Page 180 of Puck Prince

Before I can decide if I should pick it up or not, my door opens. Summer walks in.

“Take this.” She hands me Nicky and walks down the hall. “I have to pee.”

“Hello to you, too,” I call out, juggling my nephew and a beer bottle at the same time.

“It’s terrible out there,” she says, the bathroom door obviously cracked while she pees.

Sisters are great.

“I had to duck between reporters just to get inside the building.” I hear her flush and wash her hands before she reappears in my kitchen. “I mean, look at me. Give me a canvas bag with a dollar sign printed on the side, and I look like a cartoon bank robber.”

She’s wearing a dark oversized hoodie and thick black shades.

Nicky giggles and squirms in my arms, smiling at her like he hasn’t seen her in days. She matches his energy and snatches him out of my arms. “Anyway, how are you doing, big brother?”

I haven’t told her much. Only that Callie and I are on the outs. Unlike everyone else who is practically peeling back the curtains of my private life to peek through the windows, she patiently waited for me to come to her.

Sisters can be great.

“Shitty.” I take a sip of my beer and watch as Nicky chews on her drawstrings. He’s getting chunky and drooling like a basset hound.

“Come on now. Use your big boy words. Uncle Owen has a potty mouth,” she says to Nicky in a baby voice.

“I want to be there for her.”

“So be there for her.”

“I’m also trying to put space between us.”

“I see where the issue is. Those two things contradict each other.” She rifles through one of my cabinets before pulling out several Tupperware containers and lids and carrying them into the living room. She drops them in front of Nicky like a treasure trove, and he lights up at his new “toys.”

I sit on the couch. “It’s complicated.”

“Is it, though?” She looks up at me. “Does she make you happy?”

“What?”

“It’s an easy question, Owen.” But she slows it down for me like I might be slow. “Does Callie make you happy?”

I have no idea where she is going with this, but I answer. “Yeah. I mean, she drives me fucking insane and always has. But when I’m with her, and we aren’t being chased by crazy people, yeah… I like the way I feel when I’m with her.”

“Do you think she feels the same?”

I think about it. The smiling. The flirting. The kissing. The… other stuff. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Do you love her?”

I almost choke on my next sip of beer. “Do I love her?What kind of question is?—”

“It’s an easy question. God, you men make this so much more work than it needs to be. If you like being with her, she makesyou happy, and you think she feels the same way, what’s left to figure out?” She shakes her head in disappointment as she pads into the kitchen for a beer. “Plus, she’s having your baby. It’s simple.”

“Except that it’s not! She’s not even really my girlfriend.”

“What do you mean she’s not your girlfriend?” Summer’s voice is muffled as she digs through my fridge before reappearing with a bottle. “Did you break up?”

“Yes and no.”

“Explain theyes.”

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