Page 1 of The Best I Never Had

Chapter 1

THEA

Whoever came up with the phrase “diamonds are a girl’s best friend” is a dirty liar.

The gigantic rock catches the light, sending a swirl of colors around it, like living inside a kaleidoscope. But the brightness is nothing compared to the smile on my little sister’s face as she wiggles her fingers.

There were a lot of things I expected when I came in for my shift at Cibare, an intimate Italian restaurant in our small town halfway between Orlando and Daytona Beach. Having to tolerate creepy men so I can get enough tips to pay my rent. Knowing I’ll have twice the number of tables as usual because our asshole manager cut down on the staff to trim the fat. Avoiding said asshole boss at all costs.

What I didn’t have on my bingo card was my twenty-three-year-old sister showing up in my section, waving around an engagement ring the size of the Hope Diamond while yelling, “Surprise!”

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Addy asks with a sigh, straightening the ring when it slides sideways on her finger. “Harrison said we can get it sized so it stops twisting like that, but I can’t bear the idea of taking it off.”

Harrison. The man my baby sister is apparently marrying. This is the first time I’ve heard the name. I didn’t even know he existed before today, a fact I don’t have time to unpack when there’s someone at one of my tables yelling about the amount of ice in her iced tea, another patron calling out, “When you have a second,” and a third frantically waving his hand through the air like an inflatable tube man to signal for the check. The terrifying stack of bills at home is the only thing keeping me from blowing them all off and demanding an—inevitably long—explanation. Why would Addy hide a guy she’s dating, much less serious enough about to marry?

A voice in the back of my mind whispers he isn’t the one she’s hiding.

I shake off the intrusive thought. She loves me. We’ve been there for each other through everything. Thea and Adelaide. Tia and Addy. The Pappas girls. Just the two of us.

Until now.

I keep my eyes glued to Addy, pretending like I don’t see Tube Man waving even more aggressively in my periphery. “So, Harrison?”

A dreamy look takes over her face, blissed out like our mom after one hit too far. Not that she’d remember those days.

“He’s the best, Tia,” she says, the lifelong nickname that belongs solely to her slipping easily from her tongue. “If I could make a perfect man, he’d be it. I laugh with him, like, all the time. And he’s gorgeous. The most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.”

Another pair of eyes—the one I guarantee would actually win the mantle of Most Beautiful Eyes—flash in my mind, and I push the memory away.

“He sounds great, Addy,” I say. “But … isn’t it fast?”

Her body stiffens and her smile slips before she plasters it back in place, like a construction worker half-heartedly spackling the side of a building for repair.

“We knew each other for over a year before we started dating.”

“Because he’s your boss,” I say slowly, still working through the sixty-second info dump she gave me when I walked up.

She breathes deeply through her nose, then slips on a patient, if slightly exasperated, smile. “Harrison is not my boss. He was my supervisor, but he moved to another department almost a year before he asked me out.”

“Another department of the company his family owns that you work for. I know I’m not a professional”—I put the word in air quotes—“but isn’t that, like, a big no-no?”

“There’s no conflict if I’m not reporting to him,” she says, her voice going higher with each word, and I imagine a timer counting down on her forehead, a bomb about to explode. But before it can, she sucks in another breath, calming the rage in a way I never mastered. “I know him. I love him. And I’m not giving up my soulmate because the way we met isn’t perfect. I’ve never felt connected to someone like this before.”

I tense my muscles to stop my flinch in its tracks. It’s not that I don’t want her to find someone to spend her life with. It’s just that she’s slowly slipped away from me over the years since I aged out of the foster system and we were separated. But this moment, her creating a family of her own, feels like the final step in our relationship’s inevitable doom.

“Why the rush? You’re so young.”

She’s barely out of college with a little over a year in the real world. I’m five years older and have no idea what I want in life. How can she?

“Why should I wait?” she asks, her pleasant demeanor holding up, but the tightness in her words—something only I’d notice—gives away her frustration. “I want to marry him. He wants to marry me.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Stop, Thea,” she says. Her use of my real name is like a slap to the face. “Have I ever done something irresponsible?”

The implication is clear. She’s the levelheaded one. The one who always makes the right decision, who thinks things through and weighs all options before jumping in.

Meanwhile, I’m the screwup. The one who lets my emotions get the best of me. My temper and inflexibility have cost us plenty over the years.