“How’d you chip italready?” She groaned. She turned her back to me to rummage through a drawer in her bedside table. “All that hard work I put into making sure you have cute nails and you justsoilit.”
I held up my hands. “Mom and I were painting, and you know I type aggressively.”
“You’re lucky I like you,” Nikki said as she sat down across from me on the bed.
I smirked back at her. “Yeah, I love you too.”
>> <<
It didn’t occur to me until later that week when Nikki and I were taking a walk around the courtyard that I had actually beenlookingfor Brooklyn, but the way my heart careened into my throat when I finally saw him told me all the things I wouldn’t readily admit. There he stood, big and tall but not nearly as imposing as you expected someone of his stature to be, having an animated conversation with another guy. The early afternoon sun hit him just right, and when he laughed at something the other guy said, I half expected a chorus of angels to come down in a beam of light singing “Hallelujah.”
“Hello?” Nikki shook my arm.
“I’m sorry.” I shook my head, trying to unstick my thoughts from whatever vapid daydream I was having. “What were you saying?”
“Are we continuing our Lindsay Lohan movie run or are we pivoting?” Nikki asked. “You’rethe movie connoisseur.”
“Pivoting,” I echoed. I subtly glanced over at him again, realizing I had already been lingering longer than I wanted to. I needed to casually pivotuswithout raising suspicion, before he noticed us and opened up the floodgates of Nikki.
“Yes, we’re gonna pivot,” I repeated as I took her arm in mine. “Herbieis where I draw the line with Lindsay Lohan movies made before 2020.”
I thought we were in the clear, but the moment I turned my back to him, he called out to me. So close, and yet so far.
“Hey! Wait!”
“I’m sorry, do youknowthat guy?” Nikki whispered, keeping her head down close to mine.
“Sort of, yeah. Wait a second.” I sighed before resigning myself to the inevitable.
When I finally turned back around, there he was, backlit by those goddamn angels as he smiled down at us.
“Hey, Nat,” he said breathily, and turned to Nikki. “And Nat’s sister.”
“Hey, yourself,” I greeted him, unable to stop my lips from curling into a grin. Thankfully he seemed to have that effect oneveryone, not just me.
“It’s Nikki. Hi, I’m Nikki. Or Nik, or . . . whatever.” My sister smiled up at him in a sickly sweet way, keeping her arm looped around mine.
“Hi, Nikki,” he said, and turned to me. “I was actually hoping I’d run into you again, Nat.”
“You were?”
He nodded, and a few stray locks of hair flopped onto his forehead. There was an almost intentional messiness to him, but instead of being off-putting, it added to his charm. All I wanted to do was steady his hands and fix him up. I could handle him better when he looked and acted more like other guys, instead of being sohim.
“How tall are you?” Nikki blurted.
I inwardly groaned, but this was Nikki being her usual speak first–think second self, and I tried to let that thought outweigh the embarrassment. If she was feeling like her normal self, I’d take it, and if Brooklyn was at all deterred, he didn’t show it as he grinned again.
“Six five.”
“So tall.” Nikki sighed as she leaned into me.
“Yeah, tall enough to be the designated get-things-from-the-top-shelf person in my house.” He chuckled. “Anyway, before we were so rudely interrupted the other day, I’d wanted to ask you something.” He paused, rocking back and forth on the toes of his sneakers.
That sticky knot formed in my throat again, tangling up my words in it. There were a lot of uncertainties in my life, but one thing I was certain of was that a distraction like dating wasn’t something I needed right now. My focus needed to be with my sister, my career (or lack thereof), and finding a shred of normalcy in my life here.
“Sorry, I have to get Nikki back inside,” I blurted. “You know how strict they can be about unsupervised time.” He flinched so subtly that I almost had to second-guess that it had happened at all, and guilt gnawed at my stomach. “But I’ll see you around?”
And the effortless charm returned like it had never left. “You will.”
