I take another drink of the beer, then set it down. “I guess some things never change, do they?”

  Sighing, she shakes her head. “I wish they did, but I don’t know if they will. I don’t know how not to look out for Luna,” she says, and there are no barbs in her voice now. She doesn’t have to add the details I already know well.

  When she was sixteen and Luna was twelve, her parents separated, headed straight for a split. But then they decided to go to therapy, and somehow they worked through their troubles. Except once they got back together, they became laissez-faire parents, ignoring their kids.

  “You know what happened,” Lola continues. “My parents were all about themselves as a couple. Like, they could justify ignoring Luna because they needed to reconnect or have another mommy-daddy vacation. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to be the one who was there for her, since they weren’t.”

  “I know exactly what you mean.” I get it completely. I get her. My parents moved here from Brazil when I was five because my father landed a finance job in New York. He became a workaholic, and so did my mom. That drove them apart, splintering their marriage. And they didn’t stop. They both worked so damn much post divorce they didn’t have time for their kids. I was older and handled it better. But Rowan was always the more sensitive one, more needy. His heart was easily wounded. He was younger too, still moldable clay. And I couldn’t stand by and watch them ignore him with their work obsessions, so I became a de facto parent to him. “I hated that they didn’t have time for him, and I wasn’t going to do the same thing.”

  “That’s why I chose the school I did,” Lola confesses quietly. “I don’t regret it. I’m glad I went to school where I did. But I did it partly to stay close to her.”

  “I did the same for him,” I admit, something I never voiced at the time. But I chose a close college so I could keep an eye on him, since the people who were supposed to never did. They were too caught up in work, too intent on lashing out at each other, even after they split.

  “Do you ever feel like you love him more than he gives you any reason to?” she asks.

  I laugh, but it’s tinged with a little sadness as I nod an emphatic yes. “Yeah, I do, but he’s like Puss in Boots when he bats his eyes.”

  “No one can resist those help me eyes.”

  “I’m powerless against him,” I admit. “But I don’t regret it. He needs someone, and in his own way, he appreciates it. He’s grateful, and that seems to hook me every time.”

  “Luna’s the same. Even though she’s so needy, she’s also so loving. She’s like a puppy.” Lola sighs, her gaze drifting away. When she speaks again, her voice is low and vulnerable. “Is it our fault that Luna and Rowan are still so dependent at times?”

  “That’s what my friend Reid says,” I admit, flashing back to my conversation with him this morning. “He said I need to learn to say no to Rowan. That I need to let him fend for himself. He’s probably right, but it’s hard.” I can say to Lola what I can’t to Reid. He hasn’t been through the same things. He hasn’t seen a younger sibling start to spiral, to lose their sense of self, and been the only one who tries to help. “I love my kid brother. Flaws and all. Fuckups and all. And I’ve been saving him since we were kids.”

  Lola lifts her glass, takes a drink, and exhales. “And I don’t know what I’d truly accomplish if I said no to Luna’s crazy requests. She’s independent; she supports herself. I’m not paying her bills or anything. She’s just sometimes a little . . . overly needy.”

  “And he’s sometimes wildly un-independent when it comes to little things,” I say.

  “So maybe we agree on this point,” Lola says, a quirk to her lips.

  A grin tugs at mine too. “That there’s nothing wrong with helping a sibling?”

  She tips her glass to mine. “To family. To loving them, flaws and all.”

  “I will definitely drink to that.” As the crash of pins echoes in the background, I knock back some of the beer, and for the first time in a long time, I feel understood when it comes to my choices about my brother.

  I still don’t know if I’m doing right by helping him out of every jam. But at least I’m not alone in having no damn clue what the answer is.

  The waiter arrives with our food.

  “And here are your fries, your sandwich, and your burger. Enjoy,” he says.

  I grab a fry, and my taste buds cartwheel. “Salt and carbs. My favorite drugs,” I say with a happy food moan.

  “Mine too,” she says, her pretty brown eyes twinkling.

  And as I look at her face, I see something so very real—I can still make her smile.

