Page 36 of #Starstruck

“Not paying bills,” I immediately responded, which got the laugh I’d been looking for. “What about you?”

“I always paid the bills. Even when I was a kid. Sometimes I wish I’d had more of a childhood.”

There was something so inherently sad about his statement that it made my heart ache. And I could relate. “I know it’s not the same, but I didn’t have much of a childhood, either. I was expected to work hard all the time.”

Zander had already finished his ice cream and let out a loud sigh of boredom as he leaned his head back.

“He seems a little lost without his tablet,” Chase said softly to me.

“Right? Like someday I expect to wake up and find that it’s become permanently attached to his hand. I try to get him to go out and do real-life stuff like this. It tends to backfire. Like one night I was feeling inspired, so I told them no devices, no TV. That we were going to play board games.”

“How did that go?”

“Let me put it this way—now I understand why all those parents in the 1960s were alcoholics.”

“Hey!” Zane poked Chase in the side. “What kind of shorts do clouds wear?”

Chase pondered the question seriously. “I don’t know. What kind of shorts do clouds wear?”

“Thunderwear!” Zane cracked himself up.

“I think Thor wears that, too,” Chase added, making Zane laugh harder.

“Hey, do you guys want to play in the sand while we wait for the girls?” Before I had finished my sentence, my brothers fled the table.

Zelda had stopped eating her Neapolitan ice cream a while ago, and now it was running in pink, brown, and white rivers down her hand.

“Why aren’t you eating your ice cream?” Chase asked as he reached for more napkins before everything dripped on her leg. “Did you lose your sweet tooth?”

“My sweet tooth?” Zelda asked in alarm. “Which tooth is that? Did the Tooth Fairy take it? I want it back!”

I tried to explain idioms as she grew increasingly frantic, so I settled for reminding her that she hadn’t lost any teeth yet. I got her cleaned up and sent her off to play with the boys.

As we watched them play, some joggers ran past us on the boardwalk. “I used to love running on the beach. I miss it.”

Again, I felt a pang of sadness for him that so many things in his life were abnormal.

“What about you? Do you ever come down here and run?”

I tried not to laugh. “Not unless I have to chase somebody down.”

“You don’t like running?”

“My stepdad used to say running was for criminals and masochists. Lexi used to be really into it, but it was never my thing.”

He leaned back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head. It made his shirt lift up slightly, and I forced myself to look at his face. “So basically, if you ever have to run for your life, things aren’t going to end well for you.”

“Basically.”

“What kind of exercise do you like?”

How did you tell somebody whose life revolved around being in the best shape possible that your exercise routine consisted of tossing and turning at night? “Climbing?” I was talking about the three flights of stairs at my apartment but left that part off.

“What gym do you go to?”

“I think about going to the gym, but the guy who works the counter at Wendy’s is named Jim, so I figure that’s close enough.”

It felt like he was looking at me, but I couldn’t tell with the sunglasses. “You’re lucky you have such a fantastic metabolism.”

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