OceanofPDF.com One moore time Mariana zapata

OceanofPDF.com

Copyright © 2026 by Mariana Zapata All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Book Cover Design by Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations Editing by Hot Tree Editing OceanofPDF.com

To everyone I love— I wouldn’t have had it in me to write this if it weren’t for you OceanofPDF.com

CONTENTS Author's Note: 1. January 2. February 3. February 4. February 5. February 6. February 7. March 8. March 9. March 10. March 11. March 12. April 13. May 14. May 15. May 16. June 17. June 18. July 19. July 20. July 21. August 22. September 23. October 24. December 25. February 26. February 27. February/March 28. April 29. June 30. June

31. June 32. July 33. August 34. August Epilogue Merch and More Acknowledgments About the Author Also by Mariana Zapata OceanofPDF.com

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a fictional book where I took a lot of liberties (AKA I made up a lot of it… all of it) Nothing is advice. OceanofPDF.com

I CHAPTER 1 JANUARY t never failed to surprise me just how many times a day I had to stop myself from calling someone a dumbass. “…sellers aren’t willing to repair the foundation.” This was one of those moments. But no matter how much I wanted to, how much some part of my soul needed to do it—and definitely regardless of how much this specific dumbass could benefit from hearing about this kind of fault in her character —I wrangled it in. I saved that one little word in the compartment of my brain where the “real me” lived. Real Veronica and Work Veronica were two totally different people, after all. Real Veronica called everybody other than Mom, Dad, and Abuelita a dumbass. All of my brothers might as well have “dumbass” as a middle name from how often I called them that. But in their case, it was basically a term of endearment. Most of the time. Work Veronica, on the other hand, could not throw it around as much as she wanted to. If there was a career where you could call someone that and not get in trouble, I hadn’t found out what job that was. Real estate wasn’t it. Right then, unfortunately, Work Veronica was still on duty.

She was always on the clock when I spoke to this particular dumbass; I didn’t trust Real Veronica around her. “I understand. I made it clear to my clients that was a possibility after our last conversation,” I replied in a professional tone that deserved a pat on the back. Not just because it had sounded so levelheaded, but because I was talking to someone I couldn’t stand on a good day, and I was managing to do it while I was stuck in rush-hour traffic on my way to do something I didn’t want to do. I’m trying, damn it. My New Year’s resolution had been to reduce the things in my life that brought me stress, which meant carefully picking what I allowed to make me feel that way. And there wasn’t a thing I could do about I-45 traffic—at least that’s what I told myself every time I was stuck in it lately. I was pretty sure an ulcer I’d had a couple of years ago might have been caused, in part, by yelling “fuck, fuck, fuck” while trying to strangle my steering wheel multiple times a day. Sometimes, I liked to imagine it was my ex-husband’s neck. Thinking about that—strangling my ex—had me loosening my grip before glaring at the rows of red brake lights ahead of me. None of this is a big deal. Not the three miles an hour I was currently driving, and not this bullshit with a top-tier dumbass. …much like the owner of the house I was heading to. But that was something else I didn’t need to get hung up on. I could only handle two irritating things at a time, max. The problem was, I had expected this response and behavior from Sara, and I had been prepared for it, which meant I had also prepared my clients for it too. This wasn’t the first time in my eight years in real estate that a seller wasn’t willing to do repairs that were highlighted on an inspection report, and it wouldn’t be the last time it happened either. It drove me nuts when homeowners sabotaged a deal by being stubborn, but at least this time, I wasn’t the one representing the party making a poor decision. The good thing was my clients had basically paper-rock-scissored between two properties before deciding on this one, which was about to not work out. Not that this dumbass knew that. “The owners had their foundation repaired four years ago,” Sara claimed, her voice strangely easygoing for someone who was about to lose

out on a pretty great commission. “We can provide receipts that the work was done in the recent past.” Was four years considered recent? I shook my head before raising my voice so the Bluetooth in my car could catch my response over someone honking in the lane next to me. “I appreciate the offer.” That was a lie. I didn’t appreciate her half-assed way of trying to appease us—my clients and me—but that was another thing Work Veronica was keeping to herself. “But if that’s the case, we won’t be moving forward if the repairs they’ve requested aren’t addressed,” I told the other realtor as I got to accelerate to a whole ten miles an hour. If I squinted really hard, I could see the shape of the sign up ahead that pointed out my exit. As soon as I got this next showing over with, I could go home, and I couldn’t wait for that. I’d spent most of the day dreaming of taking my shoes off. Changing out of my too-tight skirt. Splurging on food delivery before I did paperwork while some rerun played on the television in the background; I’d been forced to skip lunch, and I was so hungry. But first, I had to show potential buyers an overpriced house that felt like it was never going to sell. This traffic needed to go so I could check that off my list and move on with my day. Just like this conversation needed to go somewhere. Normally, I might have gotten upset at a deal falling apart, but a family I’d been working with had closed on a house last week—they had signed the final paperwork to buy a property—which resulted in me getting paid, so I wasn’t too worried about money at the moment. There was also the fact that when a property had major foundation, roofing, plumbing, or electrical issues, I got pretty hesitant about moving forward with a home purchase, even when it wasn’t my money being spent. I didn’t want anyone I worked with to get screwed over. My clients wouldn’t be happy, and they wouldn’t recommend me to their friends, and I needed all the word-of-mouth business I could get. Those referrals were what kept me busy. “My sellers would be willing to provide a five-hundred-dollar credit toward closing,” the realtor, who should have been on my side but never had been in the decades we’d known each other, offered after a moment. I changed lanes and sped up to almost thirty miles an hour. I’d swear the only times 45-north didn’t have traffic were between midnight and 6:00 in

the morning. “I’ll pass that along, but I’m just letting you know that if that’s the best renegotiating you can do, we’ll be backing out of the contract. I’ll have the paperwork to you by tomorrow morning.” When we hadn’t heard back from her a couple hours ago after I’d initially reached out, my buyers had gone ahead and asked what their other options were. It had taken us five minutes to come up with plan B, which didn’t include moving forward with this property. They were real go- getters, and I appreciated that. The moment of silence over my speaker had me smirking. What Sara should be trying to do, instead of haggling with me, was talk her sellers into fixing an issue we both knew was going to come up regardless of who ended up purchasing the home. Lenders—the businesses who financed homebuying—required an inspection of a property before a loan was approved. Afterward, potential buyers received a report with a list of issues the inspector found, and while there were a lot of problems that could be relatively easy to resolve or that could be ignored, a major one like a potential foundation issue was going to be a huge red flag. Which all basically meant that anyone financing this home was going to run into some problems getting approval to move forward. I knew that and so did this dumbass, and so would any other realtor who heard about it, except Sara was trying to pretend otherwise. She did that a lot. In any other case, I could applaud her dedication, because I sure as shit wouldn’t want to be in her position. These kinds of issues were why I suggested my buyers have their homes inspected before we put them on the market so we could get ahead of problems and save ourselves a headache or two. But what did I know? “Sorry we couldn’t make this work, but good luck with the sale of the property,” I said, still using my Work Veronica voice as my exit finally came up. “Wait, you’re being serious?” she suddenly snapped, her forced professionalism disappearing as fast as her loyalty had. “As serious as you are, Sara,” I told her. She didn’t say bye. She just hung up on me. I snickered. It wasn’t every day I got to piss off my cousin.

Leaning back into my seat, I fought a small wave of disappointment at a sale falling through. But that was just part of the job. Plus, I honest-to-God had anticipated something coming up. Nothing with her was ever easy. Knowing Sara, she was probably going to go crying to her dad over it, but it would die there. My uncle was a softie and a pushover with his only daughter, but I made him more money than she did, so too fucking bad. The truth was I loved doing real estate—most of the time. It was the perfect job for me—when I wasn’t questioning my life choices at 1:00 a.m. after getting texts from my clients that made my blood pressure skyrocket. I was able to set my own hours. I worked with who I wanted to—for the most part. I got to bicker and haggle, two of my favorite things. I got to win sometimes. Lost a lot, which kept me humble, but the wins made up for the losses. And I might complain about it from time to time, but as my mom had always half-bragged, half-groaned, I loved solving people’s problems. Loved it. Sure, there were good parts and bad parts to working in real estate. The housing market was a roller coaster, people could be stupid, and I was on my phone half the day, but there was a lot to enjoy about it. This wasn’t my first sale to fall through, and it wasn’t going to be the last, and my nervous system just needed to get over it. Sara had always been an idiot, and I hadn’t expected her to suddenly stop being one. It was why she was tied with one of my other cousins for being my least favorite family member. Everything would work itself out. My clients would find another house, and if they didn’t, they didn’t. And these hardheaded dumbasses I was no longer going to have to deal with were going to struggle to sell their home until they eventually broke down and fixed the problem. And that wasn’t going to be my problem. My problem now was the listing—the term we used for a property that was listed for sale—I was on my way to. I’d had a bad feeling about it since it had been passed on to me, and three months later, I regretted taking it on. Even though it hadn’t exactly been my choice. My broker—my boss and my uncle all wrapped into one— had basically thrown it at me after two other realtors at our office “gave up

on it,” Sara being one of them. I knew I’d been in for it when she had rolled her eyes when I’d made myself ask her about it, and Victor, the other realtor, had patted me on the back. They both refused to talk about it. So far, I’d done everything I could, and I could go to sleep at night just fine knowing that. It wasn’t my fault people were stubborn. And that was what I kept telling myself as I took the exit that would lead to the house I was about to give a tour of. I had tried my hardest at least three different times to talk the owner—and his manager—out of having me do these tours every time a potential buyer wanted to check the house out. The thing was, nobody liked having a stranger breathing down their neck, blowing smoke up their butts, and hyping up the marble counters from Italy. You either liked a house or you didn’t, but my words fell on know-it-all ears that wanted to pretend I didn’t know what I was talking about. I wasn’t going to get mad about that anymore either. It didn’t take long to wind my way through The Woodlands, an area north of Houston that was its own city but had been absorbed into the greater Houston metropolitan area over the last couple of decades and was basically considered a suburb by many. Fortunately, I entered the gated neighborhood pretty quickly since my name was on the list of approved permanent visitors at the guardhouse. One huge house after another dotted the one-plus-acre lots on the other side of the gate. The smallest “mini mansion” in Rolling Hills—the name of the subdivision—was seven thousand square feet, with the average home value being five million. The house I was trying to sell came in at about nine thousand square feet, about six or seven thousand more than the majority of houses I normally dealt with, and around five million dollars more than any other house I’d ever sold or helped someone buy before. Most realtors would have jumped at the chance to have a listing in the seven-digit range, but I’d fought off a sense of dread every time I parked in front of the massive colonial home. There were a whole lot more expectations when you were involved in a deal at a certain price range, and sure, the commission could be life-changing, but it had never seemed worth it to me. Most sellers and buyers at that bracket were different than the people I was used to. But it’ll be worth it, I told myself as I walked up the driveway and then the pathway that led toward the front door, where I used my phone to unlock the smart lock.

Lights, unlock the doors, flush the toilets, I went over the list in my head of the things I needed to do. There was a camera security system set up along the perimeter of the house, but I didn’t have access to it, so I wasn’t responsible for disarming it. Please, Jesusito, let me sell this house, I prayed as I stepped inside the most expensive home I’d ever been in. It was definitely something. Normally, just about every real estate agent I knew told their sellers— people selling their houses—to consider taking down highly personal belongings. You wanted people to envision themselves living in a house they toured, and having blatant reminders that someone else currently lived there made that difficult, even in a best-case scenario. Early on in my career, there had been a family who had their entire staircase leading up to their second floor covered in pictures of themselves, and I mean covered. It might as well have been wallpaper. There had been photographs of them traveling to different countries, of staged moments on beaches and in parks, and silhouettes of them holding hands as they walked. I had very gently suggested they take down half of them, and they had argued it was unnecessary… until feedback from three back-to-back tours had called their photo wall “creepy” and “uncomfortable” and said that it gave their kids “the ick.” The family had been so butthurt, but they eventually took down their mural, and guess what? The house sold soon afterward. Since then, I’d shared that story with every homeowner that had something similar, and nine times out of ten, people listened. But one second inside the colonial made it very clear that this particular owner had ignored every suggestion I’d given him. And that was one of the many things that had gone wrong with this listing from the beginning. Because again, it wasn’t like I knew what I was talking about. The first thing anyone noticed when they took a step inside was the artwork. If you could call it that. There was also the gigantic sectional that took up way too much of the primary living area, and the oversized television that made a spacious wall look cramped. I had told the owner he should think about replacing one or

the other because they were huge and made the room feel much smaller than it was—another suggestion he’d ignored. Another issue was the blinding cyan blue I’d also recommended be painted over, but hadn’t been. I loved bright colors as much as anyone, but neutrals tended to sell better because they were less distracting, and most people weren’t adventurous with their paints. To me, though, the biggest issue with this property was that every single person’s eyes immediately went to the images of a half-naked man that took up just about every inch of wall space in the entire house. And I meant the entire house. Even in the bathrooms. Everywhere you looked, there was a wet, shirtless blond man in shorts so tight they looked like they’d been painted on. To be fair, those shorts—and the water covering him—had paid for this house, and however many other houses and cars he owned. While most people wanted to remain anonymous when they were selling their homes, this guy thought potential buyers knowing he was the owner would make them want it more. Those had been his words. And that’s why the first “artwork” anyone saw when they walked in proclaimed: “The Greatest Olympian of All Time,” right above a swim cap, a muscular torso covered in beads of water, and a hint of that swimsuit as it emerged from a pool. “An American Hero,” the Minutes Magazine print beside it proclaimed, really sealed the deal. “The Face of Swimming” was layered over various pictures, all of which featured a body I had definitely appreciated, like most of the world had… before I’d started working for the man it was attached to. The man as in George Moore. The George Moore. AKA the biggest pain in my ass for the last three months, and that title had a lot of weight behind it because I had several pains in my ass. Some of them I was related to. Or, as I referred to him when I complained to my family, Dumbass Who Doesn’t Listen, because I’d had to sign a nondisclosure agreement that prevented me from telling anyone he was my client. Because signing an NDA when he had pictures of himself everywhere made so much sense.

As far as I knew, the only people who were aware that I was selling the house of the most famous Olympian of all time were the potential buyers I’d given a tour to, my coworkers who had worked for him before me, my broker, and his representatives. Sighing as I suppressed the familiar irritation I felt at my suggestions being ignored, I reached out to flip on the lights, reminding myself that if I managed to sell this place, I’d be able to— Nothing happened. I flipped the switch down, then up, then down and back up again, but nothing happened. Let’s try it again. Down, up, down, up. “What’s happening?” I said out loud, thankful for the sheer curtains covering the windows so I could still see clearly. I sidestepped toward the next set of switches beside a canvas of the man known to the world as simply “Moore” in the tiniest blue speedo as he sat on the edge of a pool, one hand running through his short hair. Ten years ago, I might have stood there with my arms crossed like I was in a museum observing a timeless piece of art, but now, his body was old news. I’d been seeing his half-naked ass regularly for months by this point. I tried the second set of switches and still nothing happened. It has to be the breaker box, I figured, as I made my way through the huge house, flipping each light switch I passed on the way to a laundry room the size of my bedroom and finding that none of them did anything either. Opening one of the gray metal doors that were at eye level, I used the light on my cell phone to illuminate the rows of black switches, hoping to find one out of place, but they were all where they should’ve been. I checked the second breaker box, and that one was the same story. The third and fourth boxes were no use either. None of the switches were flipped. Balling up my fist, I put it against my mouth and let out a very long, slow sigh. I could not cuss out my client in his own house. I took a deep breath and realized that the air smelled a little musty, like the AC hadn’t been running. Moving toward the big, ceramic sink that looked brand-new, I turned on the tap for the hell of it. No water came out.

“Okay, this is fine,” I said out loud to myself as I thought about what to do. First things first, I pulled up the information for the realtor that had scheduled the showing I’d driven over for and called him. It didn’t take long to apologize and make up a story about the power being out—which wasn’t really a lie. He was a little annoyed, but I couldn’t blame him. He claimed they’d reschedule, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath. I wouldn’t want to come back either after having my time wasted. With that done, I left the laundry room and found the contact in my phone saved as Beetlejuice on River Forest—Beetlejuice because of the NDA, and everyone I worked with was saved under the name of their street —and tried the water in one of the half-baths on the first floor, but nothing happened there either. I was no electrician or plumber, but common sense said there was only one easily explained reason why the water and the power wouldn’t be working. The line rang and rang… “The voicemail you are trying to reach is full…” I pressed my fist against my mouth and tried calling again as I went into the garage to where the water shutoff was. Lo and behold, it was not turned off either. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” I said to myself as I hung up and called one more time. “Hello?” a groggy-sounding voice finally answered right as I almost gave up hope. “Mr. Moore?” I asked, biting my cheek as I ducked back inside the house. We’d spoken on the phone plenty, but his voice wasn’t distinctive enough for me to recognize it from the get-go. It wasn’t too deep or too high. “Uh, who’s this?” the male voice replied after a second, sniffling. This again. We’d spoken on the phone twenty times by now. And each time, he answered like he had no idea who could be calling. I rolled my eyes only because I knew the power was out and his cameras wouldn’t catch me. “This is Veronica Rubio,” I replied, figuring that had to be enough information. It was half the time. I was wrong. Today was going to be one of those days when he didn’t remember my name either. It was every three calls—on average—that he developed

selective amnesia, I had figured out. But it was fine. He didn’t need to know my name; we just had to work together to get his place sold. That was all that mattered. “Your realtor,” I explained slowly, just barely holding on to my Work Veronica voice. Money, money, money, I reminded myself of why I put up with this. Medical bills, medical bills, medical bills. Abuela, Abuela, Abuela. A loud yawn had me blinking. “What?” Was he asleep? What time was it? “Your realtor. For your house in The Woodlands.” Mr. Twenty-Something Gold Medals let out another long yawn. “Ohh. The realtor.” He grunted. “Does somebody wanna buy the house?” We both wished. “Not yet.” Here we go. “I’m calling because I’m at your house right now for a showing, and the water and power are both off.” “Okay,” George Moore replied, but it came out in a way that made me feel like he wasn’t listening. He sounded half-fucking-asleep. I would know all about men pretending to listen when they weren’t. I had a lot of experience with it from my brothers. In their case, I could usually use it against them when I needed to, but it didn’t work when I actually needed this man to give a shit. It wasn’t like I could get the utilities restored myself. Though I had a feeling he was going to turn this around and ask me to resolve it somehow. In the three months since my broker had dumped his listing on me, I was willing to bet George Moore had only paid attention to about a fourth of what I’d told him. During the majority of our conversations, there had been someone around him—usually a woman or two—talking to him, and it had been obvious from the number of times I’d had to repeat myself that his mind had been elsewhere. Talking to me was not a priority. Selling his house wasn’t one either. When money wasn’t an issue, why would he care? And that was why George Moore had tried to pawn me off on his manager originally, I thought. Not that that had lasted long. To be fair though, the face of swimming hadn’t been mean or even abnormally rude; he was just a human shrugging emoji. Like he couldn’t ever be bothered, and that made him not one of my favorite clients. Not even close. And this conversation, along with the countless reminders

around the house of all the recommendations I’d made that he had blatantly ignored, reminded me of why I had tried to get out of working with him. Helpless people drove me fucking nuts. I had a rocky relationship with professional athletes too. And most people who had assistants or people who worked for them, I’d learned, relied on them so much that they easily became useless with a lot of things. From my experience with him, that was Mr. Greatest Olympian’s problem. But I could really use the money from this commission, and I had made a commitment to work with him, so damn it, I was going to do all that I could until our contract ended. Which meant that I had to get my frustration under control. I pulled the phone away from my face before bringing it back to my ear. I could do this. For my grandma, I could do anything. “Mr. Moore, you don’t have power or water, and I had to cancel the showing that was scheduled. The breakers weren’t flipped, and the water wasn’t turned off in the garage.” I couldn’t believe I was about to say what I was about to say, but… I tried to gentle my voice. “Is there any way that the power and water bills weren’t paid?” There was no response, and I could have sworn I heard him breathing deeply. “Mr. Moore?” I would have bet twenty bucks the quick sound of him sucking in a breath over the line was the same one I made when I got woken up by dropping my phone on my face. “Huh?” he asked, sniffling again. I gritted my teeth. “Is there any way that the power and water bills weren’t paid?” I repeated myself. Another yawn came over the line. “What? No.” “Could you double-check and make sure that your payments went through? Maybe you got a new credit card, and it didn’t get updated in the billing system?” That had happened to me before. The next sound he made was the same one I made when I was stretching in bed. “I don’t know. Can you call and find out?” There we go. Exactly what I’d been waiting for. Him to ask me to do it. “If I could, I would, but the account isn’t under my name and companies are pretty sensitive about sharing personal information,” I tried

to explain before he sighed. “Look.” Another yawn. “Just call my manager and let him know what’s going on. He’ll get it sorted,” the guy that the entire country had rooted for at the last few Olympics suggested before letting out a long, sleepy sigh. “What was I saying? Oh yeah, just call him. I wouldn’t even know who to call.” George Moore chuckled softly in a way that confirmed he gave zero shits about his house not having power or water. I pulled the phone away from my face once more before bringing it back toward my mouth. Maybe he thought it was cute to not know basic things, but I didn’t. I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t his fault. He paid someone to take care of all the stuff that didn’t interest him, which was more than likely everything that didn’t include swimming. You didn’t get to become the best by not making it a priority in your life, I understood that. It wasn’t his fault that not giving a shit was literally the least attractive trait anyone could have, in my book at least. I tried again. “Mr. Moore, I understand that you’re busy, but—” “I’m gonna go back to sleep, but call my manager,” was all he said before hanging up. I love my job, and I need money. I need a lot of money. I love my abuela. Barely holding on to my patience, I scrolled through my contacts for Beetlejuice’s Manager (on River Forest) and called. The line just rang again, but at least his voicemail wasn’t full. “Hello Mr. Carter, this is Veronica Rubio. I’m Mr. Moore’s realtor in the Woodlands. I just spoke to him because the power and water are off at the house on River Forest. Could you please find out if there’s an issue with their billing and, if so, have it reconnected? Please give me a call if you have any questions, but I look forward to hearing back from you. I can’t show the house unless the power is back on,” I said as professionally as I could before ending the call. Dropping both my hands, I looked up at the twelve-foot ceiling and reminded myself that this was just a fucking job, that my potential commission would pay off a huge part of the debt that weighed my soul down, and that getting utilities turned back on was no big deal. At least it wasn’t a foundation issue. OceanofPDF.com

“I CHAPTER 2 FEBRUARY ’ll let you know as soon as I hear back,” I told my client, who was on the other end of the line. “Thanks, Veronica!” Linh, half of the couple I was working with, replied. “Have a nice day!” I smiled as I said, “You too,” and hung up. What a fucking relief. Linh and her husband, Nam, had been the same couple that had been trying to purchase the house with the foundation issue weeks ago. Unfortunately, the other home they’d been interested in had gone under contract before we’d been able to do anything, but after touring another handful of places in their price range, they had finally decided on one they both liked. Now I just had to do my part to get it for them, which meant getting home so I could get an offer together. I avoided going into the office unless it was absolutely necessary. The less time I spent around my cousin Sara, the better for everybody. The sound of my phone ringing suddenly filled my car, the name Beetlejuice on River Forest flashing across the screen on my dashboard. It had been two whole weeks since I’d heard from George Moore. Two weeks since he’d brushed me off with his water and power issue. Fourteen whole days since he’d started ignoring my calls. He’d never responded to my texts from the beginning, so I’d given up on those a while back. Every

time I’d tried to check in and see if anything had gotten resolved, I’d gotten nothing. And two fucking weeks into the three months I had left with his listing, since I’d started having to decline showings—what we called when potential buyers came to tour a home—because nothing had been done. His manager hadn’t called me back either, despite my reaching out to him twice a day, every day. Needless to say, Mr. Face of Swimming and his manager were officially on my shit list at this point, and unfortunately, I couldn’t tell him that, despite how badly I wanted to. Why people put off fixing problems when they were trying to sell their houses was beyond me, and then they wondered why their places weren’t selling, and somehow it was my fault…. I punched the button on my steering wheel harder than I needed to, pulled my Work Veronica personality around me because it was necessary, and answered, “Hello, Mr. Moore.” You couldn’t even tell I wished I could call him a dumbass. “This is my realtor, right?” he replied in a rush. There were voices in the background, like there usually were. I blinked as I switched lanes and reminded myself for the thousandth time that this man was going to make me a shit ton of money. If I could sell his house, that was. “Yes,” I replied, wondering what was going on. He had never called me before. It was always me hunting him down. “Where are you?” “I’m sorry?” “One of the neighbors just called and said someone’s stealing my car!” My first thought was, this wasn’t why I’d told him not to leave cars in the driveway, but it sure as hell would’ve prevented it from happening. What I actually said was, “Do you need me to call the police?” I mean, why wouldn’t he call them first? Why wouldn’t the neighbor do that instead? Dumbass helpless people… Wait, how did they even get into the neighborhood when it was gated? “I already did,” Mr. Moore snapped, making me blink. “Right before I called you. Can you go by the house and make sure no one’s gotten in?” You know what else would’ve helped right then? Having a working camera system, which is what he would’ve had access to if he’d gotten his

power restored. But I swallowed that down too and fought the urge to tell him that I couldn’t drop everything and go. Did he expect me to hold people at gunpoint if they were stealing his stuff? No amount of money was worth me getting injured. I’d rather be in debt another decade. I could sit in the car and record them. Damn it. I hope the realty karma gods are paying attention and will repay me someday in the future, I thought, as I kept my voice professional and said, “Sure. I’ll drive over there now.” “I’m leaving the airport, but I’ll be there as soon as I can,” George Moore said quickly before hanging up on me again. My hand formed a fist, and I thanked the universe that I was already closer to The Woodlands than I was to my house in Spring—another part in the northern Houston metropolitan area just south of his home. It took longer than I would’ve liked, but less than usual, to make it to his neighborhood. Hopefully, the cops are already there, I thought, as I turned onto his street and immediately slowed down. Neighbors stood outside the mini mansions on his block, and each and every one of them were staring in the direction of his house. Some of them were filming. Some of them were bunched up in groups, gossiping. I realized why almost immediately. In front of the brick home—with no sign in front of it because it was against HOA rules—was a tow truck in the middle of loading one of the two cars that had been parked outside of George Moore’s home for the last three months. This vehicle was a low-to-the-ground orange BMW with a license plate that said 23MEDLS. I’d rolled my eyes so hard the first time I’d read it. Missing from the driveway, though, was the lime green Lamborghini that had been even more of an eyesore. But it was the law enforcement car parked near the tow truck that almost had me doing the sign of the cross. At least until I spotted the two deputies standing in front of his house as they watched the BMW get loaded up. I parked behind the sheriff’s car and threw the door open. “Hello,” I called out as I walked up to the deputies. The man and the woman turned to me. “I represent the owner of this house, and he just called me saying that someone was stealing his cars,” I explained.

The deputies suddenly looked uncomfortable. “The towing company is within its legal rights to take the vehicles,” the female deputy explained slowly and tightly, like she was trying to imply something. “We checked their documentation.” I wouldn’t say I was a genius, but there was only one reason why cars could be getting towed legally, and I thought I figured it out in record time. They were getting repossessed. This dumbass hadn’t paid his car notes. I stared. “Nothing is being stolen then?” I asked slowly. They both shook their heads. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I stared at them. They stared at me. This might have been the most awkward moment of my life, and I’d once walked in on my ex, butt naked, on our bed with another woman. I stood there watching the tow truck driver finish preparing the BMW for transport before it took off just as a black SUV turned onto the street and then pulled into the driveway. I was going over how this house was turning out to be the biggest mess of all the homes I’d ever sold when the rear passenger door of the SUV opened, and a long, pale leg swung out, followed by another. Then another pair did the same. And because two tall women weren’t enough, a third climbed out of the other side. At the same time, the front passenger door opened, and a man in black sweats got out, towering over everyone else by several inches. He was the one my eyes got stuck on. A black beanie was tugged low on his head as he looked around, hands going to the top of his beanie where he linked them together. The man stared down the street in the direction of where the wrecker had gone. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone else get out from the driver’s side, open the trunk of the SUV, and pull out multiple suitcases, which he propped on the driveway before getting back into the car and pulling away a moment later, leaving the man and the three women standing there. The man looked like he didn’t know what state he was in, and the women looked almost as confused. “Is that him?” I heard the male deputy whisper to his partner.

“Maybe. Let’s go have a word,” she responded. They looked at me. “I’ve only spoken to him on the phone,” I told them since they seemed to be asking me for confirmation. With his hair covered and fully dressed, I couldn’t be positive it actually was him. Because what was I going to do? Ask him to pull up his shirt so I could confirm his abs matched the ones I’d been seeing in all the pictures inside the house? I didn’t think so. The officers made eye contact, then headed for the driveway. Was he George Moore? As far as I knew, I didn’t think he’d been to the house since I’d taken over the listing. But it had to be him. How the hell had his cars gotten repossessed? I wondered. Those kinds of things didn’t just happen by accident. I had a cousin who had gotten at least five of his cars repossessed, and I knew for a fact that he’d gone at least three months without paying on each of those loans before a tow truck driver had to hunt him down. He’d told me all about it one night when he’d been trying to talk me into cosigning a loan for him—I hadn’t. But as I walked toward the driveway too, I couldn’t help feeling that his power and water had been shut off for nonpayment. I’d come back to the house multiple times to check if the issues had been resolved, but nothing. I’d even talked to a couple of people I worked with, and they all made the same kind of face I would’ve made when I explained the situation. Power or water getting cut for a day or two because of an accident was one thing, but there weren’t a whole lot of explanations for why it would happen for longer than that. And definitely not both at the same time. Houston hadn’t been pummeled by a hurricane or a tropical storm in months, and that was always the reason why there were problems with both. The possibility that George Moore—an icon, a worldwide celebrity for his athletic feats—could be in financial trouble seemed so impossible, it almost felt like I was committing treason thinking it. He was the human version of a bald eagle. When you thought of someone who embodied America, he’d be somewhere in the top ten list of people you would think of. Over the last decade, I’d seen commercials of him regularly. He was a millionaire. At least, he should’ve been. He better not be past due on his property taxes. He better not have any liens either. I hadn’t even imagined that could be a possibility, but now that

I did, I swear I felt cold and sick to my stomach. I could not fuck this up. I’d be out thousands. I’d paid for new photography, drone footage— “Mr. Moore!” one of the officers called out as they approached him. Please, God, let there not be some problem that would mess up this deal. Please, please, please… Otherwise, I was going to strangle him with his own medals if he screwed this up for me after all the work, time, and money I’d put into it. But I had known he was going to be a problem. I’d known it, and so had my boss, who had made it seem like he was doing me a favor. My uncle slash boss was friends with someone in George Moore’s camp, which was what had gotten our group the listing in the first place. This would be more than anything else you’ve ever sold, he’d tried to bullshit me. It would be great for your career, Veronica. It might open up another clientele for you. And my dumbass had said no. Twice. But in my gut, I’d known. George Moore might be an American icon, but he was also the same man who had been arrested twice. I’d looked it up to make sure I hadn’t imagined it. One arrest had been for breaking and entering, and the other had been for getting into a fight with some other swimmer, as a quick search had confirmed. The charges had been dropped both times, but an arrest was an arrest. While I hadn’t been into celebrity gossip since elementary school, when Abuela and I would read tabloid magazines she bought at Fiesta, her favorite local grocery store, I had seen just enough about him to know that he’d been called a “partygoing playboy” for a very long time. Pretty much his whole career, I assumed, based on how he was in the news every couple of years. I was also pretty sure he’d been suspended once or twice from the United States Swimming Association, but that I hadn’t confirmed yet. As much as I tried not to judge people unless I knew them personally, it was hard not to side-eye that kind of thing. The fucking up. I had four younger brothers, and there had been no way in hell I was going to let them turn out to be a bunch of helpless fuckboys. “I wouldn’t even know who to call!” might be cute to some people, but I liked competent humans. Not people who needed others to do everything for them.

