I roll my eyes. He’s clearly egging me on with the overuse of smuggle. “No. I stuff those in my mouth on the way home. They never actually make it through my door.” He laughs now, and it’s so beautiful to hear that I get goosebumps. Which I really shouldn’t be getting. “Jonah doesn’t like hot dogs,” I continue, like he doesn’t know his twin’s tastes.
“If you were attacked by hot dogs when you were ten, you wouldn’t like them either.” And then I giggle so much when he tells me how there was a hot dog eating contest they entered at a local fair, and Jonah made himself sick from eating too many. He threw up for hours and has sworn off them ever since.
A big grin stretches across my face as I lean back into the couch. “I didn’t know that.”
“Why would he tell you this? I mean, it’s a story about him puking after overeating. That’s not the sort of impressive thing to share, especially with a girl.”
“You told me!”
“I told you,” he says slyly, “that Jonah was the one throwing up. I haven’t shared any of my own embarrassments.”
I try my best puppy dog face, the one that cracks Jonah in less than five seconds flat. “Tell me one.”
But he’s no dummy. “Nope. I like my pride, thank you very much.”
Fine. “I have to hide the hot dogs from Cora, too. Because she gives me crap for eating them.”
Kellan sighs, all amusement gone. “I wish she’d take that stick out of her ass already.”
Whoa. “What’s this?” I ask, sitting up.
“What’s what?”
“You sound, I dunno, anti-Cora.”
He’s thoughtful for a moment. “Do I?”
“Yes?”
“Well,” he says, looking down at the cuff on his wrist, “you can’t really blame me, can you?”
Caleb cautions me to tread carefully. “Why no love for Cora?”
He’s staring at me like I’ve somehow missed the boat. “Honestly?”
“Obviously.”
And it comes at me so quietly that I’m not even sure the words are real. “If you recall, she’s the reason we broke up.”
“Oh.” Pause. “Oh.” Caleb no longer has to flash his warning signals. I already know that I need to back off, and do it fast, even if the real reason we broke up had to do more with my feelings toward Jonah and less with Cora’s big mouth.
But Kellan is already backing off himself. He picks up a picture off of the coffee table, one of Jonah and me at the beach on a day in which Jonah’s efforts to teach me to surf once again failed miserably.
Kellan taps at the image of the surfboard I’m holding. “Still having trouble?” I nod, and he continues, “You should’ve let me try teaching you when you had the chance. Jonah’s great at a lot of things, but he’s not exactly the best instructor. Joey always said he was too much of an introvert for it. Poor Cal finally gave up on his attempts to help after a really miserable month that barely had her standing up in baby waves.” He grins, like we’d never talked about Cora and her machinations at all. “I got her comfortable in five footers in less than a week.”
“Do you and Callie go surfing a lot?”
“Sometimes.” He thinks about it. “We went to Hawaii a few months back.”
“Hawaii?”
“Yes, C.” He’s amused. “Hawaii is famous for surfing.”
“The bar was decorated like Maui,” I tell him. “You know, when Callie and I were drinking toxic Mai Tai’s. It was nice.”
“The toxic part or the Maui part?”
I give him a look. “Maui. Duh.”
“Speaking of . . . have you guys island hopped over there yet?”
“Kellan. Callie and I hung out for the first time ever last night.”
He puts the picture back on the table. “You know I meant you and J. Or do you two stick to Kauai?”
I stare at him for a long moment. And then—“Huh?”
It’s his turn to look confused. “You guys have gone to Hawaii, haven’t you?”
I’m suddenly so lost in this conversation. “No?”
His forehead creases. “Why not? Don’t you like the islands?”
“I’m sure I would adore the islands if I could go there. Or anywhere, really. Remember? I fantasize about traveling.”
“Are you telling me,” he asks slowly, “that Jonah hasn’t taken you to our house in Hawaii yet?”
It takes a moment for his words to make sense to me. By then, imaginary hands have wrapped around my throat. “You . . . he . . . house in Hawaii?!”
It’s his turn to lean forward. “Okay. This is definitely not something for you to get worked up—”
I slice my hand through the air. “Since when? How long have you two . . .?” My mind just can’t wrap around this. Because, wouldn’t I have heard about this by now? Me? Jonah’s FRICKING FIANCéE? My words are auditory bullets. “Owned! A house! IN HAWAII!”
He’s the one to tread carefully now. “Um, three years now?”
Why wouldn’t Jonah tell me about such a thing? Is it a secret? “How do you have a house?” I demand, irrationally irritated at Kellan, too. Because, obviously, he could’ve mentioned this at some point as well.
“Joey left it to us. Was his, now ours.” He says this almost exactly like the time he told me he’d—no, they’d—inherited surfboards from their honorary uncle. How easy would it have been to further the sentence: “We inherited a bunch of surfboards from Uncle Joey, plus a house in Hawaii.” So easy, right?