Page 76 of Double Apex

“If we had any, I’d be all over it,” she says with a wry look. “But you know Mama won’t buy store-bought.”

She rises onto her knees to stretch for a tissue box on the bedside table, and I glance at her impeccable yoga butt, encased in baby blue leggings I’d never be brave enough to wear.

“I’m shocked you’d consider eating cookie dough,” I mutter, “and risk that perfect little size-two peach you’re sporting.”

“Yeah, well.” She gives an unladylike honk into the tissue. “This perfect size-two peach didn’t keep Remington from going back to his ex-wife.”

“Please tell me you weren’t actually fucking a guy whose parents named him after a gun.” Of course I focus on the exactly wrong thing, because I am a garbage sister.

“Shut up.” She smiles around the tissue, so maybe it wasn’t the wrong thing to say.

I take the ball and run with it.

“It’s not a name you could cry out in the heat of passion with a straight face.” I flop my hand against my forehead like a swooning maiden and collapse back on the bed. “Oh, Remington! Do me like a big funky sex machine!”

She leans in to deliver a smack to my thigh, and I yelp. She shushes me, laughing, and to my surprise we’re both cracking up now. I grab for her face the way I did when she was little, and finally she submits to my squeezing her cheeks into fish lips.

“Say it or I’ll sit on you,” I demand. “You know the drill.”

Her eyes check mine for level of seriousness, and apparently she decides not to chance it. A sigh whistles from her protruding lips. “Teapot,” she mumbles. “Teddy bear. Butter pecan.”

I release her, and she massages her cheeks with a grumpy glare.

“We did have fun sometimes,” I say, more to myself than to her.

Aislinn snorts. “No, you just found it entertaining to torture me.”

Well, shit.She’s not entirely wrong. Looking at her now, I remember the gangly, fuzzy-haired pest she was—back when I called her a “stinky little spider monkey”—and I feel bad.

“Sorry about that.” I grab a pillow to put in my lap, and the way she flinches as if expecting me to pummel her makes the guilt even worse. “I wasn’t around other kids. Spending all day every day with guys didn’t train me well for, uh…” I clear my throat. “Ladyhood.”

She eyes me. “At least you probably understand men better than I do.”

“Psh!I wish.”

She twists one of her pearl stud earrings. “Guess we’re both getting our hearts broken.”

“How do you know about that?” A wave of paranoia goes through me. “Did you see something online? Gossip or whatever?”

She scoffs. “You’re not exactly a Kardashian, Phae. The world doesn’t give a rat’s hiney about your love life.”

I can tell she’s getting a certain satisfaction out of taking me down a peg, so I let her have it as payback for the face squishing.

“I overheard some stuff the day before you got here,” she goes on. “A video call with the, uh, who’s that handsome older guy? The one who sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger—”

“Klaus.”

“And the short-haired British lady.”

“Reece. Gotcha.” I twist the corner of the pillow. “What’d they say?”

“I just heard the tail end, before they noticed I was around the corner. Daddy sounded tired when he hung up the call, and he said—” She pauses and shoots a look at me. “He said, ‘I am real disappointed.’”

“Fuck.” My stomach flops.

No wonder he hasn’t said a word. I’m sure the last thing he wants to do with this pre-death family reunion is scold meabout the Cosmin debacle. I’ve clearly shut it down, so there’s nothing more to say.

“What else did you hear before they clammed up?”

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