Remembering that had me squaring my shoulders and lifting my chin. This was my job, after all. He might not be my favorite person to ever exist, but I was going to help him. Because I had to, but also because I would only be helping myself by helping him. The faster this place sold, the faster I could move on. And the less I’d owe. As long as there aren’t any serious problems going on that I’m not aware of. I was going to have to get to the bottom of that ASAP. I couldn’t risk wasting any more of my own time either with all these signs pointing to there being some serious shit going on. I stood back as the officers talked to the man who may or may not be George Moore. He had his height, six foot four or five, I figured, with long limbs hidden beneath baggy, dark sweats. But it was the bone structure visible between his shoulders and the bottom of his beanie that sealed the deal on his identity once I watched him long enough. One of the most memorable things about the “greatest swimmer of all time” was his bone structure. It wasn’t often I used the word “pretty” to describe a man, but George Moore’s appearance fell into that category. Ten years ago, I would’ve definitely described him as hot. Beautiful high cheekbones that a model would bargain their soul for graced the face of one of the most incredible athletes of my generation. Even the mugshot that had been on his Infopedia page looked like it could’ve belonged on a magazine cover. Some people were blessed with either good looks, athletic bodies, great personalities, or smart brains. Some of us were lucky to get a little of one or two. I couldn’t say much about his personality or his brains, but George Moore had struck the jackpot in not one but two of those categories. There was a serious reason why he’d gotten so many endorsements for practically everything from sports apparel and shoes to being plastered on billboards for a watch company with my favorite retired soccer player, to underwear, cologne, cell phones, a workout app, a breathing-technique app… everything. Sure, part of it was his twenty-something medals, but it sure didn’t hurt that he was considered to be a physical masterpiece of a human being. …one who may or may not know how to pay his bills. I couldn’t hear what he and the deputies were talking about, but he looked flustered, his slightly tan skin turning pink along his cheeks, his

forehead wrinkling. Much sooner than I would’ve expected, the deputies backed off, their expressions torn and uncomfortable, and then I realized it was my turn. But just as I took a step forward, the man I was 99 percent sure was the same person I’d been communicating with on and off for the last three months turned to the group of women huddled together on the driveway. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his sweats, and I heard him say, “You need to find somewhere else to stay.” I was not going to judge my client. I’d wait until we didn’t work together anymore. The girl in the middle, a beautiful brunette, frowned in response. “You said we could stay here.” “And now I’m saying you can’t,” More-Than-Likely George Moore replied, his tone not mean, just matter-of-fact. It kind of reminded me of the voice my mom used on us when she told us to do something. Not asking but telling. He definitely didn’t sound like the same guy who was always laughing with other people whenever I called him. All three women looked like they’d been slapped. “But you said—” the same brunette started again, her voice rising in pitch. “I know what I said, and now I’m saying no. You had a hotel booked; that’s what you said not an hour ago. Something’s come up, and I need to take care of it,” he went on, still sounding firm. Or detached, maybe. “We were going to hang out,” the woman beside the brunette, another brunette but a more caramel one, complained. “What was that about anyway? You said your cars were getting stolen, but those cops didn’t stop that tow truck driver who just left.” I watched Maybe Mr. Moore’s face tighten. “We met four hours ago.” Shoulders that I hadn’t noticed were crazy wide went up into a shrug that really didn’t seem all that apologetic to me. “I don’t know your last names. I can’t remember two of your first names, if you really wanna know. I don’t have time for this right now.” His voice hardened, just as his eyes did, when none of them responded. “I’ve got something to deal with, and you can’t stay. What else do you want me to say?” Two of the women scoffed, and the one who hadn’t made a peep went red-faced as she started patting around her pockets, presumably for her cell.

“An apology would be nice,” one of them threw out. “I don’t think so.” He’d snickered that out like he couldn’t imagine doing that. The woman’s scoff was impressive. “Are you kidding me?” “No,” he replied as he shoved his hands in his pockets. “Fuck you then,” the woman in the middle snapped before whipping her phone out of her crossbody purse aggressively. “What a joke. You’re such a dick.” Ouch. “Whatever you say,” More-Than-Likely Moore sighed, his expression full of disbelief, like he couldn’t fathom why someone would assume he’d care about their impression of him. “You switched seats with the person sitting next to me. You were the one who wouldn’t leave me alone the entire flight. You insisted on coming with me. I didn’t ask for any of that.” The middle woman scoffed even louder as she punched at her screen like she was mad at it, stopping only to glare at the man who she apparently barely knew. “Yeah, but you didn’t say no when—” “I’m not in the mood to deal with this right now. You insisted. I didn’t. We don’t know each other. End of story,” he cut her off. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be. I’m not trying to be a jerk here, but…” The woman’s face was a volcano of pissed. It got redder and redder. And the long stream of curse words that shot out of her mouth was borderline poetic. Mr. Maybe Moore’s head dropped back, and I watched his throat bob as he stared up at the sky. I knew that move too. It was the same one I did when I was praying for patience. Two of the women kept running their mouths. They called him a dick a few more times, an ass at least twice, and a broke bitch once, all while he stood there, not saying a word, just looking at the sky and possibly trying not to lose his shit. The thing was… I had things to do, and getting this conversation over with was at the top of my list, so I waited five whole seconds before accepting that I wasn’t going to stand there all day waiting for them to leave or for him to do whatever it was he was planning on. I could pretend I hadn’t just seen all this happen.

I couldn’t count the number of times I’d been present when couples I was working with got into fights, and then I’d have to pretend like I hadn’t seen shit and couldn’t sense the tension still lingering between them. Like he could sense me coming toward him, More-Than-Likely Moore finally lowered his head, and vibrant green eyes—a shade so pure I almost thought they had to be contacts for a moment—landed on me. Then his cheeks hollowed slightly beneath those unmistakable cheekbones that definitely confirmed he was George Moore before he smiled very, very weakly. “I don’t have a Sharpie for an autograph right now,” he announced in a strained voice. I blinked and felt my lips part. And even though I knew better, I still looked over one shoulder and then the other, but there was nobody behind me other than the women he’d just told to go away, and they weren’t paying attention to him anymore. They were bickering with each other while all three of them were on their phones. The neighbors across the street were still gawking. And he was looking at me like I hadn’t understood him. “I can’t sign an autograph for you right now.” Was he testing me? Light brown eyebrows hitched up as the man who was definitely George Moore—the same half-naked man I’d seen countless times on posters at this point—narrowed his eyes, and it hit me then that he had the clearest skin I’d ever seen. I’d thought it was makeup this whole time, but… Focus, dumbass. “I don’t need an autograph,” I confirmed, still wondering if this was some sort of fucked-up test. Did he not know what had been in the NDA I’d had to sign? I wasn’t sure of the order, but there had been a list of the things I was and was not allowed to do around him. I knew for certain that at the top of the list had been a big “no autographs” clause. No autographs. No calling him George or Moore, but Mr. Moore. No pictures. No touching. No questions about anything that wasn’t necessary to the sale of the property.

There had been more nopes on the list, but those had been the major things. I wasn’t about to get fired or sued for a fucking autograph. I watched him carefully as I said, “I’m Veronica.” The blank expression that stared back at me almost had me sighing, but the reminder of how much I’d spent on this listing was fresh on my brain, so I bottled it up for later. “Rubio, Mr. Moore. Veronica Rubio. Your realtor,” I explained slowly but not too slowly. “You called me a little while ago?” I tried next. Somehow, there was zero recognition on his face. “We’ve spoken on the phone several times.” That got me something: a squint. I looked at him. I’d had a strong suspicion he genuinely struggled remembering my name despite me giving it to him every single time we’d talked, but I’d tried convincing myself otherwise. Now, I really wasn’t so sure. He squinted those green eyes some more, and I thought, He doesn’t remember it. At least he seemed a little embarrassed about it. I stared up at him, and I mean stared up at him. He was almost a foot and a half taller than me. Those bright green eyes roamed over me. Over my brown-black hair that had shades of lighter colors throughout it I had to go to a salon to keep up with once a month; I’d curled it a little today, leaving it down. The cream blouse I had on was tucked into my pale pink skirt. My appearance was fine enough that he wouldn’t be wondering who the hell was trying to sell his house. “I thought you were a kid,” Mr. Moore said in a voice that sounded suspicious, like he wasn’t sure I was being honest about who I was. Because I was short? Was that what he was trying to imply? “No, I’m an adult,” I confirmed, still clinging to my work voice. It wasn’t the first time someone had pointed out my height. I didn’t think I’d survived a holiday season without an elf joke. “It’s nice to finally meet you,” I forced myself to say in a voice that was not sarcastic. There was no reason for him to know that my goal had been to do all my business with him over the phone and email.

Mr. Moore’s expression stayed pretty suspicious, but he nodded after a second. The fact he didn’t agree that it was nice to meet me too didn’t escape me. Fine. “Did you speak to the deputies about the…” How did I say this without offending him? “Situation with your vehicles?” His demeanor changed in the blink of an eye. “They explained what was going on,” Mr. Moore answered through what were definitely clenched teeth. His nostrils flared on his perfect nose as his eyes moved across something behind me, like he was noticing his nosy-ass neighbors for the first time. A deeper shade of pink rose up on his cheeks before he jerked his attention back down to me. He seemed to be clenching his teeth even harder. He dropped his voice. “Will you talk to me inside where we aren’t being stared at?” “Sure,” I said, looking behind me too and taking in the neighbors who weren’t coming over to be nice but just being a bunch of nosy assholes. But when Mr. Moore didn’t take the lead to go in, I went around him and up the path toward the front door, hearing him follow, rolling his suitcase, the wheels clacking on the path. It didn’t take long to get inside, but the second I opened the door, the strong, stagnant smell of a house without air conditioning hit me in the face, and I took a step back. It had gotten worse since the last time I’d been here. Maybe because he was behind me, or maybe because chlorine had killed his olfactory senses, George Moore asked, “There a problem?” I tried my best not to give him the look I really wanted to give him: my “you-dumbass” face. “The power is still out.” Two things happened simultaneously. The first was that his cheeks went straight red, the color creeping its way down his neck too. And the second was, right after that, his eyes went really wide in an expression that reminded me of the face I’d just fought off giving him. Like he thought I was the idiot here. “Excuse me?” he had the nerve to ask. I’ve been training for this for years. I cannot treat him like a dumbass. I tried to keep my face as innocent as possible, and I was really, really glad my siblings weren’t around because they would’ve been able to see right through my expression. “The power is still out. We talked about it two weeks ago.” I just barely kept the “remember?” to myself.

His eyebrows formed a perfect little arch on his smooth forehead. “And you spoke to Anders?” That was the first name of his manager. The same dickhead who’d been dodging each and every one of my calls too. The same dickhead who I was not about to let get me into trouble. “I’ve called him twice a day since we talked, and I’ve left voicemails each time. I can show you my call log,” I explained, leaving out the part where I’d left him voicemails and texts about it as well. “There’s a problem with the water too.” “There’s no water?” We’d talked about that as well, but who was keeping track other than me? I nodded, staring him right in those clueless but pretty green eyes. “There hasn’t been in at least two weeks.” Which I had reminded him about in each of my messages. If I’d thought he’d been tense before… A big hand rose, and the very beautiful but coddled man in front of me palmed his forehead, covering the entire thing. I watched him take a deep breath in through his nose and out of his mouth. In and out. His breathing getting heavier with each one instead of lighter. Before I could say anything else, George Moore moved around me and went inside, leaving his suitcase where it was. I watched him flip the first set of lights, just like I had done on each of my documented visits. Nothing happened. He blinked, and then those long legs took him to the next closest set of switches. He tried again, and still nada. I didn’t want to be right, but I did get a little bit of satisfaction watching him confirm everything I’d already tried pointing out. I didn’t trust anybody either, but what would I get out of lying about this? Starting to follow after him, I stopped when I remembered he’d left his suitcase outside, and I held back sighing before going out there and dragging it in. I closed the door, then went to the street-facing windows, opened three of the five, and glared some more at the neighbors who were still outside gossiping. Except this time, they were congregating on the street in front of the house. They were talking to the women who had gotten dropped off with Mr. Moore. “None of them are working!” he called out from the direction of the kitchen.

No shit, I thought as I headed toward where I thought his shout had come from. “You think there’s something wrong with that box in the garage?” “That box” was in the laundry room. “We can check again, but that wasn’t the problem every other time I was here. I’ve seen the neighbor’s outside lights on the times I’ve come in the evening,” I explained as I got to the kitchen and found him staring out the windows that showed off the overgrown backyard—another problem I’d been purposely ignoring. His sweats were so loose they hid the world-class athlete beneath them, but all I had to do was look to my right to see just about everything that was hidden at the moment. “So what’s the problem?” Mr. Moore asked over his shoulder. Did he think I was a part-time electrician? “I don’t know for sure, but you could call the power company,” I suggested, strangling Work Veronica for dear life. I’d left at least three messages with that same suggestion already. Mr. Moore slowly turned around. “What’s their number?” “There are a lot of power companies, Mr. Moore,” I explained, wondering if he was asking because he thought I had the number memorized. “I don’t know which one you use off the top of my head, but I can look it up.” The blank face that stared back at me… I wasn’t sure any of my brothers, other than JJ, knew that there were multiple power providers in Houston. It was my job to help Mr. Moore though. Pulling out my phone, I took a few minutes to find the disclosure form he—or somebody, I didn’t want to know at this point—had filled out with the names and numbers of his utility providers. Turning the screen toward him, I held it out. Those green eyes went from me to the screen and back. He had to be fucking kidding me with this helpless shit. “I can’t call for you, Mr. Moore.” I paused. “The utilities are under your name, aren’t they?” I hadn’t even thought that maybe they were under his manager’s or a trust or a business entity. “I don’t know. How can I find out?” he asked, sounding more earnest than I would’ve expected. I wasn’t going to fall for it though.

I lifted the phone an inch higher. “You call. They won’t talk to me.” I would clean his oven, give his bathtub a quick scrub, wipe his windows if I had to. But calling a utility company for him? No. “What if I give them permission?” The Lord didn’t grant me the patience to deal with this level of useless. Help me, Jesusito. “We won’t know unless you call and find out,” I tried, even smiling a little as I did to play off how lazy I thought he was being. That answer must have been good enough because it got him to take his phone out of his pocket and dial the number I’d shown him… after he’d asked me to read it out loud. Part of me expected him to walk away while he had his conversation, because that was something I would do—I wouldn’t want anyone hearing if I was past due on my bills—but he didn’t. He stood right where he was, in his oversized matching sweats with his beanie covering everything but the ends of his hair and put his phone to his ear after dialing. I watched him sigh. “Does it always take this long to talk to someone?” he asked after a couple of minutes of silence where we both stood there as I figured he was put on hold. I nodded, not totally trusting myself to stay as professional as I wanted. All of a sudden, his face changed, brightening. “Hello?” answered the same man I’d watched almost three years ago stand on one podium after another. He sounded friendly enough at least. My phone vibrated, and I peeked at it, finding a text from my brother JJ. JJ: Can you watch the kids on Sunday? Mr. Moore was explaining to the customer service rep about how his power was out as I texted him back. Me: I have showings in the morning, but I can in the afternoon. JJ: Thanks, Shorty. We wanna do something just the two of us. Haven’t decided what. I overheard him ask if he could pass the phone to his realtor and then make a grunting sound as I assumed they said no. I wished that customer service rep a hundred years of happiness before I focused back on my texts. Me: Have another baby. JJ: You have a baby.

I was trying to think of how to respond as I heard the man in front of me say, “How’s that possible?” Side-eyeing him, I noticed he was looking up at the ceiling, but this time he was glaring while he did it. His face was turning red again. “Since December?” His voice went high with that question. Reading the room, I went back to the wall that faced the backyard and took my time opening the windows there too. As much as I tried to pretend like I wasn’t paying attention, I was. I could just air out the house for a minute while I did it. I wasn’t going to bring up how badly the yard needed a mow until he got the most important things working first. “So the payments weren’t going through?” he asked as he dug around in his pocket, whipping out a wallet and pulling out a short pile of cards. “What’s the number on file?” Fuck. I mean, it wasn’t like this wasn’t the exact situation I’d brought up. Maybe his card had expired, or it had gotten stolen and they’d had to cancel it. Both of those had happened to me before. More than once. But the way his conversation continued going made me even more wary. “No, that card is right.” He frowned as he plucked a second card out. “Yeah, I don’t know what’s going on. I’ll call and find out. Can we try another one?” He probably didn’t even pay his own credit card bills. No, not probably. There was no way in hell he did. I’d bet money on it. How could anyone ever give another person that much trust? I wondered, imagining letting a stranger—because the only people in this world I fully trusted were my parents, siblings, and my grandma—be responsible for my finances. It would never happen. Ever. I trusted my baby brother, but I would still hesitate to have him drop off an envelope at the post office for me. Knowing Tommy, he would get distracted on the way and set it down and forget about it for three to five business days. Letting someone have access to my bank account? Again, at least? Nuh- uh, no way, never gonna happen. Ever. I went over my receipts while I walked out of the grocery store. I went line by line over my credit card statements because I didn’t even trust an automated system. And this man right here just assumed he could let someone have access to his accounts and pay his bills?

Must be nice. Or maybe not, if what I thought was happening was true. I hoped not. I knew what it was like to be burned by someone I thought I could trust, and that was traumatizing. Eventually, Mr. Moore said, “Thank you” quietly, and a moment later, I heard him let out a very long, very slow sigh. And maybe he thought he said it low enough, but I heard his soft “fuck” afterward. I counted to ten before I turned to him with my Work Veronica face on. George Moore stood right where I’d left him, but instead of holding the phone to his face, that hand was down at his side, and his opposite one was clenched into a fist right in the center of his chest. He was squeezing his fingers so tight his knuckles were white. “Get it figured out?” I made myself ask. He didn’t look at me. “There was an issue with my credit card,” Mr. Moore answered in a voice far removed from the easygoing one he’d been using when he’d been trying to get me to call the power company for him. It was flat and hard, and it put me even more on edge. “Why would a credit card get declined?” he asked. “Maybe it got stolen and the account was suspended,” I offered first. That got his attention. “Really?” He sounded so hopeful. I guess no one had ever used his card to buy cigars before. “Sure,” I told him before I laid out the truth for him. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t. “Or a payment wasn’t made.” His expression fell instantly. “How can you find out?” the grown-ass man in front of me questioned. “You log into your account. Or you call.” He glanced down, then back at me, and opened his mouth. “I can’t call for you either. But the number should be on the back of your card,” I explained before he could try. Chances were, he didn’t like that I’d caught on to his bullshit before he’d had a chance to get it out, but tough shit. His mouth only went a little flat. “Did you say something else was wrong?” “The water’s off,” I reminded him, keeping my expression as patient as I could. “Could it be a leak?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t see anything obvious, but you never know.” I fucking doubted it though. “Does a plumber need to come out?” I looked him dead in the eye. “There was no water in the holding tank of the toilets.” It had made me wonder just how long the water had been off and if I just hadn’t noticed. My words meant nothing to him, I knew instantly. “You might need a plumber, but I would try calling the water company first,” I suggested. Some way, somehow, his expression dropped even lower than it’d been after the credit card payment conversation. Another slow, slow sigh left his mouth. “Do you have the number?” he just about muttered. I did, and I gave it to him. Twenty minutes later, he slapped both palms against his forehead as “Fucking mother fuck” left his mouth in an angry hiss that I was very, very familiar with from personal experience. He had found out that his water hadn’t been paid either, and when he’d tried to use what I thought was the same card that had paid his outstanding power bill, it had gotten declined. He’d had to bust out another card, and I’d been able to tell he was starting to sweat it. A deep groan left his body as the man who had been on the front of an iconic cereal box let out another “Fucking mother fuck” that came out even angrier the second time. I wasn’t someone to run away from a tense conversation, but… “Mr. Moore, I need to get going.” He didn’t look at me, but he nodded, still palming his face. Still breathing hard. From the little I could see of his skin, I was pretty sure his features were red too. “If I can help you with any other numbers you might need, please reach out,” I told him more gingerly, already taking a step to get out of the kitchen. But guilt had me pausing after the first one. If he’d just gotten fucked over… “I’m here to sell your house and help you do that along the way.” I tried not to say that too often because I didn’t want more responsibilities or to have people take advantage of me, but the guilt was clear and present in my stomach. Something was going on, and I could imagine way too easily how scary and frustrating that had to be. “I’ll

forward you the list of numbers for other utilities you were signed up for when we put the house on the market, just in case you need them.” All the man who had barely ever given me the time of day before did was nod. The last thing he needed right now, after finding out he was having payment issues, his cards were getting declined, and having his cars towed, was me standing there while he went through it. My pride would hate that. I called out, “Bye, Mr. Moore,” over my shoulder when I got to the front door. But I knew he and I were going to need to have another conversation, and that was going to need to happen very soon. I saved my own “fuuuuuck” until I was driving out of the neighborhood. OceanofPDF.com

I CHAPTER 3 FEBRUARY was feeling pretty uneasy when I pulled up to George Moore’s home the next day. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d dreaded seeing someone so much. If it had been up to me, I would have waited a couple more days until I paid him another visit, but I was pretty used to not having things work out the way I wanted them to on the first try. I couldn’t ignore the voice text message I’d gotten earlier. Beetlejuice on River Forest: “Do I need to call your assistant to have you come by?” It had been my first ever message from him, and I let myself feel flattered that he thought I had an assistant. Some people I worked with had help with contracts. As for me, there was someone at the office who would do them if I asked, but I was too much of a control freak. I tried to remind myself of that choice when I was tired and wanted to run over my phone. As I parked though, I tried to accept that whatever was going on with George Moore was one of those things I had zero control over, which meant I needed to let that shit go. The truth was, I’d gotten away with not thinking about it—him and his house and his three girlfriends and repossessions— until half an hour ago when his message had come through. Figuring he preferred audio messages and that’s why he’d never texted me back, I recorded one and sent it to him immediately.

Me: “No, let me know when you’re free, and I can call you or come by.” He surprised me again when he responded almost immediately. Beetlejuice on River Forest: “Drop by. I’m home all day.” And so I rescheduled my plans with my abuela to pay our bills together, like we did every month at the same time and same place. Fortunately for me, I hadn’t skipped lunch today, so my stomach wasn’t growling, and I wasn’t in a bad mood over it. I tried being consistent with my eating habits, but more often than I wished, I survived off coffee and whatever kind of nutritional bars I could get my hands on. Fast food runs had messed me up enough times now that I wasn’t willing to risk not having access to a bathroom when I was driving around. I warned George Moore I was on my way, and now I was here. Fully prepared to hear all about how the house was getting foreclosed on, or how there might be a lien on it, or basically any other excuse that would all mean the same thing: I was fucked. It almost felt like I was walking toward my own financial funeral as I forced myself to keep my chin up and not drag my feet all the way to the front door. I rang the doorbell, and a minute later, the door opened, and I felt a fresh waft of air conditioning meet my face as it went wide. On the other side stood the same person I’d met yesterday… except today the tall man was in navy blue sweats, and his hair wasn’t hiding under a beanie. It was out and about, curling at the ends and looking longer than I’d expected it. In pictures and on TV, it had always been cut short on the sides and longer at the top in varying lengths. The shades of blond and light brown lightly curling around his face were all chin length. Somehow, it made his face that much more striking. Not that he needed it. “Hi, Mr. Moore,” I greeted him, taking in the circles under his eyes I hadn’t noticed at first. I was pretty sure they hadn’t been there yesterday. “Hi…” He trailed off. Here we were again. “Veronica,” I reminded him, staring at him evenly. He snapped his fingers. “Right. Right. I knew that,” my client replied in a voice that sounded like he’d had some of his life sucked out of him in the last twenty-four hours. Shit.

“You mind talking in the kitchen?” Mr. Moore asked after he flipped all three locks on the door. Only the main one had ever been engaged before. I hadn’t even paid attention to the other locks. “No, the kitchen is fine.” A big hand waved me to follow like I didn’t know where I was going. At the huge hardwood table, which weighed about a thousand pounds—I’d tried moving it once and never again— was a laptop. He went to take the seat where his computer was, and I took the one across from him. Mr. Moore didn’t shut the laptop, but he moved it aside, giving me a view of a stack of papers he’d had underneath it. He leaned against the back of his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. In this lighting, he definitely looked like shit. This was going to be bad. “I didn’t want to talk about this over the phone,” he told me, everything about him seeming more and more exhausted by the second. He even dragged his hand down his face before pinning me with a look. “I’m tired of making calls.” It wasn’t like I hadn’t expected to get fired after what I’d learned yesterday. It had never happened before, but I’d always known it eventually would. It was one of those things that I was aware other realtors had gone through. But it just had to be this fucking house that I was going to get screwed on. A house that had cost me so much to get photos of, drone videos, and advertise— My tear ducts better not embarrass me. I would never forgive them. George Moore lowered his chin and aimed the clearest and greenest eyes I’d ever seen in my direction. “Do you work for me or for my manager?” he asked. Was this another test? “I work for you,” I answered. Where was this coming from? “Your name is on the contract, and so is mine. I’ve only ever spoken to your manager because you asked me to,” I reminded him. His gaze didn’t move an inch. “Are you sure?” Was I…? “Yes. I’m not going to risk my career doing anything I’m not supposed to do. Your manager and I have spoken a few times, but it was nothing more than to ask him to get the driveway power washed and to

have a handyman come out and fix a toilet. Maybe a couple other things with the lawn service, I can’t remember. I wrote down all the reasons I talked to him. I let you know every time.” It hadn’t been my choice to go through him, and I’d been prepared for him—George Moore—to have memory issues and not recall all the things we’d ever discussed since his attention span during our conversations was questionable. Nobody was going to blame me unnecessarily for shit. “When was the last time you spoke with him?” Mr. Moore asked. That bad, bad feeling got worse. “A month ago,” I answered. “I get too many calls to go through them, but it was when I noticed the toilet in the upstairs half-bathroom kept running.” Why was he asking? Was he trying to figure out who to blame for his utilities being cut off? “I see,” was all he replied in a voice that sure sounded wary. I should just get this over with, I thought. But before I could ask if I was getting fired, Mr. Moore sat up straight and squared those insanely wide shoulders. He gave me a look that was pretty damn penetrating… but it didn’t faze me at all. I’d had scarier people stare me down. He didn’t have anything on my mom. “I’m trying to figure out who I can and can’t trust right now, but if you work for me, then I can trust you, right?” Huh? “You want to sell my house, don’t you?” “Yes.” I looked at him suspiciously. “And this conversation will stay between us, won’t it? Because of HIPAA?” Those green eyes blinked. “Or is that OSHA?” I had to use all of my willpower not to react. To not make a face. To not look up at the ceiling. To not even breathe a little bit harder. But if one of my brothers had asked me what George Moore just had, I’d be reminding them of it when we were in our eighties. “I signed an NDA. I have a copy if you want to read it,” I explained like the professional I could be. From the face he made, he seemed surprised. “You signed an NDA?” “Your manager had me do it when I took over your listing.” Mr. Moore’s smooth forehead scrunched. “I didn’t know that.” I paused. I guess he hadn’t been testing me before with the autograph thing. That made me like him slightly more.

“What was in the NDA?” he asked, surprising me. I figured he wouldn’t have cared. “I can’t say your name or give hints about you to anyone. So anything we talk about, anything that has to do with you or the property, I can’t discuss with other people.” America’s Golden Boy nodded warily. “I didn’t know.” His face smoothed before he sighed. “I’ll give you the short version of what I found out, because I need you to tell me what my options are with the house.” Whatever happened, whatever he said, I was going to be fine eventually, I reminded myself, bracing for whatever disaster was about to come out of his mouth. I had been doing pretty well financially lately. This would hurt a lot, but it wouldn’t decimate my future or anything. I wasn’t the only one bracing either, I realized, when his eyes went hard. For the first time, I thought he really looked like the man we had all seen beside a pool while the whole country cheered him on. He seemed focused and serious, and not at all like the laughing man who couldn’t follow our conversations to save his life. “I’ve got reason to believe,” Mr. Moore started, “my manager’s stealing my money.” In a way, it was so much better and so much worse than I could have expected. When I had been in my early twenties, it had felt like my future had been decided for me—against my wishes. I had thought that I would never find something good at the end of the tunnel full of knee-high shit I’d found myself in then, and that I’d be stuck sinking into that shit deeper and deeper every day. It had been a terrible place to be in. But my family had taken turns grabbing me by the ear and dragging me through that damn tunnel when all I had wanted to do was be mad over my situation. And I would be the first person to acknowledge that things hadn’t gotten better overnight, or even over a lot of nights. But eventually, they had. I knew firsthand what it was like to be betrayed by someone, and maybe that’s why sympathy—when I didn’t want to smack George Moore for

being oblivious and lazy—settled deeply in my chest while I listened to him tell me what had kept him up almost all night, according to him. I thought I’d had it bad before, but his story was so much worse. Not that I said that. Over the course of an hour, Mr. Moore explained way more than I’d expected him to. He wanted my opinion, he’d claimed, but with a glint in his eye that made me suspect he really wanted me to help him somehow. I didn’t want to point out that he could barely remember my name, so I kept that part to myself. According to him, after I’d left yesterday, he had spent a couple of hours figuring out his credit card login information and found that some of his cards hadn’t had a payment applied in two months. There were other cards that hadn’t been paid in even longer. That led him down another rabbit hole of figuring out his bank account information. “I have four that I know of,” he explained. If I thought it’d been hard to not make a face when he brought up OSHA, it had been ten times harder not to react to him not knowing his bank logins. His story went downhill real quick after that. He discovered that “most of his money” was “missing.” His savings accounts had been depleted over the course of the twelve months in statements he’d been able to download. Mr. Moore had tried calling every account he could remember having and every account he could find on his email; he was on the phone until each company’s customer service departments had closed. And this morning, he’d started all over again, reaching out to what he could. He went from looking bad to worse. “Nothing’s been paid in months, and I don’t know what collections are, but one credit card company said they were going to send me to it if I didn’t set up a payment plan in the next forty-eight hours. I can’t get my cars back because they were a voluntary repossession. My fucking manager hadn’t paid the lease, and he called them to set up having them picked up.” Those green eyes were laser-focused on me from across the table as he said, “I don’t know what to do. This was all stuff my manager was supposed to take care of.” His lean throat worked, and I was pretty sure he started gritting his teeth. “Now I don’t trust my lawyer. I don’t know if I can

trust my agent either. My accountant’s fucking useless, whoever the hell that is. Shouldn’t one of them have caught on that something was wrong?” Yes, yes they should have, I thought. But I didn’t know how any of his financials worked. “All I can think about is that I need to sell this house because I need to make money if I’m as fucked as I think I might be,” Mr. Moore just about summed it up. That hit home for me the most: the being fucked part. But at the same time, it was his entire story that had me wanting to walk out of the house because I hadn’t signed up for this shit. On the other hand, it also kept me right where I was because the look on his face was one that made me uncomfortable with how familiar it seemed. He was fucked. And he was asking me for my opinion. Me, who he barely knew. Me, someone he’d only spoken to over the phone until very recently. Me who knew very, very, very well what it was like to be screwed financially. That’s why I would tell myself later that I stayed. Because I understood the position he was in better than 99 percent of people would. Who would I be if I turned around and left? I was already invested in this place. I also needed the commission I could potentially make off it. I was a good person who did nice things often enough without wanting anything in return, but I was also busy and had enough other shit to worry about. I wasn’t going to be winning any golden tickets to heaven, but I thought I did a decent enough job to end up there someday, even if no one rolled out the red carpet. I was human, and I had people and things that depended on me to do financially well. “Okay,” I told him carefully after taking a second to go through everything he’d just thrown at me. I pushed my chair closer to the table. “Let’s go back, all right?” He nodded seriously, all traces of the man who couldn’t be bothered to do anything for himself gone. He was looking at me like I held the secret to immortality. Hopefully, I wouldn’t disappoint him because I didn’t. “I need to make sure, you bought this house outright? There’s no loan?” He confirmed it, but I still didn’t trust him. “Do you have the deed?”

