“Your business is important.” She jabs a finger at my chest. “You always do this, Zach.”
“Do what? Help people? That’s not a bad thing, Hope.”
The words come out sharper than I meant them to. Hope raises her eyebrows.
I blow out a breath. “I’m sorry. You’re here to visit, not fight. I’ve just...I’ve had a lot going on lately, and I already feel bad about not working on the business. Can we talk about something else?”
“Of course.” Her face softens. “How about you tell me more about your friends? You mentioned Dylan came to visit. How was that?”
“It was great. We didn’t get much time together since it was a quick trip and he was mostly here to see Renee, but we grabbed lunch. We actually almost got kicked out of the diner. We were sitting next to this family, and Dylan asked, like, really loud if I’d had sex with DeeDee—”
I cut myself off mid-sentence, but it’s too late. Hope’s eyes are already bulging out of her head, and her mouth has dropped open.
“What?”
“Okay, let me expl—”
“DID YOU HAVE SEX WITH DEEDEE?”
I sigh. “Well, not at that point, but—”
“OH MY GOD, YOU HAD SEX WITH DEEDEE!”
She shouts it at the exact moment Paige decides to walk out of her room, oversized hoodie hanging down to the knees of her leggings and headphones slung around her neck.
She pauses, blinks twice, and then shrugs.
“Huh. About time.”
Sixteen
DeeDee
SOUR: term used to describe a drink made with a lime-flavoured mix
I pullthe green-stained gloves off my hands and throw them into the trash in Zach’s bathroom.
“Okay,ma belle, now we wait.”
Hope beams at me before jumping up off the toilet seat to check her hair out in the mirror.
“This is so cool! I’ve always wanted to do this.”
Zach pokes his head into the doorway. “I can’t believe I let you dye my sister’s hair green.”
Hope walks over and punches him in the arm. “One: you don’t get toletme do anything. Two: it’s teal, not green. How many times do I have to tell you?”
Zach picks up a piece of her hair, and Hope smacks his hand away. “It looks pretty green to me.”
“That’s because the dye is still on—and don’t touch it! You’re going to wreck it. Right, DeeDee?”
I watch the two of them argue and joke around the same way I used to watch the sibling characters in TV shows when I was a kid, after my sister got taken away. I would sit in front of our old box of a television and repeat all the lines, acting out the same body language. I’d imagine what it would be like to have someone I could tease and hug and tackle whenever I wanted. Even now, I feel like I’m memorizing everything Zach and Hope say, soaking it up and storing it away like I do with Zach’s stories about his home town.
“I said: right DeeDee?”
“Ah,ouais, right.” I follow the two of them into the living room. “Don’t touch it, Zach, you dork. You will wreck it.”
Hope sits down on the couch, perching at the front of the cushion so her hair doesn’t stain anything.
