Page 66 of Dearly Unbeloved
“It does,” Jazz agrees. She squints at Xan. “You know,sometimes, I think if Liam had met you before me, he could’ve fallen in love with either one of us.”
“Um, thank you. I think?” He looks at me, bewildered. Understandably. You never know what’s going to come out of Jazz’s mouth, but it’s always an experience.
“You’re not Sierra’s type,” I tell him with a shrug, and he laughs.
“Can’t have them all.”
We spend twenty minutes perusing the sets available to build. There are so many. Jazz picks first—a mini typewriter for the nursery Maggie is putting together.
I hover by a bunny holding a carrot, but my eyes keep flicking toward the set that caught my eye when I first walked in.
“We won’t judge you for picking them. You know if they had jasmines, Jazz would do the same,” Xan says, grabbing the rose bouquet and pressing it into my hands.
I clutch the box against my chest. “They’re Sierra’s favorite flowers.”
“I guess you two were meant to be, huh?” he replies, and I chuckle alongside him, ignoring the way his words hurt a little.
“For Kami?” I ask, nodding to the Polaroid camera set he picks up.
His cheeks flush pink. “Yeah. She and Evan are going through a rough patch right now, and I thought?—”
“How rough?” Jazz interrupts, wiggling her eyebrows. “Like breaking up level rough?”
“Jazz! Sound a little less excited about it.”
“What? Evan is fucking awful, and Kami deserves better,” Jazz says with an unapologetic shrug.
“You’re not wrong,” I say as we pay for our sets, order coffee, and settle at one of the big tables.
“I don’t think they’re there, but it’s not going well,” Xan confirms, as he carefully opens his box and tips the bags out. “Evan hasn’t been around much lately.”
“Has he ever been around much?” Jazz quips back.
I open my LEGO set and start sorting the bricks by color and size as I watch them volley back and forth. I don’t have much to contribute, since I don’t know Kami’s husband all that well, but I’m just happy to be here. There’s no awkwardness between the three of us, and it doesn’t feel as unnatural as I thought it might to spend time together like this. It just feels easy.
Doing this together feels like something we might have done as kids, if our parents weren’t who they are. Maybe on a rainy Marysville day when we couldn’t play outside. I can almost picture it perfectly: the three of us sitting on the floor in the living room, Jazz stealing the TV remote and turning off Xan’s playlist in favor of her own.
“I can’t believe we never did anything like this when we were kids,” I say, clicking the bricks together.
Xan laughs. “I can. Mom and Dad would never have let us hang out like this.”
I look up, frowning. “What do you mean?”
“Anytime we started hanging out or getting closer, they always found a way to play us against each other.”
I’ve never noticed it before, but now that Jazz mentions it… “They started making us go around the table to one-up each other with our accomplishments after that summer we went to the music festival together,” I say, grateful that Jazz put her foot down on doing that after she and Liam got together.
“Exactly. And when we were kids, and we were all desperate to go see that new Disney movie together, Dad took me and Jazz and told us you didn’t want to go anymore, Rose. Then he told you it was my idea to go without you. You didn’t talk to me for weeks,” Xan adds, sounding more bitter than I think I’ve ever heard him.
There are countless examples when I think back. For years, I convinced myself that Xan found me annoying and Jazz just didn’t care, but how much of that was actually true? I’d be willing to bet that Jazz and Xan both thought similar things about me growing up, all of it carefully crafted by our parents.
“They probably think we’re easier to control if we’re not talking about shit like this,” I say, shaking my head. “And I guess they were right, because it worked. For years, it worked, and we just didn’t notice.”
“We got there eventually. And this is pretty fun. Good choice, Xan,” Jazz says.
I voice my agreement. It’s nice to just be around them. They’re the only people in the world who know what it was like to grow up with our parents. And the LEGO is fun, too.
I bet Sierra would love this. Maybe I’ll need to grab a couple of sets and take them home…