He leafed through the stack of papers in front of him and held out a stamped paper from the state of Texas. “I found it in my safe this morning.” Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It literally felt like a weight had been lifted off my chest. I kept my Work Veronica face in place. “This is really good,” I tried to assure him, relief definitely washing over his features for a second. “Not great yet, but good.” The relief disappeared, but I had to be real with him. His features turned wary. “Why isn’t it great?” Oh, child. “Because we need to make sure you’ve been paying your property taxes, or that’s going to be another issue,” I told him honestly. “How do we find that out?” “My laptop is in my car—” “Can you use mine?” he asked. I nodded, but I flinched when he turned the screen toward me. The font size was GIGANTIC. I didn’t even know it was possible to have lettering that size. I leaned back and then peeked at him. His expression said he didn’t think anything of it. Maybe he’d forgotten his contacts? Not about to change his settings, I let my eyes adjust to the huge words on the screen and maneuvered us to the website we needed. I wasn’t sure who was more relieved between the two of us when we found that he was current on his property taxes. I almost did the sign of the cross, and he went full dramatic and blew a kiss at the ceiling. I glanced at a picture of him next to the table where he stood with eight medals around his neck, bare chested with the cockiest expression on his face, then I looked away. “So, we’re good?” George Moore asked. “Not yet.” His gaze flicked up to the ceiling. “What now?” Someone was bracing for the worst with everything too. I warned him about other things we needed to make sure of, like how he couldn’t have any liens or lawsuits against him. “You said no when we did the paperwork originally, but you said you don’t trust your manager or your lawyer, so we need to make sure that’s actually true. The deed and the taxes are two really great things to have clear, but there are a lot of ducks that need to be in order.” His hand came up, and he palmed it over his eyes and forehead, bringing attention to lips that weren’t super full, but full enough. “But how

will they know?” he almost whispered. “Who is ‘they’?” I asked, dropping my voice too because I wasn’t positive I understood who or what he was referring to. “You know.” He paused. “The people who do the paperwork and stuff when you buy and sell a house.” Oh. A part of me appreciated him being willing to lie a little buuuuut, “They’ll find out. They have underwriters that check everything, and it will come up.” “But how do you know for sure?” Someone was sneakier than I ever would’ve given him credit for, but this wasn’t the situation for that. “Because I’ve had deals fall apart three days before closing because something came up during the process. One time it was a four-thousand-dollar car note that wasn’t reported. Another time, it was a medical bill. It’s not worth it.” He didn’t scowl, but he didn’t exactly not scowl either, but I pretended like I was the better person. “So what do I do?” “You should call a lawyer with experience in this kind of thing, but a quick way to get an idea,” I stressed that part, “would be to check your credit.” I knew what he was going to ask before it came out of his mouth. “How do I do that?” the man who’d had his own meal named after him at the golden arches a few years ago asked, still hiding most of his face with his palm. I swear to God… At least he’s asking. “There’s a website.” “This isn’t so bad.” My head swiveled to look at him as we sat in front of his laptop, eyes on the blown-up screen that was giving me a headache. Mr. Moore had pushed his chair and computer around to where I was sitting before he logged into his brand-new credit rating account and read through the report it provided. I’d tried pushing the computer toward him so I wouldn’t see what information it gave him, but this trusting fool had said, “It’s fine. You can’t tell anyone about this anyway.” He was right, but there was something wrong with him. He’d just told me his manager might have embezzled his money, and here he was showing

me his credit score and all the negative shit that appeared on it. Me, whose name he hadn’t even been sure of. “Right?” he asked, using the keypad to read through the list of things that had set his credit on fire. His score was in the four hundreds. I wasn’t one to talk, and I knew that. At one point in my life—after my divorce—mine had been in the lowest of the lows of five hundreds, but I’d known what that number meant, and I had been fully aware of how it had gotten there. Mostly thanks to my ex—all because of him, the son of a bitch —but as Carly liked to remind me, “Nobody made me marry him.” In this case though, George Moore had no idea what he was looking at and had no idea how he’d gotten there, and I had a strong feeling it hadn’t totally been his fault. “It’s not so bad, right?” he tried again, turning to look at me when I didn’t respond fast enough. Trying to keep my expression as Work Veronica as possible and not make any comment or movement that could be seen as condescending, I fought the urge to scrub my face and said, “Let’s look at some things. Scroll down a little.” Those green eyes kept sliding toward me, narrowing by the second. He scrolled down after another squint, and a long list of collections, notices, and past dues that had demolished his credit were listed right there. “Wait, what the fuck is all this?” he snapped as he leaned forward like his eyes were deceiving him. “What are all these amounts?” Mr. Moore leaned forward even more, clicking on one link after another while I kept my mouth shut. I could have told him that maybe they were mistakes, but it sure as hell didn’t seem like it. And I wasn’t sure I could even say the amounts out loud without my voice cracking. It was a lot of money. And I meant a lot of money. To me, at least. To him it might be pocket change. “Does this mean none of this has been paid?” he asked, his voice rising a little. “I would try to call or log in to all these accounts and find out, if you haven’t already,” I replied, trying to walk that line between making him feel better and giving him false hope. If I was a good enough liar to butter him

up and tell him that it was probably all a mistake, I would have done it, but I wasn’t. If we’d been on the phone, I might have had a slightly better chance. He pinched the bridge of his nose, then palmed his forehead some more, and he followed that up by shoving his chair back and breathing loud. “Fuck,” he exhaled. What was I supposed to say? That this wasn’t the end of the world? If our roles were reversed, that was not what I would have wanted to hear. It wasn’t actually the end of the world, but right then it was a slap in the face and it sure as hell felt like it no matter how you looked at it. After what seemed like a lifetime of silence, the greatest swimmer of all time said, “This was all supposed to be paid. Don’t they have that thing where they take money out of your account without you doing anything?” “Yes, it’s called an autodraft.” His hand covered his eyes again. “It won’t make a difference if I call and say that somebody else didn’t make the payments, will it?” This poor, innocent child was only a year younger than me. His Infopedia page had confirmed that to me when I’d started working for him. “No, but you should call them and see what they say. There are things you can do to get items removed from your report, I think,” I told him carefully. “I’m no expert though. You should get in contact with one and hear out what they recommend.” George Moore dropped his hand and lifted his head. He looked even shittier than he had when I’d shown up. “This is what you were worried about, isn’t it?” It was. “Yeah. This is all a fraction of what you could make selling your house, but you really need to find out about the lien thing I was telling you about. Just to make sure.” He said nothing, but he dropped his head back again and didn’t say a word. “It’s good that you owe a lot less than what your house is worth,” I tried to tell him as I pulled out my phone. “I know a tax attorney, and I’m not even sure if she deals with this kind of thing, but I would give her a call. I would trust her if I were in your situation.” I texted him an old client’s contact information. When his phone beeped, he didn’t react. The only thing that moved was his chest as it rose up and down slowly and rhythmically. A minute passed,

and then another, and when he still hadn’t even wiggled a finger or sighed, I figured it was my time to give him some space. “Mr. Moore, I think you should talk to someone who can help you start getting this sorted first before we move forward. You should think about whether or not you still want to sell your house. I’m not rushing you for an answer, and I don’t want you to feel pressured when you have other things going on,” I finally said as gently as possible, even if it stung my throat and my wallet. “I’ve dealt with a lot of people going through divorce, or after a death in the family, and stress makes a difficult situation that much harder. You could always remove the listing and try again later.” It might hurt me to say it, but I meant it. If what he suspected was true, he was in a shitty situation, and I couldn’t see how it wouldn’t end up being a huge struggle to deal with once he learned the extent of it. His Adam’s apple worked, but Mr. Moore finally responded, “Yeah. Okay.” He rubbed his face. “I still want to sell this place. I wanted to before, but I think I might need to.” “In that case, take some time, see what you find out. If you change your mind and want to not sell it or just don’t want to sell it anytime soon, all you have to do is let me know. Now that the power and water are back on, we can resume showings whenever you’re fine with it.” All he mumbled was “All right.” I thought about suggesting getting his backyard mowed—the front was decent—but I kept my opinion to myself for now. “Do you need anything else from me?” I asked, making sure to make that point clear. From me. Not in general. His “no” almost made me feel bad. It was soft and weary, and it sure as hell sounded like he’d needed to dig deep to get just that out. Steeling my sympathy, I fought the urge again to tell him everything was going to be okay. I didn’t know if it would be. Not for sure. My promises tended to be the quiet kind, the type that underpromised and overdelivered. And at this point, there was no way to know if he was in the clear with anything. All I could do was keep trying to sell this place if he could and if he wanted me to. That was the best I could do for both of us, after all.

OceanofPDF.com

“W CHAPTER 4 FEBRUARY ho crawled up your ass today?” I gave my brother Pablo the middle finger from across the table, not even bothering to be subtle about it. I was hungry, and I was in a mood. We were at a restaurant for our monthly sibling dinner, and I was twenty minutes late. I hated being late. I hated it slightly less when other people were the reason why I was late. In this case, a family had shown up five minutes before the end of my open house. I hadn’t immediately figured out that they were going to waste my time to the extent they had. The wife had explained about two seconds after introducing herself that she lived across the street and just wanted to take a “quick look around” because she had “always wondered what it looked like on the inside.” Neighbors did that all the time. I did that every time a house in our neighborhood went on the market. My grandma usually went with me, and we “oohed” and side-eyed things together… discreetly, of course. If I had time and they were nearby, sometimes I did it for other homes that I thought had fair asking prices; I liked to call those my recon missions. If the family had been nice, I wouldn’t have thought twice about their visit. But these particular people hadn’t been nice, and their seven-year-old had been even less nice when he’d sat on the couch with his muddy shoes

and wiped those same shoes across the living room rug. Then his parents loudly criticized every room in the house while taking their sweet-ass time. I’d had to spend almost an hour cleaning up the mess the boy had made. Instead of leaving a little after 5:00 p.m. like I’d planned, I hadn’t managed to lock the door until well after 6:00 p.m. Dumbass, Dumbass, and Little Dumbass had irritated me so much. And that was why I was late meeting up for dinner with two of my four siblings. One of them I had already known couldn’t make it, and the other was a surprise to find he wasn’t there, but the others had already been seated with meals in front of them when I’d finally walked in. Fortunately, JJ had called and asked what I wanted him to order for me, and he’d read half the menu without the slightest annoyance. JJ was my closest brother in age; we were less than two years apart. I would never say I had a favorite brother, but JJ and I had been a team from the moment our parents kept having kids after us. It had always been us against them… or more like us keeping them in line because they were premier-level dumbasses. This day out of the month was one of my favorites. As much as I enjoyed dinners at our parents’ house, it was nice to bullshit with my younger brothers. We could talk about things we might not want to mention in front of our parents because we didn’t want them to worry or give us a hard time. Today, the one thing I did want to talk about, which had been on my mind regularly for the last few days, I couldn’t bring up. That being George Moore and his appearance and his shitty credit and shittier manager. “Where’s Carly?” I asked instead. Pablo, the middle Rubio child at twenty-four, scrunched up his face as he cut into what was left of his steak. We’d met up at our favorite steakhouse chain because the rolls and cinnamon butter were out of this world. “No idea. He texted me that he wasn’t going to be able to make it, and that was it.” He paused and glanced up at me with the same dark brown eyes I saw in the mirror every day. “When was the last time you saw him?” I tried to think as I unwrapped my utensils. Pablo and Carly both lived with me. Carly—Carlos to everyone but the family—was the second- youngest Rubio. “Two days ago? Maybe three? He got home after I went to bed yesterday. And the day before that, I don’t think he came home at all.” I

really hoped he’d stayed with a friend and wasn’t trying to get back together with his ex-girlfriend. Pablo nodded, the dim lighting in the restaurant casting a shadow on his shaved head. “Me too. He called and said he couldn’t make it and hung up on me, the bitch.” I thought for a second about looking him up on the app that tracked everyone in my family, but I let the urge go and shrugged. I tried not to use it on my brothers unless it was necessary. I took it as an honor that they even shared their location with me because they didn’t let Mom and Dad have access. I had just started cutting into my steak when my phone started buzzing, and I took it out of my bag. The name that appeared was for the service that scheduled showings for most of my listings. Only a few of them were automatically approved without needing to get in contact with the homeowner—or me—and at that moment, I only had one property that I had to give verbal approval of because I had to be there to give tours. They were calling about George Moore’s house. He’d sent me a voice text three days ago saying he wanted to resume showings. He hadn’t answered when I’d tried calling him, but he’d sent another message an hour later, insisting we start them up again. So now we were here. “Get off the phone!” Pablo griped. I held up my finger. “This is about my expensive house. Hold on,” I told him before sliding my finger to answer the call. He understood and nodded. I might not have told anybody who the house belonged to, but they all knew I had a lot riding on this property. They were also vaguely aware of how much of a pain in the ass it had been so far… parts of it, at least. “This is Veronica Rubio,” I answered, ignoring Pablo who snorted at my “work” tone. The voice on the other end went through the usual spiel about how she was calling regarding the property at River Forest, just like I’d expected, except… “They want to see it in an hour?” I asked. “Yes, Ms. Rubio,” the scheduler confirmed. “Is that possible?”

Fuck. “Did you try calling the homeowner first?” I’d originally had it set up that they called me first before he’d come to Houston, but I’d contacted them and switched it so that they reached out to George Moore instead since I thought there was a chance he was still staying at the house. “Yes, ma’am, but the homeowner didn’t answer. It says on here to get in touch with you if we don’t hear from them.” Of course he didn’t answer. “Okay, can I call you back in five minutes? Let me try and call them,” I said, wondering whether he was in Houston or not. “No problem,” the voice replied before I thanked them and hung up. “Shorty,” Pablo complained in the same voice I’d used in the past to give him shit when he’d get distracted by his phone when we were together. It was our one rule for sibling dinner: no phones… unless it was really, really important. “I know, I know,” I grumbled. “But I need to do this.” I found Beetlejuice on River Forest in my contacts and dialed. No answer. Fuck. I sent a muffled Hail Mary voice message since he’d seemed to respond to those. Me: “Mr. Moore, someone wants to see the house in an hour. If I don’t hear back from you in the next ten minutes, I’m going to confirm the showing.” When I didn’t get a response back nine minutes later, I called him one more time and got no answer. Then I ignored Pablo again as I called the service and confirmed the showing. What were the chances the house was going to be clean? “You need to go?” JJ was the one who asked as I stared down at the time on the screen of my phone. I lifted my head and gave them an apologetic face. “Yeah, it’s for the big house. The owner was there recently, and I don’t trust that the place is still clean,” I told them as I grabbed my wallet and pulled out enough cash for my food and part of the tip. I handed it to JJ. “What the hell?” Pablo squawked. I gave him a look that said we both knew why I wasn’t giving him my money as I pushed my chair back. “Can you take my food home?” I asked

him though, barely holding back a groan. I’d been looking forward to eating. He made a face but nodded, even as his gaze flicked toward my mostly- there steak. I leaned forward and licked a line across the meat, earning a disgusted sound from him and a laugh from JJ. Then I licked my fork and jabbed at my mashed potatoes before poking at my corn with it. “I wasn’t going to eat your food!” the liar tried to claim. JJ snickered at the same time I did. “Bullshit,” I laughed as I got up. “Sorry I have to leave. I’ll pay for dinner once I close on this place. Love you,” I told them as I picked up my purse. “Bye, Shorty,” JJ called out after me as Pablo grunted something. What were the chances the house was going to be in showing condition by the time I got there? The lights were fucking on. I was cussing under my breath as I got out of my car and hustled for the front door, knocking hard and ringing the doorbell multiple times before going for the smart lock. “Mr. Moore!” I called out the second I stepped inside, ignoring the way my stomach grumbled at me for not eating more of my dinner before leaving. At least the other locks hadn’t been engaged. “Mr. Moore?” “Ver…onica?” I heard a holler back a second before the tall dark blond appeared in the hallway leading to the home gym. I was going to kill him. After we sold his house. “Hi, yes.” I tried to keep my tone from telling him I was exasperated. “I tried calling and texting,” I warned him. He was sweaty, I realized, seeing the sheen on his forehead. He had another pair of sweatpants today, but instead of a sweatshirt, he only had a white T-shirt on. A shirt that hugged his upper body perfectly. Wide shoulders, a flat, muscular chest and stomach, and the narrowest waist… “Oh,” he said, his face going almost sheepish. “I was gonna call you back when I was done with my workout.”

The urge to smack myself on the forehead had never been greater. “Someone scheduled a showing for twenty minutes from now….” I trailed off. Light brown eyelashes fell over his eyes in a hard blink. “Today?” No, tomorrow. “Yes, in twenty minutes.” He blinked again. “Shit.” Exactly. “Is that all right?” I asked, even though it should’ve been. His skin seemed to glow with sweat as he looked around and grimaced. “Yeah, but the house is a little…” He didn’t need to point it out. There was no way to ignore the takeout containers, the bags from the restaurants, and multiple bags of chips on the floor beside the couch. “I can reschedule if you want, or we can clean up as fast as we can,” I tried. Please say you’ll help clean up. Praise Jesus, he nodded. “Let’s do that,” Mr. Moore agreed. Thank God. Maybe he was serious about selling. “You take the upstairs, and I’ll take down here,” I told him. To give him credit, those long legs didn’t hesitate to move in the direction of one of the two staircases in the home. Grabbing a trash bag from under the kitchen sink, I ran into the living room and tossed everything in it, and eighteen minutes later, Mr. Moore was back downstairs, even more sweaty than he’d been when he’d come out of his home gym. “I’m done,” he claimed just as I threw a balled-up paper towel into the trash can in his kitchen. “Me too,” I said, looking at my watch to see how much time we had left. I had to get him the hell out of here. “They’ll be here in two minutes.” He nodded and hooked his thumb toward the opposite side of the house. “Okay, I’ll just be in the gym.” It could never be that easy, could it? I stared at the same face that was plastered in every room you went into —and it was amazing how not-Photoshopped each picture was; he was that naturally good-looking. It wasn’t makeup or filters. Tommy had a poster of an anime character he liked in his room, and I’d swear the artist must have been inspired by George Moore. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t clear before. People don’t like it when homeowners are present,” I clarified. “They hate it. They should be out in an hour, and you can come back in right after that.”

Green eyes stared at me. “Where am I supposed to go for an hour?” I stared back at him. “Anywhere?” I asked him slowly, not sure where the hell this was going or what he wanted me to do about it. “I don’t have a car,” he replied just as slowly right back. Son of a bitch. He could not be here. I thought about it. “You could go for a walk.” “I don’t want to talk to any of the neighbors,” he argued. We had a minute left. “I have to stay here,” I told him, not sure what he wanted me to say. Couldn’t he book a car? “Why?” “Why do I have to stay?” He nodded. Was he fucking with me now? “Because you told me you wanted me to give tours of the house when potential buyers came over,” I explained, still using my Work Veronica voice. “I did?” I nodded. “I don’t remember that,” he claimed, still not looking like he believed me. “You don’t need to do that. That’s weird.” I blinked. “Okay. Then, I… we need to get out of here,” I told him. What the hell was I supposed to do? “Do you... want to go somewhere?” I asked. “With me?” A part of me couldn’t believe I was saying this. “For an hour?” His shrug was so natural it caught me off guard. “Okay.” Okay? “You’re sure you’re fine with me leaving?” “Is that not okay?” Did he really not remember how he’d gone on about me staying at the house even after I’d tried to talk him out of it, despite him not usually giving a shit about anything else? You know what? Whatever. “Most realtors don’t.” He shrugged again like that was obvious. “Okay.” God help me. “Okay, let’s go out the back then just in case they’re already here,” I warned him. “Why do we have to go out the back?” “So that they don’t see us and we don’t make it awkward,” I told him, pointing toward the door. That must have made sense because he nodded.

I headed for the back door first, and he followed. Fortunately, no one was in the driveway yet when we headed down it, but right before we made it to the street, my phone started ringing. The screen said “Abuela.” I paused, but I swiped my finger and answered. “Abuelita?” “Mi niña,” my grandmother said, calling me her little girl. “¿Estas ocupada?” I was busy, but I would never admit it. “Para ti, nunca.” Her laugh was sweet, and she quickly explained that her water aerobics class finished early and that her friend who usually drove her home hadn’t shown up. “Can you pick me up?” she asked in Spanish. I would drive to Belize for her if she wanted me to. “Voy para alla,” I said. I’m on my way. “Gracias, amor,” she replied. I told her I loved her and ended the call, glancing over the roof of my car at George Moore standing on the other side of it. He was looking up at the sky. I didn’t want to do anything to lose my listing, but I would always prioritize my family over money. Even a lot of money. So I knew exactly what I was doing when I said, “My grandma needs a ride home from her water aerobics class.” That got me his attention. “Okay.” What did that mean? “I need to go get her,” I told him, making sure he knew I wasn’t asking for permission. “I can drop you off somewhere and pick you up afterward,” I offered. That was about as good of a compromise as I could come up with. “I like grandmas,” was what he replied. He said what? He gestured to the door. “I’ll go with you.” Of all the ways I’d expected him to react to me needing to pick up my abuela, this wouldn’t have been anywhere on the list. George Moore liked grandmas? And he wanted to go with me to pick mine up? I wasn’t sure I trusted him, to be honest. This was the same son of a bitch that could never text me back, couldn’t answer his phone more than half the time, and had done a bunch of dumb shit when he’d been younger. And more recently. He was currently suspended from swimming, I’d confirmed last night.

He was a professional athlete. One of the most famous of all time. And the last time I’d trusted one of those, I’d come to regret it with every fiber of my being. But you don’t really have a choice, do you? The answer was no, I didn’t. I had to pick up my grandma, and I’d committed myself to getting him away from here. We both wanted to sell this damn house. I was pretty damn wary as I opened the driver’s door and got in, while he did the same thing on the other side. By the time I U-turned, a car was coming down the street, and it parked in the driveway. I side-eyed Moore when he angled his body to look in the direction of his house. He shifted back to face out the windshield after we turned, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “I didn’t think it’d bother me having someone go through my house, but I don’t like how I feel about it, and I’m not even attached to that place.” No shit, that’s why I told him not to be in the house when anyone was over, but I kept that to myself. “It probably doesn’t help that they’ll figure out it’s yours right after they walk in.” His head tilted in my direction. “How would they know?” At a stop sign, I pulled my Work Veronica pants a little higher and looked at him. “Because there are pictures of you all over the house,” I explained, wondering for the millionth time if he was fucking with me or not. He blinked once before he snickered. “Oh. Yeah. I’m distracted.” He snickered again before shaking his head and facing forward for a second, then turning back in my direction. I tried to ignore how strange it was to have this man sitting in my passenger seat when I’d watched him on television so many times. It was a good thing I didn’t feel shit for celebrities. Mr. Moore tilted his head. “Didn’t we get into it about all the artwork of me in the house a while back?” At least he remembered that. Because I didn’t trust myself, I nodded. “Hm,” he huffed as I accelerated through the gate leading out of the neighborhood. “Do people really not like buying someone else’s house when they know who it is?” “Well, I did some research on a few athletes selling their homes. When they have really personalized things in them, like basketball courts, they

usually don’t sell fast. One of the houses I found belongs to a well-known basketball player. It has statues of him and his number, and his house has been on the market for years.” “Years?” “Almost a decade.” “Ten years?” George Moore’s voice got louder. “Why?” His selective amnesia was kicking in again because we’d had this conversation already. “Because it’s too personalized. It’s very specific. People want to picture themselves in a home they’re buying.” He didn’t say anything for a minute but then muttered, “Fuck.” He rearranged his arms as he shifted in the seat. A minute later, he asked, “Should I take them down then?” This wasn’t a battle I wanted to have with him again, so I shrugged. “Should I?” I genuinely didn’t know what to think about George Moore. He’d barely been able to answer my calls a month ago, and now he was here asking for my opinion again? Which part of him was the real him? The guy who’d kicked a bunch of girls out, the one who had never been able to talk to me without being distracted, or the guy who had said a minute ago that he liked grandmas? It wasn’t like it mattered. I just had to sell his house. “I brought this up to you twice, Mr. Moore, and you insisted it wasn’t necessary. It’s your house,” I told him politely, even though I thought he’d be dumb if he didn’t. The photographer had done what she could, staging and editing pictures to avoid showing as much of the walls as possible in the listing. “Has anybody said anything about it?” he asked after a minute. I had emailed him feedback every time I’d gotten it, and I wasn’t shocked he’d never checked it out. I told him the truth. “Yes.” “What’d they say?” “They didn’t like it.” “You think it’s that much of a problem?” Don’t you dare make a face, Veronica. “It’s your home, and I’m here to guide you in selling it as much as I can, but every decision is yours. I’ll do whatever you want to do.” I might not like it, but I would. He didn’t say anything again for a long, long while before, “And I’ve ignored you.”

Unfortunately, I made it to a red light and had to glance at him. His attention was on me in the dark cab of my car. “You’ve made your decisions,” I told him gingerly, even though I called him a dumbass in my head. From the look he gave me, it almost felt like he knew I’d done just that. He pinched his lips together after a second. “I did and the house still hasn’t sold. Is that normal?” We’d had this conversation already too. “At your price point, they take longer to sell. There are just fewer people in the world who can afford a multimillion-dollar home—” “Didn’t you say something about the house being priced too high?” Boy, I did not want to have this conversation while in person, in my car, with no way of pretending like I’d lost signal to avoid it. And it took all of my experience to keep a straight face as I answered, “I did.” He blinked. “And I said to sell it for that anyway?” We both knew the answer, but I still confirmed it. “You did.” Mr. Moore winced. “See, my friend said that at the size of my house—” I zoned out while he went on about his friend who “knew about real estate” telling him what he thought his house was worth, even though his friend didn’t live in Houston, and blah, blah, blah. “—I was just going off what he suggested.” Curling my fingers around my steering wheel, I mentally asked it to forgive me for strangling it. “Right, but I mentioned when we had this conversation that I thought it was high for the price per square foot and, if you wanted to sell it faster, I thought we should make it more competitive.” He crossed his arms all over again. “How much did you say?” I told him the number, which was several hundred thousand less than what he’d suggested. “Has anyone complained about the price?” Better late than never now having him worry about what other people thought. “Yes.” He cursed under his breath creatively enough that I peeked at him and had to pretend not to be surprised. It wasn’t like I’d ever been under the impression he was some sweet angel, but I hadn’t expected one of the greatest athletes of my lifetime to say “fuck” so often either. It made him seem so… normal. “Why can’t they make an offer even if it’s low?” Mr. Moore asked.

“Because they’re insulted with it to start off with,” I explained. I saw his fingers tapping along his forearm for a minute. “You think I should lower it then?” I pulled my Work Veronica pants even higher, nearly up to my boobs by that point. “If you want to sell your house faster than the rate we’re going, it’s worth a try.” “But it could sell for what I want?” Somebody was a dreamer. “It could.” Just like I could win a few million from a scratch-off lottery ticket, but was it realistically going to happen? Probably not. “Speaking of selling it, I was under the assumption that you found out something about the lien situation.” “Yeah.” His voice came out kind of pissy. “No lawsuits or liens as of right now.” Thank you, Jesusito. Thank you, thank you, thank you. George Moore cleared his throat, and I felt his eyes on me. “The people looking at the house now, they’ll call and tell you what they thought?” He was still worried about that, huh? “Sometimes they do, but if not, I’ll call and get some feedback,” I assured him. “And we could change the price easy-peasy?” “With some paperwork we could.” I paused. “If you decide to.” When he didn’t reply, I kept the rest of my thoughts to myself, but a couple minutes later, I heard him shift in the seat before asking, “Anything else anyone has said they don’t like?” I had to keep my eyebrows from shooting up my forehead. “A few things. I did send you a report after every showing, so you know.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the fingers closest to me ball up. “My manager usually checks my email and relays everything to me,” he muttered in a tight voice. “I should probably change the password, huh?” And that’s where some of this shit show had originated from. “You should. You can download the app onto your phone to check it from now on, if you want,” I told him in case he didn’t know. God, I hoped he did. He nodded slowly. “Yeah, you’re right,” he agreed. “I’ll do it later, but what did they say?” I saw my opportunity, and I took it. “Your paint color choices have been questioned.” He turned in his seat. “What’s wrong with my paint colors?”

“They’re suited to a specific palate.” I thought about it. “Sometimes it takes longer to find someone who also has the same taste.” I made the mistake of peeking at him right after I said it, and his face seemed pretty offended. “Is it the blue in the bedroom?” It was every color in the house. To the point where even I wondered if he might be a little colorblind. Or he really just enjoyed loud colors. “That’s one of them,” I replied cryptically. “You mentioned that too before, didn’t you?” I nodded again. “So painting might help?” “It wouldn’t hurt.” “What color?” Anything. “Neutrals are safe. Kind of a blank canvas.” “What’s a neutral? Tan?” I nodded. “Yeah. Or white. That’s popular.” “You really think it’d make a difference?” He must be really serious about selling his place. Fucking finally. “I think so, Mr. Moore.” Those hands came up to his face, and I watched him scrub at it as he sighed. “Yeah, all right.” He made a little grunt in his throat. “Anything else I should know about?” Those were the biggest red flags, I thought. “I think those are the most important factors you should focus on.” Mr. Moore didn’t say a word, but he did sigh some more. Maybe I should’ve felt a little bad, but I didn’t. I’d been trying to help him from the beginning. It wasn’t my fault he’d been stubborn as fuck. My phone ringing lit up my console. “Sara Rubio Realtor Calling” appeared on my dashboard. It was my fucking cousin—or as I preferred to refer to her, my coworker. She was the dumbass I’d been talking to when I’d been on my way to Moore’s house when I’d found his utilities off. I had managed to avoid her since that conversation. “You can get that if you want,” he let me know. Normally, I would never answer a call when I was with someone. “It’s all right,” I told him, silencing the call. “I really don’t care,” he insisted, even as my phone stopped ringing.

“They’ll leave a message if it’s important—” I started to say just as she called again. “Take it,” George Moore insisted. If he’d been anyone else, I might have kept on arguing, but fine. I tapped the button on my steering wheel to answer. “This is Veronica Rubio,” I answered like I hadn’t known her for most of my life. “Ugh, Veronica,” she griped, catching on to my bullshit. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my passenger glance at me. “Hi, Sara. I’m driving. What can I help you with?” She made a huff like she knew I was full of shit. Work Sara wasn’t clocked in, apparently. This was the version of her I knew best though: the petulant, exasperated asshole. “Whatever you say. I was calling because I thought you might be interested to know that my sellers had a change of heart and are willing to negotiate on some of the repairs that your buyers brought up.” The way I wanted to roll my eyes. I couldn’t even smirk though. Not with this man in my passenger seat. “I see,” was all I said. This wasn’t the time to discuss or explain anything. “Is that something you think they might want to discuss?” I barely held back a snicker. “I can pass the information along.” There was a pause like she couldn’t read me and wasn’t sure how to take my responses. “Okay.” She sounded annoyed. “They would be comfortable with hiring another inspector to come out and check the foundation and go from there.” “I’ll let them know and get back to you,” I told her, holding back an eye roll too. “Okay. Talk soon,” Sara said suspiciously before hanging up without waiting for me to reply. Out of nowhere, George Moore said, “Does she talk fake or is it just me?” That had me glancing at him. I tried not to laugh or smile but ended up tipping my head to the side, reminding myself that I had to stay professional with him. He wasn’t my friend. He was my client. And he didn’t recognize her voice either, from the looks of it, even though she’d been his realtor before me. “She doesn’t sound like the most genuine person.” Because she wasn’t. His eyebrows arched. “You gonna call your clients?”

We made it to a red light, and I took my phone from the holder right beside the steering wheel. “They’re more of a texter actually,” I explained as I kept one eye on the light and typed up my message from sheer memory of where the keyboard placement was. I managed to finish the text and send it before the light turned green. But I’d barely driven through the intersection when my phone rang again. This time it was the videographer who helped me with my social media. “You can get that if you want,” Moore offered immediately. Nah, I’d just call them back later. Fortunately, the YMCA where my grandma swam was close, and I turned into the parking lot soon after that. I didn’t pick her up from the Y often—usually one of my brothers or my parents figured out her ride situation, but I had enough times to know her routine. I pulled up to the curb and parked. “I’m just going to run inside and get her,” I told him. He nodded, his expression deceptively easygoing. Or maybe I was just that leery of him. He’d acted a whole lot differently the other day, but I guess, if I’d had the kind of day he had, I wouldn’t have been in a good mood with anybody either. I could take that into consideration, I figured. Abuela was waiting where she usually did, on one of the benches just inside the building, and my angel of a grandmother smiled when she saw me. Her round face just lit right up. “Vero,” she called out, the only person in the family who called me that. I gave her a kiss on the cheek as I fought the urge to help her stand and let her do it herself, but I did pick up her bag and put it over my shoulder before she slipped her hand through the bend in my elbow. “¿Como te fue?” I asked her. She made a swimming motion with her free hand. “Bien, bien.” Good. “Pero me muero de hambre.” She was starving. “Do you want to go out to eat?” I offered, knowing what her answer was going to be. From the funny face she shot up at me from behind the thin frames of her glasses, she knew that I knew too. “Tenemos comida en la casa.” I laughed at the same time as she smiled. It was word for word the same thing my mom, her daughter, said any time we asked if they wanted to go out to eat.

“Órale pues.” We were both smiling while we went down the steps, her hand still on my arm. Just a year ago, we’d had a family meeting where we had all agreed to let her do as much as she could on her own. We all had a bad habit of trying to baby her when what she really wanted—and needed—was to be as independent as she could for as long as possible. Going down the stairs with a little help was more of a precaution. “Abuelita,” I said when we were on the last step. “I have a client in the car.” She lifted her lined face up to me. “A client?” She was still speaking Spanish. “Sí.” Her features scrunched up. “You were busy! I’m sorry, Vero!” “No empieces,” I argued. “Siempre puedes llamarme.” I promised she could always call me. “Someone is touring his house, and he wanted to come with me to pick you up. I was ready to leave him on the side of the street.” “Which house?” she asked, and I knew she knew because she kept track of these things. She liked all my posts on Instagram; she’d set up an account just to follow me. I couldn’t think of a video listing I’d done that she hadn’t dropped a little heart comment in. I loved her so much. “The expensive one,” I whispered. Her mouth dropped open as we approached my car. “The secret one?” I nodded. “Okay, I won’t tell anyone he was in the car with us,” she offered with a wink. “Thanks, Abuela,” I said just as the front passenger door opened and a long leg came out, followed by another one. Standing up just outside my sedan was the tall, lean man who had shoved another dark beanie over his head that covered nearly all of his hair again. Did he carry one around in his pocket? He smiled in our direction— or at Abuela specifically, I realized a moment later—when he gestured to the front seat. “Hello,” he called out. My grandma’s face lit up, but I didn’t think she recognized him. Mostly because she squeezed my hand and whispered under her breath, “Dios mío, mi niña, parece un príncipe.”

