“Now you know how we felt with you and Dad.”
Her brow furrowed. “I never thought about it that way.”
Even though my brain was racing, my heart pounding because she was in my backyard, I took a deep breath and nudged my mom with my shoulder. “It’s not like we didn’t know what you guys were doing every time you took a nap together.”
Mom raised an eyebrow. “Our door had a lock. We didn’t care if you knew. We just didn’t want you walking in. The other day, I was babysitting Violet and Willa for Iz. When I brought them back to their house, Iz and Aiden were in his truck in the garage, and I almost poured bleach in my eyeballs.” She nudged me back. “Grab the cheese out of the drawer, please.”
I did as she asked, snagging a water bottle while I was in there.
Mom handed me the sandwich, and I wolfed it down in about three bites. “Thank you.”
She rolled her eyes. “If you need another one, you’re on your own. I’m gonna go call your dad and see when he’s coming home. Noah should be here soon. I think he’s going to take Molly and Adaline home.”
My head snapped toward the slider at the sound of Adaline’s laughter. I pinched my eyes shut. Don’t get a boner in the kitchen with your mom, I thought desperately.
“He’s taking both of them?” I wasn’t even sure she wanted to see me. The last time I surprised her, she broke the land speed record in four-inch heels trying to get out of that ballroom.
“Neither one of them should drive. Adaline’s apartment isn’t too far out of the way.”
“It’s like, twenty minutes in the opposite direction.”
Mom eyed me. “You took the guest room, but I supposed if she wanted to crash, she could take the twin bed in the office.”
Adaline, drunk and in the same house as me and my parents, was not the way I’d imagined this at all. I planned on calling her in the morning. Asking if I could take her out for breakfast. Or bring food to her office and see what she’d been building the last four years. Give her time to prepare for my sudden arrival.
Mom shoved me. “Go. Say hi. They’ll be excited to see you.”
But as I turned toward the slider, the girls chose that moment to head inside.
Adaline walked in first, and she was so beautiful, my chest throbbed with a sharp beat of longing. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair tangled up in a ponytail perched at the top of her head. I took a deep breath, and when I let it out, she finally registered the sight of me in the kitchen.
Her eyes went wide.
She stopped suddenly, Molly slamming into her from behind.
“Holy fuckballs,” she breathed. “Did I manifest you?”
I laughed, my arms aching to hold her.
Molly, laughing helplessly behind Adaline, peered past the girl I couldn’t tear my eyes off. Then she screamed, running at me with the fervor saved only for children and a very drunk sister excited to see her brother.
She jumped at me, and I caught her with an oomph, laughing as she wrapped her arms tight around my shoulders.
“What are you doing here?” she said.
I pulled my head back. “It smells like a vineyard exploded all over you.”
Molly smiled sheepishly, setting her feet back on the ground. “Because it maybe did. I don’t drink very often anymore, but it was necessary tonight.”
“Was it?”
She nodded seriously. “I haven’t seen Adaline in a month, and that’s so long. We had things to catch up on.”
My eyes strayed to Adaline, who was watching me with a mixture of fear and excitement … longing on her face. Everything I’d been holding tight in my chest relaxed.