Chapter Twenty
Did I mention that Jove is hot?
Elodie
“In five days?” Lyra asks. “You’re not pranking me, are you? You’ll really be here in five days?”
“Five days,” I affirm, grinning at my laptop where Lyra’s adorable face grins back. “We’re leaving early Saturday morning. I was hoping we could stay with you when we get there?”
“Of course!” she squeals. Her hands enter the screen and land on her smiling cheeks, squishing all the joy.
“This is the best news! And we just renovated Mars’ old room, so you’ll be the first ones to try out the guest room.
” She gasps. “Maybe one night we can set up a fort in the living room like when we were kids! Sleepover!”
Beside her, Jove’s—hot—shoulder shifts, then his—seriously, hot —face slides onto the screen. “No sleepovers,” he rumbles. “She’s sleeping with me.”
I fan myself, nodding. “Of course,” I agree. “With you, big guy. Where you can—”
“Okay!” Lyra yells, her face flaming as she pushes Jove back out of view. “No sleepover.” She coughs. “But we can still have so much fun! Are you and Roman going to be only one bed-ing this? Or should I make up the trundle?”
“ Roman can sleep on the floor,” I reply. “And Lyra is going to remember that Roman is not anyone to get excited about. He’s just…” I grunt. “A friend. I guess. A person I do not hate, at least.”
She nods, slowly. “Right, right, right, right, right. A person you do not hate. Who you’re having a weekend away with. And introducing him to your family. He’s just that , but definitely not someone you would only one bed with. What a silly cousin I am being.”
“I’m not introducing him to my family ,” I snort. “He’s already met Sol a bunch of times. They’re friends.”
“Well, you’re introducing him to me, your favorite cousin, which seems like kind of a big step.”
“You’re acting like I’m taking him to meet the parents.”
“I’m offended,” she gasps. “I’m way more important than your parents.”
Well, she’s got that right. Love my mom and dad, but they’re off doing their Midwestern empty nester thing, and when they weren’t empty nesters, we weren’t exactly close.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re good parents…
basically. They always remembered my birthday and they showed up to almost all of my recitals, but they were also people , you know?
They view the world through their own lenses, and they weren’t always the best about trying on someone else’s glasses, no matter how much I may have begged.
Unfortunately for me, their worldview, while well-intentioned, did not lend itself to knowing how to raise a girl like me.
My dad definitely didn’t know what to do with a wild, fearless little girl.
He worried about me constantly, but left my handling mostly up to Mom.
Mom being a person who felt little girls should be proper, polite, and—most importantly—quiet.
Yeah. Little girl Elodie did not jive with Mother Sage. Nor did teenage Elodie. And adult Elodie? Well, there’s a reason we live in different states. I love my parents, and they love me, but that love is best felt from a distance. A week or two at holidays is more than enough for us.
All of that to say, if I were to bring someone home to “meet the parents," it probably would be Lyra and Sol that I brought them to. Their opinions of my potential happily ever after mean a lot more to me than my parents by a long shot.
Still. Roman? He’s not that person. He’s just… He’s Roman.
“You’re the most important,” I tell Lyra. “Right next to Sol. And Ruby. And, you know, that rabbi I met at that furry convention that one time. He was really nice.”
Her eyes roll, but she laughs, and I laugh too.
“I miss you,” I say. “I’m so happy I’ll get to—”
I stop as the front door opens and Roman walks in. “Sweet!” he calls, eyes on his phone. “Did you see this email?”
I resist the urge to hang up my video call as Jove’s curious—and, still, hot —face squeezes in next to Lyra’s on the screen. If they’re going to meet him in five days anyway, there’s not much point in continuing my efforts to keep the cousin ribbing to a minimum.
“I’m right here,” I reply using my inside voice. “No need to yell.”
Roman looks up, lips downturned as he takes me in. How dare I be living in the living room, I guess.
My eyes narrow, daring him to say something stupid.
His eyes, in turn, zero in on my laptop and the two people urging me to turn my screen so that they can see him too.
“Is that your cousin?” Roman asks, dropping his cell into his pocket and approaching the couch.
“You were right. All those things you said.” He stops behind me, hands settling on my shoulders as he leans down to put his face in frame next to mine.
“She looks like you,” he whispers too low for the mic to pick up.
Then, to the screen he says, “Hello, I’m Roman. You must be Lyra and Jove.”
Lyra’s eyes dart back and forth between us, a giddy grin stretching her lips as Jove stares, blank, then hums a confirmation.
