Page 69 of Mirror Image

Reunited at last!

Double the adventure, double the love!

Sisters by fate, adventurers by choice!

“Wait . . . what?” I murmured, gaping at the crowd moving toward the building and our parking spot.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” Naomi squealed, looking down at her phone. “TwinPower is trending number one!”

“What the fuck does that even mean?” Sam demanded, ducking her head to get a better look past me and out the window.

“It means the two of you have gone viral!”

For the first time in nearly a day, my eyes met Sam’s.

I knew right then and there that I didn’t have the luxury of staying mad at her because it was going to take both of us to face this. Whatever “this” was.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Jenn

Saturday evening

“Oh my God, this is amazing!” I murmur into my drink—a new cocktail Stef has been working on for her restaurant. “You have raised sangria to an art form!”

She nods, flashing me a knowing smile. “I know, right? It’s the cinnamon stick.”

“Wait, really? That’s it? A cinnamon stick? That’s so . . . not sexy. I thought maybe you were going to say prickly pear or kumquat or some crazy kind of plum . . .”

“Nope. Just your garden-variety cinnamon stick. It’s very Spanish—as in Spain—so that’s kinda sexy, I suppose,” she offers with a shrug, reaching for an empanada.

We’re sitting out on the deck of her condo in Little Havana, just down the street from the restaurant.

I take another appreciative sip, licking my lips when I’m done. “Yeah, okay. I’ll buy that. Sexy Spain. And hey, I appreciate you taking a Saturday night off from the restaurant. I know you like to be there to keep an eye on things on the busy nights.”

“Mama, ever since the Food Network did a feature on us, every night is a busy night! I got myself an excellent manager to pick up some of the slack so I can spend more time at home . . . with my girlfriend.”

I sit up straight on the couch and set my drink down on the glass-top side table next to me. My cousin is notoriously fickle about partners. I learned a long time ago not to get too attached to any of them. I can’t even remember the last time she threw around the G word!

“Really? An actual girlfriend girlfriend? Like the kind who stays all night and has breakfast with you in the morning? That kind of girlfriend?”

She shrugs, offering a cryptic smile. “Maybe. Sometimes.”

“And her name is . . . ?” I fish.

“Bertha.”

I wrinkle my nose. “Bertha?”

“Yes, Bertha,” she repeats. “Hey, not everyone can be a Jennifer or a Jessica—”

We both freeze.

For a moment we’re suspended together in companionable regret, neither knowing how to proceed. If we pretend it didn’t happen—that Stef didn’t just invoke my dead sister’s image by murmuring her name—then it’s like pretending she didn’t happen. But if we make a thing of it, then it’s like it still hangs over us. And it does. It absolutely hangs over both of us, but not in the way it once did.

My cousin sighs heavily. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .”

I wave a hand at the sentiment she can’t finish. “No. Of course she was going to come up. How could she not? Me being back here in Miami doesn’t just dredge up my past as an adult. It takes me right back to . . . you know . . . to that time. To before . . . and after.” I take a breath and then a long sip before I pivot our topic of conversation to something a little less emotionally challenging. “So, uh, do I get to meet Bertha while I’m here?”