From Lukov with Love

“No!” my brother hissed at the same time my sister Tali went, “How did you screw that up?”

“You know he sucks at Jenga,” I threw in, coming up behind the body I knew belonged to my sister. She turned around just as I touched the top of her head.

“Jasmine,” Ruby, my slightly older sister, squealed, her hands moving toward me before stopping halfway between our bodies, like she was hesitating. She always did.

I didn’t even sigh; I just wrapped my arms around her and noticed it took her all of a second before she hugged me back.

“I come over all the time, and you never hug me like that,” Jojo piped up from his spot across the island.

I was still hugging Ruby when I glanced over at him and said, “Because she’s never come into the bathroom while I was showering and dumped a pitcher of ice water on me.”

“You’re still mad about that?” my brother asked, planting his elbows on the island and smirking so wide his gap-tooth grin came out.

“You did it last week,” I reminded him. “And two weeks before that.”

“I was only trying to help you—” he started to say before James, who was sitting beside him, elbowed him in the arm, hard enough to get his attention as he rubbed his arm. “What was that for?”

James’s eyes were on the spot behind me as he elbowed his significant other again.

Now or never, right? “Ivan gave me a ride home because my car wouldn’t start,” I explained, watching as all of them, even my mom who was at the oven, all turned to try and look behind me. “Everyone, Ivan. Ivan, this is everyone.”

My brother squeaked. James elbowed my brother again. My sister, Tali, blinked. The hand that Ruby had on my lower back jerked. My mom did nothing, and neither did my sister’s beautiful blond husband who was sitting in the seat directly to my right.

“Hello,” Ivan, who was apparently wearing his polite pants, called out.

It was my mom that replied, “Hello, Ivan,” as she came around the island, wiping her hands on the apron she had on over her clothes. “It’s nice to see you again.”

He replied something I couldn’t hear when Ruby’s hand on my back moved, and she leaned in to whisper into my ear, “He’s so tall and handsome in person.”

I glanced at the man beside her, who had turned back around to face the island and begun collecting the wooden blocks that were spread all over the counter. “I’m going to tell Pretty Boy you’re eyeing another guy.”

She scowled and pulled away. “You’re a pain, Jasmine.”

I smiled at her and touched the top of her head again. She had been the last of my brothers and sisters to move out, and even though it had been six years since it had happened, I still missed her like it was just yesterday. Even though I was pretty close to Jonathan in our own screwed-up way, it was Ruby that I had always been the closest to. My mom said it was because we were polar opposites and balanced each other out. Like Karina. I always thought it was just because she had the most patience with me, and I had always been really over protective of her despite the fact she was five years older than me.

With the back of my hand, I reached to the right and tapped her husband’s shoulder, taking in the baby monitor sitting in front of him on the table. It was one of those fancy video ones.

He peeked over at me in the middle of collecting Jenga pieces and grinned. “Jasmine.”

I gave him his own little smile. It was hard not to. “Aaron.”

“I’ve been meaning to tell you how happy I was when Rubes said you got another partner,” the man replied in his honey-sweet Louisiana accent. “I knew it would only be a matter of time.”

My smile grew a little wider, and I nodded at him, tapping his shoulder one more time to tell him thank you. In return, the man my brother had joked around that he’d sworn he’d seen on the cover of a book before, smiled at me, like it was enough. It had only taken Aaron about five minutes to convince me that he deserved to be my sister’s first boyfriend. I’d been prepared to hate his guts. But in those first five minutes after she’d brought him to the house to introduce him to us all—six months before they eloped, and six and a half months before we found out about it—he had asked her to show him all of the cosplay outfits she had made over the years, and I knew she had found a kind, decent man.

If he hadn’t been, my mom and I had been ready to whoop his ass one dark, rainy night when he couldn’t identify us.

“’Sup, man,” my brother, Jonathan, said from close by.

Peeking over my shoulder, I found that Jojo had gotten up from the island and was towering over my mom at her side, hand already shaking Ivan’s.

“How’s it going,” Ivan replied. “Ivan.”

Like Jojo didn’t know who he was.

“Jonathan,” my brother said, sounding totally cool, and not at all like he’d talked about Ivan’s “skater butt” in the past. “This is my hubby, James,” he continued on, hooking his thumb behind him to point at the island. James waved.

“You’re my fourth favorite figure skater,” James said, shooting me a wink.

Fourth?

Even Jojo wondered the same thing. “Who’s one through three?”

“Jasmine.”

“Two and three?”

“Jasmine.”

My dead heart gave a little burn of emotion, and if I was the kind of person to blow someone a kiss, I would have done it to him. “I’d push you out of the way if you were about to get run over,” I told him and meant it.

He smiled and winked at me again. “I know you would, Jas.”

I smiled back at him before glancing at Ivan to see him watching me. I was about to ask him what the hell he was looking at but stopped when I remembered I had agreed to try and be friends with him. What the hell had I been thinking?

“Would you push me out of the way of a car?” Jojo asked.

“No. But I’d pick some pretty flowers for your funeral.”

He scowled and stuck his tongue out at me. I stuck mine out right back. His middle finger came up to his face and scratched at the tip of his nose. I brought mine up and rubbed it across my eyebrow.

“Jasmine, come on,” my mom moaned. “Not in front of guests.”

“But he—” I started to say, pointing at Jonathan before stopping myself and shaking my head.

My brother’s “hehe” was really low, but I still heard him.

“Dinner is almost ready. Are you going to shower, Jasmine?” my mom asked just as Tali approached Ivan and introduced herself. At least that’s what I assumed when she hugged him.

I was watching them as I nodded, “Uh-huh.”

Ivan gave my sister a smile I hadn’t seen before… and it made me feel weird. Tali was a younger version of my mom. Beautiful, slim, with that red hair, pale skin, and bone structure that no plastic surgeon in the world could replicate. I couldn’t think of a single time I had been out with her and hadn’t caught someone staring at her or hitting on her. She was so used to it she didn’t even notice it anymore. And I had stopped caring that she was so pretty a long, long time ago.

Some were just better looking than other ones. Maybe I wasn’t as pretty as my sister, but I could kick her ass, and that had always made me feel better. But Tali would be the one to help me bury a body… if I ever needed to.

“Go shower then,” my mom demanded. “I don’t want the lasagna to burn.”

I nodded and glanced at Ivan, who was still talking to my sister. “Ivan, I’ll show you where the bathroom—”

“Do you want to play this next round of Jenga?” Jonathan asked him while I was still talking.

I blinked.

In the span of that blink, Ivan replied, “Sure.”

What?

“Go shower, stinky, so we can eat,” Jojo kept going.

Ivan looked over and must have seen the “wtf?” on my face because that hint of his smirk-smile crept over his cotton candy pink mouth. “Yeah, stinky. Go shower,” he echoed like an ass.

“He hasn’t showered either,” I let them know.

“I don’t smell,” Ivan said.

“I don’t either.”

“That’s debatable,” Tali said on a cough.

I blinked and ignored her because I knew what was going to happen if I didn’t take control of the situation. “Ivan, you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. I’m sure you have better things to do. I can show you where the bathroom is.”

“I’d like to play Jenga,” was his reply.

What was I going to do? Tell him no? I was going to regret this. I really was.

“I’ll show you were the bathroom is,” Jojo offered.

Shit.

“Okay,” I mumbled before leaning into Ruby and whispering, “Please make sure nothing bad happens.” I heard her laugh and felt her nod. Touching her head again, I gave one last look around the kitchen to see Ivan taking a seat beside James.