  Something I did before.

  Something I failed to do when I returned to school.

  When I said that shitty thing—It was only one night.

  I shouldn’t have said that.

  I should have said a lot of other things.

  Talking about my brother reminds me of that. I’ve had to be the adult with him. I had to take care of him when my parents stopped doing it.

  I have no regrets. I love that kid like crazy. I want to give him everything I saw them take away.

  But even though I’ve chosen to play the role of the mature one with Rowan, I haven’t always done it for myself.

  I certainly haven’t always done it with the woman across from me.

  The night I went to her dorm, I wasn’t ready to face the truth of my feelings.

  There’s no need to now either.

  But I can do something I failed to do then.

  Maybe it’s because of the salt and carb high, or maybe it’s because of this crazy night, or possibly it’s because not many have the opportunity to say what they should have said way back when . . . Whatever the reason, I draw a deep breath and speak from the heart as she reaches for a fry. “Hey, you.”

  She looks up in surprise.

  The fry falls into the basket as I say, “I’m sorry, Lola.”

  9

  Lola

  They’re words I longed to hear nearly ten years ago.

  They’re the only words I wanted then.

  Well, those, followed by Let’s try this whole first date thing again.

  But I can’t quite believe he’s saying them. And I don’t want to misread him. Is he sorry for what happened to us? For our crazy siblings? For our absentee parents?

  Or maybe just for the fry that fell?

  Nerves thrum through my bones as I wipe my hand on my napkin. “For what, Lucas?”

  He heaves a sigh, then rubs a hand across the back of his neck. “There were a lot of things I didn’t handle well the night I came to your dorm.”

  My heart speeds up. It’s pumping with anticipation. But not for romance, or for sex. It’s an anticipation I didn’t expect to feel.

  It’s the wish for resolution.

  To truly put the past behind us.

  To say the things we couldn’t say as two hotheaded twenty-one-year-old aspiring artists who wanted each other. Who wanted to see if maybe there was something more to all those nights of friendship.

  “What sort of things?” I ask, my pitch climbing as I study his handsome features.

  Gone is the sexy smirk he wears so well. In its place are serious eyes, flecked with honesty. “For starters, I shouldn’t have said that thing about it being only one night. The night before,” he explains. “That was dumb and—”

  I know exactly what one night he means, and I am bursting to say something too, something I didn’t even realize I needed to say until just now.

  “I’m sorry too,” I blurt out, cutting him off, because it feels so damn good to say it at last.

  He flinches in surprise. “What are you sorry for?”

  And I know. I know exactly what I’m sorry for. I didn’t give him a chance to truly apologize. Sure, he should have batted first back then. Definitely, he’d needed to explain better. But I was so wounded that I put on my armor immediately. “I didn’t give you a real chance to explain. I went into self-protection mode,” I say, my voice marked with potholes as we revisit the past.

  In the scheme of things, it’s not such a terrible moment. No one died, no one fell ill, and no one lost a home.

  But even if it wasn’t the end of the world, it was the end of something else—it marked the end of a fantastic friendship.

  There was a before and there was an after. And Lucas and I were never the same.

  “Lucas,” I say, leaning closer, emotions bubbling up inside me, spilling out. “I was so upset that weekend. When you didn’t show. I was . . .” I pause, searching for the right word, recalling how I felt as I waited for the guy who’d rocked my world a few nights before. “Devastated. I was devastated.”

  His face falls, and sadness clouds his features. “I’m sorry, Lo. I felt like shit. For what it’s worth, and I know it’s not worth much now, but you were pretty much all I thought about while I was away.”

  A smile pulls at my lips. “Yeah?”

  He nods decisively. “And I was so damn frustrated that I didn’t have a way to get in touch with you. And the guys, well, you know how they were. Jock pride and all. The captains basically said, ‘If anyone needs to call his mommy or daddy, do it now and do it on speakerphone.’ So yeah, I couldn’t.” He heaves a sigh, long and full of regret. “In retrospect, I should have. But in retrospect, I should have come to your dorm when the weekend was over and groveled. Got down on my knees and said, ‘I’m sorry, can we have a do-over? Here are flowers and chocolate and a thousand mea culpas.’”

