for what, three, four years?”
I shrugged. “Seven years. And three of those, Dad was sick. She took care of him better than anybody else could. She probably deserves to live in that house forever.”
Dani pulled my suit coat closer around her. “I remember the night you told me about losing both your parents.” She shook her head. “It still doesn’t seem fair.”
A memory flooded my mind of Dani in my arms, our legs propped up on the coffee table in front of the sofa in my New York apartment. “I remember that night, too. You cried.”
She huffed out a small laugh. “It was a really sad story.”
Losing both parents to cancer within a couple of years was a sad story. I was generally used to the sympathy expressed whenever people found out. But Dani had given me more than sympathy. She’d taken a little bit of my sadness and felt it like it was her own. I’d never forgotten how different that felt, how she’d made the burden feel a little lighter for her willingness to help me carry it. “That’s the night I really started to fall in love with you.”
She stopped on the sidewalk, gripping the lamppost beside her. She closed her eyes, her lips pressed together in a thin line. “Don’t, Alex,” she said, leaning toward the lamppost, her voice so soft I almost couldn’t hear. “You can’t say things like that.”
“I’m sorry.”
She pushed away from the post and walked down the sidewalk at a good enough clip, it was clear she wanted to put some distance between us. I followed behind, respecting the distance, waiting for her to make the next move.
Finally, she turned around, the fire in her eyes evident even in the dark, across six feet of sidewalk. “So Isaac knew you were back in Charleston because my mom told him about our break-up?”
I nodded. “I think so, yeah.”
“And he just called you up and offered you a job?”
“Basically, yes. He sent me a resume request through LinkedIn.”
She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. “There are so many weird things about that sentence.”
I grinned. “It felt a little weird to me, too. But I appreciated him trying to keep it professional.”
“Is it just you and Isaac living together?”
Ha. If only. “No; the whole team lives there. It’s a pretty big house.”
Her eyes went wide. “Tyler? Vinnie?”
I nodded. “And Mushroom. I’ve never actually figured out what his real name is. Oh, and Steven. He’s the co-host Isaac hired last year.”
“Mushroom’s name is . . . Marvin? No. Marshall. Which almost sounds like Mushroom? I haven’t met Steven.”
“They’re all friends from high school, right? Except Steven?”
She nodded. “From elementary school, even. At least Tyler and Vinnie have been around that long.”
“It’s a very interesting group,” I said. “But honestly, it hasn’t been as difficult as I expected it to be. We all get along, and I appreciate how much they look out for each other. They treat each other like family. And they are genuinely the most nonjudgmental group of men I have ever been around.”
“Hey-hey, you do you, bro,” Dani said, in a voice lowered to sound like her brother.
“That was an unnervingly accurate impression,” I said. “But mocking aside, that is why I like it there.”
“I bet you were overdressed your first day of work.”
I laughed. “I feel overdressed when I’m wearing the most casual thing I own.”
It couldn’t last, not with the history between us, but it was nice talking back and forth like we used to. It felt good to laugh with her.
After a few moments of silence, she stopped one more time to face me. “I hear what you’re saying, but I’m still not sure it adds up in my brain. You and Isaac living together, working together every day. I don’t want to make it all about me, but he’s my brother. Is that part not weird for you?”
I sighed. “It was, at first. It felt a little like I was torturing myself just by being around him. But I was desperate. Things with Alicio got really bad. I had to separate myself from him, from the whole company, and it didn’t feel like I could do that without leaving the city. I looked for work in Charleston, but nothing felt right. When Isaac reached out to me, he tossed me a life preserver. I actually didn’t plan to move in long term, not initially. I thought I’d find my own place somewhere, but then your brother