“Yeah, and that’s no way to celebrate Tate and Fletcher,” Brinley adds. “Brooks, make yourself useful and grab the candles and a lighter from the kitchen.”
“But I just sat down,” Brooks pouts, but Brinley doesn’t care. She just crosses her arms.
He gets up.
“Thank you!” She grins, hopping over my legs and squeezing past Declan to take Brooks's previous spot in the corner of the couch.
“Oh, fuck you.” Brooks groans when he gets back. “You just wanted my seat.”
“When I’m here, it’s my seat. We’ve been over it,” Brinley replies as he tosses her the candles and lighter. She opens the top pizza box, sticks on a21candle, and lights it.
We don’t sing; we haven’t since we were kids, but they still make their wish, each blowing out one of the candles.
“Don’t forget, it’s also the anniversary of Zeke finding out Fletcher and I aren’t related.” Tate laughs.
“In all fairness, Fletcher has like fifty-three siblings, and you were always over at his house.”
“Thirteen,” Fletcher argues.
“Same thing. Plus, you were screaming and crying.”
“My dad was terrified when you started screaming that he was abducting me.” Tate reaches for a piece of pizza. “We laugh about it now.”
“I was trying to be a good friend.” Now I laugh, thinking back to that day. We had been friends for over two years, so I probably should’ve known that Tate and Fletcher weren’t related.
Fletcher’s moms looked mortified when I told them someone was trying to take one of their kids. Then they saw Mr. Lewis and Tate standing in the middle of the yard and realized I thought this whole time that Tate was one of their foster kids.
I’ll never live it down.
Tate’s mom is Chinese and Swedish. Tate’s basically her twin. She did get her dad’s black curly hair, but that’s the only thing that ties her to him. Her older sister, from her mom’s first marriage, also looks just like their mom.
That’s one thing Tate and I have in common: we get most of our looks from our mom. Everyone’s always told me that if we used agender-swapping filter on my mom, the outcome would be me. Like Tate, I got my dad’s hair. Aside from my dad’s hair and his warm umber skin, everything else is all her.
“I don’t look like my dad at all,” she continues. “So, I can understand why seeing a six-five white man dragging me across the lawn was a little jarring.”
“Thank you,” I respond. “And yeah, six-five seemed fucking tall at eleven.”
“Dad likes to say all of my height came from him.”
“Your mom’s like five-ten,” Fletcher states, and Tate shrugs.
“I was just looking out for a friend,” I add.
Tate reaches back to give me a fist bump, and as our fists collide, I give her a friendly wink.
“Alright, everyone, find your spots,” Jeremy says, pressing play on the movie. “And shut up. I don’t want this to be likeThe Conjuring, where you guys talked so much that you had no idea what was happening when we hit the halfway point, and we had to start it over.”
“Yeah, I had to relive all those jump scares because you don’t know how to shut up, Zeke.” Brinley eyes me, grabbing a piece of pizza.
“Whoa, it was your brother who started talking about an upcoming hockey game,” I argue, but she doesn’t seem to care; she presses a finger to her lips, telling me to shush.
Jaxon grabs a couple slices of pizza, stacking them together like a sandwich, and sits beside Brinley. She drops her legs over his lap, and he moves his arms, allowing her to do so. Like it’ssecond nature.
I guess, in some ways, it might be. They do movie nights by themselves occasionally, and I’ve always wondered if they sit on top of each other like they are right now. Tonight, there’s an excuse, everyone’s piled onto the couch. But when it’s just them…
I know Jaxon would never go there, though, because of Declan. Declan’s his best friend, and even though theno-sistersrule we came up with years ago applied to any sister within the friend group, I think we all assumed it was to keep Jaxon away from Brinley.
Because Brinley was the sister who was always around. We were always at the Sandersons if we weren’t at school or practice. And there’s definitely something between them, even though it’s been denied by both parties.