82

Marianna POV

Being twenty-three and living with your brother and conducting a relationship so secret it technically doesn't have a name yet are now what my life is.

I wake up at 6:15 to Marco's coffee grinder.

Not an alarm. The coffee grinder. It's the same grinder that's been waking me up since I moved in, the same morning ritual, the same sequence: grinder, then the particular hiss of the stovetop espresso maker, then the sound of Marco moving around the kitchen.

Normally I lie there for another ten minutes. This morning I'm dressed and in the hallway in four.

This is either personal growth or self-preservation. Possibly both.

Duane is already at the kitchen table.

He's in the same white t-shirt from last night, which means he slept in it.

Marco is standing at the counter with his own coffee, looking at his phone, performing the studied neutrality.

"Morning," I say.

"Morning," they say, simultaneously.

I get coffee. Sit down across from Duane. We look at each other.

"Okay," Marco says, to his phone. Then he puts the phone face down on the counter, which is the Reyes family gesture for I am about to have a real conversation and I need you to know that. He turns around. "So."

"So," I say.

"So." He leans against the counter, arms crossed, in the Georgetown Law shirt that has become his default uniform for difficult conversations. "Montreal."

"Yes."

"Three months ago."

"We've established the timeline."

"Marianna." His voice does the soft thing. The not-angry thing. Which is worse than angry, honestly, because angry I know how to handle. This—this careful, deliberate thing—requires me to actually show up. "I'm your brother. You could have—"

"I didn't know what it was," I say. Honestly. "For a long time I genuinely didn't know if it was—anything. Or if it was—" I stop. Try again. "It felt too fragile to say out loud. Like if I named it, it would break."

Marco is quiet for a moment.

"Is it fragile now," he says.

I look at Duane across the table.

Duane looks back.

"No," he says.

Marco watches this.

"The rules," Marco says finally.

"Marco—"

"Not negotiating, establishing." He holds up one finger. "You don't bring this into my professional relationship with him. If something happens between you two, my working relationship with Veloce is a separate thing. Those tracks don't cross."

"Agreed," Duane says.

Second finger. "If you fight—" He looks at me specifically. "You don't put me in the middle. I'm your brother and I'm his best friend and that doesn't change regardless of what you two are doing. I'm not a referee."

"I wouldn't—"

"You absolutely would, accidentally, because you're a Reyes and we are congenitally incapable of keeping our problems contained." He says this with the authority of someone who has watched our mother rope our father into approximately four hundred domestic disputes under the guise of "just asking his opinion." "So I'm saying it preemptively."

"Fair," I say.

Third finger. "You're happy." He looks at me with our mother's eyes, warm and perceptive and slightly terrifying in their accuracy. "I need to know you're actually happy. Not managing-fine happy. Actually."

The question sits there, direct as a scalpel.

I think about vanilla candles. Paper airplanes. A heartbeat under my palm in a British manor house at six AM.

"Yes," I say.

Marco looks at me for a long moment.

"Okay," he says. He puts down his coffee. Points at Duane. "Breakfast."

"I said I don't—"

"You said you don't cook. You said nothing about not having money and a phone with delivery apps." He gestures at the kitchen in the manner of a man delegating responsibility. "There's a place on Second that does Cuban eggs. I want the ones with the tostones. Marianna wants—"

"The ones with the chimichurri," I say, because I have been wanting those for three weeks and apparently this is the moment I'm leveraging.

Duane looks at each of us. The almost-expression—not quite resigned, not quite amused, something in the middle that has no name but that I've been collecting since Montreal.

He picks up his phone.

"You're a menace," I tell Marco.

"I'm an innovator," Marco says, refilling his coffee. "Now tell me everything. Start from the airport. The actual beginning."

I look at Duane.

He looks at me.

"You first," I say.

"It's your story," he says.

"It's both our stories."

"Mm."

"Duane."

"The wet dress," he says, to Marco, in the tone of a man making a concession. "She got off the plane in a white dress in the rain and I had to tell her the underwear didn't match."

"I told you," Marco says, pointing at me. "I TOLD you that was the world's worst travel outfit—"

"NOBODY ASKED YOU—"

"I said specifically when you called me, I said Mari don't wear white to the airport—"

"YOU SAID THE WEATHER MIGHT BE UNPREDICTABLE—"

"THAT IS THE SAME THING—"

Duane sits at Marco's table ordering Cuban eggs on his phone while my brother and I argue about precipitation and clothing choices at increasing volume, and the apartment fills up with the noise of a morning that is, by any measurable metric, completely ordinary.

Except for the way, when I glance over, Duane is watching us with an expression I've never seen on his face before.

I look away before he catches me.

The food arrives at 7:30. We eat at the table that is the right size for two people and cramped for three, and Marco extracts the full story with the methodical thoroughness of a man who went to Georgetown Law and retained the interrogative instincts even after pivoting to sports management.

He asks better questions than I expect. Not the protective-older-brother questions—not what are your intentions and are you sure about this and all the variations of she's been through things you don't know about. He asks the questions that tell me he's been paying attention for longer than I thought.

"The paper airplanes," he says, at one point. To Duane. "You made one for her before she even—"

"Wynwood," Duane says. "Yes."

"I remember that night. You told me you had an early simulator session."

"I did have an early simulator session."

"After."

"...Yes. After."

Marco absorbs this. "You threw a paper airplane at my window," he says to me, in the tone of someone whose sister contains infinite capacity for surprise.

"Three floors up," I say. "With good aim."

"He has good aim," Marco confirms. Then, after a pause: "He's been making them since he was eight years old. Did he tell you that?"

"I know," I say softly.

Marco looks at Duane. Marco nods once. Duane holds his gaze.

"Okay," Marco says, for the third time this morning. "Okay."

He steals my last tostone. I let him.