“Uh, no, sir,” Jasmine mocks me, and I elbow her in the side. She bursts out laughing, and so do I, and we get to work.

It takes us twenty minutes of working side by side, with zero fooling around, to finish and clean up enough not to leave a gross mess for the crew that’ll be taking care of it at the end of the night. By the time we head to our respective showers, I positively reek.

As I scrub the smells of onion, garlic, and bell pepper from my skin, I can’t help thinking how funny it is that Jasmine comes off as the most dauntingly sophisticated seventeen-year-old girl on the planet, but when it’s only us, she’s somebody else entirely. She’s playful and warm and has the patience of a saint when she’s teaching me about exposures and light meters and how to get the best angles in selfies. She’s like her dad in her excitement to get me to try new things, and like her mom in how much joy she gets from fashion, makeup, and styling. Yesterday, she finally pulled me into her closet and demanded I let her give me some things she never wears, things she swears are too small, and before I know it, I’m wearing an entirely new outfit from earrings to anklet. (Her having dinky-size feet like mine was too much to hope for, unfortunately.)

And later at night, especially nights when Mom and Declan are at events, or traveling to meetings, or even nights where Mom passes out early and Declan locks himself in his suite, far away from the rest of us … those nights show me something else entirely.

We inevitably end up in her bed, curled around one another and playing with each other’s fingers or giving each other chills until one of us finds an excuse to place a kiss on the other. It’s agony, waiting until I can figure out how to get away with it, or waiting for her to, waiting, waiting, waiting until we can explain it away with sleepiness or drunkenness or just wanting the other one to feel and taste how amazing this new lip gloss is.

I’ve started to think about them in advance, how I might excuse dropping a kiss on this one spot on her neck that always elicits this tiny noise that makes my toes curl. It isn’t quite a moan and it isn’t quite a growl and as soon as I hear it, I’m out of my mind for the rest of the night.