Page 46 of Silver Sweet

The coffee pot beeps. I fill up a cup with one hand and then send Tom a voice note with my other.

“First off, no more shower thoughts. Wait untilafteryour shower to call me. Second, it looks like we’re both free tonight. Where do you want to meet up?”

11

TOM COBALT

“Are you lighting a candle, brother?” Eliot asks with a wry smile. “Setting the mood?” I regret putting him and Luna on a video call. It is a serious character flaw that I can’t even be alone in this apartment without calling my two best friends.

But they’re the first people I dialed as soon as I had the place to myself.

“Dude, it’s not like that.” I blow out the candle I just lit.

“I thought the candle was nice,” Luna tells me, her camera so close to her round face, I just see a blur of glitter on her cheeks and her light brown hair twisted in space buns. She’s been jostling the phone while she rushes to a 7 p.m. business seminar at Manhattan Valley University.

Luna Hale is my twenty-two-year-old cousin and the third component to our dynamic, unbreakable trio. Our family dubbed us “the troublemakers” ever since we were teenagers caught climbing trees and vaping between the branches.

Now we’re in our twenties and our dreams have become bigger and more important than doing cartwheels on a golf course and partying till sunrise. Eliot’s in the last round of auditions for a new play on Broadway, and Luna is beingmentored by our Uncle Stokes on all things Fizzle while in college.

Our Grandfather Calloway built the soda empire, and when he kicked the bucket last year, he made a stipulation in his will that one of his grandchildren be named successor. Just so there’d be time to mold us into the perfect CEO.

After the board considered a handful of my brothers and cousins, Luna became that someone. She’s now contractually obligated to take over theentirecompany. Luna Hale being the Fizzle heir is still hush-hush in the press, but the stress on her isn’t invisible.

It feels like the three of us are gripping onto our dreams by our fingernails. We don’t have a solid hold yet, but sometimes I think about what happens if they do seize everything they’ve ever wanted.

What happens if I don’t.

I can’t bear an outcome where Eliot’s a world-renowned actor, Luna’s the CEO of the biggest soda corporation in the world, and I’m struggling to fill seats in a small local venue.

Like I’d besofucking happy for them…but it’d crush me. Even envisioning it causes instant tortured breathing and sheer fucking panic. That makes me a shit person, right? That I can’t even find a way to be happy for my best friends without envy and despair. I hate that future.

I will become my worst self in that future.

It can’t happen.

Happy thoughts, Tom Carraway. Those come in the image of a tall jerk-off named Phoenix St. Pierre.

He’s my last hope for success at this point.

I stare harder at the three-wick, pine-scented candle as smoke billows. Ben bought a ton of these soy candles when he moved in. I think it was to set the mood for his girlfriend—but that’snotwhat I’m doing here.

Not…at all.

It’s not like I’m dressed for a candlelit dinner. I have on ripped jeans and a dark muscle tee that says BOWIE.

I move the candle to the other side of the kitchen counter. Then back to the first spot on the marble near the sink. I look up and realize the door is literally right there. This’ll be the first thing Phoenix sees when he enters the apartment.

All my brothers are MIA tonight. Ben, at a game board club thing on MVU’s campus. Eliot, at the theater. Beckett, ballet rehearsal. Charlie, unsure—but I would guess Central Park. The city might contain millions and stretch for miles, but it’s not big enough that I haven’t run into Charlie reading at the Ramble by the stream.

He has spots.

Routines.

With everyone occupied doing their own thing, I figured it’s perfect timing to invite Phoenix over to work on songs. Less chances for Beckett to interrogate him about his arrest history and for Charlie to do Charlie things.

I’m smart enough to know prolonging that meet-and-greet is better for my sanity.

But now I’m freaking debating on whether acandleis too much. Come on. It’s not like it saysI wanna bang you. Right.