Page 17 of Five

“You know. Maybe we could use the old apartment to have some… alone time.” He waggles his eyebrows at me. “If you get my meaning.”

Yes! I want to do a great big fist pump. I’m gonna have sex today! With the love of my life!

And then I frown. “Hmmm… I don’t know.”

“What? You’re gonna deny me, Princess? Well, don’t blame me for trying—”

“No!” I say. “No, no, no, no, no! I’m in. One hundred percent. It’s just… I have always pictured it in my bedroom, ya know? On my princess bed. Surrounded by my princess stuff. But the shop apartment is fine. Better than fine. It’s perfect. Come on, let’s go!”

PRESENT DAY

“You did not,” Kate says, breaking her rapt attention away from my story, “do it for the first time in my father’s creepy old shop apartment on your farm.”

“We did,” I say, making a face. “And it was all wrong. I felt like a child, ya know?” I shake my head, trying to shake that memory away at the same time. I don’t like to think about it. “It was nothing like I imagined in my head.”

“Hmmm,” Kate says. “Well, yeah, that sucks.”

“We didn’t do it again, either. He had to leave early, remember? And he never came back. So I’m stuck with that one horrible first and only time with him in my memory.”

“Girlfriend, you need to make a new memory pronto. He’s back now.”

“Yeah, but I don’t care what he says, he’s not back for me. He’s up to something. Just like he was up to something that day we did it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… I don’t think he was up in the shop planning for our first time. I think he was doing something else up there.”

“Like what?”

I have thought about that morning for years trying to make sense of it. But I have no clue. So I just shrug. “Dunno. It was just weird how he showed up on that private jet and then left after only a week.”

“Hmmm,” Kate says again. I can practically see her mind spinning. “That was my grandfather’s jet. He was here from Hong Kong that summer. But now that I know all the details, you’re right. My baby brother was definitely up to something.”

“Yup,” I say. “And whatever it is, we need to find out.”

Just then, Oliver comes through the screen door. “Rory!” he calls.

“In here,” I say back.

Oliver—so tall now, so much like my dad—appears in the kitchen doorway. “Did you see Five?

“Yes,” I say.

“Did he make you happy?”

“Why?” Kate asks.

“Oh,” Oliver says, fake-polishing his nails on his t-shirt, “just cause I told him I was pissed off about how he left things with you, ya know. And I made him make it up to you.”

I squint my eyes at him. “Make it up—are you telling me he put on that caveman act because you put him up to it?” I’m fuming again.

I might be sweet Princess Rory most of the time, but I have a bombshell of a temper when I get angry.

“Where did you guys go?” Kate asks, placing a hand on my shoulder. It’s a signal for me to calm down.

“Out to the farm. Five needed something from the shop apartment.”

Kate and I exchange a look. Mmmmhmmm, that look says. We’re on to him.