A sister's logic was so wildly ill-timed, pretty much at any given moment. I was about to tell her what she could do with her opinion when Lia knocked on the driver's side window.
I rolled it down.
Lia grinned in at us. "What are we doing?"
"We are about to come inside," Isabel said. "Because we have nothing more worthwhile to do with our time than to eat a family dinner and focus on our own issues."
Lia's pretty face scrunched in confusion. "A little heavy on the subtext, are we? I feel like I'm missing something."
Because that was not something I felt like getting into, I waved at Claire and Finn, Lia’s best friend, who were hanging back while Lia leaned next to my car. Finn, tall and lanky and the kind of nerdy cute that always made me hope that he and Lia would hook up, waved back.
"Gawd, when are you two gonna do it already?" Isabel muttered.
Lia's face blazed red. "He is my friend," she whispered, just shy of a hiss.
I grinned. "He got bigger over the summer," I mused. "Didn't he, Iz?"
"Someone's working their arms, that's for sure."
Lia's face stayed even, which was annoying, because if you lost the ability to bait your little sister, were you even living your life right?
"I'm hungry," Claire yelled from the driveway. "Can we go in, please?"
"Oh, did your legs stop working when you got out of the car? No one is making you wait," Lia said over her shoulder. Finn tucked his hands in his pockets, but I saw his cheeks lift in a wide grin.
Isabel ignored the exchange between the twins. "He's got that Clark Kent thing going that I am not mad at."
"Don't think I won't make you suffer if he hears you say that."
I dropped my head in my hands. Probably good Noah didn't come. The front door of the house opened, and Emmett whooped loudly.
"Hey, Finn! I saved you a seat by me! We can almost beat the girls in numbers now!"
Isabel climbed out as Lia, Claire, and Finn made their way to the door. I took a second to watch them shuffle into the house. Chaos was so ingrained into the normal ebb and flow of my life in various ways. It was hard for me to understand it any other way.
Even the apartment I shared with Iz, small and cute and tucked in an affordably safe building downtown, was never quiet. We always had music playing, the TV on, or an audiobook going while I cooked. If we were home more, we probably would've had a dog or two that I could take on walks and snuggle on the couch with.
Maybe that was why thinking about Noah made me sad for him, causing a slow, unfurling ache in my chest that I wanted to rub at until it went away.
I didn't want him to be sitting alone in the dark, and it wasn't because I wanted to heal any emotional wounds.
Liar, a voice in the back of my head whispered.
I didn't want that man sitting alone in the dark because I liked him, and there was no earthly reason I should've. He was snappish and grumpy. His moods shifted faster than the weather, and for some reason, he refused to acknowledge that there was another side to him than The Machine.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
This was my curse, apparently. Something that made me good at my job when my own feelings weren't on the line, but horribly inconvenient when they were. Without trying all that hard, I had a sixth sense that jangled like a bell when it came to the people I was forming relationships with.
Noah needed warmth and laughter. He needed someplace where he didn't need to be perfect all the time. Where he could just be Noah.
My phone, still connected to the Bluetooth, rang loudly through my car's speaker, and I took a deep breath when I saw Beatrice's name flash across the screen.
"This is Molly," I said.
"Molly, it's Beatrice." Wasn't it fun when we all started our calls like we didn't have caller ID? "Sorry I'm calling at dinnertime. Do you have a minute?"
"Sure, go ahead." Paige opened the door and held up her hands questioningly. I held up my finger, then pulled my hand to my ear to signal a phone call. She nodded and went back into the house.
"I just got off the phone with Rick. He's on his way back from Tampa."
My fingers tightened in my lap. "Yeah, he told me he plans on being there for filming tomorrow. We've got everything set up for a defense only practice and some stuff in the weight room."
She hummed. "Yes, he told me that as well."
Something about her voice pricked uncomfortably. "Did something happen, Beatrice?"
"He's thrilled, you know, with how it's going with Noah."
"That's … good. Right?"