21. Addy #2
“That isn't an answer.”
She smiles with all the innocence of a woman who definitely bought sugar. “See you later.”
Then she hangs up before I can interrogate further.
I lower my phone slowly.
Captain, watching from the rug, sneezes.
“Exactly,” I tell him.
By the time evening rolls around, I’m absurdly excited.
Maybe because it’s Friday, and because I haven’t seen Luci in too long. Maybe because living inside someone else’s beautiful, emotionally complicated penthouse means the prospect of having a piece of my old life here feels grounding in a way I didn’t know I needed.
Ethan gets home just before she arrives.
I’m in the kitchen slicing fruit for Oliver when I hear the front door open, followed by Captain launching himself toward the entry with the force of a tactical device.
A second later, Ethan appears in the doorway.
And because my nervous system remains committed to embarrassing me, I notice everything at once. Dark coat, loosened tie, slight tiredness around the eyes. That controlled posture of his somehow looks even more dangerous when he’s exhausted.
“Hi,” I say.
“Good evening.”
There it is again. That voice. That impossible calm that always sounds like he’s one sentence away from either issuing an instruction or doing something regrettable.
Oliver races in. “Dad, Luci’s coming.”
“So I’ve been told.”
The door buzzer sounds before either of us can say anything else.
Captain loses his mind.
Oliver yells, “I’ll get it!”
“You absolutely won't,” I call, already moving.
When I open the door, Luci barrels in like she’s been released from containment. “Addy!”
She drops a bag, throws herself at me, and nearly knocks me back a full step with the force of her hug.
“Okay,” I wheeze. “That’s enough. I enjoy oxygen.”
“No, you don’t.” She pulls back just enough to look at me properly. “Oh shit, you look hot and stressed. Love that.”
Before I can answer, she spots Ethan over my shoulder… and pauses, taking him in.
“Well,” she says at full volume, “that's unfortunately a very handsome man.”
“Luci,” I hiss.
“What?” She turns to Ethan with perfect shamelessness. “Hi. I’m the sister.”
“I gathered,” Ethan says dryly.
To his credit, he looks almost amused.
Luci marches right up to him and holds out a hand. “Lucinda Clarke. But only teachers and tax documents call me that.”
He takes her hand. “Ethan Strong.”
“I know.”
“Luci,” I say again, with warning this time.
She ignores me completely. “You look exactly like someone my sister shouldn't be living with.”
Ethan glances at me. “That seems reasonable.”
I close my eyes briefly.
Oliver, traitor to my peace, chooses that exact moment to throw himself into Luci’s orbit. “You brought snacks?”
She gasps and drops instantly into a crouch. “Tiny king. Of course I brought snacks.”
Captain is circling her suitcase by then like a narcotics dog who’s very bad at his job.
Within five minutes, Luci has distributed gifts, charmed Oliver, declared Captain “a big stupid prince,” and somehow made the entire apartment feel louder, warmer, and several degrees less emotionally repressed.
It’s honestly kind of magical.
Ethan watches the drama from the kitchen, one hand around a glass of water, and I catch a glimpse of his expression I didn’t expect.
Relief, maybe. Or amusement softened.
Luci follows my gaze and leans into me the second Ethan looks away. “Oh, you're in trouble.”
I elbow her lightly. “Behave.”
“Never.”
Dinner is loud in the best possible way.
Since I’m technically off work once Luci arrives and Ethan insisted earlier that we “weren’t going to create unnecessary domestic strain out of obligation,” we order food instead.
Luci reacts to the spread like she’s been invited to dine with minor royalty, which, to be fair, in this apartment, she basically has.
“Be honest,” she says around a bite of pasta, “do rich people know their olive oil tastes different or do they just lie to each other?”
Ethan, seated at the head of the table with the expression of a man who has absolutely had stranger conversations in his home this week, replies, “Some of them lie. Some are merely insufferable.”
Luci points at him with her fork. “See? I like him.”
I choke on my drink.