She thought he looked like a prince. She wasn’t wrong. He was definitely one of the most beautiful men I’d ever seen in my life, if you were into that kind of thing. “Hi,” my abuela responded without a trace of shyness, her accent thick but her smile bright. That one word made him beam. His whole freaking face transformed, all those impressive, perfectly proportioned angles softening. “You can sit in the front,” he offered in a sweet tone. Huh. We had just gotten to the curb when she waved her hand and shook her head, gesturing for him to get back into the same seat. He responded by motioning again for her to sit up front. “No, please, you.” Who was this man and where had the son of a bitch who couldn’t pay attention to me when I called him go? “Mija, dile que no,” Abuela demanded up at me. I looked down at her, which said something about her four-foot-eight height because I was only five feet tall, and there were very few people, other than children, I could look down at. “Why?” I asked her suspiciously because the way she’d said that made it seem like she had a really good point why she couldn’t. “Pues porque no,” she replied. Just because no. “Es tu cliente.” “What did she say?” Moore asked. “She said she can’t sit in the front because you’re my client,” I translated. Abuela bobbed her head in agreement as she slipped her hand off my arm and reached forward to pat George Moore’s forearm. “You sit,” she told him. She both understood and spoke English, but she preferred to let us translate if it was an option. He opened his mouth, but she patted him again. “It’s okay,” she repeated before reaching for the back door and getting in, leaving us both standing there watching her. “Está bien alto.” Olympian eyes flicked to me, and I shrugged. “She’s stubborn,” I explained before pausing. “But thank you for offering.”

That model-like face fell, but he nodded before sliding his gaze back toward the tinted window of the rear passenger seat. “She said you’re really tall,” I went on, just in case he was wondering what else she’d added. His mouth formed a small smile, but he ducked his head. “All right then.” I glanced at my watch and saw how much time we had left before his showing ended. “Do you mind if I drop her off and then take you home?” I asked. He hesitated zero seconds before agreeing. I guess today was going to be a day of surprises. The drive to my abuela’s house wasn’t quiet, and that was mostly because a minute after picking her up, a friend called and she spent the entire ride talking to her, her occasional little laughs at whatever she was being told making me smile. But I figured it was for the better. A part of me was scared to talk to George Moore more than I already had. This man had been throwing one grenade after another at me since he’d gotten to Houston, and I didn’t know what to do with any of them. Run and cover? Just cover? What I wanted to do was run and not look back, but that was out of the question at this point. I still couldn’t believe he’d gotten in the car with me. It had gotten a little easy to forget just who he really was. A normal man, sure, nobody knew better than I did how you shouldn’t put high expectations on well-known people—they were just normal fucking people who had gotten really good at what they did through practice and commitment. But he was still the athlete that literally everyone had rooted for at the Olympics. I couldn’t think of a single person that hadn’t put their hopes into him whooping every other swimmer’s ass in the pool. Regardless of the other questionable things he’d done, George Moore was a legend and would go down as the greatest Olympic athlete in history. He hadn’t just dominated his sport; he’d redefined it.

Keeping my eyes on the road so he wouldn’t decide to talk to me about anything else that wasn’t work-related, I turned into our neighborhood faster than I’d expected. I had just driven maybe twenty feet on the main street when a pair of headlights started heading straight for us, the car slowing down just as we passed by each other. The driver rolled down the window and gave me a middle finger before speeding off. Of all the times… “Did that guy just flip you off?” the person I had been hoping had been looking out the other window asked. “They must have me confused with someone else,” I lied. Maybe he’d understand it was my brother, but maybe he wouldn’t. From Pablo, that was basically a kiss. The dumbass. But the way Moore said “Hm” didn’t sound super convinced. Too bad for him I wasn’t going to tell him the truth. And fortunately for me, Abuela’s house was closer to the entrance of the neighborhood than it was to the back. I passed by an extremely familiar house before turning into her driveway four homes down. “I’m home. I’ll call you later,” I heard my grandma tell her friend before hanging up just as I parked. “Do you want to come inside and eat?” Abuela asked before she undid her seat belt. Shit. I should’ve seen this coming. “Gracias, Abuelita, pero—” My stomach grumbled, reminding me of how I’d skipped dinner. Abuela huffed from the back seat. It personally offended her if someone was hungry around her. “¿No comiste?” I looked at her and shook my head. “What did she say?” the nosy motherfucker beside me wanted to know, either not hearing my stomach rumble or not caring that it did. This faint nagging suspicion suddenly made me feel pretty wary all over again. I couldn’t exactly lie because she’d know what I was doing. There was also a chance that he did understand some Spanish. Not sure what else to do, I went with the truth. “She asked if we want to go inside and eat,” I translated. There was something about the way he didn’t exactly look surprised that nagged at me some more.

But nothing could have prepared me for the way he replied, “I could eat.” “What?” I couldn’t have heard that right. He undid his seat belt. “I’m always hungry. I could eat,” he said before stopping with his seat belt halfway retracted. “Or not…?” He narrowed his eyes, but I wasn’t sure if it was because he couldn’t see me or if he was just unsure about whether or not I wanted him to go inside my grandma’s house. I was pretty sure I’d kept an even face while I’d conveyed the offer, but maybe not. Abuela smacked her lips. “Sí, Veronica, ándale. Vamos adentro.” This was not fine. This was not fine at all, I thought, as I tried to keep my features from showing just how against this I was and forced a fucking nod at the twenty-something-gold medalist sitting in my passenger seat, who lived in a multimillion-dollar home and had apparently been getting screwed by his manager. “I don’t know if what she makes fits into your nutrition plan,” I said, trying to get out of it one last time. He let his seat belt roll back into place before reaching for the door handle. “I’m not picky.” There was a pause. “And I’m taking time off from training right now.” So the man with bag after bag of takeout at his house claimed. I was sure the smile I gave him was weak as hell, but shit. I wasn’t opposed to working with family and friends, but I had never ever mixed my clients who weren’t already part of my life with Real Veronica life. And this particular person was at the bottom of the list of people who I would’ve let cross the line. But if there was one person in this world I could never say no to, it was the woman getting out of my back seat. Moving like this was a bad dream, I got out while George Moore did the same. I watched in slow motion as Abuela started to go around him, stopped, and reached up for his face, a smile on hers. I watched as he dipped his head before her hand reached the highest point it could—several inches short of his head—and set his chin into her palm and smiled down at her. It took everything in me not to frown. I was pretty sure she squeezed his chin before she went around him and headed up the path to her front door.

And that weird sensation in my chest got stronger as I watched a smile cross Mr. Moore’s features before he followed after her. Where the hell was the man who hadn’t given half a shit when strangers had called him a bunch of names to his face a few days ago? I made a face as I went after them, staring at the back of the beanie- covered head as he crossed the threshold into the house. By the time I got in, he was toeing off his tennis shoes and Abuela was already halfway down the hall that led to the rear of her home where her kitchen and living room were. With a hand on the wall, I bent over and pulled one heel off, then the other. Dear God, please don’t let me regret this more than I already do. “Sígueme, niño bonito,” Abuela called out. “What did she say?” Moore asked as I straightened, noticing that he’d lined up his shoes neatly along the wall. They were white-ish and looked weathered, kind of like my brother Tommy’s ancient Adidas. I didn’t recognize the label or the emblem, but they looked like the expensive clothes I saw sometimes that were made to look beat-up on purpose. But I’d give him credit for not just kicking them every which way, like he kept his shoes at his own house. I’d had to straighten them before we’d left, so I would know. “She said to follow her,” I translated with a blank expression on my face. He narrowed his eyes at me. “Is it all right that I’m here?” he asked, oddly intuitive. I knew for a fact I had a good business face, so how did he know? I kept it up but let myself tell him a little bit of the truth. “I don’t know what you’re used to or what you expect, but my grandma cooks with vegetable oil and doesn’t know what a carb is,” I tried to explain. “I don’t mix work with my personal life, and I signed an NDA that you’re making really hard to adhere to.” I paused. “I don’t think she knows who you are, but I might be wrong.” Those green eyes got even more squinty as he reached up to tug the beanie off his head and shove it into his pocket. “I haven’t been watching my diet much lately,” he insisted. I blinked. “And this was my choice to come here. If she asks, I’ll tell her, so it isn’t you doing the telling. Deal?”

The urge to narrow my eyes rode my instincts hard, but we were already here. And he was right to a point. This was all his fault. Accessing my phone, I found the voice note app on it and opened it. “Can you say that out loud? That you won’t sue me for whatever happens while we’re at my grandma’s house?” I asked. George Moore blinked those green-green eyes. “You’re serious?” I stared at him. “I don’t mess around with contracts, Mr. Moore. They’re kind of my thing.” His forehead furrowed, and I worried for a second that I’d offended him, but that face that was all clean lines and unreal cheekbones went very, very thoughtful. Then, what felt like out of nowhere, he smiled a little. “You’ve got good ideas. I’ll have to do that next time.” I blinked. “I don’t actually know if it’s legal or not, but I figure it’s better than nothing.” “Better than something is better than nothing, I’m learning,” he answered, his little smile disappearing just as quickly as it had appeared. I’d forgotten about his life’s dumpster fire and had to fight not to wince. “It’s better to be too careful sometimes,” I told him gingerly. He nodded, expression bordering on glum, before tipping his chin at me. “Hit record,” he said. “I, George Carl Moore, solemnly swear not to sue Veronica—what’s your last name again?” It took everything in me not to physically react. “Rubio, Mr. Moore.” The son of a bitch didn’t look embarrassed at not knowing my name. “I won’t sue Veronica Rubio if her family finds out she works for me while I’m at her grandma’s house against her wishes. I say this today, February 15th, the year of our Lord 2023.” The year of our — “Good?” he asked. “Good enough,” I told him, even more unsure about him again after that little joke. Maybe he had been in an extra bad mood the other day. He tipped his head in the direction Abuela had gone. “Can we go eat now?” There was only one way to answer. I nodded.

“Will you tell your grandma I said thank you again for feeding me?” Loosening my fingers around the steering wheel as I went through the gate to get into his neighborhood, I said, “Sure,” and meant it. I didn’t think there was anything in this world that could have prepared me for the man who had sat at my abuela’s table and quietly eaten not one, not two, but three bowls of caldo de res—a kind of beef stew with squash, carrot, potato, and chunks of corn. The kicker had been the way he’d quietly smacked his lips after sucking down the broth at the bottom of each bowl. He wasn’t dainty about it. What might have surprised me more than the three bowls he basically swallowed was the way he’d caught on to me eating my own caldo with a rolled-up tortilla I dipped into the broth, and then he’d mimicked it. George fucking Moore, six-foot-five inches of blond hair and green eyes, had hunched over my grandma’s table with one rolled up tortilla after another and sang an endless stream of praises for the soup I’d been eating my entire life. “This is so good, Miss Gloria,” he’d just about moaned. He’d asked her what her name was after she’d invited him to sit at the table, and my tiny little grandma had patted his hair and answered, “Gloria.” I’d blinked. And that was what started Miss Gloria. “Miss Gloria, this is the best thing I’ve eaten in years.” “Miss Gloria, did you make these tortillas?” She hadn’t, but he’d sworn she’d put magic into them. “Miss Gloria, are you sure I can have another bowl?” “Miss Gloria, I don’t want to eat all your food, but I will take some more if you’re sure it’s fine.” I had four brothers and a healthy appetite myself, but I had never ever seen anybody eat the way he did. And if I didn’t know my abuela half as well as I did, I would have thought she’d been horrified feeding a man with an empty 48-gallon tank, but when she beamed at his request for seconds, thirds, and fourths, I knew she had been pleased. Abuela ate that kind of shit up.

None of us talked much, and it had been awkward but not worse than when I’d brought my cheating ass of an ex around my family after I’d forgiven him the first time. After that third bowl, I’d asked George Moore as politely as I could if he could check and see if people were still at his house, and he’d confirmed they were gone. I washed our dishes, and then he’d thanked her while giving her a hug that I’d monitored suspiciously. Him being so nice toward her didn’t seem like an act, but… “You can park in the driveway,” he offered just as I came to a stop in front of his house. “Thanks,” I told him, even though I wouldn’t. I never parked in clients’ driveways unless I absolutely had to. Moore didn’t know I was just trying to appease him as his hand moved to the door handle and lingered there. “Will you let me know what they say?” “Sure,” I agreed instantly. I could tell he hesitated over something, before saying, “All right. Hopefully, we get a… what’s it called?” “An offer,” I replied. “Yeah, that,” he went on, his tone pretty bleak. I could only imagine what he’d been thinking of on the drive over. The urge to ask him what else he’d found out about his financial situation was in my brain again, but it wasn’t my business—not unless it affected this, and I wasn’t in the mindset to deal with another fire right now. We were going to keep showing the house until something legally forced me not to, damn it. “I’ll let you know,” I promised, watching him. He opened the door, then stopped again. “Thank you for taking me to Miss Gloria’s,” he said, smiling faintly. “You’re really lucky.” Before I could figure out if he was referring to having her for a grandma, he was out of the car and slamming the door shut hard enough that I winced, his stride long and sure all the way toward his front door. I waited until he was inside to U-turn and go home. And I thought about him more than I needed to, feeling kind of guilty the whole time. OceanofPDF.com

“…I CHAPTER 5 FEBRUARY don’t understand why she’s always on my ass.” I snickered as I leaned against the corner of my passenger seat and watched Tommy behind the wheel, his seventeen- year-old face pulled into the closest thing to a scowl he was capable of. I would never tell him, but our ten-year-old niece was more intimidating than he was. Tommy was all butter-soft sweetness 99 percent of the time, and I would commit a felony for my Care Bear of a brother. God knew it needed to make up for giving me Pablo and Carly. “She’s on your ass because you’re the baby and the only one who still lives with her, so she has to focus on somebody,” I tried to explain as he drove us home from the custom salad place we’d had for lunch. “I know it doesn’t make it any easier, but she’s been on all of our asses at some point.” I was pretty sure that he and I had gotten peak Mom and Dad. Me because I was the oldest and they’d learned how to be parents with me, and him because he was the only child still under their roof. “But she’s gotten so much worse, Shorty. She gives me shit for how I rinse the dishes. She gives me shit for how I fold my clothes!” he claimed, exasperated. He had his long hair down and parted in half, the black strands gleaming in a way that I knew had nothing to do with conditioner. “I cleaned the bathroom, and she told me I cleaned it wrong.” I started laughing, and he slid his gaze toward me, his lean face a weird mix of the little boy I’d adored and the man he was on his way to becoming.

“Tommy, she’s been pulling that line since I was little.” “That was a long time ago.” “Fuck you, man,” I snickered in one go, the insult doing nothing. “All I’m trying to say is, she’s trying to teach you how not to be a lazy-ass, and I’m not saying it’s the right way, but it’s her way. And she did it to all of us, so she isn’t singling you out.” My baby brother blew out a huff. “But it sucks.” I shrugged at him. “It is what it is, Tommy. Just let it go in one ear and out the other. It’ll be helpful when you’re older and other people piss you off. Think of it as training.” The face he made at the windshield told me he didn’t believe me exactly, but I figured it was good for him to get it out of his system regardless. He didn’t know it yet because he was too young, but Mom was pretty awesome compared to a lot of other mothers I’d heard about. She just expected a lot from the people she cared about. That was probably where I’d picked it up from. “Can I move in with you when I graduate?” he asked. “Have you thought about what you want to do after you finish school?” I asked him, dropping my voice in a whisper because we hadn’t discussed the future much yet. That was a question I’d hated being asked throughout several periods in my life, so I usually avoided bringing it up. Just as he opened his mouth, my cab started beeping with an incoming call. The number was from the scheduling service. Tommy already knew the drill, so he stayed quiet as I answered. “This is Veronica.” The man on the other end explained where he was calling from and why he was calling—because of George Moore’s house on River Forest—and could an agent come by in an hour? I hadn’t heard from the man who had chowed down at my grandma’s house since dropping him off almost a week ago, but I couldn’t say I was surprised he still wasn’t answering their calls. “Let me see, and I’ll call you right back,” I told the scheduler, who agreed. Sighing, I hit the button to activate my voice dialing. “Call Beetlejuice on River Forest,” I said out loud, not even earning a glance from my brother, who I didn’t think had ever watched the movies before.

Mr. Moore answered on the third ring. “Hello?” He didn’t sound like he knew who was calling again. “Hi, it’s Veronica, your realtor.” I made it a point not to say his name. The pause before he replied was longer than it needed to be, but he finally said, “Oh, hey. Did those people change their mind?” Straight to business. I’d texted him the day after the last showing, giving him a watered- down version of the feedback we’d gotten. The homebuyer hadn’t liked the location, and they’d thought it was priced too high. I’d added the last part as matter-of-fact as possible, even though I’d been shaking my head at how not surprising it was. But even with that feedback, Mr. USA Swimming hadn’t said another word about dropping the asking price. It made me want to smack myself on the forehead. “No, but someone else wants to see the house today. The showing service said they called you twice.” “Is that what that number was?” he asked, trailing off. “Yeah, they can come. When?” “In an hour.” “Oh.” I blinked. “Is that okay?” He better not say no…. There was an “umm” that had too much hesitation in it. “Yeah, but I’ve got a date in three hours.” I glanced at the clock on my dashboard, wondering what kind of a date someone would go on during a Monday afternoon. Tommy was only with me because it was a school holiday; otherwise, he’d be in class. But what did him having a date have anything to do with having a showing? “Are you still at the house?” I asked. “Yeah, I’m going to be living in Houston full-time now.” He made another pensive little sound that had me wanting to shake him because didn’t he understand we needed to show this place as much as we possibly could? “Yeah, all right. They can come see the house. It should be fine. Can you come get me?” This again? Was his date picking him up too? And why the hell was he selling his place if he was going to be living here? “Oh,” I said, trying not to mutter. “Your car situation is still… tricky?” “You can say that,” he replied, his tone turning just a little brittle.

Why couldn’t he take a car somewhere? I wondered before reminding myself that I had to say yes regardless of whether he had a transportation issue or not. Fuck. The fact was, if he wanted me to drive halfway across Texas, I should. I thought of my abuela’s face and how grateful I was that she was healthy and walking around just fine, and that put everything into perspective. “Sure. But I have someone in the car with me right now, and I don’t have time to take him home before going to get you.” “Okay,” was his instant response. “See you here.” He hung up. Not asking who I was with or anything. “We need to get someone?” Tommy asked. Just as I reached for my forehead, I reminded myself that I’d spent too much time on my makeup that morning and I wasn’t going to screw it up now. “Yeah…” I dropped my damn hand. The good thing was we weren’t too far from The Woodlands, where Moore’s house was located. “Let’s go back north.” My little brother nodded as he did the first U-turn under an overpass he could and merged on the freeway while I called the service back to confirm the showing. Tommy didn’t ask where we were going or what we were doing. The moment I hung up, he went straight into, “Anyway, you talked to Carly lately?” “Not really,” I replied, pushing away my worry about how I was going to explain George Moore to Tommy. “I know he’s alive because I see his car in the morning when I leave, and his shoes get moved around.” I paused. “Why?” “It’s been three weeks since the last time he got on and played GT with me. We used to play almost every night,” my baby brother explained. “I sent him a text three days ago, and he never texted me back.” “That son of a bitch,” I said. Out of all my siblings, Carlos was the quietest and the most independent, but the dumbass ran strong in him too. JJ was always in my business, and Pablo was a wrecking ball of a human being who mostly just worried about his own problems. But when I worked in my office, it wasn’t uncommon for him to wander in, take a chair, and mess around on his phone for an hour without saying a word.

But for Tommy to point out that one of our brothers was acting weird was more than a little alarming. Especially since I’d once cut half my hair off, and it took a whole month before he’d noticed. And we spent the most time together. “He’s probably still in the dumps over Jackie, but I’ll try and see if I can get anything out of him the next time I see him around,” I promised Tommy. He shot me a look. “Don’t tell him I said anything.” I made a face right back. “Secrets are my middle name.” I paused. “I’ll blame Pab.” We laughed at the same time, and when I told him to exit, Tommy was halfway in the middle of a story about him and Pablo going to the movies last weekend and how he’d tried to sneak candy in his hoodie but it had fallen out right after they’d gotten their tickets scanned. It didn’t occur to me again until we drove through the neighborhood gates that I hadn’t figured out what to tell my brother about George Moore. Would he recognize him? Was I worrying for no reason? I finished giving him directions to the house, and he whistled when he parked in front of it. “Damn, how much money is this thing going for?” “Too much,” I told him as my hand went for the handle. “Will you wait here while I go get my seller?” He nodded. I paused. “I have to get him to leave the house for—” I glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “—an hour and a half. Is that all right?” His half-scrawny, half-growing-boy shoulders went up. “I don’t have anything better to do.” I smacked his shoulder before opening the door. “Damn, thanks.” I grinned as I got out. I jogged up the driveway, then toward the front door. At least I’d gotten dressed for work today, I thought, remembering the content I’d filmed that morning to advertise the homes I sold and leased. Some days were crazy hectic workwise, and other days I laid around, knowing I didn’t need to leave the house or do my hair or worry about making my clothes match. Appearances meant too much in the business, unfortunately. When I didn’t wear makeup, I looked too young, which made people less likely to trust me because youth usually meant immaturity, and I needed clients to have faith in me. Some of them didn’t give a shit, and others wanted to feel

like I was a TV show presenter, so it was a constant battle of finding a middle ground until I got to know them. Knocking on the front door, I put Work Veronica mode back on, hoping I could maintain it while I was around Tommy, and waited. Nothing. I knocked again. This son of a— I pulled my phone out and hit Beetlejuice on River Forest on my recent contacts. He answered on the third ring. “Hello?” He sounded like he had no idea it was me again. “Mr. Moore, it’s Veronica.” Nothing. Just when I’d started to feel bad for him. “Your realtor.” That did the trick. “Oh, Veronica. Yeah.” Yeah? I barely kept myself from making a face or sighing, knowing damn well he had a camera on his doorbell. “I’m here. Are you ready to go?” “I just finished showering; I’ll be out in two minutes.” “Okay. Is the house show-ready or…?” There was a long pause. “Uh, it could be better.” I was going to beat this man. No, I was going to enjoy spending the money he was going to make me. Was I spending it on something fun? No. But I was putting it toward something that kept me up at night, which was why I put up with his bullshit. Dealing with a person I had sworn to myself almost a decade ago I would never work with. “Can I come in and check while you finish getting ready?” “Yeah.” “Okay, see you downstairs,” I warned him. He hung up. I sent Tommy a text letting him know I was going to be a minute, then went inside. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t ready to be shown either. There were more bags of food with receipts stapled to them, telling me just how much he’d been having delivered. The only good part was the house didn’t smell like old food. Toeing off my shoes, I ran around trying to pick up as much as I could, straightening cushions, brushing off crumbs, and hoping nobody was going to be walking around barefoot because I could feel how bad the floor

needed a vacuum and a mop. We were going to need to have a conversation about that, I thought, as I shoved all the bags into the overflowing trash can and gritted my teeth as I took it out to the can in the garage. Keeping an eye on the time, I loaded the dishwasher—thanking heaven that this man mostly used paper plates—and reminded myself I loved my job. This was going to be worth it once I sold it. This man had been very, very nice to my grandma. And that’s what I kept repeating in my head as I flushed the toilet in the half-bath and had to flip on the overhead fan. Maybe dealing with my brothers’ bullshit had been meant to prepare me for this: for other people’s bullshit. I’d never thought about it like that before, but now that I did, it cheered me up. Tommy had just been complaining about Mom holding him up to a higher standard, and you know what? Good for her. I was darting through the home gym, trying to find anything else out of place, when I glanced at my watch and saw that we had to leave. I cursed under my breath and listened for any movement upstairs. Nothing. “Mr. Moore!” I hollered as politely as I could, not the same way I did around my family. I kept the deranged to a minimum. “We have to be out of here in two minutes!” He was so lucky we weren’t friends or related because— “Almost ready!” he answered from the direction of his bedroom. Deciding the house was as good as it was going to get, I went to the front door to wait for him. When five minutes went by, I balled up my fist, closed my eyes, and tried to prepare myself to yell in my Work Veronica voice again. Just as I was about to, George Moore came storming around the corner. He was tugging a maroon hoodie over his head, giving me an extremely clear view of the same washboard abs and tiny waist that were on most of the “artwork” in the house. I’d thought I was desensitized to possibly the greatest core in the universe, but… nope. I looked. I took a good ol’ look at the body on the man who had recently claimed he wasn’t “watching what he ate.” Then his head popped through the hoodie as he shoved the material down to his waist, where the elastic of his matching maroon sweatpants rested on a pair of oblique muscles that belonged in an anatomy book. George Moore ran a hand through his damp hair as he headed over, moving fast, socks in his other hand, and huffed, “I’m ready.” I opened the door for him.

He shoved his feet partway into his sneakers before clip-clopping out of the house so I could shut the door. When we were halfway to the car, he finally turned around and tipped his chin up. “Hey. Did I say that already?” “Hi, Mr. Moore,” I greeted him before suddenly remembering we needed to discuss something. I threw out my hand to get him to stop. “Actually, can we talk about something first?” He blinked, wariness creeping over his features almost instantly. “Okay.” “My little brother is with me.” “Okay.” “He’s in the car.” He started to squint. “Okay.” I only barely kept the sigh in my mouth. Maybe I’d buy him a planner as a closing present, so he could take down notes, write his passwords in it, and keep track of things a little better. “Remember that NDA we talked about last week?” His eyes lit up. “Ohhhh. Yeah, okay.” Mr. Moore shrugged. “That’s fine.” “He might recognize you, but he might not.” He thought about it for a second. “What if we don’t say anything unless he says something?” I liked that idea. I nodded. “All right.” I stopped. “But you tell him however much you want to tell him if it comes to it.” His nod was immediate. “He’s your little brother you said?” “My youngest brother, yes.” Moore gestured in the direction we’d been going. “What’s his name?” We started walking down the driveway. “Tommy.” He tossed his socks into the air and caught them, still half walking, half limping in his worn-down, expensive sneakers that I’d looked up at a red light and learned cost six hundred dollars. The shit people spent money on. When we got to my car, I hesitated. Then he hesitated. “You can ride in the front if you want,” I offered. He thought about it and shook his head. “Nah, you go in the front.” He didn’t have to tell me twice. But the second I sat down, legs still on the curb, I turned to my brother.

Tommy smiled sweetly. “You took a long time.” “Fu—” I remembered who was opening the back door and stuck my head out while waving my hand, trying to fan out the car. It smelled like rotten cabbage. Worse than rotten cabbage. That was the last time I let him get chickpeas in his salad. But I kept my mouth shut as I closed the door and cracked the window before glaring at Tommy again. He shrugged. “You fed me. Blame yourself.” Damn it, I held my breath as I scooted the seat as far up as possible without the dash being in my lap. When I’d gotten my seat belt on, I turned and said, “Tommy, this is my client. Uh, this is Tommy.” My little brother didn’t seem all that surprised or anything really as he glanced at the back seat and tipped his chin up. “Hey. Nice to meet you.” I didn’t know what Moore did, but I heard him reply, “Yeah, nice to meet you.” Very polite. Interesting. I peeked in the back. George Moore looked at me. I looked at his shoulder, then back at his eyes. He didn’t move. I looked at his shoulder again, then made eye contact one more time. His eyes narrowed, and he slowly glanced at the same spot I had. I patted my shoulder in a way that he could see. He didn’t move. Was he really going to make me say it? “She wants you to put on your seat belt.” It was Tommy who piped up, saying it in his usual cheery voice. “She almost died in a car accident, and now she makes us all wear them, even if you’re in the back seat.” George Moore’s lips parted a little before he met my eyes. “Serious?” I nodded. His eyes got all wrinkly in a way that made me feel like he was about to try and argue over why he didn’t need to wear a seat belt, but after a second, he reached for the strap and pulled it across himself, buckling it in. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the thumbs-up he gave me afterward, but I remembered: money. And he’d done what mattered… and I slowly sat back to face forward. “Where we going?” Tommy asked.

I didn’t know. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. We had been on our way back to my house, and there was no way in hell I was taking him there. That was a line I wasn’t about to cross. I raised my voice so Mr. Moore would know I was talking to him. “Is there anything you need to do?” “No.” “Is there anything you want to do?” I asked, going through one idea after another and discarding each. I doubted he wanted to go grocery shopping or go to a box store. His “no” wasn’t exactly a surprise, but his “I wouldn’t mind going to your grandma’s house again” was the last thing I expected to hear. That time it was Tommy who looked at me, his forehead scrunched up. I gave him an expression that said, “I’ll tell you later.” But would I? Not unless I had to. Fortunately, Tommy had been my ride or die his entire life, and I could tell him we were driving across the country, and he’d shrug and say “okay.” He pulled out his phone, tapped on the screen a couple times, and said, “She’s home.” He’d checked the app that let us track her. Abuela would never say no to anyone coming over. If anything, we’d all made an effort to spend more time with her since our great-aunt, her sister, had passed away three years ago and left her without a roommate. I’d seen the way she’d looked at Mr. Moore. She liked him. But she liked almost everyone. I peeked at the blond over my shoulder again. “You sure?” “Positive,” he said, folding his hands in his lap. Of all the places in the world… my grandma’s? Because he was hungry? I mean, her house was very homey. I think it had more to do with her being a warm person than it did anything else. Her house had always felt like my house, and I’d never lived there. “To Abuela’s then,” I told Tommy. My baby brother glanced at me again, his expression something that told me he hadn’t forgotten about this being Mr. Moore’s second trip to Abuela’s. We hadn’t left the neighborhood when a phone went off in the back seat, the “Hey” coming right after it. I kept my attention forward, but I was listening.

Had his voice come out a little different, or was I imagining it? “I’m good… Yeah, I’m in Houston… No, I’m not coming back…” He was good? Since when? He had dark circles under his eyes again. I kept my face even and pulled out my own phone, focusing down on the screen like I was doing something, but really, I was just eavesdropping. “Sure, I’ll give you a call next time I come through... Probably won’t be any time soon. I’ve got so much going on now… Mm-hmm… Mm-hmm… I’m not looking into investing in anything…” Keeping my eyes from darting side to side like I was looking for all these things he had “going on” was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. But I couldn’t risk him seeing me in the side mirror or somehow through the reflection in the windshield. “I’ll let you know if I change my mind… No, Brian, I’m really not interested… All right, bye,” he finished soon afterward, his tone having gone slightly sharper at the end there. I had questions, but I couldn’t exactly ask them because I didn’t think it would be professional. “You almost died in a car accident?” came the sudden question from the back seat about five seconds later. I didn’t get a chance to answer. Tommy handled it. “Yeah, this car T- boned her and Mom. Mom broke her arm and leg, and Shorty got a bad concussion and broke her arm.” Okay, that wasn’t so bad as far as information went. That wasn’t exactly oversharing. “No shit,” Moore huffed from the back seat. “That bad?” “Yeah. This guy in a work truck—BAM!—ran a red light and plowed right into them,” my brother explained, letting go of the steering wheel with one hand and making an explosive motion that had me biting back a laugh at how dramatic he made it seem. “Car? Totaled. It was brand-new too. Mom’s first new car. The cops said it was a miracle they didn’t die.” The way he made the story sound didn’t exactly come out like a near tragedy. The way Tommy retold it made it sound like a video game. Sometimes my arm still hurt from the break even though I’d been told it had healed perfectly. Mom said the same thing about her broken bones. “What happened to the truck driver?” “Yeah, what happened to him?” Tommy chimed in. I blinked. “He was fine. I don’t think anything happened to him.”

“You get money from it?” George Moore asked. “Mom and Dad paid off the house, didn’t they?” my little brother asked. I nodded, uncomfortable with sharing this money talk. “And our medical bills. Our insurance wasn’t very good.” I’d gotten some money too. It had paid for part of the down payment on my house. “That’s why she gets naggy about seat belts. Because they save lives.” I raised my hand to smack Tommy on the arm with the back of it because I wasn’t fucking naggy, but then I remembered who was in the back seat and put it back down. Even my brother’s face looked surprised I hadn’t gone through with it, but when I flicked my eyes to the side, he understood what had saved him. He grinned. I just faced forward again and promised myself I wouldn’t forget. “I’ve done some dumb shit, but I’ve never been in an accident before,” Moore threw in out of nowhere. “What kind of dumb shit?” That was Tommy. The man in the back seat made a soft sound. “The dumbest? Breaking and entering. I was nineteen. It was a dumbass dare to get into—anyway, security caught us.” He made another sound. “Technically, only me. My friends got away.” I started to raise my hand to my forehead and stopped. He could probably see me. “You didn’t rat them out?” “No. I probably should’ve, but I didn’t.” He made a sound in his throat. “I got lucky the training facility dropped the charges eventually, and I just had to pay for damages. But that got me suspended from swimming for a while.” There was another sound. “It was pretty fucking stupid.” A third sound. “I regret it.” I was proud of Tommy for not disagreeing with him or blowing it off. Lord knew I wasn’t going to say otherwise either. That was stupid. But I could appreciate the fact he was willing to take responsibility for it. I guess. His comment must have triggered something—maybe his guilt— because nobody said anything after that. I got caught up thinking about stuff in my life that I’d done that I regretted, and Tommy… who the hell knew what Tommy was thinking about. Dumb stuff he’d kept a secret, maybe.

