“She’s very persuasive!”
“You never letmebraid your hair.”
“You neveroffered!”
Rashida raised a hand. “And there it is again… two grown men throwing emotional darts because neither of them knows how to say, ‘I miss you.’”
Angus crossed his arms. “He ignored me for a week.”
Mr. Banks blinked. “He ran off with a shirtless Hawaiian oracle with abs.”
“He was busy getting his hair braided by a royal temptress with hips like a lullaby.”
“I was rediscovering my past!”
“You were ignoring yourpresent!” Angus shouted. “Me!”
There was a long pause.
Rashida held her wine like a judge with no time for appeals.
Cal stirred melting butter in a pot in total silence.
I kept chopping like the fate of the evening depended on it.
Mr. Banks took a long, deep breath. “I didn’t know what I did mattered that much to you. Nothing I’ve ever done has meant much to anyone.”
“Everything you do matters to me,” Angus muttered. “I’ve been your best friend since the minute we met, and then suddenly—boom—Princess Makani floats in on a breeze and everything changes.”
“It didn’t change,” Mr. Banks said quietly. “The world has just… shifted. Ever so slightly. It always does. It always will.” He paused, then added, “I’ve missed you, Angus.”
Angus sniffed. “I missed you too.”
Suddenly he leapt up from the couch and threw his arms around Mr. Banks.
It wasn’t graceful.
It wasn’t cinematic.
But it was real.
They hugged hard and for slightly too long.
“I was worried I’d lost you,” Angus mumbled.
“You couldn’t lose me if you tried, my dear friend,” Mr. Banks replied. “Unlike my passport in Marrakesh. One minute I was buying figs, the next I was impersonating a Bulgarian folk dancer named Yuri just to get through customs.”
And just like that, things were whole again.
We sat down to dinner… not perfect—we would never be perfect—but intact. Like people who’d gotten something off their chests and were better for it.
And as the smell of pasta and the sound of laughter filled the room, I caught myself smiling. This was ours.
And that made it enough.
Even if the slipper in the microwave would remain a mystery forever.
CHAPTER 26