  My throat tightens with a knot of emotion I barely realized was there. When I part my lips to speak, it loosens. “I would have happily given you a do-over, Lucas,” I say, voice wobbly.

  The corner of his lips quirks up. “You would have?”

  I shrug in admission. No need to lie now. Do I need to tell him I was falling for him? Hell no. That stays under lock and key. But letting him know I was interested back then? That I’d have taken him up on a mulligan? Hell yeah. “I would have. I thought about you that weekend too. But by the time Monday rolled around, all I could say was Let’s just be friends. It was easier that way. Do you know what I mean?”

  He lifts his beer, takes a drink, and nods thoughtfully. “I do, Lola. I do. And that’s what I’m most sorry for—that we couldn’t fucking figure out how to do that.”

  I breathe out a sigh. Strange that I’d feel relief. But I do. The loss of what we’d had was a huge weight on my conscience, and it’s lifting for the first time as we open up about how flawed we were then, how ill-equipped to navigate the waters of friendship to lust and back with no road map. “I didn’t know how either. I suppose I can blame my parents for that,” I say dryly.

  “Parents are always to blame.”

  “And truthfully, I didn’t know how. Didn’t have a clue. My parents went from madly in love, to fighting and nearly divorcing, to back together and disgustingly in love, obsessed with each other, ignoring their kids. I was like, Um, how am I supposed to behave with this guy whose hand was down my pants? Where is the guidebook for that?”

  Lucas smacks the table and laughs so deeply, so loudly that the couple at the table nearest us shoots him the side-eye. But then in the distance someone knocks down several pins, and all is forgiven.

  When Lucas recovers, still breathing heavily, he says at a lower volume, “That definitely wasn’t in any talk anyone gave me either. Here, son. This is what you do when a girl you’re totally hot for says, ‘Let’s just be friends.’”

  And I beam. It’s vanity—so much vanity—but happiness too. There was a part of me that thought he was turned off by me. Knowing he was turned on makes me feel surprisingly good.

  But what feels even better is this honest moment. The admission. The confession.

  And most of all, the opportunity this strange night has given us to let go of the ways we hurt each other when we were young and foolish.

  Now, I’m nearly a decade older, and I hope a lot wiser.

  So I say, “Why don’t we try again? To be friends? But mean it this time.”

  The smile that ignites his face is magical. He extends a hand across the table. “Hi, I’m Lucas Xavier from São Paulo. I’d very much like to be your friend.”

  “I’m Lola Dumont from Miami. And I’d like to be your friend too.”

  We shake . . . for longer than friends usually shake.

  And that, too, feels surprisingly good.

  When he lets go of my hand, he gestures to the food. “And, as friends, I say we need to polish off this double serving of fries, play a quick game, then get the show on the road.”

  “That sounds like an excellent plan.”

  We eat and talk and laugh, and we don’t insult each other. We don’t shoot mad glances each other’s way.

  We simply get along like old times.

  Like we did before the night we kissed.

  It’s as if we’ve rewound the clock.

  But it’s even better.

  Because we’re not twenty-one anymore. We’re thirty, and we can make it work this time around.

  It’s wonderful.

  The bowl of fries is empty. Lucas stares at it like a dog praying more kibble will magically appear in his food dish.

  “Aww.” I push it an inch or so toward him, an offering. “Do you want to lick it?” I glance around the noisy lounge. “I won’t tell a soul.”

  “Cover me, Dumont. I’m going in.” He grabs the bowl, brings it to his face, and pretends to lick.

  As he places it back on the table, I laugh, saying, “I told you these were soul-selling worthy.”

  “You did not lie. This is the number-three item I’d sell mine for.”

  “That was just a cheap way to get me to ask what items one and two are. Fess up. Now.”

  He wiggles his brows. “I thought you’d never ask. Of course, saving the forests, the trees, the earth would be number one.”

