“Humor me.”
She narrowed her eyes on me. “What?”
“Can you let your guard down for a few seconds? You’re so stiff right now. Back straight. Chin up. It looks painful.”
“I don’t—” She glared at me. “What does my posture have to do with anything?”
“If we’re going to work together, you—”
“We’re not. This is my job. I told you I don’t need your help.”
“And I toldyouthat your job impacts my livelihood.”
“Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you slept with your client’s daughter,” she tossed back.
I stretched my neck to relieve some of the tension that had set in. “I told you I didn’t sleep with her,” I muttered. “And we’re working together on this.”
“I work for myself,” she said, clapping her hands together with each word. “Hired as a contractor by Granny. Not you.”
“Semantics.”
“Truth.”
Hendrix cleared his throat. “Just a quick reminder that we’re in a public building. Inside voices.” We both glared at my cousin, and he lifted his hands in surrender. “Anyway, I’ma let y’all finish this conversation. I need to meet your friend out front anyway. She recruited me to bring the rest of your stuff in, if you care.”
“We’re not talking about this anymore,” she muttered under her breath.
“That’s what you think,” I grumbled.
Ignoring me, she asked Hendrix, “Aren’t you two on a break?”
Hendrix snorted. “I never said that.Your girlsaid she was done with me around nine this morning because I told her to order her own breakfast,” he explained. “Then, she asked me to help get the rest of your things from the car.”
My cousin had a love-hate, no-one-else-would-ever-really-be-right relationship with Brianna Cobb. He pushed. She pulled. It was a constant tug-of-war between them. I was convinced they loved it that way, because they were never really done with each other.
Chuckling, I said, “How long are you going to keep doing this?”
“I know, right?” Albany giggled. “When are y’all going to stop playing around?”
“Probably until the wedding,” Hendrix mused, rubbing his beard. “I am her plus-one.”
It was the first time she’d smiled at me tonight. And it felt like the sun had shone down on me, bathed me in light. I wanted to bottle the feeling up, the overwhelming sense of peace I felt, the calm that washed over me.
“How long has it been?” she asked Hendrix. “Fifteen years?”
“Twenty,” Hen corrected. “We were twelve when we sat together on the bus for a Cedar Point trip.”
Albany lit up. “Ah”—she clutched her chest—“I remember those days.”
Growing up in Detroit, we could count on one activity every summer. A trip—or two—to Cedar Point, the world-famous amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio. Back then, it was about thrill rides, roller coasters, thick-cut French fries, and funnel cakes. Although the group was smaller, we still tried to make the hour-and-a-half drive annually.
“I haven’t been there in so long,” she continued, a wistful smile on her face. “Do they still have the Top Thrill Dragster?”
The year that particular ride opened, Albany had insisted we go on opening day because she wanted to be among the first to experience it. We continued that tradition every year afterward, until … Well, until we didn’t.
Hendrix frowned. “I think that closed a couple of years ago. But they have some new ones you’d probably like.”
“We’re going next month,” I offered.
