"See ya later, Remy baby," he taunts as he walks away.
I'm seething as I grab the other double shot and down it without so much as a wince.
"Well, this is going to be interesting," Hailey murmurs.
2
Remy
I wake up to the delicious smell of eggs and bacon wafting through my apartment. I groan happily, thinking for the millionth time how grateful I am that my sister is a brilliant chef.
Sure enough, when I shuffle into the kitchen with bedhead and a sleepy smile, I see Hailey at the stove with a skillet in her hand and a dish towel thrown over her shoulder. She flips the omelet as I plop down on the bar stool behind the island.
"I don't know how you do it," I mumble. "It's 7am and you're already dressed for work looking perfect, making a breakfast that would've taken me an hour to figure out."
"That's because your cooking skills are so bad that you have to pore over every line of a recipe and then look up what 'mincing' means," she laughs. I glare at the back of her head—even though she's spot on. I actually burned water once.
"Not the point," I grumble. "I think the joke about you being dropped off by the stork might have some truth to it, since no one else in the family is even close to being an early bird. I don't know where you got it from."
She shrugs as she slides the omelet onto the plate in front of me. My mouth immediately starts watering. "I have a lot to do today," she reasons. "I'd rather get to the café early and get everything done so I have time to make Steve dinner before he gets home."
I pause my chewing as I consider my next question. I've sensed something is off about my sister's relationship recently, but she hasn't seemed eager to talk about it, so I haven't pushed. But my sister spidey senses are starting to go from tingling to fire alarms and I feel like I need to start pushing a little bit.
"You can always sleep here if you don't want to go home," I tell her softly. "I know you guys have been a little off lately. Maybe you need some space. Like more than a night."
Her shoulders drop and I can practically feel the sadness in her stance. "No, it's okay. I want to see him tonight. He already texted me this morning that he misses me and can't wait to see me. I'm just going to head home after work." She looks up at me with a fake smile plastered on her face. "All good. What's your day look like?"
Her deflection isn’t fooling anyone but I decide to drop the subject anyway. I dig back into my omelet.
"I have back-to-back meetings with some of the Subject Matter Expert engineers today," I say around a mouthful of egg. "I read over what they wrote and now I have to sit down with them and basically translate their techy speak into normal person speak. It's great. I get to be looked at like I'm an idiot all day long. I'm living the dream."
Hailey shoots me a pitying glance. I don't even have it in me to jokingly wave it off.
"Thanks for the omelet," I say with a mouth full of bacon. "This is one of your best."
"Bacon crispy enough for you? I practically turned it into charcoal."
I glare at her smug face, both of us remembering the time sheactuallyburned my bacon to charcoal so she could prove to me that there was such a thing as 'too burnt.'
"Yes, it's perfectly crispy," I snap as I shove another piece of bacon in my mouth.
She laughs as she dumps her dishes in the sink and finishes the rest of her coffee. Slipping on her pea coat, she grabs her tote bag off the island. "Okay, well, I'm out. Thanks for letting me stay over. I'll call you tomorrow to figure out the plan with Jax for the fights this weekend. Which I'm actually looking forward to, by the way. I can't remember the last time the three of us hung out with just us."
I smile when I realize she's right. Once Jax and I went off to college, it was rare that the three of us managed to get our schedules to match. This Saturday will be the first time in a while that we’ll all be together.
"Okay, have fun at work," I tell her as I happily crunch through the last piece of bacon. "And let me know if Steve acts up. I’ve been itching to introduce him to Bennie."
She lets out a loud laugh. "Let's not bring Bennie the Bat into this just yet.”
I grin triumphantly at the fact that I made my sister laugh. "You just tell me when you're ready for him. Bennie hasn't seen any action since your high school boys."
"Nuh uh, you said you brought him out when that guy in your hall thought he could follow you into your dorm room."
"Oh yeah, I forgot about that guy." I frown. "Guys are fucking morons."
She laughs again and I swear it's the happiest sound in the whole world.
I turn back to my plate with a sigh, a small frown crossing my face. I love my sister more than anything and it kills me when she's not happy. From the age of fourteen she's been a supremely independent person, doing what she needs to do to be successful and creating her own happiness—she’s never been reliant on another person for either of those things. Jax and I have known her current boyfriend wasn't going to be the one, for the sole reason that he doesn't drive her to be better and doesn’t particularly add anything to her life. But we never thought he could actually drag her down. We just always assumed Hailey would cut any guy the second he started giving her more bad times than happy ones.