She shot him an inquisitive look, tilting her head to the side. “The charity gala? ‘Cause you’re good at fucking up a lot of things, but I don’t even know how you could mess that up,” she said, then the corner of her lips twitched playfully.

He threw the ball at her, but she caught it quickly. “Ha. Now I have your weapon.”

“To answer your question, no, not the gala. But things with Michelle.”

“Ah,” Casey said, and set down the iPad. “So you like her a lot?”

He took a deep breath, nodded several times and sat up. This was not a conversation to be had lying down. “I do. I really do. She’s . . ..” He started, but let his voice trail off. He shared more with his sister than anyone, but could he really say all the things that were forming on the tip of his tongue? Amazing, smart, beautiful, direct, open, lovely, funny, and absolutely perfect for him. “She’s great,” he said, and it seemed wholly inadequate, but when Casey flashed her winning smile he knew she understood all that was unspoken.

Casey drummed her hands on the coffee table in excitement. “You should bring her to the gala next month,” she suggested.

Jack narrowed his eyes. “It’s not like that.”

“What? How is it not like that?”

While he might run a sex-centric company with his sister, he didn’t want to dive into the finer details of his sex arrangement with Michelle. So he deflected. “That event will be crawling with photogs. She’s a prominent psychologist. I sell dildos. I should do my best to keep her out of the limelight.”

Casey laughed, then tossed him the ball. “Well, when you put it like that, you are kind of Captain of the Dildos.”

He caught it easily in one hand. “And you’re Queen of the Dongs.”

“I wear that title with pride,” she said. “So when do I get to meet the Princess of the Weiner Dealer?”

Jack cracked up, a deep, rumbling belly laugh. After his shoulders stopped shaking, he threw a question back at his sister. “Why are you so focused on my love life?”

She shot him a look, like he was crazy for asking. “Because I don’t want you to wind up like Mom and Dad,” she said, as if the answer were obvious, and when she phrased it that way, it was. “The last four years when you were already in college and I was still home were the worst. Dinners were painful. I’m just glad you were in school nearby.”

Their parents had met in college, married soon after, and then proceeded to drift apart for the next twenty-one years they were together. He swore they kept a calendar and marked with an X each day until they neared Casey’s high school graduation. Bitter, snippy, unhappy people, they simply didn’t want to be together anymore, but they clearly felt it was their duty to do so until they got Casey out the door. Jack had tried to come home on weekends as often as he could, to rescue Casey, take her to the movies, attend her swim meets, help her with homework and then college apps. As soon as graduation came, their dad walked out the door happily swinging his suitcase, and their mom threw a party.