She beams, resting her head on her hands as she sits beside me. “Elodie’s pretty great, huh?”
“One could say that,” I reply, rubbing a hand over my stubbled jaw.
“Would that one be you?”
“Maybe,” I allow. “Did you lose your husband?”
Smooth subject change, Roman. Did the love eat your brains?
“He went next door to talk to Brandi, his tattoo artist. I wanted to stay here to talk to you, my future cousin!”
No subject change for Lyra, then. Because what I want to do first thing after finding out I’m in love with a woman is talk about it with her cousin while said woman stands twenty feet away, gabbing with her brother.
“Do you have many cousins?” I ask.
“Just Elodie and Sol,” she answers. “Their mom is my mom’s only sibling, and I don’t have a dad, so no cousins on that side.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
She shrugs. “I’m not. Having an absent parent can sometimes be better than having a present one. Besides, I’ve never known anything different than him being gone. I don’t usually think about it at all.” A mischievous grin, like a baby kitten’s, lights up her face. “What Idothink about is my dear,sweetElodie, and how much she deserves a happily ever after with, as she would say, a total hottie. Any thoughts on that from you?”
If I weren’t newly aware of the state of my emotions, I’d find Lyra hilarious in her adorable ploy to matchmake. As it is, I am reeling from shock and finding it hard to fully appreciate her efforts.
“She does deserve a happily ever after,” I agree, “with a total hottie.” AKA me.
Lyra hums, sighs, and kicks her feet beneath the table, eyesglazing as she stares at me. I can practically see the wedding bells ringing in her eyes, Elodie and me beneath them.
“Roman!” Sol’s voice, close, grabs my attention and alerts me to the fact that he and Elodie areright there.
I stand, offering Elodie my seat. She stares at the four other empty chairs at the table.
I grunt.
Sol laughs, poking her into the wooden chair before turning his angelic aura on me. His teeth glimmer, and his hair shines under the fluorescent lighting as he opens his arms to clasp me within them. I… did not know that we were this friendly.
“Hey, Sol.”
“Thank you for keeping my baby sister safe,” he says, pulling back. “I’m glad she’s got someone looking out for her.”
Oh. I see. We are that friendly, then. Good. All the easier for when I make him my brother. Which is not a sentence that kicks my heart rate into hyperdrive or anything.
Sol lets go of me to greet Lyra, and I sit down in the seat next to the one I gave Elodie.
The table shakes, and I grimace, bringing my fist down on my leg to stop its trembling.
“Are you okay?” Elodie asks, squinting at me. “You look ill.”
“I feel a little ill,” I say.
After all, lovesick is a type of sickness… surely.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
We stay loving carrot cake.
Elodie
After lunch at Sweet & Salty, an extremely short jaunt through town, and a detour to pick up Mars from next door, Lyra, Jove, and I sit at their kitchen counter snacking on leftovers from last night as we watch Mars and Roman dance around the kitchen together. It’s a dance of an entirely different sort than we had last night—more elegant, more graceful, but no more or less beautiful.
