You didn’t tell me she had separation anxiety.
I’m surprised you know what ‘separation anxiety’ is.
“Is that Elijah?” Summer asks. “How’s Milo?”
“Sounds like they’re having a great bonding time,” I assure her with a smile. She beams back at me before intertwining our hands and heading toward the car rental.
Once I’ve loaded our bags into the trunk, I pull out my phone and open the GPS app, using the address Juliet provided. She’s baking a last-minute Christmas order and watching over Terra, so I told her not to worry about picking us up. Plus, I could tell Summer was nervous about meeting my sister, and I wanted to give her a little bit of time once we’d gotten off the plane to prepare herself, though I doubt Juliet will give her the third degree. She’s aware that I pursued Summer while she’d tried her best to keep her distance.
I can see Summer’s anxiety start to ramp up the closer we get to our destination. She wrings her hands together and bites her lower lip.
At a stoplight, I lean across the seat and smooth my thumb across her lip, forcing her to release it. “Hey,” I say, trying to soothe her. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
“I want your sister to like me,” Summer mumbles. “But I know our relationship is… less than ideal.”
My stomach drops at her words, though I know how things started wasn’t how either of us would’ve preferred.
“Juliet has been hiding out here in California and has refused to let anyone see her or meet Terra. You should have heard the earful I had to take from our parents when they learned they weren’t invited to Christmas. I think she’ll understand that sometimes things don’t go the way we originally planned.”
Summer gives me a small, hopeful smile, but continues to worry her lip between her teeth as she looks back out the window.
“Should we have stopped at the store?” Summer asks suddenly. “We should stop at the store, right?”
“What for?”
“I don’t know!” she groans, throwing her hands up. “I should get her flowers, or a bottle of wine, or a toy for your niece! I shouldn’t show up empty-handed!”
“Summer… have you not met a lot of your previous partners’ families?”
“What gave it away?” she asks sarcastically. She lets out a huff of air and defensively crosses her arms. “No, I haven’t been introduced to partners’ families a whole lot. And this is especially terrifying because of how highly you speak of your sister.” I open my mouth to respond, but she continues, her tone rising in pitch. “And she hasn’t let anyone come visit her, and now here I am! The student who made you break your moral code.” She rakes a hand through her long, golden hair, pulling at the strands.
“Hey, stop,” I say seriously, taking her hand with mine. “Juliet is really nice. She hasn’t let anyone visit her for her own reasons that she hasn’t even disclosed to me. She knows that I pursued you; we talked about it before you and I were ever together. She’ll like you.”
“Do you really think so?” she asks quietly.
“How could she not?” I respond with a comforting smile.
Summer closes her eyes and takes a deep, steadying breath. Her amber eyes open and meet my gaze, crinkling at the corners with hersmile. We pull up to a curb, and Summer opens her door. “All right, let’s do this.”
I grab our duffel bags from the trunk—Summer apparently still uses her high school gym bag, which is crazy. It had me seriously debating whether to buy her a new one for Christmas.
Summer stands on the sidewalk outside a quaint little house that looks more like a cottage. The house is painted a cream color with brown trim and brown shutters. A matching brown door is up a few cobblestone steps, with a burnished golddoorknocker. There are a few flowers that look neglected in the small yard, and the grass obviously hasn’t been watered much, as it shows patches of yellow. The closer we get to my sister’s house, the more obvious it is that it could use some work.
The cream-colored paint is peeling. A few of the shutters look loose. Shingles are missing from the roof, and I notice that her mailbox is barely hanging on to the post at the end of the driveway.
I push thoughts of the house away and make my way up the steps to the porch. Summer gives me a supportive thumbs up, but she looks like there’s a very real possibility she’ll be sick from the nerves.
I knock quickly, hoping the faster everyone is introduced, the more comfortable Summer will feel.
Juliet opens the door with a huge grin.
“Hey, twerp,” I say fondly.
“Long time no see, big brother,” she responds before pulling me into a bone-crushing hug. When I try to break the hug, she holds metighter, refusing to let go. She pulls back after a few long seconds to really look me over.
Juliet has cut her hair so that she now has jet black bangs across her forehead. She also seems to have trimmed the length a bit, though it still reaches past her collarbone. Her chocolate brown eyes twinkle up at me, and the freckle—which our mother always referred to as a ‘beauty mark’—under the corner of her eye shifts with the movement of her eyes, crinkling with her smile. She’s predictably covered in flour—Juliet was never an organized child, and she never adopted that trait in adulthood.
A high-pitched squeal sounds behind her, and her smile gets impossibly bigger as she steps aside so that my niece can barrel into my legs.