Add that to the list of things I didn't need to hear out loud.
Oliver, who’s spent the evening delighting in Luci’s total lack of normal boundaries, laughs so hard milk nearly comes out of his nose.
Captain gets an unauthorized piece of bread and is immediately rebuked by everyone except Ethan, who appears to have accepted that discipline where the dog is concerned is mostly theoretical.
By the time Oliver’s finally wrangled into bed, with Luci dramatically agreeing to read exactly one page of a plane book before claiming all further negotiations violate her civil liberties, the whole apartment's glowing with late-evening warmth.
Ethan disappears into his office for a while after that, work pulling him back the way it always seems to, and Luci and I retreat to my room with drinks, snacks, and the sacred sisterly understanding that sleep is for weaker women.
The second the door shuts, she turns to me and says, “Okay. Tell me everything.”
“Everything is such a large word.”
“Use your best judgment.”
I climb onto the bed cross-legged with my glass while Luci steals half my blanket and all available dignity.
We gossip first, because that’s what we do best: home, her latest almost relationship with a man she refers to only as “that decorative drummer,” Bryce’s continued existence, and Sophie, who Luci already adores based on my description alone.
Then, inevitably, we circle back to Ethan, and the impossible, ridiculous shape of my life now.
“So,” Luci says, stretching out on her stomach and kicking her feet up like she’s fifteen and not twenty-five with the soul of a champagne gremlin. “How bad is it?”
I take a sip of water. “That depends what you mean.”
“How obsessed are you?”
I nearly spill the glass. “Luci.”
She grins. “Addy. You moved into a billionaire widower pilot’s penthouse after sleeping with him on a plane. This is either the beginning of your villain era or your third-act emotional breakdown. I need details.”
I press my free hand to my forehead. “We’re trying to be professional.”
She bursts out laughing. “That bad, huh?”
“No, it’s…” I stop because, unfortunately, there are not enough words in the English language for what Ethan is like up close all the time. “It’s complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
I stare into my glass. “He’s… not what I thought.”
Luci props her chin in her hand. “Meaning?”
I exhale. “Meaning he’s not just hot and arrogant and annoyingly controlled. He’s good with Oliver. He notices everything. He trusts me in ways I don’t understand. And then sometimes he says something really direct, and I forget how to have a skeleton.”
Luci’s eyes go wide. “Oh, you’ve got it bad.”
I throw a pillow at her. She catches it with a cackle.
“I’m serious,” I say, laughing despite myself. “It’s not just that I want him, which is already inconvenient enough. It’s that when he’s just… there, at home, being all quietly competent and dry and unexpectedly kind, it’s worse.”
“Worse?”
“Yes. Because then he feels real.”
“That’s the dangerous part,” Luci says quietly.
“Exactly.”
I flop backward against the pillows. “And we made rules.”
“Oh, incredible. Nothing says doomed sexual tension like rules.”
“Thank you for your support.”
“You’re welcome.”
I laugh so hard my stomach hurts. Or maybe that’s the weird nausea thing again. I sit up too quickly, and the room sways for a brief, unpleasant second.
Luci catches it instantly. “Whoa. You okay?”
“Yeah.” I wave her off. “Just moved too fast.”
She narrows her eyes. “You’ve done that twice.”
“You're so annoying.”
“And yet correct.”
After a while, the weird floaty feeling passes again, leaving only the warm, loose exhaustion of too much week and not enough emotional stability.
By the time we finally give up and try to sleep, the city outside the window has gone dark and glittering, Chicago spread below us in light and steel and restless motion.
Luci curls up under the blanket beside me like we’re kids again for half a second before announcing that if I kick her, she will expose all my teenage crimes to Oliver in the morning.
“Sleep,” I mutter.
“Yes, mother.”
I smile into the dark.
Despite the dizziness, the nausea, the fact that my life currently feels like it was plotted by a woman with a wine problem and access to romance tropes, I’m happy tonight.
Really, stupidly happy.