Page 150 of Love Spells: And Other Non-Refundable Magic

“All right,” I say.

She studies me, apparently waiting for the rest. When it doesn’t come, her eyebrows rise. “That’s it?”

“That’s it. I reserve the right to worry about you, because I’m your older sister and it’s one of the few hobbies I’ve maintained consistently since childhood. But I know you want to go.”

Rose’s expression changes, softening in a way that immediately makes me suspicious she’s about to make this emotional.

“Oh, no,” I say the moment my sister gets up from the floor.

“I haven’t done anything.”

“You’re coming over here with feelings!”

She wraps her arms around my shoulders while I’m still sitting on the couch, and I laugh as I hug her back.

For all the years I’ve spent looking at Rose and wondering what she understood about life that I didn’t, maybe the answer is nothing.

Maybe neither of us knows what we’re doing.

She’s simply been more willing to make a choice and live inside it.

When she pulls away, she kisses the top of my head and returns to the floor, where she immediately takes the sweater back out of the taking pile.

I decide loving someone means knowing when to stop asking questions.

For approximately thirty seconds.

“So Flora knows about the job?” Veronica asks, once Rose has moved on to deciding whether she needs four nearly identical tank tops for several months on the Washington coast.

I nod. “I called her when I left Phillip’s office.”

Dani looks mildly wounded. “Before us?”

“You got a group text from the elevator.”

“One thing is not like the other, babe.”

“No, because Flora asks useful questions and you usually respond to every text message with a handful of exclamation points and a GIF of a celebrity mom saying, you’re doing amazing, sweetie.”

“It communicated my feelings very effectively.”

It did, actually.

I smile, remembering Flora’s call. And after a few minutes of silence, I realize I’ve stopped talking and my two friends and my sister are watching me.

“What?”

Veronica takes a sip of wine. “Nothing at all.”

Across from the coffee table, Dani smiles but seems to decide, for once in her life, not to contribute.

“Guys, what?”

Veronica shakes her head. “You were talking about Flora.”

“I talk about Flora.”

“Okay, keep going.”