3. Lennie
Lennie
CHRISTMAS
M ariah Carey belts her heart out while I try to wrap Christmas presents.
I almost give it up as a lost cause when Adeline barges in.
“If you don’t turn that off, I will commit murder. Your murder.”
Blowing hair off my face, I plop onto the mattress. Adeline recently graduated from NYU and moved back home. When we were in high school, we lived in Manhattan, but Mom kept saying she wanted to hear herself think.
Dad pointed out numerous times we lived in a soundproof multistory penthouse.
But she kept talking about deer and gardens so they moved just outside the city.
In some ways, this place feels like my childhood home more than the Manhattan penthouse.
It’s cozier and calmer. And now that we’re all older we actually like hanging out with each other.
Though, I doubt Mom thought she’d have two daughters living with her again but here we are.
Considering I work in the city, that’s probably where I should be living, but I don’t mind the commute.
And I crave the comforts of home. Adeline is staying here while she figures out where she wants to live.
I’m here because it’s another way to fight my loneliness.
It sounds silly, but even going away to college had me desperately homesick.
Adeline holds up a present, shaking it.
“Don’t!”
“What is it?” she asks like a kid. “Is it for me?”
“Do you see your name on it?”
She narrows her eyes, studying it.
I grab it out of her evil clutches. “It’s for Dad.”
“And what are these?” she asks, swooping down.
Wrapping paper and bows litter the floor, but she folds back the bed skirt and grabs a basket out from under my bed.
“Don’t mess with those!”
She gasps, her mouth dramatically hanging open. “Lennie, you do realize this is the equivalent of hiding a porn stash.”
“It’s not like that.” I tug the basket toward me.
It doesn’t matter. There’s another stack of books under the bed she discovers.
“Smut is not porn,” I defend, lovingly holding one of my dark romance novels to my chest.
“I’m not the one forcing you to hide them,” she points out with a wicked smirk. “You could always, I don’t know, put them on your bookshelves.”
She turns her head, eyeing up two shelves on either side of a window bench. I love my little reading nook and yes, I know it’s not bad to read smutty romances. Does that mean I’m ready to display them to the world?
“You know how nosy Mom is.”
Adeline rolls her eyes, digging through the books. “More like sexually repressed.”
“Who is sexually repressed?” Nat asks from the doorway.
With the way Mom acts, you’d think Nat lived in Russia instead of Brooklyn. She’s the only one who lives away from home so she promised to spend Christmas weekend at the house.
“Mom,” Adeline explains.
Nat scrunches up her nose. She’s in her socks and a pair of jeans, but there’s an effortless beauty to her casual appearance. “What’s all this?”
“Dirty books.” Adeline holds one up.
I grab it back. Luckily, Nat’s phone goes off and she turns to leave.
“Hey, are you okay?” I call after her. “You look tired.”
“Tired of you!” she yells back.
“Rude,” I say under my breath. When I turn back to Adeline the hair on the back of my neck stands. Why is she making that face? “What?”
She smiles coyly. “Are you okay?”
“Me? Yeah, of course.”
I’m off of work for the next few days, and once I get Adeline out of my room, I’ve got a new dark romance series to start.
“Mom says you’re still going to book club.”
I pick up bits of wrapping paper. “Yep.”
“Read anything good?”
“Uh. . .” I point to the pile of books. “Yeah, you know, just. . .”
“I fucking knew it!” Adeline bursts, pointing at me. You’d think I admitted to murder with the way she shouts. “You’re not going to book club. Admit it.”
“I am too!”
“Every week?”
“Yeah.” Now that she lives here, she knows I come home late on Thursdays after work.
“You are such a liar.”
“No, I’m not.”
Ads levels me with a look. “If you went to a bookstore weekly, you’d be coming home with twelve new books every time.”
Fuck. She’s got me there and the glint in her eyes tells me she knows it too.
Incoherent words rattle in my throat as I try to take up a defense. But her next question shakes me to my core.
“Are you dating someone?”
“D-dating?” I think she might be serious.
Adeline nods toward my phone on the bed. “Your texting people all the time. And then you go to ‘book club’.” She air quotes.
She thinks I’m hiding something and she’s right. It’s just not what she thinks.
My sister, for all her dramatics, has a serious side which runs deep.
Adeline went to brunch earlier with friends and while I’m in pajamas, she’s wearing a short skirt with tights and a blouse. She wore a leather jacket over it and looked like Julia Roberts from Notting Hill .
She’s never struggled for friends and she’s dated her whole life. Her freshman year at university she brought home a serious boyfriend. An Irish guy no less.
They broke up and she’s kept quiet about it, but I know it hit her hard. Sometimes I wonder if she misses Ciaran and is forcing herself to go out in a bid to get over him.
I don’t hate her for having a life.
But it’s hard seeing my baby sister experience things while I just. . . languish. She’s checked all these things off and I’ve only read about them in books.
