Unsuitable

“Because you love me, Flipper, and you’d do anything for me.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Flip said, then her eyes popped and she head butted the counter. “Ooh!”

Reece lifted his palm to Etta and got a no enthusiasm high five. Etta kept her eyes on her phone screen and dangled her hand off her wrist like a limp fish.

“Hah, that was too easy, Flipper.”

Flip sat and pouted. “Oooh. I don’t want to come with you.”

“You don’t want an afternoon at the beach watching Sky’s volleyball. I guess there are jobs you can do around the house instead.”

“All right, I’ll go, but only if everyone does.”

Etta typed something on her screen. “I’m not going.”

Great. He needed Etta to watch Flip while he was talking to Audrey. “Ett, please. If you love me...”

She didn’t look up. “I don’t love you.”

“You know how you need someone to teach you how to drive and Mum said in your dreams...”

Now she looked up. “You dick, you’d welch?”

He grinned at her. “Yeah, no tactic too low.”

“You stink.”

“That’s because I used your moisturiser.”

Flip giggled and Etta opened her mouth to complain but Neeva slipped in behind her and put her hand over Etta’s mouth. “Shut up about it. If he gets this job it’s a sleepover.”

Etta’s eyes widened and she shook Neeva’s hand off. Not easy. Neev loved a good wrestle.

He‘d expected this. It was time to move out for good. But the whole Sky thing was complicated. “Oh, no. No girl germs in my bedroom.”

Neeva popped onto the stool next to Etta. “You won’t even know about it.”

“Like I won’t know by the knickers and wet towels Gin would leave on the floor.”

“That’s true. Gin is such a slob,” said Flip, with all the wisdom of someone who’d had to pick up after Gin as punishment far too often.

“Anyway, I have to actually get this job for that to even be an option.”

“Mum said she’d give you a reference,” said Neeva.

He groaned. “You can’t have your mother give you a job reference when you’re twenty-seven.”

“But why?” said Flip, and the rest of them groaned.

Neev popped Flip on the back of the head. “Dork.”

Flip held her hands out in front. “No, seriously, why can’t your mum give you a reference?”

“It doesn’t work that way,” he said to anyone who was still listening.

Etta put her phone down on the counter. “So how come you need us to be at this interview and how come it’s at the beach?”

“This is a play date so we can suss each other out. I want Audrey to see I’m a good guy with a loving family. So she can picture me fitting into her family.”