Page 28 of Falling into Place
Brooks cocked an eyebrow, holding the door open as Sasha entered his house like a woman on a mission. His other brow joined the first when Macy appeared in the doorway.
“What are you doing here?”
“You think I was gonna miss this?” she asked as she passed.
Brooks sighed and moved to close the door, but a hand shot out.
“Whoa.” Macy’s husband, Mark, had nearly been hit in the face. “Easy, bud.”
Brooks allowed Mark entrance (and gave him a pass for thebud) but extended his other arm. “What the hell?”
“Come on,” Mark said with a laugh. “Macy said if my parents agreed to take the kids I could come watch.”
After he closed the door, Brooks leaned the back of his head against it. “I thought this part was supposed to be about me. Does this require an audience?”
Sasha spoke from where she knelt on the floor, messing with the laptop she’d opened on his coffee table. “We’re all engaged in the process.”
Macy sat on the couch. “What she means is we don’t think you’ll do it right.”
“How could I mess up my own dating profile?”
Sasha and Macy laughed simultaneously for far too long, and Mark just looked at him with something like pity.
“I hate you all.” He pushed off the door and headed for the kitchen. This was going to be a long night, and he’d need a beer or three to get through it.
“I’m here in solidarity against the Martin women,” Mark whispered as Brooks brushed past him. “Give me a signal, like a wink or head scratch, and I’ll fake a migraine so they have to take me home.”
Brooks bumped his fist. That was more like it. “I’ll get you a beer.”
When he returned, his sisters were huddled together on the couch, Sasha furiously typing as if she had a term paper due in the morning. But he’d never actually seen her work this hard for anything school related.
He sat in the armchair and waited for a few seconds, expecting them to pause and ask for input.
“What are you doing?” he asked when they didn’t.
“Filling out the ‘About Me’ section. It’s free text,” Macy said without looking up. Sasha didn’t seem to have heard him.
“Need anything from me?” he deadpanned.
“Nope.” Apparently Sashahadheard him.
Mark just shook his head and took a pull from his beer.
Not that Brooks was surprised—this was about how it had gone with the write-up for the debut article, which would go live on the website first, followed by the print issue. Sasha wrote the whole thing, which he only let slide because it was mostly describing how the entire endeavor would go down.
He’d put up a dating profile.
Go on real dates (no setups like onThe Bachelor).
Report back about the venues and, if he wanted to, how the dates went (good or bad). Sasha promised readers they’d be along for the ride if he met someone special, despite his skepticism it would happen.
The one thing he’d been allowed to choose was the photo in the spread, and only because he’d put his foot down. Sasha had wanted one of the more brooding images, but he fought for the one where he was smiling, remembering it was Carly’s snarky comment that had lightened his mood that day.
The incessant tap of Sasha’s fingers against the keyboard did the exact opposite, grating on his nerves more with each second that passed.
“That’s perfect,” Macy murmured. “Oh, wait.” She grabbed the laptop and typed something of her own, then handed it back to Sasha, who read the addition and smiled.
“Nice,” she said appreciatively.