When my brother turned into the neighborhood, he started to say, “Do you want me to park at—” “Park at Abuela’s,” I cut him off before he could say anything else. He proved to me again why he was the brother I would call if I needed company to do anything sketchy when he didn’t comment and did just that, parking my car at our grandma’s. We all got out quietly, with Tommy behind me and Moore behind him. I knocked once before turning the knob. “We’re just going in?” I heard Moore ask as I went in. “Yeah,” Tommy replied like it was the most natural thing in the world, and to us, it was. “Abuelaaaaa,” I called out as I went inside far enough to take off my shoes. “¿Mi niña?” “We came to see you,” I told her in Spanish as Tommy came to stand beside me and did the same. “I brought you a visitor.” I heard her soft steps before her head peeked around the wall on the other side of her house. She was already smiling, but when I felt a big presence come up behind me, she smiled even wider. “Hi, Miss Gloria,” the voice right by me called out. My tiny grandma beamed even brighter. “Hola, precioso.” “I don’t think she’s ever called me that,” Tommy whispered. I elbowed him. “Hi, Abuela,” my little brother raised his voice, sounding almost expectant. “Hola, amor,” she replied. Abuela’s little baby took off down the hall, giving her a hug and a kiss on the cheek that she returned. I tipped my head at Moore in their direction. He was smiling faintly when he nodded, and I set that aside for later. Abuela gave me a hug first, but she just about shoved me over before holding out her arms. And the man I didn’t want to like reached out for her in return immediately, taking her hands before stepping closer with the biggest smile on his face. She was so small in comparison to him. He was almost two feet taller than her, after all. “What can I call you?” she asked him in Spanish. Green eyes slid to me as a set of suspicious brown ones did the same. I ignored those.

“She wants to know what to call you,” I told him. “George,” was his simple answer. I blinked. The NDA I’d signed had been specific about me not calling him that. That had got me thinking about how the entire world referred to him by his last name, even in interviews. Abuela smiled at that before moving on just as quickly. “¿Tienen hambre?” she asked, already taking a step toward her kitchen. “Hungry?” Mr. Moore didn’t need to be asked twice. “Yes.” He paused. “¿Sí?” He might as well have kissed her. My grandma just about giggled. “Follow me,” she said. And that’s what all three of us did. After Tommy and I side-eyed each other. Moore took the same seat he’d been in during his last visit, and Tommy followed Abuela to the fridge and stove to help her, like he usually did. I sat next to my seller. Our eyes met. “Are you sure I don’t need to help?” he asked me, maybe, possibly, winning me over a little more. He’d asked the same thing the last time he’d been over here. I’d expected him to not be so accommodating. Before I could assure him that Tommy and Abuela had it under control, it was Abuela who answered, “No!” Moore faced her. “If Tommy can help, I can too,” he tried to argue, winning me over just a little more. He couldn’t remember my name, but he could remember my brother’s? And Abuela’s? I was more than oddly fine with it. I didn’t understand it, or his ready willingness to help serve himself here when he wasn’t exactly clean at his own house, but it was acceptable. For someone like him. Tommy was already pulling containers out of the fridge when he called out, “Nah, don’t worry. She used to wipe my butthole. It’s the least I can do.” Before anyone could blink, before George fucking Moore could even process the comment, because I sure as hell wasn’t able to, my brother threw in, “When I was a baby. Not recently,” just to be clear. There was something wrong with him. And later on, when I wasn’t wondering how the hell I’d gotten to this point in my life, I’d tell JJ all about the most recent dumb shit to come out of one of our siblings’ mouths. That was one of our favorite pastimes—

sharing those dumbass comments with each other that had us questioning why our parents had kept having kids after us. But as caught off guard as I was by Tommy’s butthole talk in front of a practical stranger, nothing could have prepared me for the equally serious way that the blond man nodded in return before saying, “Fair. The only person who’s looked at mine since I was a baby has been my doctor.” What was happening? Tommy bobbed his head at George Moore like their exchange was totally normal. Like talking about buttholes was second nature for them. And it might have been if Mr. Moore was anyone else. In our family, it wasn’t out of the ordinary. I was pretty sure we’d had a whole conversation right here about a pimple on Pablo’s ass that he thought was actually a boil or a cyst. But the man beside me wasn’t just anyone. He was George Moore. And like it was no big deal, one of the most well-known people on the planet turned to me. “I was meaning to call you,” he claimed suddenly. “Were you?” I asked, unsure whether that was a good thing or not. “Yeah. Do you know anything about painting? How much it costs?” “Painting walls or a portrait?” “Walls.” “A little, why?” I asked, not wanting to jump to conclusions that he was considering painting his house. But please let that be why he’s asking. “These two companies came by and gave me a quote. I don’t know if I’m cheap or dumb—” He smiled, but it was a funny one. “—but is it really that expensive to hire somebody?” “Which walls and how much did they say?” It wasn’t all the walls, but it was the ones I’d suggested he make less personal. When he said the amount, I flinched. “Are they redoing the sheetrock?” Did the paint have flecks of gold in it? Good God. He shrugged. “I don’t know what sheetrock is, but that sounds more expensive than painting. It is a lot then? I’m not making something out of nothing?” “That’s a lot. A lot, a lot.”

“Wait, someone wants you to pay them that much to paint?” even Tommy piped up from the island, his mouth slightly open. Nosy ass. “Yeah,” Moore replied. “They were trying to get me to agree to hire them on the spot.” My little brother made a sound in his throat. “I’ll paint your whole house for that much. Inside and outside.” Mr. Moore smiled in a way that seemed very genuine but also made me very wary. “Veronica said it’s eight walls that need to be redone.” He paused. “You want to do it, I’ll pay you instead.” He paused. “Not all that, but we can come up with a fair price.” Green eyes slid in my direction in a way that made me feel like he expected me to give him an idea of a fair price. I threw my hand up the second I realized what was happening. “Wait, wait. He has no experience painting.” From by the stove, Tommy shot me a look that was not reassuring. “It can’t be that hard, Shorty.” I winced at the “Shorty” and hoped Moore hadn’t heard that part. The thing I didn’t think either of them were aware of was that it took common sense to do a good job, and that there was a method to it. You couldn’t just throw paint up on a wall. You could tell when someone didn’t know what they were doing. “I could watch an instructional,” my brother offered. There was no way I wanted to embarrass Tommy and say he had no business trying to paint someone’s walls, but… Mr. Moore turned to me. “It doesn’t need to be perfect, does it?” Technically it didn’t. He took my silence as a “yes” because his face turned both serious and pleased at the same time. “If you want to do it, you’re hired.” Jesus Christ. What was wrong with both of them? I didn’t want to shit on either of their dreams, but what the fuck? He was just going to hire my little brother, a person he’d met less than half an hour ago, to paint some of his walls to save money? I had never been more torn with deciding who to call a dumbass, Moore or Tommy, than I was at that moment. All I could do was sit there and wonder about who I was supposed to disappoint. The person paying me a ton of money—hopefully—or the boy I’d loved his whole life?

“I can do it, Shorty,” Tommy insisted, like he could tell what I was debating. I shot him a look over my shoulder that I knew he had to recognize. It was my “are you fucking kidding me?” face. The same one I gave all our brothers when they did something I was hesitant about. The thumbs-up he gave me should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t. If he did an awful job… You know what? I’d figure it out. I had more experience painting than he did. I’d been the one who painted everything in my house. And suddenly I knew exactly what was going to end up happening. Damn it. But one look at his face reminded me that I would do a lot worse for him and with him. Still, damn it. There were better things I’d rather do with my time than paint. Especially paint Mr. Moore’s house. I guess it would only help me in the long run if it helped the house sell faster, though. I went over all this in my head as the two of them discussed a price, when the job could get done—“Tomorrow, whenever,” were Moore’s words —and what color he wanted painted: white. Like there weren’t a million shades of white and these two were unaware of that, so I was going to have to poke around in the room where the previous owner had left half-empty five-gallon paint buckets years ago to find the right shade. I couldn’t believe these two. Dumbasses. Both of them. OceanofPDF.com

“Y CHAPTER 6 FEBRUARY ou don’t need to go with me.” I rubbed my eyes with the pads of my fingers and tried to think about how to reply to Tommy. Being a big sister was a lot more complicated than most people would assume, especially when you were the oldest. I thought so, at least. In my case, being bossy came naturally to me. Then there was the whole “wanting to solve everybody’s problems” trait that had only gotten worse as I got older. My brothers had been my minions their entire lives. Mom and Dad used to say they were my orchestra, and I was their conductor. At one point though, I realized I could cross that line too easily. I was their sister, not their mom, and I tried my best to not overstep. I didn’t want my brothers to ever feel like they couldn’t share things with me because I would lecture them, which is what they expected from our parents. I wanted to be in their business. But I also had to tell them when they were being stupid, because somebody had to. And I liked to think that I’d done a pretty decent job of it over the years because all of them still came to me with things they didn’t want to share with other people. And now, as much as I wanted to tell Tommy that he shouldn’t have butted in and offered something he had no business volunteering for, I had to walk that fine line again.

I might want to make money—to pay off a debt I would gladly owe for the rest of my life that had been well spent on one of the most important people in my life—but not at the risk of hurting his feelings. There were very few things worth that. “It’s easier if I come with you because I can get you through the gate without any problems,” I told him, which was the truth. “And I’ll help you paint so we can get done faster. You don’t even have to pay me my cut.” Brown eyes slid to me. “I wasn’t gonna pay you to begin with.” I rolled my eyes. “You should since I’m the one who sent you the list of what to buy,” I reminded him. I’d texted him how many rolls of tape he should get, what kind of brushes, roller, roller handle, trays, plastic, and even taken a picture of the kind of paint the builder used so he could get the same brand. How had Tommy replied to my text? With a thumbs-up. God, help me. “I could’ve figured it out,” he tried to claim. I shot him a look. “I could’ve!” “Whatever you say, buddy,” I snickered. He might be in denial, but I’d told Mom what he was planning, and even though she hadn’t been surprised at his entrepreneurial skills, she’d still scoffed. “Tommy? Paint?” And then laughed and said that knowing him, he’d just show up ready to do the job with nothing else. And since I could see him doing that too, I’d made the list of supplies, along with pictures of what kind of tape to buy, because not all tapes were created equal, and I wasn’t fucking around. “Nah, you’ll see. I watched a few tutorials last night. I got this,” my baby brother insisted. “We’ll see who does it faster,” I egged him on. “Yeah, we’ll see,” he agreed with an easygoing smile that lasted about two seconds before we got to the gate. The second he drove us through, he said, “Say.” “Yeah?” “I didn’t wanna make a big deal about it, but why didn’t you tell anybody you’re working for George Moore?” he asked so nonchalantly, it took a moment for it to hit me that he knew. He hadn’t said a word. “I didn’t think you’d recognized him.”

It was his turn to roll his eyes. “Shorty, it’s George Moore. At least two of my teachers this semester have posters of him up in their rooms. When I was little, half the boys in my class dressed up like him for Halloween. Everybody knows who he is.” He made a good point. “So you see….” He side-eyed me, and I made a face. “I couldn’t. I signed this agreement that said I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone he’s my client or else I’d get sued.” Brown eyes almost bugged out of his head. “Then why’d you bring him around?” he just about cried. Then I just about cried because how smart was he to recognize I’d done something potentially stupid. He had more common sense than I could’ve ever given him credit for. “I’m proud of you for knowing that,” I told him. “He insisted, and I recorded him saying it was fine. It was his idea.” “And you trust him?” he accused one more time. Really, I could’ve shed a tear. “Not really, but that’s why I recorded him.” I paused. “In some ways, he’s a lot different than I thought he’d be like. I didn’t expect him to want to go to Abuela’s.” “Yeah, but why can’t he drive? I saw his PG account. Doesn’t he have a daily driver?” I could only imagine what a daily driver was, and we were running out of time, so I didn’t ask for confirmation. “I can’t tell you what’s going on with him. I’m sorry. Maybe he’ll blurt it out to you since you two are all buddy-buddy now, talking about your buttholes.” Tommy laughed. It wasn’t a lie. At Abuela’s house, Tommy and Moore had talked about why he wanted to paint his rooms, which led to asking why he’d picked such specific colors for his walls in the first place, which then led to Moore explaining one of them was for his favorite football team, which turned out to be my family’s favorite football team, and that’s where the conversation had gone while Abuela and I smirked at each other over their little bonding episode. I hated football—football players, one more than all the others, really to be specific—so I kept my mouth shut. Even the entire ride back to drop him off had been football, football, football. By the time Moore had climbed out of the back seat, he’d been

laughing and slapping palms with Tommy. All I got was a lift of a hand, which was fine by me. We’d crossed so many lines already, I was struggling with keeping mine straight. I figured all I could do from here on out was do my best. What my brother did was a whole different story, so there was no point in worrying about it too much. He didn’t have to be a professional. I did. Look at me being better about stressful shit. Tommy grinned. “Yeah, I like him.” His eyes slid toward me, a little furrow between his eyebrows. “Why don’t you like him? Because he’s an athlete?” It was instinct to start to say, “What makes you…” Think I don’t like him was where I was going with that. But this was my baby Tommy. Work Veronica didn’t need to clock in yet. “It’s not that I don’t like him.” He slid his gaze toward me again, even cocking his head a little to the side. “Okay, fine. Yes, because he’s an athlete. I didn’t like him that much a month ago. I’m pretty sure he didn’t know my name until recently. And every time I tried to talk to him about his house, he’d blow me off or make it seem like he had better things to do, when I was just trying to help him. He didn’t know how to do anything, Tommy. He didn’t want to do anything himself; you know that drives me nuts. And there was all that stuff he did before that made me think he’s an immature little fucker.” “But wasn’t that stuff a long time ago?” Ten years to me wasn’t a long time, but I guess to my little brother it would be. And I supposed, if I really thought about it, maybe he had a point. I’d made some of my stupidest mistakes in my early twenties too, I guess I could admit. Damn it. “Yeah, that’s a good point,” I acknowledged. “But he’s growing on me.” “I like him,” my baby brother repeated. But he liked everyone. He hadn’t gotten burned by people enough yet to be wary of them. I kept everybody that wasn’t related to me by blood at least two feet away at all times. Even that seemed too close sometimes. Rocks could travel pretty far if someone threw them at you. I felt bad for the people who didn’t know me well enough to be prepared for the fact that I didn’t give a fuck and would throw them right back if I had to.

Tommy remembered how to get to his house, and when he parked in front of the big colonial, he said, “I’ll grab everything if you wanna go tell him we’re here. You don’t need to carry anything since you aren’t getting paid.” I snickered as I opened the door. “Boy, I wasn’t going to carry anything anyway.” I laughed right before he did as I shut the door and made my way up the path. I had to ring the doorbell three times before the door finally opened. Mr. Moore stood there in a fitted black T-shirt that hugged long muscles and dark gray joggers that showed off thighs I had not been expecting on someone as lean as him. He was about 95 percent muscle, I bet. He was holding his cell phone to his face when he opened the door, saying, “I understand. I can wait until Monday.” I blinked. Mostly at the washboard abs that were visible beneath his tight shirt. That’s how defined they were. But when he lowered his phone, I lifted my face. He was digging into his pocket, a polite smile on his features. “You want an autograph?” “What?” I asked, distracted. He held up the permanent marker he’d pulled out of his joggers like a fucking magician. “Autograph?” Not again. My hand went up to touch my cap, and I tried to give him a little credit as I attempted to not make the face I really wanted to make. “Mr. Moore, it’s me.” I lifted the brim a couple of inches. Green eyes squinted. “Veronica?” “Yes.” Did he have face blindness? Did he need glasses? He leaned forward even closer, and I felt myself tense up as he narrowed his eyes before kind of laughing. “Oh, it is you.” Those dark, deep green eyes swept over my face, and he squinted some more. “You look different.” He huffed. “And shorter.” I had makeup on, but less than when I was working. I had tennis shoes on instead of heels. I also wasn’t dressed up, and my hair wasn’t down like every other time.

Before I could overthink it too much, he straightened. “Is there a showing today?” I knew for a fact he’d worked out having Tommy paint today because I’d been sitting right by them when they’d come up with this schedule. “No, I’m going to help Tommy paint.” His “oh” was breezy as he waved that big hand toward the doorway. “Come in.” He lifted his head, and his expression brightened surprisingly. “There he is.” “Hey, man,” I heard my baby brother call out. George Moore grinned. “Tommy. How’s it going?” My brother had his hands full. In one he held a five-gallon bucket of flat white paint, and in the other he had three bags with the other supplies he’d picked up. They leaned into each other and bumped shoulders like they were old friends. He could remember Tommy’s face, but I wore a hat and a little less makeup and he was offering me another autograph? I didn’t think I looked that different. Give me a break. “Want me to show you what or…?” I took the bags from my brother and shook my head at the man who was, at least, extraordinarily kind to my family members. “No, I got it, if it’s fine with you.” Two and a half hours later, I smacked Tommy between the shoulders. “I’m going to get some more water. Want some?” “Nah,” he declined as he drew the roller across the wall, totally focused on his task. I was pretty proud of him. He’d had a general idea of how to paint— from the instructional video or two he’d watched—but after I’d showed him how not to get too much on the roller and a couple other tips I’d picked up over the years of painting my own walls, he was doing great. At painting at least. I’d had him try and do the lines of tape on the trim and ceiling, and that had been questionable at best. He couldn’t do a straight line to save his life.

So that’s where I’d spent the majority of my time: applying colored tape to protect everything other than the walls that were getting a makeover. I was fine with that. All I’d wanted to do was help Tommy, not do the work for him. Down the stairs, I headed out to my car and grabbed the gallon of water from the floor of my passenger seat and chugged down some of it before going inside with what was left. But I was walking through the living room, eyeing the tape I’d put up on the bright blue wall I’d been telling Moore to cover up for months, when I heard, “Veronica?” It wasn’t my brother either. “Yes?” I called out. “Can you come here for a sec?” Thinking it sounded like he was in the kitchen, I went there and found him at the same table where I’d seen so much of his business not too long ago. He had his laptop open too, the screen facing away. But the expression on his face… I didn’t know him well enough to be certain, but it sure as hell seemed like there was something wrong. Again. “Yes, Mr. Moore?” I asked. Something rippled across his features before he frowned. “Just Moore is fine.” I nodded, knowing damn well I wasn’t going to call him that. We weren’t friends. We had an NDA. And he might be growing on me, but I recognized there was a line there I wouldn’t cross more than I already had. “I need to tell you something,” he seemed to warn me, dragging a hand through his hair. Fuck. If he said I was fired now after I’d spent so much time trying to help my brother paint his walls as evenly as possible…. “I need to sell this house now. Fast,” he announced. “What do we need to do?” The relief that left my body… I set the gallon of water on the corner of the table. “Just to be on the same page, when you say ‘fast,’ you mean tomorrow—not that that could happen—or within the next two months?” His throat worked, and the man in an extremely tight shirt leaned back into his chair, crossing his arms over his chest.

He looked tense. And real serious. “Tomorrow fast,” he replied, staring right at me. “Sit.” I took a seat in the chair across from him. I wanted to go straight into asking why, but I calmed my horses. “I have to tell you first that I can’t promise that, no matter what we do, we can sell your house in a day, much less a week. If someone was to put in an offer tomorrow, it would be a ten- day close at the earliest, and I don’t think there’s a single price point you would be willing to drop to that could get an offer that fast. Do you understand?” We had to set that expectation first. The way he lifted his hand and ran it aggressively through his hair made me guess that maybe he hadn’t known that. But he collected himself remarkably fast and nodded. “Ten days. All right.” “After an offer is made,” I reiterated, needing to be certain he understood that we were nowhere near ready for that. It was just a best-case scenario, if we had a buyer lined up. His fingers closed around his hair, pulling on the ends a little, the striations of his biceps flexing as he did. The man was ripped. “Got it.” His expression was so sober. “How low do we need to go to get someone to buy it as soon as possible?” “How much did you pay for it?” He told me the amount, and I nodded. That was going to cut my commission in almost half, but this wasn’t about me. Something was better than nothing. “I think you should make that back and a little more, but it’s up to you how low you’re willing to go.” I paused. “I’d feel better about looking at some recent comps so that whatever number you say isn’t too low. I can get you an idea tonight.” “Can you look up what you want to look up now?” I should be glad he was finally giving a shit, even if I was certain he didn’t know what the hell a comp was. “It’d be easier if I did it on my computer,” I let him know. He tapped the side of his laptop screen. “Use mine. I’d rather get a ballpark now.” Not the giant letters again. I’d gone home with a slight headache last time. “Are you sure?” He nodded and gestured toward the chair beside him.

If he insisted. I got up and moved around to take a seat, jerking back at the sight of the screen. Good God. I wanted to shove my chair back. It reminded me of the times when I’d arrived late to a movie theater and gotten stuck too close to the screen. “You good?” Moore asked, eyes squinty. I pressed my lips together, trying to decide how to bring up what I wanted to ask, even though I knew I shouldn’t. He started to reach over the keyboard. “Screen too bright?” His thoughtfulness caught me off guard for a second. Then I got over it. “Do you…” His eyebrows rose. “What prescription do you use?” I asked slowly. Mr. Moore blinked. “I don’t take any medications.” “Eyeglass prescription. Contact prescription.” I gestured toward my own eyes. “I don’t use glasses or contacts.” I turned to the screen again and thought that not even my abuela had her screen this blown up. But I still tried to tread carefully. “You don’t?” “No, I’ve got perfect vision.” The sound I made in the back of my throat was a fraction of what it would’ve been if he was my brother or a friend trying to claim this magnitude of bullshit. Perfect fucking vision? In comparison to a newborn? But he heard me, and those green eyes peered at me. “What?” “Nothing.” “No. What was that sound you just made for?” he asked suspiciously. “I had a tickle.” “That wasn’t a tickle.” I patted my throat. He narrowed his eyes even more. “You can say whatever you thought,” he tried to insist. “There’s nothing,” I tried to insist right back. “Just say it.” “It’s not important.” This wasn’t someone I needed to be bantering or bickering with, I reminded myself. Mr. Moore’s head tilted down, giving me a better angle to see all that glass skin and perfect bone structure. “But I want to know.”

He didn’t sound offended. I scrunched my nose. “It’s…” I should’ve shut the hell up. I was better than this. The line. I had to stop crossing the damn line. His eyebrows rose. “It’s…?” I could only blame myself for walking right into this. “Mr. Moore, with all due respect, your vision is not what any optometrist would call perfect.” He blinked. “I went to an eye doctor less than a year ago.” I barely managed to hold in the same sound that had snuck out of me before. “I think you should go to another one or go to an emergency room right now because…” I shook my head. “No?” he echoed. I eyed his laptop. “No. The font on your screen isn’t normal.” “This is how I’ve always had my font,” he argued. That made me feel slightly better he wasn’t having some medical emergency. “I still think you need glasses.” I tried not to make a face but still kind of made a face. “With all due respect though, I’m sure you need glasses.” A frown crossed his features. “You think so?” “How do you look at your cell phone when someone texts you?” I asked. He didn’t verbally answer, but he did pick up his phone from the table where it had been face down, and he held it up at a normal distance maybe a foot away from his face before he narrowed his eyes and moved his arm about as far away from his head as he could, squinting at it. Yup. “Can I see the screen?” I asked. He slipped it toward me, and sure enough, HUGE. The letters and numbers, I meant. “A lot of people use glasses or contacts,” I told him as politely as I could. He was still frowning. “What’s your screen look like?” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and held it out to him. His eyes instantly narrowed, and the poor son of a bitch leaned forward so close he had to be a couple inches away from the screen, then he leaned super far away before glancing at me again. “What the fuck?” he asked. “Why is it so small?”

“It’s standard size….” I trailed off. “Did you really go to an eye doctor last year?” He frowned, still focused on my phone screen, which had a background picture of Tommy and Abuela on it. “Yeah.” “Did they only test your vision at a distance?” “No.” He paused. “I don’t remember.” Those wide shoulders drew back. “Can I see far?” Was he…? “You’re asking me?” “Yeah.” “I don’t know.” Mr. Moore frowned. “Test me.” “Me?” I’d been a lot of things apart from a realtor for my clients: a cleaning person, an interior decorator, a mover, but never an optometrist. He nodded. I guess I was kind of curious. And he was asking. I got up and walked a few feet away and held up two fingers. “Two,” he called out. “Go further.” All right. I took another three steps and held up three fingers. “Three. More.” Four steps, I held up all five fingers. “Five. This is easy.” We kept trying. Two. Four. Five again. I was in the hallway leading into the living room and he was standing in the kitchen when he said, “One. I think I can see far just fine. Try me close.” “Mr. Moore, I think you need to go to another optometrist,” I told him, walking back in. I didn’t get why another doctor wouldn’t have flagged him for having poor vision before, and I told him that. His expression went a little funny and thoughtful. “My manager made all my doctor appointments.” I bet he had. The way he exhaled and shook his head made me feel bad as he palmed his forehead. “I really need to get this house sold.” He sighed before meeting my eyes. “I need the money for a retainer to go after him.” Oh shit. “I hadn’t wanted to ask what was happening with that,” I told him honestly.

What surprised me was that George Moore’s face didn’t drop. If anything, it went the exact opposite—full-on diamond hard. Not even granite, and I swear he aged about ten years right before my eyes. “I paid off the debts you showed me, not the collections yet. I’m gonna talk to someone about that, but…” He hesitated for a moment before coming to a decision. “You won’t tell anyone anything, you said, right?” I nodded. “The NDA.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “He wiped me out.” My mouth parted in surprise. “Every account he had access to,” he explained, his face going dark and hard, that friendly sparkle extinguishing. “I tried calling him, but he’s blocked me. I tried the police, but they said they couldn’t do anything at this point.” Fuuuuck. Moore’s throat bobbed more before he cleared his throat. “I’ve got almost nothing left, and I don’t know what else is gonna come up. He had my Social Security number. He could’ve done anything with that, right?” This was one of my nightmares, and I had to fight to keep it from reflecting on my face. “I’m sorry, Mr. Moore. I…” I was going to tell him I couldn’t imagine, but I could. I definitely could. Easily. “I’ve got a lot of expenses, and I need to make some money.” I bet he did. “I hope you can get someone to go after him and get your money back.” I paused. “Or whatever you can do.” What were his options to begin with? I wouldn’t know where to start. Pink lips pressed together, and the man beside me gave a single serious nod. “Thanks.” His tone was about as enthusiastic as mine was when I had to go get an oil change. He looked glum for about a minute before his expression changed again, the seriousness disappearing just as quickly as it’d appeared. He cocked his head to the side at me and lowered his voice. “You really think I need glasses, though?” OceanofPDF.com

“T CHAPTER 7 MARCH hree showings in a week is good, isn’t it?” I pressed down on my brake pedal, just barely managing to keep from pulling “fucking dumbass” out of my vocabulary when the moron in front of me slammed on their brakes for no damn reason. I made it a point to keep from riding other drivers’ asses when I had passengers I wasn’t related to in my car, mostly because I didn’t want to scare the shit out of them by slamming on my brakes, but also because I didn’t trust my mouth to not blurt something out that Work Veronica would look down on. But I grimaced as I changed lanes and settled for calling the sedan ahead of me a dumbass in my head. I couldn’t control what other people did behind the wheels of their cars, after all. God, I hated driving. I needed to get my own reality TV show one day so that I could hire a driver. That would be the life. “It is good,” I replied to Mr. Moore once I got away from the idiot who’d been in front of me. The man in my passenger seat had been busy doing something on his phone from the moment I’d shown up to his house and he’d climbed in. It had been a week since we’d had our sit-down and discussed what price to drop the house to and why we would do it that way instead of taking the listing down and putting it back up. Mr. Moore had been onboard with everything… though I’d caught the tiniest grimace on his face when I’d suggested a number.

But less than an hour after I’d sent him the paperwork to get that adjustment done, he’d sent it back signed. Now we had two back-to-back showings today and another tomorrow, and we were on our way to Abuela’s house. I’d asked again if he wanted to go anywhere or needed to do anything, and he’d replied the way he had in the past. Can we go to Miss Gloria’s? I hoped one of these showings worked out. The price we’d agreed to come in at was much, much lower than it had been listed, and it was very competitive. I didn’t want to use the word “steal,” but it was low enough to draw more interest. Even if someone made an offer less than what he was asking, Mr. Moore would break even and still make not a killing but a respectable amount. It wasn’t going to be anywhere near as much as what it would have been at the original price, but… He wanted—and needed—to get his house sold, so this was where we were at. My commission would still be a hell of a lot higher than anything else I’d ever made. I thought the new paint helped. Then Mr. Moore had surprised me that same day when he’d brought up removing some of the “artwork” and actually went through and took down several pieces. The house now looked like a borderline minimalist yet elegant blank canvas for a family. Fortunately, I’d brought some sheetrock putty from home on the trip just in case, and I’d been able to fill in the holes the artwork left behind, and then I’d painted over them before we’d finished up that same day. I had thought about suggesting staging—adding furniture to some of his rooms to make them more visually pleasing—but I didn’t want to spend the money, and with the way he’d made things out to be, that wasn’t in the cards for him either. We’d cross that road if we had to; I sure as hell hoped we never did. I had talked him into getting his yard mowed, and that had mostly been because I knew someone who didn’t overcharge for work. “I wanted to ask—hold on,” Mr. Moore started before his phone began ringing. He squinted at the screen, and I tried not to roll my eyes at how badly he needed glasses. “I need to take this,” he warned me before answering with “Hello?” I pretended to give him privacy. “How’s it going?... Yeah, I’m here, trying to settle in… Not yet.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Moore make a face that looked very at odds

with the bright tone of his voice. “I’ve tried getting in touch with him, but it’s been harder than I thought… No, things with Anders are complicated right now… Who told you that?... No, everything’s fine.” There went another face. “I don’t know who’s spreading that, but… I’m not getting defensive. I don’t know why you’re not dropping it when I’m telling you what things are like. Why would Cassie know anything?” I watched his fist ball up. “You want what?... How much?... No… Why do I need to explain to you why I don’t want to let you borrow money?... When was the last time you called me?... I don’t have time for this shit. Don’t call me again if this is all you’re gonna bother me with. Ask Cassie for it.” His tone rose with every word before I watched him pull the phone away from his ear and smash his thumb down on the screen. I could’ve sworn I heard him say “fuck” under his breath. I faced forward as the silence in the car became almost stifling. A soft, slow whoosh of air left his lungs. “Mind if I make a call?” he asked after a long moment, his tone slightly less tight than it’d been a moment before. “Not at all,” I said, thinking I’d pay to overhear more of his conversations. My life was pretty drama free—work stuff not counting—so I had to get it where I could. The most drama I got from my brothers was Carly’s love life. Another whoosh of breath left his body before he flipped his phone back to him and did something on it before bringing it back up to his face. “Hi, can I please speak to Dennis Cain?... I’ve left a few voicemails before but haven’t heard back from him… Right… Right… I understand he’s busy…” That big hand formed another fist. “Sure, another voicemail is fine. Thank you.” His tone changed again. “Hi, Dennis, this is George Moore. Give me a call back.” He ended the call, and I watched the muscles along his forearm flex as he held the phone. I knew better than to ask, but I had plenty of experience calling people. I’d been doing it since I was little when my parents would have me call businesses for them. “Are you having trouble getting someone to call you back?” That beautiful profile of his head turned toward me. “Yeah.” There was a pause. “Is that normal?” “Depends on who you’re calling,” I replied.

“A coach here in Houston.” “A swim coach?” He was still looking at me. “Yeah.” He’d moved here without having a coach? That seemed reckless. I slid him a look. “So you’ve been calling a coach to train you, and he isn’t calling you back?” I asked to be sure. His “uh-huh” was low. “There’s an aquatic center here I’ve heard good things about, and one of the coaches has the experience I’d need.” I bet he needed the best of the best coaching-wise. “Are all your voicemails the same?” His “yeah” wasn’t immediate, but it was close. “Ah.” Moore was still looking at me. “Ah?” I pretended to pay a lot of attention as I exited the freeway. “Could be the whole ‘this is George Moore’ thing,” I suggested. “But I am George Moore.” That got me to glance at him, and I really tried not to give him my “no shit” face. “Mr. Moore, he probably doesn’t think it’s really you.” I caught his blink that time. “But it is me.” I resisted the urge to flick him on the forehead. “But he doesn’t know that. You could just be saying you’re George Moore. Does he have a reason to think that you would actually be calling him?” That same forehead my finger wanted to flick scrunched. “No.” “Have you met him before?” “No.” I glanced at him and held his gaze for a moment before paying attention to the windshield again. “Have you tried emailing him?” “No.” He faced forward for a second before turning back in my direction. “You think an email would work better than a call?” “Calling him isn’t doing anything. It’s worth a shot.” I shrugged. “Why would he think it’s not me?” “Mr. Moore—” “Just Moore,” he corrected. Yeah, that wasn’t happening. “I wouldn’t call you back if I were him and that’s all you were saying. Wouldn’t your agent or your manager be the ones reaching out to him normally?”

