The video ended and Juliet had gone dead weight in my lap. Eric swooped in and scooped her up from my lap. “I’m gonna take her up and let her sleep for a bit in your bed, if that’s okay?” he whispered.

“Of course, anything she needs,” I whispered back, noticing the look of pure affection on his face as he carried her up the stairs with a practiced ease. The second he was gone, Alexis all but launched herself onto the couch next to me.

“Speaking of people who personally mean a lot to you,” she said with a sisterly smirk, “we didn’t get to finish our conversation about Dean because Juliet wanted to switch from Play-Doh to pretending that the floor was lava.”

I grabbed a bag of mini marshmallows from the table—an ideal slumber-party snack and my sister’s favorite. Handing them to her, I said, “There isn’t much more to say. Dean Knox-Morelli basically”—I cast an uneasy glance at our shared wall, wondering how much he could hear—“fucked me into the next stratosphere, and he’s probably over there right now, listening through the wall with his ear pressed to a water glass.”

Her eyes widened. “Do you really think he’s eavesdropping?”

I considered it and shook my head. “No. He’s much too nice and respectful to do something like that.”

Alexis settled back on the couch and propped her feet on my lap. Twister hadn’t seemed like the easiest time to fill in my sister and brother-in-law about what happened between Dean and me at the art museum the night before. So I went with telling them while we were building with Play-Doh instead and proceeded to have a frantic and hilariously whispered conversation using hand gestures and creative euphemisms that made Alexis laugh so hard that she cried. Eric kept putting his hands over Juliet’s ears, who was deeply concerned with the structural integrity of our castle and oblivious to the adults at the table.

My sister tapped the inside of my arm with the edge of her foot. “Do you like Dean?”

“Of course I do.”

Her brow furrowed, like she didn’t like my answer. Eric came back down the stairs, shaking his head. “It’s been a while since I’ve been at Lin’s house, so I keep forgetting that Jon Bon Jovi’s picture could be sewn into so many different types of fabrics.” He dragged one of the dining room chairs over to the couch and sank down into it. He looked at Alexis and said, “She went to sleep easy. No problems.” To me, he said, “Are we finally talking about Dean now?”

Alexis passed him the marshmallows. “Tabitha likes him.”

His eyebrows shot up.

“What?” I said with a laugh. “He’s incredibly likeable. It doesn’t mean anything.”