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Comforting patting becomes a chastising slap. “SimonandCharlieare great,” she corrects with narrowed eyes, emphasizing the names of the ranch hands our grandparents hired around the time I left for college.
To pick up the slack, they said.
To get in the way, in reality.
Two giant hulking masses of muscles with no brains, good for heavy lifting and not much else, are not the help my sister needs.
“And I have Mark.”
A humorless laugh leaves me. FuckingMark. God, I’d rather her have no one.
I’ve never liked him, Lux’s boyfriend, mostly because he’s a fucking dipshit. Smarmy, condescending, over-controlling, and Lux is oblivious to all of it. I’ve heard him talk down to her more than once. Try to diminish the hard work she does. Refer to her as ‘nothing more than a housewife’ in a derogatory tone, twisting taking care of our home as an insult and dismissing the fact she does so much more than goddamn housework.
She runs a successful business. She keeps three teenage girls, and herself, alive and healthy, as well as a dozen horses. She does a million times more work than that tool, and she’s a million times too good for him. But every time I point that out, it ends in a fight, hence the warning look contorting Lux’s features.
“You can talk about Mark,” she starts, tone too saccharine for my liking, “if I can talk about Caroline.”
It’s a dirty tactic, bringing up my ex-girlfriend. My sisters’ preferred strategy of shutting me up. “You brought him up.”
“A temporary lapse in judgment.”
“But can I just-”
“So, you really never think about getting back together with her?”
“Nope,” I cut her off with an honest, firm answer. Not once in the two years since the break-up have I contemplated getting back together with my high school sweetheart. It was a final decision, the right decision. It never would’ve worked—she loves the tiny town we grew up in, never wants to leave, and I love this place too but, God, I couldn’t wait to get out.
“Fair enough,” Lux muses over the rim of her beer bottle, and I silently marvel at how adeptly she shucked the attention off herself. “She was kind of weird.”
“She was not.”
“I thought she was gonna follow you to Sun Valley.”
“Shut up.”
“Is there a new girl yet? Just so I know to get slash-proof tires.”
Her question is rhetorical, made in jest, yet still, a glimpse of an image flickers through my mind. Silky blonde hair, enrapturing blue eyes, a sweet yet sultry voice that I could listen to forever, easy.
I shake off that fantasy as quickly as it appears because that's all it is.
A fantasy.
2
LUNA
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
A single grunt is all Kate offers to confirm that no, she is not fucking kidding.
“Heforgot?” My enraged screech startles more than one of the families attempting to enjoy the early July sunshine in the park I’m stomping through. I took the long way home with the same intention, wanting to soak up the New York summer I yearn for all year.
Alas, a single call and one infuriating confession has ruined any chance of that.
Offering as apologetic a smile as I can muster in my current fuming state, I hiss at the unimpressed face taking up my phone screen, “He forgot her birthday?”
Kate’s sigh is more resigned than surprised. “Hasn’t so much as texted her.”
