I emptied the last of the glass from the dustpan into the trash. “Try it again, and I won’t be walking away from anything, whether you like it or not.” I propped the brush against the wall and surveyed the rest of the mess she’d made in the kitchen. “Do you want a hand cleaning the rest of this up?”
Rae stood up and smiled sheepishly. “Only if you don’t clean up too fast. And I can pay you.”
“You don’t need to—”
“In ice cream,” she said quickly. “I, um, I made some chocolate fudge brownie ice cream earlier.”
My favorite.
She swallowed, fiddling with the hem of her shirt. “Um. I made it for you anyway. To say thank you for helping me with the steamer. And taking my parcel. And sorry for being a huge raging bitch?”
I ran my tongue over my teeth and grinned at her. “Are you apologizing for that last one, or are you still deciding?”
“Um.” She rubbed her hand over her mouth to hide her smile and met my eyes. “Apologizing. Awkwardly.”
“An apology with ice cream is my favorite kind. Especially that flavor.” I reached out and tugged on her hair. “Come on. I’ll help you clean up. Then we’ll go and find real food for dinner.”
“Are you asking me on a date?”
“Do you want to go home?”
“No.” She paused. “But it’s not a date.”
I held up my hands. “Not a date. Just two hungry people avoiding real life.”
She frowned. “What are you avoiding?”
“Marnie. What else would I be avoiding?”
“There’s a story there.” She threw me a damp dishcloth. “There you go. Get cleaning and tell me why you’re avoiding your sister.”
***
“She won’t stop,” Rae said, propping her chin up on her hand. “You know she won’t. She’s like those little dogs that bark through gates at you when you walk past.”
“The little yappy ones?” I raised my eyebrows. “Are you comparing my sister to a chihuahua?”
“You’re the one who lived with her. You know exactly what I mean.” She pulled her glass of Coke over toward her and sipped through the straw. “She’s going to keep bugging you until you give her what she wants.”
“I’m not telling her anything.” I held my hands up. “That conversation was between you and I. It’s one thing for you to talk to Sophie, but I’m not talking to my baby sister.”
She hid a tiny laugh behind her hand. “I haven’t actually spoken to Sophie yet. I did speak to Grandma, though.”
“You did?” I quirked a brow. “What did she say?”
“Something pretty interesting. Apparently, you still worked wood with my grandpa for a while. A little more frequently than you told me.”
Shit. We’d never deliberately kept that a secret from her, but we’d never exactly mentioned it, either. I hadn’t known how she’d take it that I was still close to her grandfather, and as far as I knew, he’d never found an appropriate time to bring it up.
I nodded slowly and eyed her, unsure of her response. Would she be mad at that? “We were in the middle of a project, and he asked me if I’d help him finish it. I’ve given him a hand a few times since then.”
“What did you work on together?”
I didn’t answer.
Rae’s lips curved to one side. “What? You thought I’d be mad?”
“You’ve got a bit of a track record with that.”
She laughed, dipping her head. “Hey, I know that. It doesn’t make sense to be mad at you for that. I didn’t expect my family to ignore you just because I was.”
Well, fuck me dead. I didn’t expect that.
“We were working on the bench your grandma wanted to go near the rose bushes.” I paused. “We weren’t quite done, and it was a side project to a set of side tables someone had commissioned from him, so he asked me if I’d still come by a few times a week to help him.”
“How did I never see you at the house?”
“I never went inside. I used the side door to the garage. Not to be rude, but because we all know how much your grandma hates sawdust on the carpets.” I sipped my Coke.
Rae laughed, resting both arms on the table and meeting my eyes. “That’s true. I wouldn’t even have had a chance to question it if I’d seen you. She would have murdered you on the spot.”
I smirked because it was true.
Our dinner was brought to us then, and that gave us a moment’s silence before we could carry on the conversation.
“What have you been working on together?” Rae sprinkled parmesan over her pasta.
I tried to hide my surprise at her interest. I wanted to talk to her like this—to have some kind of normal relationship with her.
But that didn’t mean it wasn’t weird.
“Mostly garden stuff. He got a lot of requests for things like bird boxes and wildlife houses last summer. I helped him do a few, but his favorite was a bug hotel.”