  I smile. “That’s the Lucas I know. Saving the world.”

  He parks his hands behind his head. “I’m magnanimous with my soul. I’d totally sell it for Mother Earth’s benefit.”

  “So thoughtful. But, not to knock you down too many pegs, how much do you actually think your soul is worth?” I posit. “How do you know the devil would accept that deal?”

  He clasps his hand to his heart, affronted. “I have an excellent soul, thank you very much. I’d like to think it’d command top dollar from Lucifer.”

  “In that case, I’ll schedule the seance to summon the dark lord and get the paperwork ready. What’s the second thing?”

  He slashes a hand through the air, like he’s ridding the planet of another offense. “Erasing all coffee shop phone calls from existence.”

  “Again, look at you. So considerate. Sacrificing yourself so others won’t be aurally accosted in coffee shops.”

  He shrugs, like it’s no big deal. “I’m a generous guy, Lola. I’m looking out for the eardrums of others. Or maybe I just can’t take another second of Can I start my dating profile with ‘Is that a turtle in your pocket?’ Or Dude, I’m so drunk today, but no one at the office could tell. Isn’t that rad? To which I wanted to say, Everyone could tell. But wait—there’s more! From coffee shop phone calls, I’ve learned how to fix an old record player, how to trick a guy into thinking he meant to text you, how to convince a woman to dump you first, how to ghost effectively and still look like a nice guy, and where to buy a wet suit in Manhattan.”

  “And you’ve been keeping all this from me? Didn’t you know I was looking for a wet suit?”

  He raises his brows. “Go to Don’s Surf Shop on East Fifty-Ninth Street. He’ll give you a twenty percent discount if you whisper, ‘Fins up.’”

  “I’m so there.” I laugh. “Also, is that what people are talking about in cafés? Because if they are, you could write a book—Things Overheard in Coffee Shops.” I’m thinking of Amy and her penchant for sniffing out ideas for quirky gift books.

  “Caffeine reveals our true selves. And coffee shops are a window into the soul. So, for that book, I’d design a cover featuring latte foam art in the style of Edvard Munch’s The Scream.”

  I can picture it perfectly, and it’s so him. “That’s a good concept. But here’s mine: a coffee cup with headphones on it.”

  He strokes his chin, considering. “Yours might be more inviting. Mine could perhaps suggest postapocalyptic coffee wars, and that might be off-putting.”

  “Just a tad. And if we go with my concept, we’d make sure the foam art had a wicked grin. Sort of a cheeky nod to either the clandestine joy found in eavesdropping or the satisfaction derived from blocking out the conversations of others.”

  “That’s it. It’s official. We’re designing it together.”

  I laugh. “We’ll submit it for next year’s Design-Off International.”

  “Speaking of that competition,” he says, wiggling his fingers, goading me on, “you know you’re dying to tell me about your presentation.”

  I roll my eyes as I lift my empty glass. “One more gin and tonic, and I’ll dish it all up.”

  He raises a hand and calls “Oh, waiter” in jest.

  But I don’t laugh, because a smidge of guilt settles into my gut. Guilt over my original plan for the evening. And since we’re on a truth bender, I follow that path. “I have a confession.”

  He leans forward and hums invitingly. “I’ll be your priest. Tell me your sins.”

  I draw a breath. “I maybe, possibly, might have been hoping to spy on you tonight.” I flash a toothy please forgive me grin.

  One eyebrow arches. “Is that so? Were you hoping to know what color boxers I’m wearing? Because you can just ask.” He whispers, “They’re black.”

  Great. Now I’m thinking about Lucas nearly naked, and it’s a mouthwatering image. “That’s not my confession.” I square my shoulders and press on. “I was actually toying with trying to get some intel on your presentation.” It sounds gross as it comes out, but I’m still glad I’ve said it.

  His other eyebrow rises, and he wags a finger at me. “You are nefarious. I mean that as the highest compliment. But I have to ask—how’s espionage working out for you?”