But it didn’t.
I walked into the living room, where the dusty smell was a contrast to the bright, beachy stock artwork mounted on the off-white walls. There was a big couch pushed against the wall with a white wooden coffee table in front of it and an armchair beside it. A flatscreen was nestled into a matching white wooden entertainment center.
Combing my fingers through the loose hair that’d escaped my messy ponytail, I remembered I hadn’t so much as washed my face after sweating through my leotard in the studio.
I probably looked awful.
I dropped my hand, giving up. It didn’t matter if my outsides matched my insides right now.
“Are you—” Adair started, but then wheels on tile sounded, and Adeline was there, dragging two suitcases behind her.
“Have we claimed rooms yet?” She came to a stop beside us and glanced around with a critical eye. “Maybe we should rotate every couple weeks so it’s fair.”
Adair and I stared at her, my internal horror reflected on his face.
“Delly, that’s…”
“A joke,” she finished for him, with a sly quirk of her lips. “I’m not evil.”
“Disagree,” Adair muttered, then turned with the help of his crutch and headed back toward the front door.
“Could you do me a favor?” Adeline whispered, now close enough to me that I smelled the unmistakable scent of coconut-banana sunscreen on her skin.
“Yes?” I whispered back.
Her gaze flicked to the path her brother was taking. “Could you teach me to ride a skateboard?”
I let out a surprised huff. “Sure. But it’s a longboard.”
She abandoned her bags so she could walk over to my board and check it out. “Are they expensive?”
I trailed after her and propped my shoulder against the doorway between the living room and kitchen-slash-dining room. “They can be.”
Her shoulders drooped, and my stomach sank. Her disappointment didn’t sit right. “You can find some pretty basic ones for cheap,” I said. “I can send you some links.”
She whirled and offered me her phone so fast that I actually jumped.
Jesus, my nerves were shot.
Taking it, I frowned at the unexpected bumpy texture that scraped my fingertips and turned it over.
“Is this… bedazzled?”
“Expertly,” Adeline said. “My Grams got me a Bedazzler for Christmas one year. She loved crafting and thought it would help me with, um… stuff. But anyway—” She waved her hand toward her phone. “That phase didn’t last too long, but I bedazzle all my phone cases in her memory now. Just a little bit of happiness.” She shrugged as if she didn’t just share something intimate and personal with me.
“Well,” I said lamely. “That’s really nice.”
Adeline smiled as if I’d said something much better and held out her hand.
“Give me your phone and we can put each other’s numbers in.”
A minute later, we had each other’s contact information, and just then Adair reappeared, carrying way too many bags, considering his condition.
“Addy,” Adeline chastised as she hurried over to herbrother. “Give me those. I swear you want to wreck your other ankle too. I didn’t realize you needed extra attention that badly. I guess that’s why you’ve been refusing to cut your hair. If you keep it up, you’re gonna look like Cole.” She visibly shuddered. “No one needs that.”
I tried to ease past the bickering siblings so I could head back to the Locc for my duffle bag—I’d left it in a corner of the locker room, not wanting to be too presumptuous by bringing it—but Adair zeroed in on me.
“Need help?”
