazine from Thomas’s hand with a gasp.
He leans back in his seat, grinning. “Your boy Theo Spencer is one of Forbes 30 Under 30.”
I snort. “My boy? You’re the one who had a crush on him throughout high school. He was a pain in my ass. On purpose.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” he says smugly.
I ignore him, and the two men bracketing Theo in the picture, instead staring at the face that’s vexed me for years. That wavy dark hair, the barely there dimple that pops when he smirks. Those deep blue eyes shaded by stern eyebrows that curve into cockiness with infuriating regularity. At least, they did when I last saw him years ago.
We may have been voted Most Likely to Succeed in high school, but our paths diverged dramatically when we went to college.
Obviously. The man is in Forbes, and I’m in SpongeBob sleep shorts. I’m not sure what’s more annoying—his latest accolade or the fact that he’s still smoking hot.
“Good for him,” I say in a tone that clearly conveys fuck that guy, if Mom’s arched eyebrows are any indication. I toss the magazine at Thomas, smiling triumphantly when it hits him in the face.
Thomas’s snort echoes as I drop a kiss on Dad’s sandpaper cheek to thank him for the meal.
I hightail it out of there, using the fumes of my annoyance to speed out to the backyard. Specifically, to the hammock in the far corner, where I can dive into comments without interruption.
Forgetting Theo, his perfect face, and his Midas existence, I pull up the app.
In the grand scheme of things, none of this matters. I had the perfect childhood. I had parents and grandparents who loved me, who showed up to my millions of extracurriculars, who thought the sun rose and set on my and Thomas’s existence, along with our cousins. Grandpa Joe was a sweet man with a booming laugh who used to tug on my bottom lip when I was pouting just to get me smiling again. Gram being in love with another man when she was young doesn’t change anything about my life.
But now that she’s gone, I’m desperate to know this story. She clearly found her way to ultimate happiness. How?