Page 86 of Unforgettable

“Sorry, Mandy. Won’t happen again,” CJ muttered apologetically and peered down at his watch. “I’ve got a few more stops to make before I’m done for the evening, so I’ll see you later.”

I gave him a polite wave, and as the door closed behind him, I crossed the room to lock it.

“I’m so tired of people walking into my apartment without announcing themselves,” I mumbled.

“What the hell did we just walk into?” Josh asked, plopping onto the couch and kicking his feet up on the coffee table I’d already cleaned.

I went back into the kitchen and surveyed the destruction of my Tupperware tower. “I’m not sure. Adam just walked in with guns blazin’, asking who the hell CJ was. Then they had a stare down that I thought would end in fists flying if y’all hadn’t walked in.”

“CJ would’ve laid Adam out.” Reed chuckled, taking a seat at one of the barstools and eyeing the chaos on the other side of the island.

“Yeah, I’ve got twenty on the big guy,” Josh murmured from the living room.

“I don’t disagree, but it was just weird. Adam’s a fuckhead on the best days, but he’s not usually downright rude to people he meets. I’ll… ask him about it later.”

The idea of asking him about it wasn’t at the top of my list. We hadn’t argued since he’d moved in, but the conversation I had in mind was bound to stir things up. His favorite comeback anytime I brought something up—no matter what it was—was to remind me that I was not his mother.

“Does CJ know Adam is your brother? Not your boyfriend that just moved in?” Josh asked, and my eyes went wide.

“Yes, of course. Why?”

“Seems like he was sizing up the competition, is all.”

“I agree. I still think he’s into you, Amanda. But does Adam know CJ then? Things were a little tense for two guys who have no history,” Reed asked, and my eyes met his when he stooped to assist me with the mess.

“Another question we’ll have to ask Tyler Durden in there.”

I heard Josh’s laugh before I saw him round the corner of the island. “Okay, I got that one.” And I could tell by his tone and cocky grin that he was proud of himself.

“Isn’t that the guy fromFight Club?” Reed asked innocently.

Josh and I both locked our glares on him as I reached out to smack his arm. “What is the first rule of Fight Club, Reed?”

His unamused stare bounced back and forth from me to Josh before he sighed and scooped up the remaining Tupperware in his arms. With no care, Reed unceremoniously dumped the several containers into my thankfully clean sink and turned back to me.

“Anyway, did you forget why we’re here?” he asked, and I stilled.

I opened and closed my mouth several times, like a fish out of water, and racked my brain for any idea before I resigned myself to the fact that I’d forgotten. I’d been so focused on cleaning and properly organizing that everything else had slipped my mind. Grading the previous weeks’ assignments was the only thing I remembered that had to be done before Monday. There was a stack of them a mile high, and I’d been up late finishing the final assignment.

The fancy private school I worked for didn’t care that it was the first week of spring semester and expected us to implement as rigorous a schedule as we always would.

“Sunday dinner,” Josh said, coming to my rescue, unlike Reed, who would have waited forever if it helped him make his point—I was forgetful sometimes.

“Oh shit,” I muttered, quickly throwing myself into action and hurrying toward my bedroom to get ready. Glancing at the clock over the stove, I saw we had roughly thirty minutes until we had to be at Hazel and Luke’s house.

Sunday night family dinner was a tradition we’d started in college. Every Sunday, we prioritized dinner with our group as a way to start the week on a high note surrounded by our friends. In college, it was usually pizza or tacos because we were all students and were often only scraping by.

Once we graduated, we’d mostly traded in the cheap, greasy food for potluck meals. But the idea was the same—spend time with each other, catch up on our busy lives, and start the week off right.

Sadly, in recent years, the tradition had fallen off. More often, one or more of us were busy with unshakable commitments, which meant our weekly tradition turned into a monthly one. And then monthly turned into every couple of months.

It had been nearly a year and a half—maybe longer—since our last formal Sunday night dinner. And if it wasn’t for Hazel, we may not have revived the tradition. When she caught wind of the previous gathering, she proceeded to scold us all for letting it die off and then led the charge in renewing it.

And I was the dumbass that forgot.

Scrambling to get dressed, I contemplated skipping a shower since I’d taken one the night before but realized I smelled like bleach and a variety of other cleaning supplies. I groaned, turned on the water, and proceeded to take the quickest shower of my life.

After throwing on some mascara and tossing my hair into a bun on top of my head, I stared at my newly clean closet for a few minutes before I settled on black jeans, black boots, and a maroon top that cinched in at the waist.

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