There was a moment of silence. “Yeah, but one’s tried to ruin my life, and I don’t know if I can trust the other. I’ve just been ignoring his calls.” Ouch. He kind of had to figure that out though, didn’t he? The blond faced forward one more time. “All right. I’ll give it a shot. What the hell do I have to lose? For a city this big, there aren’t that many options for a private 50-meter pool.” A sharp laugh barked out of him. It was a “my life is fucked” kind of sound. I’d recognize it anywhere. He stewed the rest of the way to Abuela’s, and it wasn’t until we were parking and I smiled at the sight of Tommy’s car parked in her driveway that he spoke again. “Someone here?” he asked. “It’s Tommy,” I explained as I pulled in beside him. A small, easygoing smile crossed his face. “He’s a good kid, huh?” Pride lifted my heart. “He’s a very good kid.” I paused and turned to him right after turning off the car. “I wanted to tell you thank you for taking a chance on him. I was worried when you two worked out that deal with him painting for you, but I’m glad it worked out.” “He did me a favor. I should be thanking him. He saved me a ton,” he argued. Mm. I didn’t want to appreciate his kindness more than I already did, but too bad for me. “Thank you regardless.” He dipped his chin. That done, I got out and he followed after me, going inside when I held the door open and hollered, “Abuela!” “¡Mi amor!” she called out right back. “I’m not alone!” “Who’s with you?” Tommy yelled. “If it’s Carly, tell him to go home!” I couldn’t help but snicker as I tilted my head down the hall at Mr. Moore and he followed after me. “It’s not Carly,” I replied just as we turned to go toward the kitchen. “Jesus, don’t let it be Pablo either,” my baby brother groaned. “Hi, Tommy. Hi, Miss Gloria,” Moore called out, sounding unlike the person in the car who had been aggravated. “Oh, hey,” Tommy said in feigned relief. Abuela, who was sitting down at her table, exclaimed, “Jorge!” Who?

Tommy and I made eye contact, confirming that we’d heard what we heard, when Mr. Moore kept moving toward the table and took her hands. “How are you?” he asked her very politely. “Bien, precioso. ¿Y tu?” she responded. He nodded. “Bien.” Tommy and I looked at each other again. I didn’t know if he smirked first or if I did. Look at him trying out his Spanish. But I didn’t want more reasons to like him. “¿Tienes hambre?” Abuela kept talking to him. “She wants to know if you’re hungry,” my brother translated. For once, George Moore shook his head. “Not right now, thank you.” Those calls had worked him up. I went for my grandma and ducked down to peck her cheek even as she held Moore’s hands. At least she gave me a smile and a kiss back. “And you?” she asked me. “Later, thank you,” I told her, giving her another kiss. Eventually, Moore took a seat beside Abuela, and I took the one opposite of her. The television was playing softly in the background, but it was the faint mention of a familiar name that caught Tommy’s, Moore’s, and my attention. All of our heads swiveled in the direction of it. The channel was one of the Spanish ones, but the television anchor, unlike my grandma, called him George, not Jorge. And if there had been any doubt who they were talking about, the image on the television sealed the deal. It was the man sitting just a few feet away, except with a gold medal around his neck, wearing a track suit with the American flag on it, and standing tall on a podium. I winced as I read the tag at the bottom. “What are they saying?” the man, whose hair was much shorter on television than it was now, asked. The subtitles were on, but they were in Spanish. “They’re talking about your one-year suspension being over,” I summed it up. The life left Moore’s face. “Oh.” His cheekbones looked real pronounced all of a sudden. “I guess it’s a good thing they aren’t talking about my manager stealing my money yet.” He’d announced it like that to the whole table. Abuela’s round eyes met mine, her face alarmed. I grimaced at her.

Moore’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he glanced around the table. “I’m fine. I don’t care if they know,” he said. I saw Abuela frown before she reached over and patted his shoulder. Even Tommy glanced at me and made a face. I knew what he was trying to ask: How did that happen? How did someone steal from him? Had Mr. Moore not cared about his finances at all? Had his manager lied to him? And how much money had he stolen from him? It wasn’t my place to say anything, and really, I should’ve shut up, but that wasn’t one of my strengths in life. “Is there anything you can do about it?” He tipped his chin down and peeked at me out of the corner of his eye. He really did have a beautiful eye color. “The lawyer you gave me the number to told me to reach out to another lawyer in Michigan, where I lived and where my manager still lives. It’s where my accounts were registered to. That lawyer was able to get things moving there.” He paused. “She thinks my manager stole a lot.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what they considered a lot of money. “It’s gonna get real complicated for a while.” His expression went bitter. “But there should be a money trail for everything, so there’s that.” I nodded, even though I only understood a little bit of it. “I’m sure they’ll figure it out, Mr. Moore.” His sigh told me he wasn’t sure how long it would take, but it was something. I squinted and asked something else I probably should’ve waited to do in private, but he seemed so open about it right then I couldn’t help myself. “Did you happen to check if your taxes are all good?” He nodded slowly, like that was a sore subject too. “It’s the one thing he didn’t fuck me over with. As far as I know right now, at least. I think that’s why nobody noticed what he was doing. If he didn’t, I’ll have to pay that back too, but so far it all seems like that was in order.” Tommy reached over and gave him a firm slap on the back. “Sucks, dude.” I could’ve smacked him on the forehead, but Moore gave him a grave but not insulted look. “Thanks.” He even sounded like he meant it. I tried to tell myself I didn’t feel bad for him, but that was a lie.

My little brother pressed his lips together. “So you’re kinda in deep shit then, huh?” My hand rose toward my forehead at the same pace a glacier would move. “What the—” I wasn’t sure who was worse when Moore gave him a solemn nod that I didn’t think I would’ve been capable of if someone summarized my life the same way. “Pretty much.” “So your manager stole a lot of money?” My brother barreled on with his awful questions. I lowered my hand back to the table and decided I’d forgive him for being intrusive toward someone who wasn’t my friend but a professional relationship. “We’re guessing at least fifteen million.” Tommy’s mouth literally dropped open wide enough for someone to toss a ping-pong ball into it, and I didn’t miss the way Abuela’s eyes swung toward me, wider than I thought I’d ever seen them. Honestly, it took everything in me not to physically react too. Because how the fuck did you not know you were missing fifteen million dollars? How? I noticed when my electric bill was twenty dollars higher than normal. “Chances are it’s probably more than that, but I don’t know yet.” Those green eyes swung around the table before his features twisted into a frown. “What is it?” My little brother’s mouth was still incapacitated, and Abuela’s face was the epitome of stunned. Even my whole body was struggling with the amount he’d just mentioned and what that meant. My lips moved, but nothing came out. Mr. Moore’s eyebrows crept up his forehead, and God bless him, he didn’t look surprised or outraged by our reactions. He just looked curious. “You wondering how I didn’t notice I was missing fifteen million?” We all nodded at the same time. His cheekbones and mouth didn’t go sheepish but maybe more regretful. “He was sending me forged bank statements.” Oh. Ohhhhh. “He had some of my accounts linked to a business email I didn’t have access to and never really thought about because he would forward me everything. I had the login, but I never checked it,” he explained, all those

angular features going tight. “We had quarterly meetings, but all that seems like it was forged too.” And this was why I didn’t trust people. I leaned forward. “How did your accountant not figure out that something was wrong?” “I don’t know if they were in on it or not, but that’s what my lawyer and I guess the police are going to find out,” he explained steadily and not like someone had embezzled millions from him. The “Jesus Christ” that came out of my mouth wasn’t intentional, but fortunately, he didn’t seem offended by it either. “Yeah,” he agreed in resignation. I couldn’t believe he was handling this so well. I would probably try and kill the son of a bitch. I’d try and ruin his life, at least. I crossed my arms over my chest. “Did they give you an idea of how long it’ll take to get things straightened out?” “I don’t know,” he answered. I couldn’t think of the last time I’d felt this much pity for someone. “He worked for me for six years. There’s going to be a lot that needs to be investigated.” His eyes slid to mine. “That’s part of the reason why I gotta sell the house fast.” My little brother lifted a finger. “Where are you gonna move after that?” Moore’s eyes lit up, and it was like… like that was something he hadn’t even thought of until that second. And the mumbled “Shit” set off another round of disbelief in me. This fucking dude…. “I don’t know.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I hadn’t… I don’t know. I’d planned on winging it, but I kinda forgot about that until now.” How did you forget about moving? “You got another house?” Tommy asked, the nosiest son of a bitch, and I loved him. Moore shook his head slowly. “No. I had an apartment, but I sold it a year ago and have been renting. My manager said we could make a lot off it….” His snicker made me feel bad. “I’ll rent something until all this is over, I guess.” I meant to wince. What I didn’t mean was for him to see me do it. His expression clouded. “What is it?” He noticed, damn it.

“I… I don’t know for sure, and I might be wrong—” I wasn’t. “—but that might not be as easy as you think it is. I just want to warn you.” He didn’t scoff, but it was close. “You don’t think I could lease a place?” I might as well have told him he was an alien from the level of disbelief on his features. I was sure he was going to struggle with the idea that, while he had been rolling in money up until now, he was going to have problems renting. “I think you should talk to somebody about it,” I suggested. “I want to talk to you about it,” was his quick-ass response. I looked him dead in the eye. I was already too involved with his life. My family was already too involved. “Someone other than me,” I said as politely as I could. A part of me had been expecting him to blink back in reluctance or something. What I got though was him lowering his voice and saying steadily, “You would know about rental stuff more than my lawyer would.” Maybe he had a point. I still didn’t want to be the one to shit on his dreams. “We can have this conversation later,” I offered instead, that same sense of not necessarily guilt but heavy responsibility falling on my shoulders. He was possibly paying me a ton of money, and even if things didn’t work out—which I sure as hell hoped more than anything they would—he was still a person in need. I might have been able to turn down a lot of people who claimed to be needy, but apparently this person who was nice to my family wasn’t going to be one of them. Wide shoulders went up almost delicately. “I already told everybody here the worst of it. I’m not ashamed. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t steal anybody’s money,” he argued. He didn’t know how much shittier it could get, and now my dumbass had to break it to him. Maybe for my next New Year’s resolution, I could work on my facial expressions. For now, I was going to have to buck up and put my Work Veronica pants on real high. “It’s up to you, but if I were you, I would want to talk about this in private.” “Miss Gloria’s my friend, so is Tommy,” George Moore kept trying to argue. The easygoing fool was back. I never should have brought him here.

“You agree not to sue me for this conversation?” I asked him seriously. “And you understand I’m only giving you a slightly educated opinion and that you should talk to someone who’s more of a professional than I am?” He jerked back so hard I might as well have slapped him. “I wouldn’t do that.” He squinted at me, and I wondered if it was because he couldn’t see me or if he was indignant. “Want me to record it?” I wasn’t sure how I felt about this saucy son of a bitch, but I still said, “Please.” We recorded him saying it. Only after that did I say, “You end this conversation when you want to, Mr. Moore—” “Just Moore.” Still not happening. “I could be very wrong about what I’m going to tell you, which is why I suggested you talk to someone else about this.” “I understand,” he replied. Knitting my fingers together, I put them on the table. “Remember we talked about your credit score?” He nodded. “And those things that came up on it too?” His past due payments, the things he’d been sent to collections for. Moore nodded again, this time slightly more wary. “They check all of that when you sign a lease.” It was his turn to lean forward. “They check that to rent a house?” I gave him a grave face. “Why?” God help me. “Because all that says something about what a person is like—to an extent.” “What does that mean?” “It gives a snapshot on whether someone is responsible or not. Or has been at some point in their life.” He opened his mouth, and I sped forward. “I’m not saying it’s accurate or there aren’t a lot of factors that go into someone’s credit score. There are. Shit happens. I would know. Some things are out of a person’s control, and that doesn’t mean it’s fair. The problem is that it still matters in certain cases. Like when you want someone to trust you or take a risk on you.” Corded arms crossed over his chest, his muscular but lean biceps popping as his face went extremely thoughtful. “So you’re saying you don’t

think someone will rent me a house because my manager didn’t pay some of my bills on time?” At least he hadn’t made me say it in those words. “I’m saying you might struggle more than other people, but there’s a chance if you put down a big deposit….” “How big?” “Depends on the rent. I don’t know. Three times the monthly rent? I’m throwing out an idea, not that anyone will even take that. Even if you pay off debt, late payments still show up on your score for years.” I thought about it. “You could buy something, depending on your finances. Something less expensive than what you’re used to.” Ideally, he would make some money off the sale of his house. It might not be much to him, but it would be more than enough for most people. Unless the money had to be spent on other stuff. Something serious flickered in his eyes again, taking away from the man-child I expected him to be, and I’d swear his jaw tensed. “My lawyer said not to make any major purchases until this is all resolved.” He pressed his pink lips together. “And I don’t think I’ll have the money anyway.” That’s what I’d been worried about. His mouth formed a fraction of a smile, but that deceptive seriousness in his green eyes didn’t go anywhere. “But I can try, can’t I? Find someone who would rent to me?” I nodded, even though…. He let out a slow breath. “All right. I’ll aim for that. I’ll just have to settle for something I can afford.” Those narrowed eyes moved toward me again. “Right?” He drew the word out, sounding way too expectant. Shit. “Right.” But the truth was, I didn’t have a good feeling about it. I just didn’t have the heart to tell him. OceanofPDF.com

“I CHAPTER 8 MARCH don’t know about this place.” I wasn’t exactly sure how I’d gotten wrangled into helping Mr. Swimming find a place to rent. One moment, we’d been discussing my concerns with him renting while we waited for potential buyers to tour his house, and four days later, I was getting a call with an offer for it. After some intense passive-aggressive communication that had me counting to ten after I’d hung up each time, we reached a number that was acceptable, with a fourteen-day closing, and now we were sitting in my car outside of a luxury apartment complex. This was the fifteenth place we’d checked out in the last two days, and the first apartment complex. “How much is the rent again?” Moore asked, eyes pinned to the glass doors. I told him the number I’d found for a one-bedroom apartment. He blew out a low breath even as he winced. “That’s expensive, isn’t it?” The E-word had my eye twitching, mostly because this had been his idea. I’d been trying to find him rentals that were less expensive, but there had been something wrong with each home we’d visited. The ceilings were too low—they were normal, eight-foot-tall ceilings, but fine.

The house was too small—that one made me side-eye him because we’d already determined he was going to be the only one living in it. The house smelled moldy. It was too far from the freeway—an unnecessary worry for someone who didn’t have a car. At three different houses, neighbors happened to catch him coming in or out, and he’d ended up signing autographs for half the neighborhood. What the man needed—and wanted—was privacy. And a “decent place” to live that fit his budget. But I was still very, very worried about him and his credit score situation. “I didn’t like living in an apartment before,” he stated out of fucking nowhere. He couldn’t have mentioned that earlier? “No apartments then, got it,” I told him, restraining myself from sighing. The least I could do was not whine about him being particular about his future. Sure, he was more limited than he’d like to be, but he still had more options than a lot of people. In my opinion. “I didn’t think it was gonna be this hard to find somewhere to live.” He sighed. Leaning back into my seat, I gave him a level expression. “It’s cutthroat out here for everyone, and there just isn’t a whole lot of inventory,” I told him for the second or third time since we’d started our rental search. He crossed his arms over his chest and sighed again. “How many days do we have left?” I gave him a look, trying hard not to show my frustration with him not knowing this. He should. He had to be moved out of his house by then. “Five days, Mr. Moore.” “Five?” His voice went higher than his eyebrows. “I thought we had seven.” Jesus Christ. “No, five,” I reiterated. “Fuuuck.” His hand went down his face again. “All right. It’s fine, isn’t it?” Was it though? I wasn’t going to stress for him. I had told myself years ago that I wasn’t going to stress about things outside of a sale with my clients. They

were adults. They could handle themselves. And George Moore was 100 percent a grown man. But he was never going to find a place. And I probably did need to bring up what he planned on doing with all of his stuff when he moved. Right now, he had a walk-in closet the size of most people’s primary bedrooms. He was going to be lucky to find somewhere that had one a fourth the size of what he currently had. Then there was his huge furniture. I’ll bring it up when I drop him off, I told myself, not wanting to deal with that right then. “That was it for today, wasn’t it?” he asked, sounding oddly hopeful for someone whose time was running out. “Those were all the rentals I had lined up,” I answered him. His silence said a lot. For one moment, the urge to assure him that everything would work out taunted me. I genuinely thought that I might have a shot at doing it. But just as quickly as it appeared, it crashed and died. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t promise something that wasn’t in my control. I’d never done it before, and apparently I couldn’t start now. And I’d be lying if I said that didn’t make me feel bad, because it did. It was obvious he was going through some stuff and could probably really benefit from a kind word, even if it was a white lie, but… Hopefully, he had other people in his life who would coddle him, because the most I could do was give him some gentle realism. And that made me think about what I could say that wouldn’t be total bullshit. I couldn’t make more houses appear, I couldn’t fix his financial situation more than getting his house sold would, and I couldn’t go back in time and make him look for signs his manager had been screwing him over. But what could I do? How could I help him at that moment? There had to be something. “Did you ever get in contact with that coach who wouldn’t call you back?” I asked, hoping that was a decent conversation to have. He was surprised by the question from the way he turned to me. The poor guy seemed to deflate, and I suddenly hoped like hell that I hadn’t just

stepped in shit with that topic too. “No,” Moore responded. “You emailed him?” He nodded. I guess that had been a long shot anyway. Who’s to say you couldn’t fake a name on an email address? I thought about that for another second. “Where does he coach?” I tried. He stated the name of a club I’d never heard of, but I looked it up. The swimming club was on the other side of town, really close to my brother JJ’s office. Moore stared out the window, still focused on the busy lobby, which had a juice bar and a restaurant with a bar on the other side. There was a reason why the rent was so expensive. I almost crossed my fingers and definitely tried not to sound reluctant when I asked, “Want to drop by there?” That got him to focus on me. Those deep green eyes widened. “It’s far from here,” he warned me. Had he not gone because of his transportation dilemma? I shrugged. “This is the perfect time to go if you want.” He thought about it for .3 seconds. “Can I chip in for gas?” Were my expectations so low with him that I was surprised he wanted to give me gas money? “It’s okay.” I paused, remembering that I wasn’t going to make what I’d originally hoped, but it would still be a new record breaker for my commissions. “Do you want to go see if you can talk to the coach in person so they know you’re real?” His “please” was instant. He smiled that smile that had won over the world when he’d been nineteen years old and baby-faced at his second Olympics while winning more than a handful of medals. I still didn’t know about him, but the words my parents had implanted in my head my entire life came at me strongly: “When you can help people, you should.” And I’d had way too many people in my life who had been good and kind to me when I needed it the most to not repay the favor. I wanted to think it was that that kept me from losing my shit when one car after another cut me off for no reason on the drive across town, and I remembered why I never drove on I-10, one of the other major freeways in the city, unless I had to. Most people from Houston had one freeway they chose to do battle with on a daily basis, and mine had been picked for me

decades ago. I only drove out in this direction if I absolutely had to. There was more traffic than I’d hoped, and only once did I regret suggesting bringing him, but right before I took the exit we needed to get to the swim facility, my phone started ringing. “FUCKFACE ASSHOLE Calling” appeared on my dashboard. I wasn’t sure I’d ever moved faster than I did right then, reaching toward the screen and hitting the icon that would decline the call five times in a row until the ringing stopped and the name disappeared. I slid my eyes toward Moore in the passenger seat, hoping he hadn’t seen that. He was leaning back, squinting at the screen. I gave him an apologetic look and sat up, pretending like that hadn’t happened, all the while wondering why, of all the times that fuckface asshole could have called me, it happened now. What the hell did he want? I hadn’t blocked him years ago on the off chance that he felt guilty one day and decided to reach out about paying me back, and I’d honestly forgotten all about his contact until now. Fortunately, Moore didn’t make a peep. He must have not been that interested in my personal life, which was nothing new. A couple of minutes later, I turned the car into the spacious parking lot in front of a wide building with WHITE OAK AQUATIC CLUB emblazoned on the front. It looked like a warehouse, and it sure as hell didn’t look like where a gold medalist would be training. Connected to it was a huge fenced-in area where I imagined there was an outdoor pool. There were only a few cars in the lot. I parked and turned as he reached for the door handle. “Good luck.” Green eyes landed on me, and he nodded. “Thanks, Veronica. I’ll be fast,” he warned before getting out. He’d nailed my name again. I watched him head for the normal-looking single glass door, his posture impressive, a sort of confidence I hadn’t seen from him before taking over his body. He was in sweats again, this time navy ones. I barely noticed he’d left his beanie on the seat. I guess that would make it easier for them to see it was him. Maybe his voice wasn’t recognizable, but his face sure as hell was. Speaking of faces…

I picked up my phone and glared at the screen. Years ago, once I’d given up hope about getting repaid, I would’ve deleted the message without listening to it. Now, I was over everything so much that I couldn’t help but be curious what this moron had the nerve to try and say to me. I pressed the play icon and braced myself. “Hey, it’s me…” I heard the voice let out a long breath. “I just found out I’m moving back to Houston, and you were the first person I thought of.” I stared out of my windshield and took too much pleasure in the fact that I felt nothing but irritation. “I’ll need some help finding a place to live.” The laugh over the line was weak. “I looked you up and saw that’s what you’re up to now. I’d love for you to show me some places.” There was another breath. “Give me a call, yeah? Maybe we can get some drinks, at least.” Pause. “Bye, Veronica.” The inside of my car was very, very quiet for about a minute or two. Then I hit the button on the steering wheel and raised my voice. “Call JJ,” I told my Bluetooth. The line rang once, then twice, before my brother answered. “Shortyyy” was his greeting. “How busy are you right now?” I asked slowly, keeping my voice nice and Work Veronica-like. He picked up on it immediately. “Not busy enough to miss out on you telling me what happened. Hold on, lemme close my office door.” He came back on the line less than a minute later. “What’s going on?” I stared at the glass door to have something to focus on. “Guess who just called me.” “There’s so many people I’d doubt you’d want to hear from. I need a hint.” It made me smile that he knew me well enough to know that was a thing. I liked people, but I’d also put up with so much bullshit over the years, it was hard not to dislike a lot of people too. “You know me too well. It was ol’ dipshit.” The thing about JJ was that he was probably the most mature of all the Rubio children. My temper, though it had gotten better over the years, made me irrational sometimes. My favorite hobby was holding a grudge—even though I’d gotten better about those too—and I was petty and vindictive,

even though I’d come a long way with those as well. Mostly because there was a lot I was willing to put up with for the sake of my job and getting paid. Juan José was none of those things. It was probably one of the reasons why we had always made such a good team. He used to try and say that Mom and Dad had given me all those traits and that’s why he’d gotten none of them. I had gotten the rage and impulsiveness—though I thought I’d grown out of most of it—and he’d been the good, responsible child. At least until he’d gotten his girlfriend pregnant at twenty, but that was another story. JJ was a great brother, and he’d been through the worst parts of my life with me because we’d always been close. So it made me feel better that he whispered, “No shit.” “Yup,” I confirmed. “What’d he want?” I told him just about word for word what was on the voicemail recording. The sound JJ made was the closest thing to disgusted as he was capable of: he snickered. “I hope the house he buys has termites and he doesn’t find out about them until after closing.” He laughed. “I bet Pablo would help you find some if you told him.” “That’s why I can’t tell him. Why do you think I called you?” “So I could remind you getting mad isn’t worth your time?” “Exactly, but still: fuck that guy.” I exhaled. Then I snickered to myself. “All right, I feel better now. Thank you.” JJ laughed again. “I’m proud of you, Shorty. You’re handling this way better than I would’ve expected.” “I’m over it.” Thank you, Jesusito. “He’s not worth me getting pissed. I’m just annoyed.” “Good.” He kind of made a sound. “Maybe you’ll reconsider your whole ‘I’m never dating or getting married again’ shit now that you know you’re all better.” I snorted as I kept on staring at the building’s front door. “I don’t know about all that. Sounds like a hassle. Just be happy I’m not out here trying to break into his house and throw all his right shoes away.” “Again.”

I started laughing right after he did. “Again,” I agreed, cringing just a little at the shit I’d done almost a decade ago. But it had felt so right in that moment. I didn’t regret anything. Well, I didn’t regret what I’d done in moments of blind rage. What I did regret were things I’d forgiven myself for because my prefrontal cortex hadn’t been fully developed when I’d made the mistakes that had come back to bite me in the ass. And as much as I hated that I’d made those bad choices, I was grateful because I couldn’t imagine what life I would’ve ended up living if I hadn’t been forced to start from, not scratch, but from what was below it. I liked where I was now. Most importantly, I liked who I’d grown into. And it had just taken being married to a piece of shit to get there. I still hoped he got an anal fissure someday. After we got off the phone, I thought about what JJ said. Almost a decade ago, I had been devastated. I had moved back in with my parents, heartbroken and uncertain about what I was going to do with my life from that point forward. I’d thought the world was over and there had to be something wrong with me. I’d thought no one was ever going to love me again. I’d been stupid. I’d forgotten somehow that I had four brothers who might roast the shit out of me for slightly mispronouncing a word, but who would drag me out of bed to get me out of the house. I had parents who loaned me money to pay for my divorce and let me work for them until I was ready to start making life-changing decisions. I had an abuela who hugged me and reminded me that I was perfect when I felt like a crumpled piece of Kleenex. I didn’t need some dipshit to love me. I needed me to love me. And these people I called my family to do the same, and they did. They always had. With time, I’d crawled out of that hole, motivated by regret and anger to never need anyone again. I’d made it here. Doing everything on my own, doing well at it, and most of all, I’d left all that bad shit behind.

Maybe that son of a bitch hadn’t meant to ruin my life, but he had. I’d taken it back, though. I would always be proud of myself because of that. I was in the middle of hyping myself up with those memories when I spotted Moore walking out the doors. He had one hand in his pocket, and the other was holding his phone to his cheek, a smile on his face. A genuine smile on his face. “…got a date tonight, sorry,” I heard him say as he opened the door and got in. Did he make his dates come pick him up too? Mr. Moore aimed that smile at me after he slammed the door closed and held up a finger, telling me he was almost done with his conversation. “No, I can’t cancel on my best girl…” I faced forward and made sure not to make any kind of facial expression. “Yeah, next time you come through for another layover, let me know. Sorry I can’t help you with that money right now,” he went on as he clipped his seat belt in and then ran that same hand through his chin-length hair. Did everyone ask him for money? “See ya, man.” He made a sound in his throat before dropping his phone on his lap and turning to me in a smooth motion that reminded me of the creepy dolls that my niece liked watching movies of. “Veronica Rubio,” George Moore said, literally beaming. I froze at him knowing my full name. It’d only taken four months. “Anybody ever tell you that you’re a genius?” I guess someone was happy. Maybe it was because I’d just talked to JJ that I felt playful enough to reply, “Not as much as I deserve.” He planted a hand on the armrest between us. “I get that you’re being professional and all, but…” “But?” He looked me dead in the eye. “Can I give you a high five?” “A high five?” This man smiled even brighter, and I was glad I wore SPF daily. “Because I got a coach and somewhere to train at, and I’ve got you to thank for it,” he announced. “They’ve got a room I can nap in. Can you believe that?” I smiled at him a little bit. “Really?”

He nodded, so damn pleased with himself. “So?” He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not supposed to touch you,” I reminded him, even though I had a feeling he didn’t know that. That expression of his instantly clouded over, and he even dropped his voice flat. “You serious?” I bobbed my chin. “That was in the NDA?” I lifted a shoulder. He rolled his eyes. “Record it: you can ignore that part.” I looked at him for a second, then figured there wouldn’t be proof that we touched each other. I didn’t have a dash cam, and if there was one in the parking lot, it was too far for me to see. So, I lifted my hand palm up, and he smacked it. “Good for you, Mr. Moore,” I told him, actually really pleased that this one thing was working out for him. But he squinted. “You’re not gonna drop that Mister stuff?” I shook my head. “Never?” “Not until I stop working for you,” I let him know. Then it wouldn’t matter because I would more than likely never speak to him again. The tension around his eyes eased. “’Kay. That works for me.” I held up my hand again, and he gave me another high five, his fingers noticeably much longer than mine. Even his palm was so much wider. I remembered that people had claimed he was genetically gifted with all the physical attributes someone could have to be a good swimmer, and I thought his hands had been one of them. Anyway, we all needed help sometimes. And maybe this was my turn to pay some of it back. Moore’s phone rang suddenly, and he picked it up, narrowed his eyes, and held it almost as far away from his face as possible—Jesus Christ— before saying, “One second,” and answering. “Hello?” The boy needed to go to an optometrist. And find a place to live. And get his life together. And train for another Olympics, it seemed. Now that his suspension was over, he could start competing again, something I’d learned from that news feature. We wouldn’t be here if he was retiring, I assumed.

But as I watched him, he set his palm over his eyes and pressed his lips flat. Whoever was on the other end must have had a lot to say because he didn’t murmur a single word until about three minutes later, when he finally spoke again. “Yeah, okay… thanks.” The phone stayed where it was for another minute before he brought it down to his lap, and the hand over his eyes went the same direction. I wanted to ask if he was all right, but it sure didn’t look like he was. His hand moved, and he turned to me, his expression turning instantly apologetic. “Sorry,” he said, his voice funny. “You don’t need to say sorry,” I told him. George Moore’s lean throat bobbed before he tilted that immaculately boned face toward the ceiling of my car. “Are you okay?” I asked, even though a big part of me didn’t want to. He never said he was. What he did instead was cover his eyes again and blow out a breath that was so shaky some part of me recognized it. It was a frustrated one. The one you let out when you were trying not to lose your shit. “You ever…” He cleared his throat. “You ever thought that things can’t get worse and then they did?” His tone hitched up right there at the end, hooking into the part of me that felt that. I wanted to tell him no, but that was mostly because I was trying to stay professional in his presence. Or at least as much as I still could. He was a train wreck I could spot from a mile away, and honestly, I’d barely survived my own. But… I’d been where he was. And it hadn’t been the people I knew who had lived good, easy lives who had helped me through the darkest points in my life, but it’d been Abuela, who had faced the closest thing to a similar situation, whose advice had gotten me through those moments. Maybe it didn’t work for everyone, but for me, hearing that someone else had been through what felt like an end-of-the-world moment had given me the strength I needed. The reassurance. If they could do it, so could I. And maybe Moore would feel the same. “Yeah. It sucks,” I told him.

He peered at me almost suspiciously with one of those jewel-colored eyes. “It’s happened to you?” I fought the urge to answer him sarcastically. “It has.” That eye kept peering at me. “But you seem like you have your life together.” I did? “I do?” I asked, trying to figure out what could have given him that impression. I didn’t really talk about myself much in front of him. Really, I didn’t talk about myself at all in front of him. On purpose, of course. Tommy was the blabbermouth. “Yeah.” He kept looking suspicious. “You’re successful. You have a nice car. You’re smart. You know a lot about everything. When you talk, your brother listens to you. Your grandma loves you.” He narrowed his eyes, but I wasn’t sure if it was because he couldn’t see me or he was still being wary. “You’re just... you have answers for everything.” A part of me couldn’t believe what he’d said. That was all true, mostly. And I guess it was a very high compliment that he’d noticed that, which surprised the shit out of me. But it wasn’t the whole story either. I’d just done a really good job at getting to this point in my life and fighting for it. Fighting to stay here. And that was humbling in its own way. “Thank you.” I looked at him and shrugged. “But it hasn’t always been this way. I had to start over with my credit destroyed. In debt. With my bank account in the negative. With no idea what I was going to do with my life. I had to move back in with my parents, even though I liked living with them, and I probably still would if I hadn’t gotten my house when I did,” I explained. “I can’t say I can relate to exactly what you’re going through right now, but someone… someone once turned out to not be who I thought they were, and they didn’t care about how they almost ruined my life. That’s how it felt then. It took me years to bounce back. Now—and I hate saying this—it was the best thing that could’ve ever happened to me. It made me appreciate everything so much more. It made me work harder.” Mr. Moore blinked. “Having the rug pulled out from under you sucks, and I’m not going to tell you some motivational stuff, but you can get through what you’re going through. It’s just going to keep sucking until you get past it,” I told him.

Those green eyes followed my face, and after a long moment, he nodded. “I don’t understand why it’s happening to me. I know that sounds whiny, but…” “People suck sometimes, Mr. Moore. They hurt us for no reason other than we’re in their lives and we made a mistake trusting them, and they’ve got problems.” I shrugged again. “I’m sorry things are getting worse, but you’ve just gotta take everything one step at a time. Just one step.” I met his eyes. “I… I promise I’ll do what I can to help you. I know what it’s like in my own way to think the world is ending, but I’ll stick around until we find you somewhere to live. And at least you’ve got one thing sorted, right? The swim club? That’s a step, and there’ll be another one too.” His nod was slow, but it was still a nod. And he smiled a little. I couldn’t say the frustration or devastation, whatever it was, left him completely, but… he seemed a little better. And that was something. OceanofPDF.com

I CHAPTER 9 MARCH ’d been a dumbass to think I wouldn’t get any more involved in Moore’s situation. For one, he was George Moore. Not helping him seemed like a betrayal to my country. For two, he was George Moore going through some serious legal and financial shit. Something that genuinely touched my heart. For three—and probably the most important reason—he had surprised the shit out of me with the way he treated my family. He'd let my grandma call him Jorge. He’d been so much more polite and nice—and honest, damn it—than I ever would’ve imagined, and I wanted to think it was those things that had won me over more than anything else combined. I was weak for people struggling, but I was the weakest for people who were nice to my loved ones. Which was why I tried to reason with myself that I was getting stressed against my will. His closing was tomorrow, and he still hadn’t found a place to live. It wasn’t for a lack of trying. We’d looked at thirty houses and townhomes, and the one apartment complex we never got out of the car for. And out of those thirty houses, he’d found three that he’d reluctantly been interested in. Of those three, he’d gotten a hard “no” for every single one of them. It didn’t matter that he’d offered to pay triple the deposit, per my suggestion.

