Somewhere Between Us

Chapter 16: Family Ties

Claire found her on a Saturday, unannounced, waiting outside the café at the end of Zoey's shift with two coffees and an expression that suggested she'd been planning the ambush for a while.

"I come bearing caffeine and an agenda," Claire said, holding one cup out like a peace offering. "Don't worry, the agenda is just 'spend time with you that doesn't involve my mother watching us like we're a science experiment.'"

"That's oddly specific."

"You've met my mother." Claire fell into step beside her as they walked, easy and unhurried, the late afternoon light doing something soft and forgiving to the whole street. "I like you, by the way. In case that wasn't obvious. I know that probably doesn't mean much, given everything, but I wanted to say it properly instead of just implying it at dinners."

"It means something," Zoey said, and found she meant it. Of everyone in Dylan's family, Claire was the only one who'd never once made her feel like she was being assessed, filed, catalogued for later use. "Thank you."

They ended up at a park two blocks over, sharing a bench and watching a group of kids attempt something that might have been soccer if any of them had agreed on the same rules, and Claire talked, easily, unguardedly, about nothing in particular at first, her design classes, a professor she found insufferable, a roommate who left dishes in the sink with the same casual disregard Dylan once had.

"Can I ask you something?" Claire said eventually, turning serious in the particular way young people did when they'd been building up to a real question through a lot of smaller ones. "Is it hard? Being in our family, I mean. Even just the appearance of it."

"Sometimes." Zoey considered how much to say. "Your mother's a lot. Julian's complicated. I'm still figuring out where I fit in any of it."

"You're not missing anything, if it helps. I don't think anyone fully fits in it." Claire pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around them, something younger and more vulnerable slipping through her usual brightness. "My mom's always so careful about everything. Every room she walks into, she's already three moves ahead, like she's playing a game the rest of us don't know we're part of. I used to think that was just what being a good hostess looked like. I don't know anymore."

"What changed?"

"Nothing, really. I just got older and started noticing things." Claire shrugged, though something in the gesture didn't quite match its casualness. "Julian's been weird lately too. Quieter. He used to at least pretend things were fine, and now he doesn't even bother with the pretending. I don't know what's going on with him, and I don't think I'm supposed to ask."

"Do you worry about him?"

"Always. He's my brother." Claire said it simply, without hesitation, and something in the plain honesty of it struck Zoey harder than she expected. "He's not a bad person, whatever anyone thinks. He's just been unhappy for a really long time, in a way nobody in our family knows how to actually talk about. We're better at performing fine than being fine. It's sort of our specialty."

Zoey thought of Dylan, of the careful walls he'd built and rebuilt over years, of Marguerite's too smooth redirection at dinner, of her own carefully rehearsed answers about her family and her father, and understood, with a small ache, that Claire had just described something true about all of them, herself included.

"For what it's worth," Zoey said, "I think you're good at noticing things other people miss. That's not nothing."

"I try." Claire smiled, some of the earlier weight lifting. "Anyway. Enough about my dysfunctional family. Tell me something good. Something that isn't about any of us."

Zoey hesitated, then found herself telling Claire, almost without deciding to, about Marisol and the café and the strange, persistent want that had lodged itself in her chest since that Tuesday conversation, the idea of it being hers, actually hers, not borrowed or granted but built.

"You should do it," Claire said immediately, no hesitation at all. "That's not a small thing, wanting something for yourself. You should chase it."

"It's complicated. Money, mostly."

"Everything's complicated when it comes to money in my family. Doesn't mean it's not worth wanting anyway." Claire bumped her shoulder against Zoey's, warm and easy. "For what it's worth, I think Dylan would want you to have it. He's not as oblivious as he pretends to be. I've seen the way he looks at you when you're talking about things you actually care about. It's different from how he looks at anything else."

