Page 32 of Love.V2
“Of course. I know it’s been hard. I can’t imagine losing the person you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with. But you didn’t give up. That’s beautiful.”
All grown up and giving me pep talks. I blinked hard. “That…” I coughed, my throat too tight. “Thank you, Grace. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
We paused in the rare moment of quiet affection. Too often, I was going one way, and the twins were going the other. Even in the last few years, when we’d lived in the same city, the times I’d seen them were few and far between.
I coughed again, spotting the sign for the restaurant where I was meeting Tess. “Okay, enough of that. What’s up?”
“Oh.” Grace grumbled. “Mom dropped her phone in a glacier.”
“I thought she was in South America.”
Gracie snorted. “She is, dummy. In the Patagonia Ice Fields. Doing oil painting or something to capture the ice before it melts.”
I pinched my brow. At least I’d gotten the country right. When she’d told me weeks ago she was going backpacking through South America with an artist’s collective, I assumed she meant something more like the rainforest.
“She’s backpacking through a glacier?” I should have asked more questions before I paid for her plane ticket.
“I think it’s more like a glamping situation? Like they stay in some campgrounds and then go out there during the day? When I talked to her last week, she was curling her hair, so it can’t be totally dystopian.”
“Okay, so she dropped her phone in a glacier.” I was starting to get the picture, and already making a mental checklist of thethings I’d have to ask my mother before I bankrolled another one of her artist retreats.
“I can’t get ahold of her now, and my sorority payment is overdue, so I can’t go to the formal next weekend, and I’m legitimately freaking out.” Gracie sucked in a breath. “And Grant has to pay the deposit on his summer mini-mester trip for the photography internship thing?”
My eyes squeezed shut. I could see where this was heading. “And Dad said no.” It wasn’t a guess so much as a fact.
“Technically, Dad said we were in school to learn, not to party. But, yeah, it was a no. And he was pretty brutal about it, too.”
Yeah, that sounded like our father. I loved my dad, but his worldview left little room for anything other than work and golf. My free-spirited, artistic siblings definitely didn’t check those boxes. Despite my attempts to shield them as much as possible, they still bore the brunt of his rigidity too often.
“Are you alright? Did he say anything out of line?”
“Just the normal stuff. You know, we need to apply ourselves to our studies, and we’re a waste of breath or whatever.”
“Grace.”
“I’m joking! He was just normal. It was fine. He even asked how my geology class was going.”
“Alright.” I nodded to myself, adding another mental to-do item to call my dad and get him off the twins’ backs. Juggling absentee parents and navigating college life was challenging enough for them, especially now that I wasn’t close by. They didn’t need the pressure he put on them to succeed. He could reroute that to me. “I’ll go into the sororityaccounts and put some in there. Tell Grant to text me how much he needs for his deposit.”
“You promise?” Gracie urged. “The formal isnext weekend, Dylan, and I’m going with Owen Marshall and if I have to tell him it’s canceled because I’m poor, I will literally die of shame.”
“First of all, yes, I promise it’ll be there later tonight. Second, who the hell is Owen Marshall?”
“Her boooyfrieeend!” Grant sang in the background in a high-pitched falsetto before he cut off with an “oof.”
“Gracie, don’t hit your brother,” I warned.
“It was just a throw pillow,Dad. Thank you for the money, weloveyoubye!”
She hung up, deftly avoiding any further questions about this Owen character. I’d have to press Grant for details later. Now that she was in college, I didn’t keep such a close eye on who she went out with, but if she was getting serious with some guy, I wanted to know about it.
Another item for the to-do list. But later, I told myself as I walked into the restaurant Tess had picked. It was cozy. Shining, warm wooden floors. Brass lamps and soft jazz playing low in the speakers. But none of that interested me.
The second I walked through the doors, all I saw was her.
She was sitting at the bar, her lavender hair twisted up into a curling bun, loose strands fluttering around her face and down her bare back. Her silky black shirt clung to all the right places on her body. My fingers tingled. I remembered that shirt, and my hands did, too.