No meant no. And from the phone call I’d just gotten, it was now four listings not willing to allow him to become a tenant. “They didn’t even ask for my social,” Moore complained from his spot in my passenger seat. I’d suggested that I call to get a feel for the management company before he paid another application fee; we wanted to get him moved in ASAP. We had worked so hard the last few days to help him get ready to, too. I’d gone from suggesting he go through his clothes to have less to move, to insisting he do it, and ended with me helping him go through things. I had then made the mistake of mentioning how he could probably sell the stuff he didn’t wear, and that had us going down a rabbit hole that had us at a high-end secondhand store selling half of his clothing collection. Fortunately, after I’d given him a trustworthy mover he could contact, he’d sorted things out by himself and gotten his belongings moved into storage yesterday. I had dropped by and peeked into the moving truck, and he had a lot of shit. I wasn’t sure how many units he’d needed to rent, and I wasn’t going to ask. “I know. It’s competitive,” I told him, honestly feeling bad that things weren’t working out. It wasn’t like I hadn’t known it was going to be hard, and I’d warned him that was going to be the case, but damn. “Is it stupid that I’m almost offended?” he asked, his voice kind of rough. I didn’t need to think about it. “No, I think I would be too.” His laugh was low and kind of pitiful. “I wanted to ask because I’d been too distracted when we were at your facility the other day, but do you want to look for a rental on that side of town instead? It makes the most sense to avoid the commute.” I wasn’t sure why he hadn’t mentioned it either. The fuckface calling had thrown me off my game, otherwise that option would’ve come to me sooner. The Woodlands was so far from his training facility. It made no sense, logically, why he wouldn’t be better off over in the I-10 area. But I had no sooner finished my question than he started shaking his head. “No, I need to be on this side of town.”

I stared at him. “That’s why I bought my house over here,” was all he added. And he still made no sense but all right. He had his reasons. The sound of my phone ringing had my attention going to my dashboard. “Abuela Calling” showed up on the little screen. I hesitated at the same time Moore said, “You’ve gotta take her call.” There he went again, being all nice about her. “I can call her back after I drop you off,” I told him. He shook his head. “No, you should answer.” He didn’t have to tell me twice. I hit the button to answer. “Hola, Abuelita.” “Mi amor,” she replied in her sweet, cheery voice. “Where are you?” “I’m driving. Do you need something?” “Sí. Can you pick up my medicine?” I asked her from what store and she gave me the name of the pharmacy, and I promised to bring it over in a little while. “What is medicina?” Moore asked right after I hung up. “Medicine?” Was he understanding more, or was I imagining it? “Yeah, she had a prescription she asked me to get.” He stayed quiet for a moment. “I can go with you.” “Oh, I can…” I’d picked him up at the hotel he’d checked into last night after his furniture had been collected. What did he have to do there? Nothing, that’s what. He probably just didn’t want to go back, and I didn’t blame him. I wouldn’t enjoy being cooped up in a hotel room either. He still didn’t have a car. I’d learned that he’d been leasing one in Michigan the last year and that, like his other two cars, that one had been repossessed too. I wasn’t sure what had happened to his things in Michigan—where he’d been living before—and I didn’t want to ask. “If you don’t mind,” I told him. “I don’t mind at all,” he claimed, sounding more upbeat than he had lately. If he said so. The pharmacy was on the way to her house, and I did the drive-thru to get her medication before we went on our way. Moore didn’t say much. I figured he had a lot on his mind. I would too. Soon after that, I pulled into Abuela’s driveway, not really surprised to see my little brother’s small truck parked there.

“Tommy?” Moore asked, surprising me with how observant he was. “Yeah,” I confirmed before we got out and headed for the front door. “He’s on spring break. He usually gets off work around this time. I bet my parents gave him something to bring over.” I was surprised when he asked, “Where does he work?” “My…” This was more information than I would’ve wanted to share if I’d thought about where my comment was going. “My parents own a seafood restaurant, and he kind of does a little of everything there.” We had all worked there. We all still worked there sometimes. Just a couple months ago, almost all the kitchen staff caught the flu, and we’d taken turns coming in to help. I didn’t mention that. “I didn’t know that,” he said, like he was shocked that he didn’t. I nodded as I turned the handle and let him in first. “Yeah, they’ve had it a really long time now.” I closed the door. “Abuela!” Time to change the subject. “¡Estamos aquí!” Something clanged in the direction of the kitchen. “¿Con quien vienes?” “She’s asking who’s with me,” I whispered to Moore as we took off our shoes. His expression brightened almost as much as it had when he’d gotten into my car at the swim club. “It’s George, Miss Gloria,” he raised his voice. “Jorge, precioso,” my grandma just about exclaimed. I didn’t think that needed a translation. Moore followed me into the kitchen. Tommy and Abuela were at the table. She had what looked like a pair of pants in front of her, and he had some jeans in front of him, her wooden sewing box sitting between them. I gave them both a kiss on the cheek before leaning in to see what Tommy was working on. He held it closer to me. “We’re hemming my pants,” he explained. “Hem mine,” I told him, rubbing my palm over the side of his head. He had the shiniest, smoothest hair. “Twenty bucks a pop,” he replied. “See these stitches? Abuela said they’re straighter than Mom’s.” I snorted. “For twenty fu—” Damn it, I stopped when I remembered we had a visitor I was still working for. And peeking over at him, I found him standing at our grandma’s side, looking in our direction.

I lowered my voice. “For twenty dollars, I’ll keep rolling up my pant legs.” “Cheap,” Tommy huffed. “More like you’re expensive,” I argued, rubbing his hair again. “Hey, take it to the seamstress at the dry cleaners. She was trying to charge me thirty dollars. I’m seventeen. Do I look like I have money?” he huffed before shaking his head. “Fifteen.” “Dollars?” “Not pesos.” I almost called him a dumbass, but again: Moore. Instead, I wrinkled my nose. “Ten bucks and I’ll write you a good review.” Tommy smirked. “Deal, but keep the price between us. I’ll charge Pablo double.” I laughed before turning to Abuela and holding up the little white paper bag her prescription was in. She pointed toward the corner where she kept all her medications. I trusted her to go through them and know when she was low on things, but I still checked out the handful of bottles she had sitting there, making sure she wasn’t too low on anything. She didn’t take much, and what I’d picked up was a prescription for Vitamin D. The familiar notebook she used every time when we paid our bills together sat right beside the bottles, reminding me that our monthly meetup was coming up soon. We sat together and paid our expenses and asked each other for advice if we needed it. Doing it with her made a miserable experience better, and it helped both of us never miss a payment or have a late fee. We’d been having our meetups together for about five years now, and I looked forward to them. I did have to be really careful to not mention the one expense I never wanted her to know about. I couldn’t help but overhear Tommy talking to Moore. They hadn’t seen each other since before the offer on his house had come in. “You’re selling your house soon?” “I close tomorrow.” “Tomorrow?” Even Tommy couldn’t believe it. “Yeah,” Moore replied in a voice that might have sounded a little confused. “Your sister didn’t tell you?” “No. That’s great, bro!”

Tommy already knew that there were certain clients I didn’t talk about. And as much as Moore wasn’t what I thought he was, I had signed that NDA, and I still took it seriously. Tommy knew that. “Thanks,” Moore replied to my baby brother. “Did you find a place already?” Tommy asked. “Not yet.” “Why?” My damn brother… He scratched the side of his head. “Bad decisions, trusting the wrong people, and shitty credit,” Moore replied, sounding almost matter-of-fact. “No one wants to accept my application.” “Damn,” Tommy replied. “That sucks.” To give him more than a little credit, Moore huffed a tiny laugh. “Yeah. Don’t trust anybody with your bank account information, all right? Learn from me.” Ouch. That familiar sense of guilt and responsibility weighed down on me as I set the last prescription bottle down where it had been and turned toward the table. Moore had taken a seat across from Abuela and at an angle from Tommy. His expression wasn’t an upset one, at least. More resigned, if anything. “What are you gonna do if you can’t find a place?” Oh-Ye-of-Little- Manners kept going. I didn’t know whether to hug him or cover his mouth. “Stay at a hotel until I do, I guess,” he replied much more easily than I would have. “I thought you had to save money, though.” Tommy kept on digging his hole deeper. I started glaring at him, hoping he could sense me doing it and realize I was trying to tell him to shut the hell up. He didn’t sense anything. “That’s gotta be expensive long-term, right?” “Yeah…” Mr. Moore trailed off, maybe sounding a little down now. Fucking Tommy. And I wasn’t the only one who wanted him to shut up either, from the way Abuela was glaring at him in the same exact way our mom did. It was creepy just how similar it was. But unlike the way we all had built-in radars

for Mom being mad at us, he apparently hadn’t developed one for our grandma’s version. I actually couldn’t think of a single time where she’d ever gotten even a little frustrated with him. But now, her face was saying, “Cállate, cabrón.” Was that what my “shut the fuck up” face looked like too? “You can’t just buy something?” was the next incredibly prying question my little brother asked, and all that pride I’d felt at him being aware of the world died right then. He knew as well as I did that 99.999 percent of people couldn’t just wake up one day and buy something. Had he missed the part where we’d discussed more than once how Moore was in financial shit? “You know, because you’re selling your house,” he went on, not helping the situation all that much, but I guess that comment was slightly more thoughtful. A pair of deep green eyes swung toward me. “I was told not to,” he replied slowly, staring at me like he was waiting for me to say something. I let my gaze wander away from their direction on purpose. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Moore plant his elbows on the table, press his palms together, and set his chin on the tips of his fingers. “What do you think, Veronica?” Not this. I reluctantly looked at him. “I think you should talk to your accountant about it.” “The accountant who didn’t notice I was getting screwed over and was probably in on it?” I winced. “Your new lawyer?” I suggested that time. “Didn’t they tell you not to?” He shrugged. I couldn’t help but snicker. I guess I was still making a ton of money off him, and he was asking me for my opinion. My brothers and my cousins asked me for my opinion on a ton of things, and I loved giving it. It was just… he wasn’t one of them. But I couldn’t play stupid when he was right in front of me, could I? In a few days, I’d get cut a beautiful check and it would be worth everything. Then we would find him a rental, and I would probably never see him again.

Biting back a sigh, I made my way toward the table and sat down. “Okay, Mr. Moore. What are you asking exactly?” “Should I buy a less expensive house? Can’t I get a loan? You never mentioned it before. My lawyer said no big expenses, but what’s really a big expense? Does not buying something in cash count?” And that was how he’d found himself in this situation in the first place. I hadn’t said shit for a reason. Mostly because of his credit. But also… I blinked. “You said you were low on funds at the moment.” “I’m broke,” he insisted, matter-of-factly. I’d been trying to be polite with my wording, but someone else didn’t give a shit right now. “All right, say you ignore advice you should really be listening to; you’re broke, and when someone tells me something like that, I take them seriously.” I blinked again. “We could have different ideas on what exactly ‘broke’ is.” He nodded. “Maybe.” He seemed so thoughtful. “Do you think it might be worth it to spend money I think I’m going to need on a house?” he asked. “Why? Because you’re not sure what the future holds or when you might come into more money?” That situation sounded very familiar. It was how I had to view every single one of my commission checks. I never knew when my next one would come in or how much it would be. The uncertainty made me the queen of budgeting. I’d learned from my mom, who learned from her mom: Abuela. Mr. Moore smiled brighter than I’d seen in a while. “Yeah. That.” Crossing my arms, I leaned back into the chair. “That’s a complicated question because I don’t know how much you have or how much you need. I don’t know how much your lawyer charges or what you’re expecting to spend on them in the long run because you said the investigation going on isn’t going to get resolved fast.” He nodded like he was pleased I understood that. Then he pulled out his phone and said, “Wanna see?” Before I could say or do anything else, he started tapping away on his screen as he threw out one statement after another. How much his lawyer was charging him—astro-fucking-nomical. Jesusito. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Abuela and Tommy grab hands because the number was so staggering.

And when that was out in the wild, he mentioned the amount that the closing company had told him he would be making. After all that, Moore said he was going to show me what was in his account to “give me an idea” of what he had to work with. I decided right then, if this son of a bitch said he was down to his last million, I might punch him in the throat. He was on an app that showed a checking and savings account. “This is what I have that he didn’t have access to,” he explained. The number wasn’t what I was expecting. Moore blinked. “What’s wrong?” I only hesitated for a second before I remembered he needed my honest opinion. “Can I ask you something?” “I’m showing you my bank account. You can ask me a lot of stuff.” That openness should not have gotten to me as much as it did, but it did. Shoving my seat forward, I pinned him with my best “big sister” look. “That’s what scares me. You don’t know me.” He straightened. “Yeah, I do.” That was kind of nice. But still. “Not well enough to show me something so personal. Again.” Moore opened his mouth, but I shook my head. “Look, I’m not going to do anything with that. I’m not going to tell anyone; this stays between us even if we didn’t have an NDA. But most other people in the world? Please don’t ever do that again. Lie next time.” “Lie?” He kind of laughed. “Or don’t say anything.” I gave him an imploring face. “You don’t want people taking advantage of you.” Hadn’t I overheard at least a conversation or two with people asking him to lend them money? “I’m not showing you my account number.” “Thank God,” I muttered, teasing just a little before I realized what I was doing and cut it off. “Just… don’t, all right? No one should know what’s in there other than you and whatever banker ever has to pull up your account again. Or your wife, whenever you get one. Or a trustworthy manager.” “I’m never having a manager again,” he spit out. “And a wife?” His snicker bordered on a snort. “Probably a good call. Just don’t,” I insisted before making a face. “To be sure, this and the money from the house is everything you have to

survive off of?” “For six months. I get a royalty and some endorsement deposits then,” he clarified before saying how much that amount usually had been. It was great, but it wasn’t seven digits, and that’s what this man needed. I nodded. “So you have to eat, sleep, and pay for six months of your whole life with what’s in there, including what you’ll have to pay your lawyer?” “Yes,” he confirmed. Don’t make a face, Veronica. “I’m assuming you have to pay your new coach and have expenses with that too, right?” He nodded, and when I asked him how much that cost, he threw out a number that kind of felt made up but had me blowing out a breath. I’d been stressed in his honor enough before this conversation. Now? I could sense a tension headache coming on. How expensive of a sport was swimming? Good God. I wasn’t saying it wasn’t worth it, but he was paying 5-star hotel rates for that room he could take a nap in. It was his turn to narrow his eyes. His voice got funny again, and I could see a hint of that intense seriousness that had made him a world-class athlete reflect in his eyes. “You don’t think I have enough to live off of for six months?” He made it sound like I was daring him. I wanted to cover my face and pretend like I hadn’t walked into this conversation. But when we made eye contact again, his expression was so grave. “Mr. Moore, pretty much all of the money you’re making from the house is going toward your lawyer fees. That money is basically gone.” I paused. “If this bank account you just showed was anyone else’s, they would be fine. No one I know would ever complain about it. If you take off what you’re expecting to pay a trainer for six months, that’s a huge chunk of it. Divide what’s left by six. You have to pay for food, and I understand you have to eat a ton of calories. You have a cell phone. You don’t have a car, so that’s something to think about. Say you get one, add insurance. That’s not counting rent or a mortgage and all the bills that come with that.” I grimaced, literally feeling more stressed by the second. “I think you’re gonna be real, real tight.” Butthole tight. Or whatever was tighter than butthole tight.

The way his face went pale honestly made me feel terrible. I was a realist, but this was too much even for me. “Not to say you can’t make it work. I live under my means because there are some months where I don’t make a cent, and I have to live my life with that expectation. You can do it. You’re probably not going to love your options, but…” “But?” “That’s just where your life is right now,” I warned him. “I would not, under any circumstance, buy a house. Not even with a loan, which you wouldn’t get approved for more than likely, and I’m sorry to say that. When you rent something, that’s the most you’ll have to spend. When you own something, there’s something that could go wrong in every room of the house that you would be responsible for.” He blinked. I had to fight the urge to cover my face. How was he supposed to survive six months on his budget? I had to say something, and I knew it. “You’re in good health. You have your career. You’re better off than most people. Do you own anything else you can sell?” Maybe a house in the Bahamas. Stocks… “I thought I did, but I don’t anymore,” he answered in a cold voice. How could this keep getting worse? “Everything was under my business, and he had access to it. I’m trying to get that fixed, but…” It would take a while. My abuela, who had been quiet up until then, turned to look at me, and even she looked distressed. “What if you go home?” Tommy asked suddenly. “You could move in with your mom and dad. Save some money. Carly and Pablo live with Shorty so they can all save money.” Those light brown eyebrows knit together. “Who’s Carly and Pablo?” “Our brothers,” I explained. “The two middle ones.” Those green eyes moved toward me, and I thought the corner of his mouth twitched a little despite the fact he looked like he wanted to throw up. Eventually though, he shook his head. “My parents live in Florida, and I wouldn’t move back in with them. Not for anything.” The mention of his parents made me feel like I’d heard something about them at some point…. “And you have to live here?” Tommy questioned.

Moore nodded, but he didn’t explain why. My baby brother grimaced. “What about a roommate?” Tommy wondered. Moore thought about it. “You think I should?” he asked me. I was kind of honored he was looking to me for advice still, but I shrugged. “If you’ve got nothing else coming in for sure, you need to save where you can. Budget everything, but that doesn’t change your credit situation,” I told him. “I hadn’t considered you moving in with someone, but you could sublet or find someone searching for a roommate.” His expression went thoughtful. “Live with somebody I don’t know?” Mr. Moore sounded about as thrilled as I would’ve been in the same situation, and I couldn’t blame him. He was too well-known to move in with a complete stranger, but… His eyes lowered to the table, and he stared hard at it. “I’m clean… at least, I can be. I didn’t always have a housekeeper… when I had a house,” he added glumly. “When I’m training, I sleep, I swim, I eat. My whole day revolves around it.” He paused. “I can be real quiet if I have to.” Why did he make me feel so freaking bad for him? When I met Abuela’s gaze again, I realized I wasn’t the only one feeling that way. But I wasn’t expecting her to say very quietly and only for my ears, “Dile que se puede venir a vivir conmigo.” She wanted him to come live with her? Before I could even think about that, the sound of the front door opening had all of us freezing before a familiar voice called out, “¿Abuelitaaaaa? ¿Dónde ’tas?” It was fucking Pablo. “Shorty, you here? Tommy loves Mommy?” he continued calling out as the sound of his footsteps got louder. “Hey, whose big-ass shoes are those by the front door? Andre the Giant’s?” He cackled. Abuela, Tommy, and I exchanged a look as Moore made an expectant face. “It’s our brother. It’s fine,” Tommy warned him, earning a nod. And fucking Pablo, the biggest idiot of all my brothers, walked into the kitchen. I was pretty sure my parents had saved up the dumbass for him and given him everything they had. He came to a sudden stop, nearly dropping the pack of Abuela’s favorite hard seltzers that he was carrying. He was

almost baby-faced, had full eyebrows, and his skin was the darkest brown in the family. He tipped his chin up at the man sitting at the table. “What’s up?” he asked before looking around. “Why is everyone being so weird?” Then all of a sudden, he acted like he’d been struck by lightning. His eyes went wide, and he might have even stumbled. He thrust his finger in the air, pointing at him. At George Moore. “Shorty got a boyfriend?” he just about shouted. “You dumbass…” I trailed off, rolling my eyes up to the heavens and stopping myself before I could say anything worse. Fucking Pablo waddled over to where I was sitting and threw an arm around my shoulder. “Thank you, thank you so much,” he gasped. “For what?” “Carly’s gonna owe me a hundred bucks. He said you were never gonna date again before you turned forty, and I said you were.” He made a noise that sounded absolutely gleeful. “Thank you. You’re my favorite sister, you know that?” I peeled one finger at a time off my shoulder. “He’s not my boyfriend,” I explained, trying not to sound like he’d insulted me. Pablo, also known as Pab to us, a twenty-four-year-old culinary school graduate, flinched before he took his arm off me and stood up. His “Oh” was the definition of disappointment. He turned in the direction of where Moore was sitting and said, “My bad, man. I wouldn’t wish her on anybody anyway.” I smiled at Abuela before lifting my face to smile up at my brother even sweeter. I was going to kill him later. He gave me the middle finger before extending his hand in Moore’s direction. “Pablo,” he introduced himself. I didn’t know what it said about my family that they weren’t fazed by a total stranger sitting at the table, but I guess those were the kinds of friends we’d all had growing up. The kind we brought over. Our house hadn’t been big, and it was messy most of the time, but it had been a place where we spent time together in the living room and dining room. As Mom and Abuela would say, you could always add water to the soup.

And we always had leftovers from the restaurant, even if most of us got fed up with them after a while. I hadn’t willingly gone out of my way to eat seafood in years. Before Moore could say whatever name he was going to go with, Abuela piped in, “Es Jorge.” This woman and her Jorge. And Jorge had the nerve to nod as he took my soon-to-be-deceased brother’s hand. Pablo nodded right back. We had a few family members with very fair skin; a Jorge that looked like George Moore wasn’t too wild for him. My skin tone was on the lighter side compared to most of our family. Pablo gestured toward his pack of seltzers. “Want one?” Look at him being so generous. Moore shook his head. “I’m good, thanks.” My brother shrugged, then went to Abuela, giving her a hug and a kiss before leaving an opened can on the table in front of her. He flicked Tommy on the ear before depositing what was left over of his drinks in the fridge. Pab pulled out a chair on the other side of the table, the chickenshit. He could’ve easily sat next to me. “Is it just me or is everyone tense?” he straight-up asked. As my mom would also say, “Solo se hace pendejo.” He only acts like he’s an idiot. Abuelita stood up from the table. “¿Te sirvo, mijo?” she asked Pablo. His eyes lit up, and I could see the indecision on his face. Even if he’d already eaten, saying no to her was pretty much a crime; the trick was to tell her “maybe later” and hope she forgot. He held his fingers apart an inch. “¿Poquito? Ya comí.” She nodded with that enthusiasm that touched all of our hearts. And it was with that thought that her offer rang through my head. Her offer to let Moore stay with her. From a logical standpoint, I could see why she would make it. Honestly, it wasn’t that surprising considering what kind of person she was. Her generosity and kindness were limitless, even toward strangers. For as long as I could remember, she’d always had a steady stream of people who lived with her, sleeping on the couch if that was the only option available. Family she hadn’t seen in years had stayed, children of her friends had too, even

friends of family members and friends of friends had called her living room home. And I got that she liked George Moore. What I got even more than that was that he needed help and she was well aware of it. I didn’t know many people who were in his type of situation. It wasn’t like he could go get a job easily. He had zero work experience other than the work he put in at the gym or in the pool—and those modeling pictures. I guess if he really needed money he could coach. I wasn’t sure if that was genuinely an option. The fact was, he needed a place to live. Because boy, was he in a fucking situation. My phone beeped, and I looked down at it. It was a text from Tommy. Tommy: You think mom would let him move in with us for a little bit? Had my entire family lost their minds? I caught Tommy’s face aimed downward to his phone, but he was peeking up at me through his eyelashes. Mr. Moore seemed nice enough. I might even say, from our interactions, he could be very polite—the day with those girls being the exception, but they’d been difficult, and he’d been having a shitty day. I wasn’t sure how much better he could’ve handled his situation. And I didn’t hold his glitchy memory against him too much for forgetting my name. I figured there were a lot of women in his life, and it was hard to keep track. The fact was, every elite athlete I’d ever known had been highly competitive. Cutthroat competitive. Each and every one of them had been selfish with their time. They were obsessed with their sport, and rightfully so. Their whole worlds revolved around that. The things I’d heard about Mr. Moore in the past seemed kind of at odds with this version of him that I’d been spending time with. I hadn’t seen the aggressively arrogant, conceited asshole shit, but maybe he only busted it out when it was necessary. The fact was, he was too trusting. Too innocent. And a total moron for getting himself into this situation where he’d lost the majority of his money, ruined his credit, and had no one to help him. I didn’t know what his relationships were like, what was stopping him from reaching out to all

those people he’d been spending time with every time I’d called before, but he had his reasons, I supposed. It wasn’t like I was any better at asking for help. A throat clearing had me glancing at Tommy, who was raising his eyebrows at me. I blinked. Before I could react, Moore called out, “Miss Gloria, may I get a glass of water?” Here he went again with his polite bullshit. “Sí, precioso,” she replied from where she stood in front of the fridge, pulling things out, before she started to close it like she was going to get him the water herself. He pushed his chair back. “I can get it, thank you,” he told her. “Anybody else want any?” I groaned inside of my head even as I shook it. “I’m fine, thank you,” I told him with a tight smile as a lingering knot formed in my stomach. Would I feel this way if he were someone else? If he wasn’t one of the most famous people on the planet? I wasn’t sure. But all I could think about was how defenseless this poor sucker was. How was there nobody he could turn to? As he went for the cabinet that held Abuela’s glasses, Pablo leaned across the table and mouthed, “Who’s that?” I leaned forward now that I had the chance and flicked him on the forehead. Pablo pushed my hand away. “I’m serious!” By some miracle, though, his phone beeped with a text, and he focused on that while I glanced over and found Moore waiting by the refrigerator while Abuela finished serving up a plate for Pablo. I looked down at my phone and texted Tommy back. Me: You guys don’t have the room. A second cousin and a distant aunt were both staying with my parents for the time being. My fingers paused. Me: Let me see how else we can help him. Tommy: Are you going to tell him what Abuela said? Me: No. Let me think about it first.

When we made eye contact, he nodded. He knew I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t mean it. Unfortunately for me, I meant it more than I wanted to. OceanofPDF.com

“I CHAPTER 10 MARCH need to talk to you, pendejos,” I announced. Carly plopped his ass onto one of the stools at our kitchen island, holding his bagel with some herbed cream cheese in one hand and his espresso in the other. For his birthday last year, we’d all pitched in to get him a coffee machine that had been so expensive I was pretty sure that Pablo still refused to touch it. Meanwhile, Pab, who was stirring up some eggs, glanced over his shoulder and tipped his chin at me. “I’m listening,” he replied, the complete opposite of Carly, with his instant coffee made out of water he microwaved and then drowned with creamer. I was the only morning person of the three of us, and it was rare that we all happened to be in the kitchen at the same time, but it was the weekend, and I refused to think it was meant to be that they were around on the day I’d planned on hunting them both down. I had already gone to the gym, taken a shower, and texted back everyone I needed to. Carly looked like he’d just rolled out of bed—his curly hair going in twenty different directions and his cheeks covered with stubble—and Pablo looked like a dehydrated sausage. I could smell the alcohol radiating from his pores. I bit into my own bagel and went over my words and thoughts one last time. I was confident I’d already thought this through enough, and I had my speech ready to go. But as much as I’d told myself why I shouldn’t do what I was about to, I kept on circling back to all the reasons why I had to try.

“What’s up?” Carly, the quietest of all my brothers, asked with a yawn that blew morning breath and coffee at me. “Other than that stray hair on your lip you missed plucking.” “I thought I was the only one who noticed it,” Pablo agreed. “You both get on my nerves.” I made a face and plopped my elbow on the counter, figuring I might as well get to the point before they got going. “Before I say anything, I want you both to know that you can feel however you want to feel, okay?” “Huh?” Pablo asked from the range. Maybe I should’ve waited to have this conversation with them until all four of their combined braincells were fired up instead of running at 50 percent. “You can both be honest with me, okay?” I tried to reword my sentence. Carly blinked blearily. “You’re scaring me.” “You having a brain fart or what?” That was Pablo. Too late now, I guessed. I tried to be patient. “Let me start over since you two are so dramatic,” I said. It was incredible how much I could love them and want to fight them at the same time. “Everything is fine. I just need to tell you about someone I met” was the sentence I decided to start from the beginning with. Carly groaned in absolute defeat, but Pablo did a literal spin with a spatula in his hand. “You said it wasn’t like that,” he claimed, sounding like he’d been revived. I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard him be this excited about anything since the last time a new game console was released. “I mean, I’m not going to say he looks out of your league, but…” He made a face. I gave him my middle finger. “Shut up.” I dropped my hand. “It isn’t like that.” I wanted to argue and say I could date “him,” but I didn’t want to get too argumentative in front of these dumbasses. They would jump to the conclusion that I was interested in Moore—I was dropping the “mister” part now that our official work relationship was over—when I wasn’t. “Who?” Carly asked, scrunching up his face. “What’s happening?” Waving my hand through the air to disperse the stinky breath coming from his mouth, I said, “That part doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that there’s someone I might be slightly considering letting move in with us… for a little while.” I paused. “If you’re both fine with it.” And if I didn’t chicken out at the last second.

“That guy?” Pablo’s voice went high in surprise. “What guy?” Fucking Carly couldn’t let it go. I should’ve known this was going to be a trainwreck of a conversation. “This guy!” I insisted. “Pablo met him a couple days ago. Abuela and Tommy already know him. They both like him.” “Wait, how well do you know him?” Pablo narrowed his eyes. I flipped my hand palm up and palm down, not sure if it had been a good idea or not that we hadn’t been up front with him about who Jorge really was. “You barely know him?” Pablo cried in disbelief, apparently the second most paranoid person in the family, unlike Carly and JJ who thought the best of everybody, the fools. “I don’t know everything about him, but I know enough,” I answered him vaguely. “I don’t know what’s happening right now,” Carly muttered as he took another bite of his bagel, and I couldn’t even blame him. Not knowing how else to explain it, and knowing damn well it was going to have to be addressed since we actually were having this conversation, I pulled out my phone and started typing on it as I said, “This cannot leave this room, do you understand?” I caught their eyes. “No one can know unless… It depends on what happens.” I hesitated at that point. I didn’t want them to say yes just because of what his name was. I guess I had to just be honest. “Okay, let me backtrack….” I told them the story about how I was his realtor, but leaving out the early parts of our interactions. That part wasn’t relevant. They heard about how I’d taken him to meet Abuela one day and how nice he’d been to her. Then they heard about how Tommy painted the rooms in his house. After that, I explained as generally as possible that he was struggling financially because someone he trusted had taken advantage of him and that he had nowhere to live at the moment. And as I looked at their faces, I knew my parents had raised a bunch of bleeding hearts because they both looked a little sad. “He’s got nobody?” Carly asked with a frown. I’d looked it up and confirmed he didn’t have a relationship with his parents. Their rift had been highly publicized early on in his career. From what I read, they had taken loans out in his name—a couple of million dollars—right around his second Olympics, the Games that had put him on

the swimming map, and that had been a mess on its own. They hadn’t been seen at any of his meets or with him in public since shortly after his twentieth birthday, when Moore apparently learned about those loans. From what I’d been able to find out, there was no proof he had any close extended family. His social media had no evidence of cousins or aunts and uncles. Just some teammates and women he’d dated… or at least been pictured with. I had looked up some of the people he’d tagged and noticed that none of them had pictures of him on their pages. Which didn’t need to mean much if he was private, but… The fact was, the people in each picture had been different, like none of them were lasting friendships. I’d been looking for reasons to not help him, and instead I’d found more reasons why I should, unfortunately. How unlucky could one person be with people they trusted? He’d gotten fucked over not once but twice, and one of those times had been by his mom and dad. I trusted my parents more than I trusted anyone. I couldn’t begin to imagine that kind of betrayal. “Fuck,” Pablo agreed, frowning. “So his name isn’t really Jorge?” I shook my head. “It’s George. He just lets her call him that.” Both of them smiled like they liked that too. See? Bleeding hearts. “How long were you thinking?” Carly tipped his chin up at me in question. He meant how long he could stay with us. “I don’t know. I thought we could try for a month to see how it goes.” That wouldn’t be long enough for anything to really get resolved, but if our living situation worked out for longer than a month, depending on what he could take off his credit report, it could make a difference. “You think we can trust him?” my twenty-four-year-old brother asked, proving again that Pablo might be the smart one, despite how much of an idiot he could be. “I think. We could hide our stuff”—I wasn’t sure any of us actually had anything worth stealing—“set up cameras in our rooms, lock our doors….” I shrugged. “That sounds shitty. Maybe this was a stupid idea.”