Roman smiles politely, and my shoulders ease. No need to be rigid, El. It’s just your family meeting your housemate, landlord, technical boss, and bestie’s brother. So chill, this scenario.
“I heard you slash people’s tires,” my housemate-landlord-technical-boss-bestie’s-brother says, and I freeze, head slowly turning in his direction so that I can kill him with freaking laser beams from my eyeballs. Has he lost his mind?
“Yep,” Jove replies, unoffended. “Lyra, too, sometimes. It’s fun on a date.”
My head whips around, laser beams forgotten, so that I can gape at my cousin. My adorable, sweet, wouldn’t help me egg my high school boyfriend’s house the summer he broke up with me cousin. “Lyra!”
“It was Ted,” she defends. “Ted’s way worse than any person you’ve ever asked me to help you exact revenge on.”
“And your mom,” Jove cuts in. “That one time.”
I gasp. Shot the heart. “You slashed Aunt Irene’s tires without me?
” I whine. “What is this? Hatred?” Aunt Irene sucks.
She deserves to have her tires slashed five thousand times for the way she treated Lyra growing up.
And I deserve to have a part in the slashing.
“I can’t believe you would exclude me this way,” I sniff. “Does my love mean nothing to you?”
“Have you been hanging out with Will?” Roman asks. “These dramatics scream Will.”
I shrug. “Who can say? The only thing I’m certain of is that my dear, dear cousin hates me.”
“Next time we happen across Mom’s car outside the grocery store, I’ll be sure to wait on you to get here to start slashing,” Lyra promises drily. “On account of how I do not hate you at all, even a little bit.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” I pout. “When I visit, I expect no less than three crimes to be committed together.”
“No crimes,” Roman says. “I’m not bailing you out of jail.”
One of Jove’s thick, dark brows rises, meeting the streak of white hair falling over his forehead. “No one’s going to jail,” he assures. “But if they did, I’d pay the bail.”
Roman’s lips press together as Jove’s twitch.
“Babe!” a man’s voice calls through my laptop, and Lyra and Jove look up, past their camera.
Lyra smiles at whoever is there, and Jove’s face softens to such a degree that I nearly swoon at the sheer level of hot it gives him.
Think firefighter with a kitten. That’s the level of oh-my-gosh-wow I have on my screen right now.
“She’s so lucky,” I whisper. “Wow.”
On screen, Jove waves to us, then disappears, and Lyra gives a quick goodbye. “I can’t wait to see you! Let us know when you’re heading out, okay?”
I assure her I will, then Roman and I both wave at her cute, smiling face as the call ends.
“They seem nice, if a little unhinged,” Roman says, squeezing my shoulders as he straightens to standing. “If you get arrested while we’re there, I’ll be putting cilantro in every meal for the next three months.”
My nose wrinkles. Ew. Soap.
“I’m not going to get arrested.” Getting arrested is for losers who get caught, and I’m no loser.
“Uh huh,” he says, unconvinced. His hands slide off my shoulders. “I’m going to make dinner. Check your email. Liam sent something about a private dress thing at his house.”
Oh. Yeah. That.
“Okay,” I answer. “Right after I let Sol know that we’ll be in town.”
Roman nods, runs a hand through my hair, then wanders to the kitchen, muttering to himself about our dinner. Steak and asparagus, it seems. Yummy.
Foregoing a video call because traitorous abandoners don’t deserve video calls, I pick up my phone.
Then, because hearing a traitorous abandoners’ voices makes me sad, I decide to text my brother the information about our trip.
And if it comes out sounding like something a robot spit out rather than a heartfelt heads up from his beloved little sister?
Well. Then that’s just how it comes out.
Heartfelt messages are reserved for people who would never drop me like a hot potato and then flee the scene.
Not that I’m upset or anything.
Sol texts me back with a thumbs up and a string of exclamation points followed by several firework emojis.
I do not respond. I also do not look too far into my feelings to figure out why I don’t respond. Those feelings can be dealt with later… or never. Whichever comes first.
“On to the wedding,” I murmur. Then dinner, housework, homework, a way-too-little amount of sleep, followed by a day full of online classes and more homework tomorrow. Easy peasy.
Opening my email, I add wedding dress shopping at Liam’s to my list. Then, I gather my laptop, set up my desk to be ready for me after we eat, and get on with my not at all exhausting plan.
Easy. Freaking. Peasy.