Page 31 of It's Complicated

“Not tonight.”

She shot me another scrutinizing look but let go of my arm.

I should have known Emma would clock me the second I walked through the door. At least she accepted my answers, even if she didn’t believe them.

Not any clearer on anything than I had been when I’d left the apartment that morning, I went into the kitchen to fix the kids a snack.

I’d head home in a bit. Right now I wanted to watch my niblings destroy the fort that had taken me almost forty-five minutes to put up. They were hellions when they wanted to be, and I appreciated their chaos way more than my sister did.

“Cody, put your underwear back on your butt. Undies don’t go on your head,” Emma’s exasperated voice filtered into the kitchen.

“But I’m helmet head,” Cody protested. “I need a helmet.”

“You can get one of the helmets out of the toy bin.” Emma tried to reason with him.

“No thanks,” Cody said brightly.

Cody hated wearing clothes, and Emma had been fighting with him about his random bouts of nudity since he was a toddler and learned to undress himself.

Chuckling, I got the milk out of the fridge. Apparently I’d been the same as a kid, and Emma and our older sister Laura loved to tell me about the times I’d come tearing into the living room when they were hanging out with their friends wearing only underwear and a pillowcase tied around my neck like a cape. Apparently their friends thought I was adorable. My sisters had been less than impressed with my antics.

Life had been a lot simpler when all I had to think about was what I wanted for a snack or if I should take my clothes off just for the hell of it.

Being an adult sucked donkey balls.

7

ISAAC

“Another?”Zander held up the pitcher he’d just poured a drink from.

I nodded. “Thanks.”

“Where’s your other half?” Jesse asked, looking around the bar. “I swear you need to put an AirTag on him or something.”

“Or one of those ‘If lost, return to’ stickers,” Luka added.

I smiled and picked up the beer Zander poured me. “That’s not a bad idea, actually. The AirTags. The sticker is just asking for me to put something ridiculous on it like ‘If found, please return to god,’ and then I’d have to walk around with a god nametag.”

Asa toyed with the chain necklace he wore when he wasn’t working. “Didn’t you guys do that at that church open house you went to a few months ago? You put ‘God’ on your nametag and Jamie put ‘Jesus’ on his?”

“Maybe.”

“I forgot about that,” Jesse said with a laugh. “How’d that work out for you?”

“Amazing.” I shot him a grin.

“You’re such a shit-disturber. I love it.” Asa held up his glass for me to clink.

“If you’re going to knock on my door at seven a.m. on a Saturday and keep knocking until I drag my ass outta bed so you can give me a pamphlet advertising your church’s open house, you’re gonna get some retribution.” I shrugged. “They fucked around and found out.”

“Seven a.m.?” Luka grimaced. “Who canvasses for anything that early?”

“People with no boundaries. It wasn’t the first time they bugged us at some ungodly hour to push their church on us. They used to shove a picture of Jesus with their church service times on the back under our door every morning after we had people over. Didn’t matter if it was a party or just a few of us chilling quietly. Apparently we weren’t the only ones. They finally stopped when the building manager stepped in.”

Zander ran his finger over the rim of his glass. “Sounds like the church I grew up in.”

We all swung our gazes to him.

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