Zoey didn't have a response for that, mostly because she wasn't sure she trusted herself to examine it too closely, and let the conversation drift instead, back to safer things, Claire's design portfolio, the kids still arguing about soccer rules across the park, the particular relief of an afternoon that asked nothing more of her than to sit still and be liked.

She got home before Dylan that evening, the apartment quiet and gold with late light, and was halfway through reheating leftovers when the door opened and he came in, tie already loosened, one shoe somehow already off and dangling from two fingers.

"There's a raccoon-sized hole in my schedule where a very important call was supposed to happen," he announced, dropping the shoe by the door, "and instead I spent forty-five minutes on the phone with a man who wanted to explain, in exhaustive detail, why his golden retriever should be legally recognized as a company shareholder."

"I'm sorry, a what?"

"A shareholder. Apparently the dog attends more meetings than half my board, so by his logic, it's earned equity." Dylan collapsed onto the barstool across the counter, looking genuinely, gleefully exhausted by his own day. "I told him I'd take it under advisement. He seemed satisfied. I have no intention of taking anything under advisement."

"You're going to be sued by a dog."

"I welcome the lawsuit. Finally, an opponent I can respect." He reached over and stole a piece of bread off her plate without asking, the particular casual theft of a man who no longer bothered pretending he wasn't going to do it, and then, spotting the mug sitting by the sink, her chipped, sentimental one, smirked in a way that told her exactly what was coming before he even reached for it. "This is still technically unclaimed territory, you know. I've been meaning to revisit the mug conversation."

"Absolutely not." She snatched it before his fingers closed around the handle, holding it protectively against her chest. "We settled this months ago."

"We never settled anything. You just won by being faster than me that one time." He was grinning now, easy and unguarded, watching her clutch a chipped coffee mug like state secrets. "One day I'm going to get that mug, and it's going to be the best day of my professional life."

"You have a company worth billions of dollars and this is the hill you've chosen."

"Every man needs a hobby." He took another bite of stolen bread, watching her with an expression that had gone, without her quite noticing the shift, from teasing to something quieter, more attentive. "You look happy, by the way. Suspiciously happy. What happened?"

"I spent the afternoon with Claire."

"Ah. That explains it. She has that effect on people." He took another bite of stolen bread, then reached into his jacket and produced, with a flourish, a small black card, sliding it across the counter toward her. "Speaking of things that happened today, I had Halloway set this up. It's yours. Full access, no limit, no questions asked."

Zoey stared at it. "Dylan, I don't need—"

"I know you don't need it. That's not the point." He nudged it closer. "I want you to have it anyway. Buy something ridiculous. Buy fifteen ridiculous things. I have more money than I know what to do with, and it would genuinely make me happy to watch you stop doing the math in your head every time you want something."

"I don't do that."

"You absolutely do that. I've watched you do it in three different stores now, very subtly, like I wouldn't notice." He said it gently, no mockery in it at all, just quiet observation. "Let me do this. Please. I promise I won't make it weird."

She picked up the card slowly, turning it over once, something warm and complicated rising in her chest that had nothing to do with the number attached to it and everything to do with the fact that he'd noticed something that small about her at all. "This doesn't mean I'm giving up the mug argument."

"Wouldn't dream of asking you to." He grinned, easy and delighted, and reached over the counter to steal a third piece of bread purely, it seemed, to watch her swat his hand away. "You're going to starve me out of my own kitchen."

"It's my kitchen too. Technically. Contractually."

"Ah, there it is. Married two months and already citing legal precedent against me." He caught her hand instead of the bread this time, lacing his fingers loosely through hers, some of the teasing settling into something quieter. "Good day, then?"

"A good day," she confirmed, and let herself lean into him for a moment, into the warmth and the easy banter and the small, stolen ordinariness of it, no investigations, no brake lines, no careful calculations about what to say and what to keep hidden, just the two of them standing in a kitchen at the end of an afternoon, close enough that neither of them needed to perform anything for the other at all, and light enough, for once, that it didn't feel like it was costing either of them anything to admit it.