There’s a spark of worry on Adeline’s face, but it’s mixed with a hint of happiness.
My shoulders sag as I let her down. “I’m not dating anyone.”
She pouts, not inclined to believe her big sister.
“I’m not lying.” But my phone lights up and she grabs for it. “Rude!” We struggle with the phone.
“Who’s texting you all the time then? What’s going on? I want to know.”
“Nosy as fuck!” I nearly topple backward but I’m victorious, clutching my phone to my chest.
“Tell me,” Adeline demands.
“Fine, okay.”
I know I shouldn’t say anything but her chocolate chip eyes pin me down. She’s not leaving this room without information.
I take a deep breath, settling into the floor by my bed. “I tried to go to book club but I chickened out.”
She nods, silently telling me to go on.
“So I walked around the corner,” I recount and nervously grimace as I add, “And went to Fujimori’s.”
The information takes a moment to settle in.
“Wait, what?” Her shiny brunette locks fall to the side as she tilts her head. “You mean Fujimori’s, Fujimori’s?”
“Yep.” The one and only.
When her mouth opens and her eyes pop out I wish I’d lied about dating someone.
She smacks my arm, admonishing me. “Lennie! Do you have any idea how badly Mom would freak if she found out.”
As if I hadn’t thought about it a time or two.
“And what about Dad? What do you think it’s going to look like if Boris Akatov’s daughter is just hanging out at Fujimori’s. What do you even do there?”
I shrug weakly. “Eat.”
My sister stares at me like she’s trying to understand if I’m serious.
“Abe is a really great cook,” I explain. “And his parents are adorable.”
The biggest smile appears on his mom’s face when I step inside now. And I’m no longer alarmed by all the fires and banging pots coming from the kitchen. That’s just how Abe and his dad communicate.
“And you know,” I keep going, “Ren has a lot of work, but she doesn’t like to book it during the dinner rush so I’m not getting pulled into anything weird.”
“Ren?” Adeline breathes out. “You’re on a first name basis with Aunt Macy’s niece now?”
I eye up my phone, giving myself away.
Adeline snatches it. “That’s who texts you?”
“Honestly, it’s not that big of a deal.”
“What if they’re using you?”
I pause, my hand outstretched for my phone. My sister is theatric but this voice is new. I’m almost touched by her worry, if not a little alarmed.
But I’ve also thought about it.
Janis kept suggesting I go to Fujimori’s. She knew how much making friends meant to me and was thrilled when I told her it was going somewhat okay.
But it wasn’t like I could explain that Ren wasn’t exactly going to turn me down. She’s too clever and my name always attracts a certain ambitious albeit morally gray type.
For the first two months, I thought Ren and Isolde were placating me. That I appeared weird to Abe and Bennie.
But Isolde asked for my number first and I gave it out because Janis kept challenging me to get closer to them. Isolde sent me a music playlist and now I’m in a group chat with her and Ren.
At first, I thought I came across as annoying, because every time I texted, Ren never responded. Isolde explained that’s just how she is and Ren assured me she reads everything, she’s just crap at knowing how to respond.
That one simple sentence made me understand that for all her confidence, Ren’s also a bit shy. She’s hyper at times, annoying Abe for fun, but her laughter is genuine and I’d like to think I’m one of the few people who see her outside of work mode.
“They’re really nice,” I tell Adeline. It sounds like a weak excuse, but I don’t know how to explain it all.
She’s diving through the thread of texts.
“Ren doesn’t talk a lot except this one time she wanted our help convincing Abe to get a jukebox for the restaurant. Isolde just texts about everything.”
Literally. She’ll send sixteen long messages in a row about whatever’s on her mind. Yet, somehow I only know she’s from the north of England and likes watching movies.
“That’s the British triggerman everyone talks about?”
“Yeah,” I confirm.
Adeline gasps when an idea comes to her. “Wait, so does that mean you know about Ren’s meeting with Russet?”
Ren and Isolde talk about the darker side of our lives but there’s a firm boundary regarding business. I think that’s why it felt easy to get comfortable around them. They knew who I was, but they didn’t pressure me to spill information.
I shake my head. “I don’t know anything. I saw her there, but I wasn’t a part of it.”
A couple of months ago, Russet went after Marissa on her own. Isolde showed me the footage and goosebumps flushed my skin as I watched her keep her aim steady as she faced gun after gun.
“You can’t seriously think hanging out at Fujimori’s is a good idea?” Adeline asks.
“Why not?” I counter back. It’s not like I have anywhere else to hang out.
An internal battle crosses her face. “I’m going to come and check it out.”
My nails tap against a book in my lap. “When’d you turn into Mom?”
She ignores me, going through the messages again. “So,” she quietly says after a moment. “You’ve really made friends with a triggerman?”
I nod, waiting for her judgment.
Instead, despite the worry, a mischievous smirk graces Adeline’s lips. She pounces on me, wrapping me in a hug. “I love this energy. I need more of it.”