Jake cautiously grabs a martini glass off the shelf and hands it to her.

“Don’t judge until you try it,” she says, pouring.

“But I don’t want diabetes,” he says with a grimace.

“Whatever. Suit yourself.” The glass is filled to the rim when she pulls the shaker away, and she sighs, satisfied. But then she just stands there and stares at it.

“Are you going to try it?” Jake asks.

“Of course I am.”

“Okay, because it looks like you were just going to admire it all night.”

She bites her bottom lip, pulling off some of her pink gloss. Her hand shakes as she brings the glass to her lips. I wonder if Jake sees it too. I wonder if he, like me, knows this is what happens before she melts down. But maybe not anymore. She said she’s changed, and after seven years without seeing her face, I can’t claim to know shit.

Jake ducks his head and whispers something in her ear, and I know he sees it too—is probably offering to go somewhere and talk with her, if I had to guess. I’ve missed this family and their closeness, the way they can fight like rabid dogs one minute and have each other’s backs the next.

Shay shakes her head. “I’m a little stressed. It’s fine. I just need to self-medicate for a minute.”

Jake gives her one last long look and nods before disappearing into the kitchen.

God must be smiling down on me today, because sometime during Shay’s martini-making production, the guy who was sitting next to me cleared out, leaving cash for Jake.

I nod to the vacant barstool. “Sit here, Shayleigh. We’ll self-medicate together. Unless you are giving me the silent treatment, that is.”

I wait for it—that smile of hers that makes me believe that somehow everything will be okay, the comforting stillness of sitting next to her, the warmth of her laughter. Hell, it’s been too long since I’ve heard that sound, since I’ve watched joy blossom on her face and felt like maybe I was born to put it there. I’ve missed her.

Except Shay doesn’t flash me her smile or sit by me. She certainly doesn’t laugh. She slides her sweet concoction in front of me and says, “On the house. I have to get out of here.”

“I thought you needed a drink.”

When she meets my eyes, I’m taken back to Paris, to my hotel room in Chicago, to her bedroom out at the lake and the hundred other times she met my eyes and I felt like Superman. “I was wrong.” She turns around, but instead of leaving through the front, she ducks out from behind the bar and stomps off to the bathroom.