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I’m shoving my way through the front door of the apartment, swearing internally at the way one of the bags I’m holding is twisting tightly around my wrist, when my sister’s voice reaches me. I’m not even in the apartment yet and she’s on my ass. I don’t know how Luna does it, but she always knows when I’m in a mood.
“What? Nothing. Everything’s hunky-dory.”
Luna pushes off from her half-sprawled position on the sofa and skips towards me. Taking one of the bags that is falling off my shoulder, she peeks in. Her deep violet eyes, which I can only assume she got from our father, pin me in place with a hard glare.
“You picked up butter and sprinkles.”
“And I see you picked up your dirty socks. Look at us, challenging our bodies to move in amazing ways.”
I can see she’s fighting a smile at my comment as she presses her lips together.
“You only buy sprinkles when something is really bothering you.”
“I do not. I buy sprinkles for all kinds of things. I was thinking about putting them in my cereal in the morning to brighten the bowl.”
“That’s not what I meant Lexi and you know it. You only pick up baking supplies when you’re stressed or when there’s a special occasion. And there’s nothing on the calendar this month. So,” she dumps the bag on the kitchen counter and turns back to me with her hands on her hips, “spill.”
Kicking off the flats I wore tonight, I shuffle to where Luna is glaring at me and deposit the rest of my grocery haul. It doesn’t matter that it’s a little after eleven at night and we both have to get up early for work in a couple hours. It doesn’t matter that the last thing I want to do right now is hash out my day. In Luna’s world, if something’s wrong, it needs to be talked out and sorted out. I love her to Mars and back, but some days I really wanted to shove a towel in her mouth to shut her up.
“Lexi,” she moans, drawing out my name until she has no air left in her lungs. She repeats my name over and over until I relent.
“Fine, you little brat. Something weird happened today and I’m trying not to think about it. There. Are you happy?”
“Weird? What happened?” she asks, pulling out one of the chairs we have at our small kitchen table.
Needing to do something with my hands as I tell her about my strange night at the gym, I start unloading all the groceries and placing the baking ingredients I would need to the side. How could I explain to Luna what happened tonight in a way that doesn’t sound…stupid? Nothing really happened. An outsider would suspect nothing out of the ordinary occurred tonight if they played back and watched me at the check-in desk at Triple X Athletics. And nothing physically did happen.
Internally was another matter. My entire world was shaken.
“It’s nothing really. I just…had a…there was a man.” I clench my hands in the cloth fabric of one of the bags I’m unloading and wait for Luna to add her commentary. We’d had plenty of boy talks over the years. Mostly about the boys she was crushing on at school. It was rare I would talk to her about the men in my life though. There was this thin strange line I had to walk at all times with her between being her sister and her guardian. I had to parent her, but I also had to tease her mercilessly.
When Luna doesn’t make a sound, I slowly turn my head toward her. She is sitting there, one arm holding her up as she leans on the table, giving me a curious look. The silence is getting to me and she knows this. She’s waiting for me to crack.
“Honestly, it was no big deal. I have no idea why I’m feeling this way. Why our interaction is sticking with me. I must be more tired than I thought.” I force out a laugh and a smile, hoping against hope Luna will let this go.
“What was the interaction?”
“Urg,” I groan, walking to her and plopping down on the chair across from her. I just need to say all the things I was thinking and feeling and then I could let this all go. Luna may hold this over my head for the next week, but I know I can tell her anything. She’d support me no matter what. “It was honestly nothing. I’m just being crazy. But Lu-Lu,” I slap my hands down on the counter, remembering Grant, “he was the hottest thing I’d ever seen in real life. He reminded me of Captain America but with an even better ass.”
“Better than America’s ass?”
Her eyes grow wide and mine do the same as I nod. “Yeah. Better.”
“Whoa. I can see how an ass like that could throw you off. Did you talk to him?”
Leaning back in my chair I nod again, running a hand through the ends of my purple hair. “Sure did. I had to print off a workout schedule for him and we chatted for a minute or two. Then I did the stupidest thing in the entire world. I walked away.”
Judging by the look on her face, Luna isn’t comprehending what I’m saying. Because how could someone walk away from a man like that?
“A trainer needed help closing off one of the change rooms because of a plumbing issue and I just followed her, not thinking. He was standing close enough to me that I could see his pores, and he was maybe-almost-borderline flirting with me. And. I walked. Away.”
The apartment goes silent as we both soak in the magnitude of what I just said.
“You never talk about men with me.” My shoulders shrug up quickly. “And no guy has ever really stuck in your head before.”
“I mentioned his ass. It’s gonna be hard to forget.”
“You know what I mean,” Luna huffs in exasperation. “You don’t give many men the time of day.” I open my mouth to contradict her but she shushes me. Me! “Are you working at this gym again?”
