“Good.” It was always the answer I gave her when she asked me about college, too. Even when things weren’t exactly going to plan, an all-encompassing “good” accompanied by a smile seemed to stop her worrying. “Bethany’s lovely. And I’ve been getting to see more of London as we go to her different classes and groups. We’re going to the Barbican on Monday. Although, I’m not entirely sure what it is. Someone said a theatre and another person said it’s a library, but people live there? Apparently, kids love it. Sounds weird but—”
“Who gave you that idea? Gabriel?” Hollie pushed the first filled glass toward me.
“No, one of the other nannies from Bethany’s nursery.”
“Do you see much of each other?” She held up her glass and I clinked mine to hers. “You and Gabriel, I mean.” My sister’s subtlety hadn’t improved since the last time she’d warned me about her fiancé’s best friend.
“Not really. He works a lot. But we message each other about Bethany.” That was true, but it was also true that it felt like I saw a lot of him. Everywhere I turned in the house, I was confronted by some little piece of him. The inexplicably passionate literature beside his bed. His pictures from school and university. His cologne that stayed in the air long after he’d left, and smelled as moody and complex as the man himself. Every reminder of him was a morsel of temptation that made me hungry for more. The small snippets of him in person left me famished. I’d make sure I had a great view when he reached up to get something from the kitchen cupboard. Or when he bent down to scoop up his briefcase. And the way his voice was almost a growl still made me shudder. I collected all the pieces of him and put them together in my imagination. In the dark of my bedroom. Under my sheets. It was Gabriel I thought of when I touched myself.
“That’s good,” Hollie said, taking a sip of her drink and pretending she wasn’t fishing for information.
“Is it?” I loved my sister. She’d provided a future for me that I couldn’t have dreamt about without her sacrifices, but sometimes she needed to back off and not worry about me so much. And if I wanted to fantasize about a man like Gabriel, that was my prerogative.
“You know, it’s good that you’re not in each other’s pockets.”
“I don’t know what you’re so worried about.”
“With your job being postponed and you having to be a nanny and everything, I don’t want you to have any more disappointment. I just want everything to work out.”
I grabbed her hand. “It will. It always does. We make lemonade out of lemons. That’s what the Lumen sisters do.” There was no point in focusing on the bad that had been or could be. Whatever was coming would come whether or not I worried about it first. Better to make the most of the good stuff in between, so the not-so-good stuff would be slightly more manageable. I placed a kiss on her cheek and took a sip of my champagne, wanting to change the subject. “Although I’d take this over lemonade every day of the week.”
Hollie might have been taking care of me for her whole life, but I could take care of myself now. And a crush on my boss wasn’t the worst thing that was ever going to happen to me. I didn’t have to tell her that I was pretty sure he’d been checking me out earlier. It had been a momentary chink in his armor that would have healed over by now.
“So, have you assigned seating?” I asked, sure that she would have placed Gabriel and me at opposite ends of the table.
“No.” She glanced at her watch. “We should take a seat. That way Howard won’t get irritated.”
“Howard?”
Hollie winced. “The chef. Dexter insisted we take him full time.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The idea that my sister now employed a full-time chef, when growing up we worried about having enough food to eat, was so bizarre.
“I know. I’ve told Dexter it’s completely ridiculous.” We wandered toward the dining table, which was beautifully set with endless sparkling flatware and about six glasses per place setting. It looked like there would be a lot of washing dishes after we’d left. Presumably Dexter insisted on someone taking care of that, too.
“You don’t need to be embarrassed. I think it’s amazing that you don’t have to worry about cooking, let alone whether you’re going to be able to make twenty dollars buy a week’s worth of groceries for both of us. Are these flowers real?” I asked, bending to take in the scent of the peonies arranged in mini goldfish bowls dotted about the table. Yup, they were real.