Page 58 of Once Smitten, Twice Shy

“Darn.” I scoop it up from the box. “Guess I’ll have to eat that one, too.”

“More pumpkin for me!” Kate takes the remaining half of my pumpkin cupcake from my other hand and pops it in her mouth. Her eyes slip shut as she groans, then says around her mouthful, “Holy shit, that’s good.”

Bea snorts. “Keep your orgasm sounds to yourself, please.”

Kate’s still chewing as she peels off the next pumpkin cupcake’spaper. “I hate everything right now except heating pads and refined sugar. Let me have my joy.” She bites into the new cupcake, then explains, “Just got my period.”

“Ugh, me too,” says Bea.

“I just finished mine last week,” I say miserably, before biting my cupcake, right into a mound of frosting. “So now I’m ovulating and horny as hell.”

Kate pats my back in sympathy. Bea clasps my hand and squeezes.

They both know I’ve been abstinent since my breakup, that I’ve needed to be. And they both know I’m a cranky hornball for the second week of my cycle.

A little wave of relief crests through me as I put it together. Maybethat’swhy I’m so hung up on Will, at least in the physical sense. Maybe this will get better soon, and every time I see or think about him won’t be lusty torture.

I drop onto the middle seat and Bea wraps an arm around me. “I know it’s not a cure-all,” she says, “but at least there are sweaty soon-to-be-shirtless men and cupcakes. Even if they are gluten-free.”

—

When the guys start peeling off their shirts (understandable; it’s hot as hell outside), I make a beeline for the bathroom under the pretense of “really needing to pee.”

I can only hide for so long, though, so eventually I make myself head back toward the studio. At the sight of my sisters in their lawn chairs on the balcony, I stop on the threshold and smile to myself. It’s a bittersweet image.

When she lived here, this room was Bea’s studio, where she painted. The small back room is barer now, and you can actually walk through it—no rolls of canvas littering the ground, or tables of paints, or long, thin strips of wood waiting to be assembled into frames. There are still the bookshelves, filled with my romancenovels, but now Kate’s backup cameras and equipment, which she stored here when she always worked abroad, Bea’s thick books about famous artists, are gone. It’s just a room of half-empty shelves, a gold armchair, and an old floor lamp Mom and Dad gave us with a Tiffany-style glass lampshade.

I hardly come in here anymore. I just feel lonely when I do.

But it’s moments like these, when my sisters camp out on the balcony, when they’re here and happy in this apartment that at one point or another has been a haven for all of us, that I don’t feel sad about what’s not anymore. I feel grateful for what is.

“You okay?” Kate glances over her shoulder. “Get the runs or something?”

Bea whacks her shoulder. “You know she’s self-conscious about when she has tummy troubles.”

I used to be, when out of nowhere, eating a food I’d had no issue with before had me sprinting to the bathroom. Now that I eat gluten-free, that’s mercifully not a problem anymore.

“I’m good,” I tell them, squeezing back into my chair.

Bea offers me our shared mimosa in its thermos champagne glass. I take a swig and let out a satisfiedahhh. “What’d I miss?”

I tug down my sunglasses from my hair and keep my gaze lifted, hopefully passing myself off as being interested in the pigeons hopping along the balcony a floor up. I’m not ready to risk a glance at the court yet.

“Everyone’s half-naked,” Kate says delightedly. “Except Will.”

My head snaps down. I peer out at the court, where the game is in full swing. I’m not as relieved as I’d hoped to be.

He’s got his shirt on, all right, but he’s still a sweaty, sexy sight to behold. His gray T-shirt is soaked, plastered to his body, as he dribbles toward the net and throws his shoulder into Christopher, who’s defending him. Will spins, then sends the ball up through the air, just over the net. Jamie catches it and dunks it.

“Alley-oop!” Bea crows.

“No need to gloat,” Kate says grumpily.

Christopher’s got the ball now, dribbling down toward the other end of the court. One of the regular guys I don’t know is defending him well, but Christopher still manages to dribble in, pull up, and sink a jump shot that hits the hoop on a cheerydingbefore it rattles in.

“Woo!” Kate screams.

Bea lowers her sunglasses and says, “No need to gloat, huh?”

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