Page 8 of Perfect on Paper

She caught my eye and grinned. “Hey, you. I brought gifts.”

Somehow—thankfully—I managed to stop myself from making a cringey one-liner about how her presence in my house was the real gift. Instead, I made just the right amount of eye contact—which she unfortunately broke before we could have any kind of moment—and kept my tone carefully casual, but not so casual I sounded disinterested. “How’s the essay?”

Brooke wrinkled her nose. “I got the outline done. I was waiting on your notes.”

“You’ve still got until next week. That’s plenty of time.”

“Iknow,I know, but it takes meforeverto do them. I’m not a fast typer like you.”

“Why are you here, then?” I asked her teasingly.

“Because you’re so much more fun than working on my essay.”

I shook my head at her, in a pretense of disappointment, but the look of elation on my face probably gave me away. For a second there, she’d given me what seemed like a meaningful look. Sure, it might have been platonic affection, but italsomight have been a hint. An opening.I would rather be aroundyou. I have fun with you. I’d sacrifice a good grade so I could snatch an extra hour with you.

Or, maybe I was reading into it and hearing what I wanted to hear. Why was it so much harder to answer my own relationship questions than everyone else’s?

While Brooke and Ainsley gushed over the productAinsley had swooped in on—a chemical exfoliant, from what I could gather—I crawled over to the haul and found a mini liquid lipstick in the most perfect peachy-pink shade I’d ever seen. “Oh, Darc, that’d look beautiful on you,” Brooke said, and that was it, I needed this more than I’d ever needed anything in my life.

But as I was swatching it on my wrist, I noticed Ainsley giving me puppy-dog eyes in my peripheral. I glanced up. “What?”

“That’s the lipstick I was gonna buy this weekend.”

I pulled it into my chest protectively. “You got the exfoliator!”

“There’s like a hundred things here, I’m allowed more thanone thing.”

“You’re not even blond! You can’t pull off peach!”

Ainsley looked affronted. “Um, excuse you, I’ll have you know Irockpeach. And your lips are perfect bare. Mine need all the help they can get.”

“You can borrow it whenever you want.”

“No,you get cold sores. If I hold onto it, you can borrow it if you use an applicator, how about that?”

“Or I could use an applicator all the time, andyoucan borrow it.”

“I don’t trust you. You’d get lazy and rub your herpes all over it to claim it.”

I threw my hands up and looked at Brooke for support. “Wow.Wow.Are you hearing this slander?”

Brooke shared an amused look with me, and all the fierceness flooded out of me. She sat up straighter and laid her palms out. “Okay, chill, this doesn’t need to end in blood. How about rock paper scissors?”

Ainsley looked at me.

I looked at her.

She shrugged.

Damn it, she knew I was going to crack. Sheknewit, and hadzeroshame in taking advantage of that fact, and only for her,only for her.Winning, knowing Ainsley wanted it so badly, would feel sour now. “Joint custody?” I offered. Good-bye, beautiful lipstick.

“Oh,Darc,” Brooke protested. She knew as well as I did if it disappeared into Ainsley’s room I’d probably never see it again. But I had to set terms regardless, otherwise I looked like I was easy to walk all over. Which I was, when it came to Ainsley, but that wasn’t the point.

Ainsley held up a hand to shush her. “I have full custody. You get unlimited visitation rights.”

“And if you go away for the weekend? Or if I need it on a Dad weekend?” While Ainsley did sometimes join me in visiting Dad every other weekend, I was the only one of us bound by the family court to see him so regularly. Once Ainsley turned eighteen, it became totally her call when to go to Dad’s, and as a college student, packing up a suitcase and traipsing across town twice a month was usually too much of a hassle for Ains.

She hesitated. “Case-by-case basis. If one of us has a special event that weekend, it goes to that sister.”

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