6. Noah/Macey
NOAH/MACEY
Noah
One of my favorite hobbies was one that my manager Ezra said he wouldn’t hesitate to fire me over if I ever shared publicly. That seemed over the top, considering it was building LEGOs, not murdering puppies.
Ezra thought I was starting to lose the “bad boy” image we worked hard to create and posting about LEGOs would shatter it completely. I told him it would add some layers to the image, but he threw an onion at the wall and said the vegetable needed to be more layered than me.
Another thing I hated about social media: once you showed a different side of yourself, people lost interest. Maybe bad boys weren’t supposed to like LEGOs, but I found it fun.
LEGOs sparked my passion for architecture when I was a kid.
Who would have thought a stocking stuffer would change my life?
Even now, I could easily spend nights building the newest set (and spending a portion of my paycheck on it—seriously, why were they so expensive?).
Besides, hot people built LEGOs.
I was working on the roof of a three-story LEGO building when someone pounded on my door. I abandoned the set on the carpet to answer.
Arms immediately surrounded my torso.
“Noah!” Daphne stuck to me like a sloth would a tree.
On instinct, my arms wrapped around her. Internally, my brain was still trying to compute what was happening. It was spring break. When I invited my sister to Chicago, like I did her freshman year, she had snickered and said, “I have friends, you know.”
Panicked, I double-checked there were no other twenty-year-olds waiting down the hall.
“What happened to New York?”
In lieu of an answer, Daphne tightened her arms around me. Okay. Okay. This was the hardest part of being a caretaker. What would Mom do?
She wouldn’t say anything. She’d just let Daphne get the feelings out. So that’s what I did. Just two siblings, hugging it out in the middle of the sixteenth floor.
There was a suitcase at Daphne’s feet. Suspicion stirred like a cat from a nap, but I swung open my apartment door and ushered her inside.
She paused in the entryway. “Your place is a mess.”
Mess was a strong word considering it could have been a lot worse, but her point stood.
There was an avalanche of clothes cascading from my overflowing laundry basket in the corner.
Dishes from last night needed to be washed.
Unfolded blankets and pillows covered the couch.
A stack of books on the coffee table sat entirely out of place.
“I would have cleaned if I were expecting company.”
“No, you wouldn’t have,” she said. “Not if it was me.”
I snorted as I started folding the blankets on the couch. She was right. “No, I wouldn’t have.”
I didn’t need to impress Daphne, and we’d lived together the majority of my life. She knew every habit of mine, good and bad, and she loved me anyways.
My little sister held a lot of those same habits.
From the little things, like our granola obsession, to the big things, like visiting our mother’s grave every December, we acted the same.
Funny, considering if someone were to stop us on the street, they probably wouldn’t have guessed we were siblings.
Daphne took after Mom. She had Mom’s curly dark brown hair and hazel eyes, along with a heart-shaped face and two dimples on both sides of her mouth. Her smile was wide, covering her face, and it appeared now when she sat next to me on the couch.
Meanwhile, I took after Dad’s appearance, though the only reason I knew that was because of old photos. There was a box of photos Mom kept hidden under the bed: from their wedding day, their honeymoon cruise, happy days outside in the park. I didn’t find them until after the funeral.
Six years ago, I had just finished my junior year of college at Cornell when Mom died in a car crash. With an absent, out-of-the-picture Dad since day one, that left Daphne and me on our own.
Technically, we had an aunt and uncle—my cousin Nathan’s parents—but he emancipated when he was seventeen. He said he already raised himself so may as well make it official. Considering I hardly talked to my aunt and uncle, I took Nathan’s side.
Cornell was dead to me once I moved back home to St. Louis.
I couldn’t go back to college and leave Daphne to a foster system.
She was fourteen, so she only needed a guardian for four years.
Even though I was twenty-one at the time, I became her guardian.
I wasn’t sure how good a job I did, but she graduated high school and got a scholarship to her local college.
So I could have been worse.
Although I once dreamed of returning to Cornell to finish my architecture degree, it never happened.
We lived off the money I made doing various part-time jobs, Daphne posting ridiculous photos online of me every day.
Soon the page took off, and so did influencer deals.
Why would I go back to college when there were two rents and tuition to pay?
Daphne insisted she’d take out loans, but I wouldn’t let her.
