Page 97 of The Fix-Up

He must have felt my eyes on him because one of his cracked open. “You okay?”

No, I was not okay. I was having a freakout of the epic variety. But I smiled and pretended otherwise. “Just tired.”

“It’s late. You should try to sleep a little.”

“Yeah,” I said, weakly. “I’ll try.”

Two hours later, we met my niece, Louisa Madeline Sterns. And yes, Mae made it through just fine. Chris did have a black eye, but no one was talking about how that happened.

THIRTY-NINE

What love is depends on the scenario. Is it chocolate cake or a person?

Love is when you really like something.

—CAERA, AGE 16

“Thanks for letting me stay here tonight,” Aggie said as she pulled her hair up into a messy bun. “I know you like your privacy.”

“Oh, right. And that stopped you when you were younger?” I gave her a pointed look as I climbed into bed next to her. “You were so careful not to invade my privacy. Unless it was to borrow my clothes, get into my makeup, and read my diary.”

“You were so bad at hiding things,” she said primly. “It was just my way of teaching you a lesson.”

I hit her with a pillow. “Such a humanitarian.”

She grinned and flipped on her side to face me. It was fun to share a bed with her and bicker and argue and gossip. Since there were seven years between us, we hadn’t had much of that growing up.

Aggie had an early morning flight back to Oklahoma City for work. At the auction house she worked at, they were preparing for one of their biggest events of the year. Besides, Aggie was never good at staying still for too long and that’s what would happen over the next few days. A whole lot of, “let me sit quietly and hold the baby,” or “let me stand here and stare at the baby.”

“I like Gil,” she said. “He’s cute in a…well, a…”

“Accountant slash principal slash knows how to knock down a wall kind of way?”

She laughed. “Yes, actually. Exactly that. You would make cute babies.”

I sighed. “We aren’t going to have cute babies. It isn’t like that.”

“Okay, if you say so.”

“It’s true.”

“El, I watched him all dinner. He does that thing where he leans close to you even when you’re not talking. And he kept glancing at you like he wanted to make sure you were real. It’s adorable.”

“He did not,” I said. Had he? A flutter of excitement twisted in my stomach.

“Yes, he did,” she said in the sing-song voice that only little sisters use to irritate their older sisters. “He likes you.”

“Even if he did, it’s…complicated. You know how Ollie left half of everything to me and the other half to Gil?” I couldn’t believe I was about to tell her this; even my parents didn’t know. “The other part of that is that we have to live on the property for six months for our claim to be valid. That’s why he moved in. At the end of the six months, he’s determined to sell everything and leave.”

“And you don’t want to?”

“Of course not. I love it here.”

Aggie propped her head up on her hand. “You’re happy here. It suits you.”

“That was nice of you to say.” Aggie was not known for her sentimentality. I put a hand on her forehead. “No fever. Are you dying?”

With a laugh, she flopped over on her side facing away from me. “Excuse me. I’ll never say anything nice about you again.”

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