A part of me was disappointed I never finished what I started, but there were other priorities in place.
I probably would have stayed in St. Louis to make sure she was okay, but in her loving words, I needed to, “Move out and get a girlfriend or something, Noah, you’re pathetic.”
While I didn’t succeed in getting a girlfriend, I liked to think I wasn’t pathetic.
A pitiful state wasn’t the reason for my singleness so much as was my belief in the people-to-follower correlation.
People, like Instagram followers, will drop or dislike you for no reason.
I preferred to openly accept followers but keep the people behind the account far away.
Daphne was happy to be here now, I was sure. But something was wrong. I could tell by the way her body pulled taut like the strings on a violin.
I debated digging into the issue, asking again what happened to New York, but she didn’t look ready to discuss it. I’d give her some time to decompress, but then I needed answers.
So I said the three words everyone in the world wants to hear the most. “Pizza on me.”
She perked up. “Deep dish?”
“Obviously.”
We gathered our things in silence, Daphne pulling out a purse from the inside of her luggage. It was early for dinner, but the two of us could always eat. Always.
Daphne’s hand, clad with rings on each finger, held a spare LEGO that had been cast aside. “You’re such a nerd. How do all these girls on the Internet think you’re so cool? ”
I snatched it out of her hands and placed it back in the box. “Don’t make me order you anchovies.”
She gasped so dramatically her bun loosened, a few curls knocking against her face. “I thought you loved me.”
I wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “I mean, there are worse—” When I opened the door, I froze. “What the fuck?”
Macey Monroe stood on the other side.
Of my door.
To my apartment.
“Um…” Her hand, which had been floating in the air, close to a knock, faltered. “I was in the neighborhood?”
Chestnut eyes widened to the size of dinner plates.
“Again, what the fuck?” I repeated, aware that Daphne was giving me a weird look. “No. Better question, how the fuck?”
She mindlessly played with the button-up sweater she was wearing. “I don’t think how the fuck is a real question.”
“Macey.”
“I mean, how the fuck implies how did you do something or?—”
I let go of Daphne to pinch the bridge of my nose. “Let’s start with how you know where I live.”
Between my fingers, I saw Macey’s expression relax. “I asked your manager for your address. He responded in twenty-nine seconds.”
Fucking Ezra.
“Why are you talking to Ezra?”
“Oh.” She glanced at Daphne as if the presence of my sister would impact her answer. “Well, I really needed to talk to you about something, and you didn’t respond to my DM. I got a little impatient, so I thought I’d ask him for your address.”
Realization lit in Daphne’s eyes. “You’re the girl from the video.”
That stupid video. Days later, it was still haunting me. Ezra had made it his new hobby to screenshot and send me the growing number of views as well as his favorite comments. Which, of course, were all about how cool Macey was.
Macey smiled and held out a hand. “Regrettably. I’m Macey.”
“I’m Daphne. Noah’s sister.”
“I didn’t know you had a sister.” Macey glanced at me.
Daphne smirked, crossing her arms. “He doesn’t like to brag.”
Macey giggled. My eyes caught for a second on the swoop of her eyelashes. I pointedly looked away. Focus, Noah . “What are you doing here?”
She pressed her lips together, then rocked onto the tips of her toes like she was trying to shake off nerves. “I wanted to ask you if your offer for Aruba still stood.”
I blinked, my brain struggling to catch up. Of all the things I expected her to say, that wasn’t one of them. Daphne let out a low, suspicious hum, her gaze flickering between us.
“If so, I’d love to go with you,” said Macey, almost shyly.
My stomach twisted. Not unpleasantly, but almost with…nerves? That was unusual. I didn’t ever get nervous. I must have eaten something bad earlier.
This would be the longest stretch of time we’d ever spent together. What if we got into another argument, the kind that would make great TikTok fodder for some bystander recording on their phone? The last thing I needed was another viral clip of us bickering in public.
But we’d started to move past the bickering. We were professionals. We could handle being good-natured colleagues for the long weekend in Aruba.
I had a sneaking suspicion that any job—hell, even covering a paint-drying competition—would be more fun with Macey. Her presence crackled with the kind of energy that turned even the most routine moments into something worth remembering .
I cleared my throat, forcing myself to play it cool. “Of course. I’ll let them know. You can write a few articles, and I’ll come up with a few social campaigns.”