It was Carly who threw a hand up. “I trust you, Shorty. You’ve got good intuition about people—” “Most people,” Pablo had the nerve to scoff under his breath as he faced the stove and turned it off. I flipped him off. I’d made one mistake in the past, but I could blame it on hormones, inexperience, and being a dumbass. I learned from my mistakes, and I was never going to ignore my instincts ever again. Or be blinded by first love. “You wouldn’t be bringing this up if you didn’t feel strongly about it,” Carly noted. “No, but I am questioning if it would be worth all the effort and the risk. I don’t know him that well. He’s not a lifelong friend or someone I’ve known for years. My gut says he’s an innocent little puppy.” I paused. “And Abuela and Tommy both brought up asking him to move in with them.” Two sets of eyebrows shot up. “Yeah. Abuelita said it first, and then Tommy asked if I thought Mom and Dad would be fine with it. If anyone is going to take that risk, it has to be us,” I explained. “Nope.” Pablo shook his head, confirming I wasn’t the only one who didn’t think it’d be a good idea for him to move in with any of the rest of our family. “We don’t have to say yes. I haven’t mentioned this to him. I can still try and find him another living situation. It doesn’t need to be with us. He’s an adult.” I frowned. “But something is telling me that our situation is the most ideal one for him, and I’m worried someone is going to take advantage of him again.” He’d been so dismissive at the beginning, and despite all he’d been through, he’d started showing me his credit information way too soon. “Bro, who’s gonna take advantage of him? He’s tall as fuck, and he’s gotta be around your old-ass age.” Pablo snorted. I flipped him off again with a straight face. But Carly surprised the crap out of me by tapping his chin. “Why would someone take advantage of him? He doesn’t have money and his credit sucks, right? I thought that was the whole point of this.” “Because someone already took advantage of him.” Two sets of people.

“But who lets another person have access to their account in the first place? I would give you my login to my bank, but I’m sure as hell not gonna give it to Tommy, and I’d give that little fucker a kidney if he needed it.” I nodded because same. I wouldn’t give Tommy any login information either. He would write it down and tape it to his laptop for anyone to take. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him with my life, I just didn’t trust him with that kind of thing. He was too trusting. Like someone else I knew. “I’ll tell you that in a second, but so far, how do you feel about it?” Pablo hunched his shoulders. “I’ve got my own bathroom, so I’m not gonna be sharing it with him. He seemed all right to me. As long as he doesn’t wake me up in the middle of the night or delete my games, I’m fine with it.” Carlos tapped his chin some more. He would have to share a bathroom with him. Between his bedroom and the fourth bedroom—the official guest room—there was a Jack-and-Jill-style bathroom with a toilet room, sink, and shower. “As long as he helps me clean the bathroom every other week and flushes his shit, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal.” He paused. “I don’t want to feel bad kicking a friend out because they’re a shitty roommate. But since none of us are friends right now, it’d be easier to get him to leave.” He had a really good point. “And couldn’t you write an agreement with rules and stuff that he’d have to follow? To make it legal?” Pablo added thoughtfully. I didn’t feel a tear well up in my eye, but I definitely felt a surge of love toward the smartest brother in my family—I decided right then—and that said something because JJ had gone to a great school on a full-ride scholarship. Pablo frowned suspiciously. “Why are you looking at me like that?” I fake sniffled. “I’m just so proud of how thoughtful you are, Pablito. I didn’t think you had it in you to be this prepared and have so much common sense. You’re so distrusting. I love it.” “I’m very smart,” he deadpanned. For once in his life, I agreed. “To answer your question, yeah, I could do that. Do rental rules, no loud music after 9:00 p.m., blah, blah, blah.” That got me two confident nods.

“So, maybe then?” I asked slowly, trying to read them. More nods. I guess now was the time to share with them the other part they had to be aware of. “There’s something else you need to know. It’s why we have to keep it a secret if he does move in, even if it’s only for a month.” Pablo crossed his arms over his chest, clearly interested. “What is it?” I typed George Moore’s name into my browser while I asked Carly, “Do you know who this is? Don’t say anything if you do,” I warned him. I showed him the screen. His gaze flicked to me a whole second later. I showed the image to Pablo. It was a headshot of Moore with much shorter hair, smiling. He looked very, very beautiful. “He’s a model?” my brother asked earnestly. Carly turned to face Pablo. “Are you fucking serious?” Even he couldn’t believe it. “What?” Pablo asked, insulted. I made eye contact with Carly when he got done shaking his head. “That’s him,” I told him. My brother straight up shouted, “That’s him?” His eyes were huge. “Bro, why didn’t you just say that?” “Because I don’t want you to say yes because of it!” “It’s probably against the law to not help him,” he tried to tell me. I laughed. “You might as well shoot down a bald eagle, Shorty,” Carly kept going, his face so disbelieving. “How is that even possible? You sold his house?” I winked and patted my chest. “Sure did, baby boy.” And I’d already gotten paid. If the money weren’t still pending, I would’ve already used it the way I’d been planning to from the moment I’d gotten the listing forced on me. Seeing my bank balance had been worth every headache Moore and his house had given me. I wasn’t applying all of it to what I thought of as my Abuela Debt. I was planning to save a significant chunk. I figured I couldn’t have too big of a “I haven’t sold a house in months” fund. If things were going really well in the future, I could always dip into it and pay more off. “How? How’d you meet him?” “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it later,” I promised, wrinkling my nose. “I didn’t want to sell it.”

Carly nodded like he was good with that. “Hello?” Pablo snapped his fingers. “I’m still here.” Carly and I made eye contact, and we both rolled our eyes at the same time. I finally turned the screen toward Pab. It was the Infopedia page with Moore’s name and picture. “This is who that guy at Abuelita’s is, güey.” I showed him. “You’re the only dumbass in this country who wouldn’t recognize him,” Carly huffed as Pablo’s eyes moved across the screen, his forehead wrinkling. “No shit, that’s him?” he asked, his eyebrows only slightly rising. “I thought he’d be more jacked.” I started laughing. “He’s wearing, like, extra-large sweats, Mr. Olympia, but okay.” “You know he’s a pro athlete, right?” There he went again surprising me with his rare thoughtfulness. I nodded at him. “I know. I’ve come to terms with it. He’s not a football player, so I can forgive him for it,” I explained. Pablo nodded like that made sense. “Well, that’s a yes from me, but he’s still gotta clean the bathroom every other week. I’m not his maid,” Carly confirmed. Pablo shrugged after a second. “I mean, that’s cool, I guess, but same. I’m not picking up after him, and I don’t wanna be woken up in the middle of the night.” He paused. “Can we do a month first? I feel bad for him. We might as well help him at least for a little while.” I couldn’t actually believe it. They were saying yes. More astonishing was the fact that I’d thought of this idea. But… I guess… I guess I was going to ask George Moore if he wanted to rent a room in my house for a month. A part of me couldn’t fucking believe it, though. Not too long later, after the thirtieth time that I’d gone through all the reasons why I could—and should—make George Moore my roommate offer, I finally worked up the resolve to reach out to him.

A small part of me hoped he wouldn’t respond. I liked the way things were at home currently. My brothers and I had gotten into it a few times, but it had always been over easy enough stuff, and none of us stayed annoyed with each other for long. Leaving dishes in the sink. Eating each other’s food—that one had been, and always would be, a work in progress, but we understood how to manage it by now. Forgetting clothes in the washer. Little things. We had a good dynamic, and I couldn’t help but hesitate over screwing that up by introducing someone new. There was also the fact that, like I’d told them, I didn’t know Moore that well. On the flip side, what I did know had gradually won me over, against my wishes, which was what had led to this entire situation. I was sure he wasn’t actually an innocent little puppy, but in some ways, he was a newborn that had to be protected. At least until he grew up. Because nothing in this world made you mature like having your world kicked out from under you. He needed some help while he learned how to stand on his own two feet. That’s what my gut said, at least, and I had learned to trust that son of a bitch over the years. If it felt strongly one way or another, I listened. And my gut said, “Send the message, Veronica.” So that’s what I did, my hand shaking for the first time in as long as I could remember. Me: “Hi, Mr. Moore. I’ve got an idea for a living situation for you. If you’d like to hear about it, let me know.” There was a chance he wouldn’t put the time into listening to my message. Maybe he’d already figured it out himself over the last couple of days. Yeah fucking right. I sent it, and I figured I would leave it up to him. I would need to see him again even if he didn’t respond. I had to give him the gift I’d gotten him for his closing since he’d done it remotely from his hotel instead of going to the title company to sign his house away. I always bought all of my clients something after they bought or sold. Sometimes I got them a washer and a dryer if it was a first home. Other times, I gave more personalized

gifts if I knew what their hobbies or interests were, or I’d get them cookware or a gift card to a restaurant. But what I had in mind for him was different from all that, and that’s what I was thinking about when my phone beeped with a new message notification. It was from Beetlejuice—I’d taken the “River Forest” part off because that was done now. That was fast. Beetlejuice: “Hi, Veronica. How’s Miss Gloria? I’m interested. What’d you find?” Damn this polite son of a bitch. Why couldn’t he be a dickhead? I didn’t want another roommate. I didn’t need another one. But that familiar pang of guilt kicked me right in the heart for the hundredth time. How could a man with millions of followers on Picturegram have no one he could reach out to? I had at least twenty people that I could move in with if I ever needed to. I was related to the majority of them, but there were a few coworkers and friends that I knew would take me in. A sneaky wave of gratitude for my loved ones slipped right through my chest cavity. What a privilege it was to be loved. It wasn’t that I ever took it for granted, but damn. I said, “Fuck,” under my breath as I started to think up a reply, but I only got about two words in when my phone rang. “Beetlejuice Calling” showed up on the screen. Somebody was desperate. Please don’t let me regret this. Please don’t let my gut be wrong. “Hey,” the familiar voice on the other line answered, and again there were no other voices in the background. “It’s Jorge.” The son of a bitch sounded amused. Hor-hay. Like he thought I didn’t have his number saved on my phone. It almost made me snicker. What it did make me do was decide. Who was I going to be from now on? Work Veronica or Real Veronica? I went with the only choice I was willing to make. “You’ve really taken to the Jorge, huh?” I asked as I leaned against my couch, feeling like I was asking somebody to prom for some dumb reason.

There was a pause. The fact was, I didn’t work for him anymore. It was almost a relief. “It rolls off the tongue nicely. I like it more than George,” he answered with a snicker. I decided right then and there that I was not going to be charmed by him. “Well, Mister… Moore.” I guess I could stop calling him that to his face now too. “What I was texting you about is a little complicated, and I’m not sure it would work, or if you’d even be interested, but I wanted to bring it to your attention anyway.” Was I nervous? “I had to change hotels last night, and I’ve had people knock on my door three times in the last two hours. I went through my numbers again, and I really can’t afford to buy anything, and my credit still sucks,” he cut in. “I looked up listings on WaltersList—” “You what?” WaltersList was an online forum where people posted just about everything: stuff for sale, trade offers, job listings, singles ads, and a lot of weird shit. “I looked up people wanting roommates,” he explained in a tone that had me imagining just how well that had gone. I closed my eyes and said, “Please tell me you didn’t.” I hadn’t told him to do that. I would never tell him to do that. Who the hell had given him that idea? There was a pause. “Yeah, not my best idea,” he confirmed, sounding like he’d learned something new about the world. “Glad I blocked my number when I called the couple of people I spoke to. I don’t think any of them were actually looking for a roommate. One woman offered to share her bed with me, said she would give me a discount on the rent.” Oh, this precious fucking child. How naïve. “I was desperate.” He kind of laughed. “You’ve made it pretty clear I don’t have room to be picky right now, but I’m not willing to share a bed with someone I don’t know, so what have you got in mind?” If he’d been one of my brothers, I’d smack him on the back of the head, but since he wasn’t, I had to shake my head and move on faster than I would’ve in any other situation. “Well,” I said, bracing myself for what I was about to do. “There is a house with three reliable, discreet people, and they have an extra bedroom.”

“I’m listening,” he said without missing a fucking beat, honestly not sounding at all put out, which surprised me because he’d claimed more than one potential rental property had been too small. “Everyone has a full-time job. You’d have to be quiet between the hours of 8:00 at night and 8:00 in the morning—no parties, no people coming over. You’d have to clean up after yourself, things like that. I can go into more detail if you’re still following me. They’re willing to do one month for sure,” I explained quickly. “If you’re interested.” Maybe he would say no. But he’d be stupid to. “You know these people?” was the first question he asked. “I do,” I told him. “You trust them?” “Very much.” He made a weak sound in his throat, and I set aside the fact that me trusting someone was a requirement he was invested in. “I can be quiet and clean up after myself. I’m not that good at cleaning, but it can’t be that hard, right?” Moore asked. I blinked. “I’m interested.” I had kind of hoped, maybe, on some level, that he was going to say that he wasn’t. At the same time, I needed to help this puppy. Because he seemed like a decent guy despite all the stupid things in his past. Because he was nice to my family. Because I understood better than anyone what being fucked financially was like. But also because, if I didn’t do this, who would help him? I couldn’t wrap my head around how many people he had to know and how he hadn’t turned to any of them when he needed them the most. “I need to point out, you haven’t even asked who these people are before saying you’re interested,” I told him, wanting to smack myself on the forehead since his wasn’t around. It almost pained me how sincere his tone was. “Thank you for watching out for me.” I rolled my eyes toward the heavens. He was worse than Tommy.

“You said you trusted them, and that’s good enough for me. I’m grateful and figured they had to be nice people to be willing to let me stay with them.” Jesus Christ. I groaned. He paused. “Am I not supposed to be grateful?” “You are, but reluctantly. They could be human traffickers. They could run a meth house—” “You said they have full-time jobs.” “Yeah, and those jobs could be at a chop shop. You should ask.” I paused. “I’m not trying to be a jerk.” I didn’t want to say it, but we were here, and I figured I kind of had to. “It could be really easy for someone to take advantage of you, that’s all.” He inhaled deeply and, in an extremely believable voice that reminded me he’d acted in commercials, asked, “What do they do for a living, Veronica?” “Good God.” I started laughing, surprised by how easy it was to be myself with him. I was going to blame his butthole talk for it. “You’re going to make me lose my shit, and I’m not even responsible for you.” I could hear him chuckle, and that was a good sign too. He was going to need a sense of humor to live with Pab. “Okay, one of them is twenty-one and works in HVAC,” I explained. “What is HVAC?” “Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning.” “Okay. That sounds like a good job.” “The other person is twenty-four. They work as a sous chef.” “I used to have a chef,” he threw in. I didn’t mean to snort, but he was whatever the opposite of Cinderella was. “And the owner of the house is thirty-one and a realtor.” “It’s a friend of yours?” “No, that’s where I meant that it might be complicated.” I couldn’t believe I was doing this, and I wasn’t doing it for karma to pay me back one day, but more for me to pay it back. “It’s me.” I wasn’t sure how I felt about the stretch of silence that came afterward, but I was definitely slightly offended. Maybe more than slightly because I was genuinely considering hanging up on him. “I’m really flattered—”

I stopped in the middle of moving my thumb toward the icon that would hang up the call before I thought about where the hell he could think this conversation was going. Was he…? “You can stop right there. My roommates are my brothers, and I don’t want anything from you. There would be rent. It wouldn’t be free. No bed sharing. I’m not hitting on you.” There was a sound that could have been a scoff on the other end, but he’d created this situation, and I had to bring us back in the right direction. “I’m only trying to do you a solid despite the fact you were about to offend me.” “I was not!” He almost sounded offended. I scoffed. “Mr. Moore—Moore. Listen to me.” “I’m listening.” “I don’t technically work for you anymore, so I’m saying this as the person who is offering to let you rent out a room for a month—with all due respect, shut up.” Real Veronica was here to stay, apparently. “With all due…” I was sure I heard him make a choking sound, but he bounced back. “Okay, I’m shutting up.” “You seem like a nice guy who’s had the best luck and really shitty luck at the same time. I’m sure you could eventually figure everything out, but it would be a painful lesson in the meantime. I’ve been in the dumps and have needed help, just like you. I come from a long line of people who take family seriously and help other people when they can. “For some reason, you came into my life when I fought allowing you into it—no offense to you—and it’s made me question if that’s for a reason. What I’m offering is a place to stay for a month, as long as you don’t do those things I mentioned, to see if maybe it could work. I can’t promise anything after that. It’s literally just to give you more time to sort things out. I’m not going to lose any sleep if you say no, but I will lose sleep if I don’t make you this offer. My grandma said the same thing the other day, but that’s not happening. You’re a good-looking man, but I’m not interested in you like that. Is that clear?” His breathing was loud. But his “Yeah, I get it” was very clear. “I appreciate your honesty, Veronica. For the record, I was only going to say you were cute, but I’ve been told I’m basically allergic to relationships.” There was a pause. “What should I ask you next?” I pressed the fingers of my free hand against my eye socket and sighed. Allergic to relationships.

“We can come back to that.” He cleared his throat. “Can I see the house? Meet your brothers? I like Tommy, and if they’re anything like him, I bet I’d like them too, but better to be safe than sorry.” There was a loaded moment of silence. “I did good asking that, didn’t I?” I slid my hand down to pinch the tip of my nose to keep from making a sound. “Yes, you did. You can see the house. You’ve already met Pablo at my grandma’s, remember?” “Oh, yeah.” He took a long breath, and he dropped his voice. “When can I come by?” “When are you free? I don’t have anything today.” I was usually pretty busy on the weekend, but today had zero things on the schedule. “I’m not sure about Carlos, but Pablo doesn’t have anything going on today either.” He’d been bragging about it during breakfast. “I’m sitting in my hotel room. I can come now.” Now? “Or later.” “Either way works,” I told him. “I’ll come now then,” he said, and just as I was about to ask if he needed me to pick him up, he added, “I’ll take a car there.” I paused. He’d never taken a car anywhere before. I’d always had to be the one to pick him up. But I wasn’t going to be driving him around if he happened to move in. “Can I have the address?” I gave it to him. Then I looked up at the ceiling again. “See you in a little bit then.” “I can’t believe he’s coming,” Pablo noted from where he stood peering through the front windows of the house, looking out toward the street. I shook my head at the creeper even though he was facing away. “I told you he doesn’t have a whole lot of options.” The blinds Pablo had pulled down flicked back into place as he whirled around. I was sitting on my favorite one-and-a-half chair, basically an oversized recliner, where I’d curled up five minutes ago after going through the house and eyeballing things that could be worth stealing. There wasn’t anything except our laptops, my desktop, and my brothers’ game consoles

—but they’d agreed to lock their doors when they left home. The previous owners had left keys for each room. The doors could be kicked in, but I really, really didn’t see that happening. And if Moore took off with our stuff, the outside cameras would catch him. My brother frowned. “Bro, how does he not have any money? He’s famous. You’d figure he’d have dozens of people on speed dial that would give up their vacation rentals for him.” I shrugged, but I agreed with his rationalizing there. It didn’t make sense to me either. And why Houston? He’d seemed so dead set on it—and this side of the city specifically—but from his Infopedia page, most of his training had taken place up north. He’d been with the same coach up until a year ago, when he’d gotten suspended for a year for doing an IV treatment. That explained why he’d let his hair grow out at least. There were articles about him and his coach parting ways, but that had traced back to the man wanting to retire. On the other hand, I had helped enough clients relocate in my career that I wasn’t surprised anymore by how many people didn’t live around loved ones. They needed the most help, and I didn’t mind doing what I could, giving them contacts for babysitters, cleaners, people who could check on their house when they went on vacation. I couldn’t get away from my family—apart from the short period where I’d lived in Alabama. My parents were fifteen minutes away, JJ was not even ten, and Abuela was a few houses down. I’d bet if Abuela had had more kids than just my mom, there would be even more family members close by, but my extended family all lived in Fort Worth. Growing up, we took trips up to see them once a month, or they came down to visit, and most of us were pretty close, considering. “That makes me wanna give Mom and Dad a hug,” Pablo muttered before rocking back and forth on his heels. My phone beeped. It was a message from Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice: “Be there in 2 minutes.” Standing up, I reminded myself that Work Veronica didn’t need to make an appearance. I’d already decided to give up work-appropriate clothes when he came over. He’d only seen me dressed professionally, other than the day I’d visited with Tommy to paint, but I sure as fuck left Work

Veronica outside of my house unless I had to answer a call, text, or write an email. This was Real Veronica’s time to shine in pants with an elastic band. If I left the house, I’d put on some jeans, but I wasn’t planning on walking out of the door today. I’d already told Moore to shut up, too. I told Pablo, “He’s about to get here. I’m going to meet him out there.” He nodded as I slipped on a pair of clogs I wore when I had to grab something from my car. The day was a pretty one by Houston standards, the sky a familiar shade of blue gray with only a couple of clouds. The weather was cool for the end of March. Coming down the road, a small red car approached, and when it pulled up alongside the curb on the opposite side of the street, I spotted a driver, a front passenger, and another in the back… at least until the door opened and one of the people in the back got out. I recognized the tall, lean body wearing baggy black sweats and a beanie pulled low. He had a face mask on. The kind my grandma wore to the doctor’s office. The son of a bitch had taken a shared ride. George Moore tugged the mask onto his chin before he smiled at me and jogged across the street. “Hey, isn’t Miss Gloria a few houses down?” I was genuinely impressed he’d pieced that together. “Yeah, right there.” I pointed in the direction. Every house in the neighborhood had a brick exterior. Most of them were shades of red—mine was a darker, borderline brownish-red—but a few were like Abuela’s, with gray bricks instead. Where my house was a two-story, though, hers had a single floor. He tugged the mask off around his ears when he got to the curb and made a thoughtful face before asking, “You never mentioned that, did you?” Nope, because I hadn’t wanted him to know, and I wasn’t going to lie about that either. I shook my head. “Come in before anyone sees you and thinks you’re my boyfriend. I’ve got a reputation to uphold.” I smiled a little, trying to make fun of him over his bullshit earlier. The tall man came to stand right beside Pablo’s silver Toyota. “What’s your reputation around here?” he asked seriously, surprising me again with how quickly he seemed to be adapting to me being me. I tilted my head toward the front door. “That I’m a mean asshole if you don’t pick up your dog poop from my yard,” I told him as we headed up the path. “I had to shut that shit down.” I met his eyes. “Literally.”

“What’d you do?” “I picked it up and put it on their porch, and by the time they did it a fourth time, I started leaving bags behind their tires. They eventually stopped.” “They didn’t get mad?” We were almost at the door. “They got mad, but I didn’t give a fu—” I stopped and turned to him, tipping my head back because he was so much taller than me. “Look, I try and be professional around my clients, and we’re in a weird limbo where you were one, but you kind of aren’t one, and today is my day off, and I don’t really feel like watching everything I say anymore. If that’s going to be a problem—” Green eyes peered down at me. He held up his hands, palms toward me, fingertips to the sky. A slow but sober smile formed over his features. “No problem here.” Good. “All right. I was saying, that’s why there are cameras all around the house because I didn’t trust them not to retaliate, and I had proof it was their poop.” “Then what happened?” He was a curious little bee, wasn’t he? “Eventually their lease ended, and they moved out. Word in the neighborhood group was that their dog started taking a shit in someone else’s yard, and things didn’t go well there either.” I turned the knob and gestured him to go in first. “Come on in,” I invited him. Moore wiped his feet on my welcome mat and took off his shoes right after going through the doorway. I guess he got a bonus point for that. We took turns mopping once a week, but I hadn’t included him in the rotation since this might be a temporary visit. It wasn’t worth adding him onto the calendar and messing up our preplanned schedule. It was how Mom had raised us. When we’d been kids and had moved into our brand-new house, Mom had made us take off our shoes so we wouldn’t mess up the new carpet. Fortunately, that had instilled good habits in all of us. So when I’d read years later how much bacteria was carried on the bottoms of shoes, I hadn’t been too horrified. I wasn’t planning on eating off it, but traces of E. coli and feces all over my floor? I’d rather not. Moore stood just inside, his eyes moving around the renovated home with a watchful face.

It was not a new house, but it was less than thirty years old. The previous homeowners had renovated things like the kitchen backsplash and the master bathroom, and I’d chipped away at others over the last three years. You could do a lot without tearing down walls, and I loved home- remodeling shows that gave me realistic ideas I could take to heart. I liked my house. It was in a quiet neighborhood with homes that were all similarly built, but the trees had grown over the last two decades and were pretty respectable now, and while the homes had been half the price when they’d been built compared to now, the value of them would only continue to go up. It had been a good investment. Right when you walked in, on one side was my office—which had been a formal dining room originally, but the previous owners had installed French doors—and opposite of it was a living room. The walls were painted a pale olive with furniture I’d bought over time, pieces that some might say were more focused on comfort than “cute.” When my family came over, everyone sprawled out, kicking their feet up. I loved it. I didn’t want anything I’d be scared to drop a Cheeto on. “So, this is it,” I said, waving my hand toward the living space. Green eyes slid to me. I dropped my hand and eyed him. “What?” The corners of those eyes wrinkled in amusement. “We’ve looked at a lot of houses, but this is the first time you’ve given a tour like this.” Where was he going with this? His eye crinkles turned into a full-fledged smile. “I watched a couple of your home tour videos on your PG. I thought you were going to give me specs on the height of the ceilings and the benefits of walking paths in the neighborhood.” I felt my bottom lip drop a little. He’d looked at my Picturegram account? “I’m joking,” Moore let me know. A familiar chuckle came from around the corner as Pablo came over, his phone still in his hand. “She woke up this morning and said Work Veronica was taking a day off. You’re lucky she washed her face,” Pablo claimed as he came to a stop beside me. “You should see her if she tries to go to the

grocery store and she’s not dressed. She puts on a hat and glasses so she doesn’t run into somebody that might want to buy a house.” I couldn’t even disagree. I had gotten a couple of clients running into people at the grocery store on a Saturday morning. The thing was, when I’d been younger, it had been important for me to not look too young. You wanted people to trust you, and having a twenty-something-year-old in sweatpants didn’t scream, “Trust me with your money.” You wanted to be seen as capable and professional, and I wasn’t going to apologize for that. But I still looked at my brother and fought off the slight urge to remain extremely polite in Moore’s presence. “I hate you sometimes, you know that, right?” I asked him. Pablo nodded in acceptance but moved on from that quickly and put his hand out. “Nice to see you again, Jorge,” he said, apparently deciding to continue the Jorge charade. Moore took his hand and smiled. “Nice to see you too.” I wasn’t sure I trusted either one of them. “Come on, I’ll give you a tour. Shorty only saves the good shit for when she’s working.” He extended his hand. “The paint on the walls is what we call kinda brown but kinda green and kinda gray…” This fucking idiot. I squeezed my eyes closed and tried not to laugh. This was what I got. And for some dumbass reason, I didn’t want to interrupt him. Thankfully, Pablo kept going. “To the left is an office where you can sometimes find an angry troll in her natural habitat.” My little brother must have sensed me coming because he whacked my hand away before I made contact with his head. He had the balls to look very, very proud of himself. He even winked at me before telling Moore, “If you throw snacks at her when you walk by, she’ll allow you safe passage.” I went to hit him again, but it was the sight of Moore’s smirking face that stopped me. I had to refrain from asking what the hell he was smiling at. We weren’t there yet. But maybe I should go ahead and let him see what he’d be getting into from the beginning. This was what our house was like all the time anyway. I hoped Pablo and I were still picking on each other when we were in our eighties.

“Moving along, you can see our rare cell phone art,” he gestured toward the framed photographs that lined the wall along the stairs. There was a mix of pictures throughout the years, but we didn’t stop, and Moore only briefly glanced at them as we headed toward the kitchen at the back of the house. “This is the kitchen. It looks like any other kitchen. Everyone washes their own dishes.” He made a point of that. “And cleans up after themselves.” What my little brother failed to mention were the cupboards I’d painted and upgraded the handles on. There was a table with a bench seat on one side up against the back wall and four chairs total on the other three sides. There was a kitchen hutch that was mostly used for storage, but it was also where I kept a collection of pictures of family members who had passed away: my other grandmother and grandpa, my great-aunt—Abuela’s sister —and an aunt who had passed away a couple of years ago. I watched Moore eyeball those pictures too, but he didn’t ask about them. Pablo steered us to the back door and raised the blinds, showing off our postage-stamp-sized backyard with a small table and chairs as the only decoration. None of us spent a lot of time outside. We were air-conditioning babies. “We’ll make our way upstairs,” Pablo called out before moving toward the staircase and going up it, with Moore walking quietly between us. Pablo pointed at the door directly in front of the stairs. “That’s my room.” He went left and pointed at the next door. “This is Carlos’s room. He’s our little brother, but he’s older than Tommy.” “Is he not here?” Moore turned to ask me. I shook my head. “He was going to be, but he took an on-call shift, and he had to run out. If you like Tommy—” “I do like Tommy,” Moore agreed instantly. Damn him. “You’ll like Carlos. He’s a little more quiet, but he talks more shit. They’re both nice.” Pablo nodded and kept going toward the next door. He opened it and gestured in. “This is the bathroom you’d share with Carlos. Each room has a door for it, plus this one right here.” Moore went inside. “This is nice,” the blond said as he peeked into the shower. There wasn’t anything special about it. I hadn’t done anything to it because Carly

didn’t care. It was just a normal prefabricated tub with a plain, navy blue shower curtain. It got the job done. There was a vanity on each side of the door—one for each of them—a shared toilet, and a small linen closet. “Can I go through here?” he asked, pointing toward the door on the left. “Yeah,” Pablo agreed before meeting my eyes. I raised my eyebrows, and he tipped his head to the side like “this guy’s not so bad.” We followed him into the bedroom through the bathroom door. There was a bed, a nightstand on each side, and a plain headboard that I’d bought from a neighbor when they’d upgraded. The room was a little too small for the set, but we’d managed to cram the matching dresser against the opposite wall. “This is the smallest room in the house,” I warned him to be honest. “There’s an outlet behind the dresser for a TV.” The ones he’d put into storage would all be too big, but… He gestured toward the door near the corner. “Closet?” He ducked his head inside after we told him it was. The closet was a small walk-in. When he came out, he smiled this annoyingly earnest smile. “It’s great.” This was the same son of a bitch who had complained about the closets in all the homes we’d toured on his quest to find a rental. This closet had to be the same size, if not smaller than, all those he’d claimed wouldn’t fit his stuff. But that had been before. He must have fully realized just how bad his situation was and that he didn’t have all the choices in the world for the first time in a very long time, or so I assumed. You could make do with a lot less when it was necessary. At least he was being polite about it. “How much were you thinking?” he asked. I crossed my arms over my chest and told him the amount. It was around what my brothers paid, just a little less because his room was smaller than theirs. Pablo paid the most between him and Carly, but that was because, after the primary bedroom, his was the biggest and he had his own bathroom. I almost told Moore about how we split the higher electricity bills during the summer because we were all scarred from our parents keeping

their AC at 80 when we were growing up and none of us were going to force ourselves to save money by being hot. At least not unless we had to. If by some miracle he was still around when we started edging into summer, we could talk about it then, but I didn’t see a point in bringing it up unless we got there. Standing there in the room with normal eight-foot ceilings that he’d complained about countless times before, Moore looked extra tall, and really, those shoulders were no joke. I was sure I’d never seen wider ones before. He was not a small man; he took up a lot of space. “Think about it and let me know,” I started to tell him, even though I doubted there was a more ideal living situation than this one. “I don’t need to think about it,” he replied. I blinked. Moore made a sheepish face. “You’ve probably got a good reason for why I should sleep on it, and I believe you, but your house is great.” He made a face when I just stared at him for buttering me up. “I mean it, Veronica. It’s nice. I like it.” Here this son of a bitch was trying to suck up, but fine. It was nice. Not River Forest-nice, but I wasn’t going to compare apples to oranges. I didn’t need a nine-thousand-square-foot house. I didn’t want one either. I would rather have four houses in four different places if I had that kind of money. “Even if it’s only a month, that’ll save me a ton, and like you suggested, that’s something I need to do right now.” He side-eyed me. “Right?” This innocent child. “Right,” I agreed. “Then, yes, please. I’ll take it.” He eyed my brother. “If it’s fine with everyone.” Did he have to sound so sincere? “We talked about it, and we said that we were fine with it. But there are house rules. I mentioned that on the phone. I also don’t want my grandma to know you’re living here unless it turns out to be long-term, and I don’t think anyone other than us should know. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t steal anything.” I paused. “I’m really picky about how the dishes are loaded in the dishwasher, just so you’re aware. Do you need me to teach you how to do it?” “Never stolen a thing in my life, and I won’t start with people who are helping me out. I can make sure Miss Gloria doesn’t know I’m here. And I know how to load a dishwasher.” Moore paused. “I think.”

“I’ll show you,” I offered. “Also, I wouldn’t eat anyone’s leftovers if I were you. We all lick or spit on our food to call dibs on it so someone else doesn’t eat it.” His mouth opened and closed, and then he laughed. “All right, no eating anyone’s food. Got it.” I was certain I saw him let out a breath of relief. “Thank you. Thank you so—” People being grateful toward me made me uncomfortable, and I felt my face starting to turn red, so I waved him off. “You’re welcome.” “She’s weird about people being too nice to her,” Pablo explained. Moore’s eyebrows went up, but I ignored both of them. “If you’re sure you want to, I’m not going to give you too much shit for jumping on this opportunity because I don’t think you’d find anything better right now.” His expression turned into a questioning one. “You’re going to get your life back together, Mister… Moore. Just Moore now.” I gave him a faint smile. Calling him that was a habit. “I don’t know what it’ll look like in the future, but it’ll get better than it is now,” I told him before getting self-conscious. I didn’t wait for him to agree with me. “Let’s go over all the rest of the rules first. I already filled out a rental agreement just in case.” Dark eyebrows shot up. “In the time it took me to get here?” Someone was observant. “I made it this morning. I had a feeling we’d end up here.” It might still feel like I could be making a huge mistake letting him move in, considering I didn’t know a whole lot about him, but I didn’t think so. All I knew was that when we walked out of the room that was going to be his sooner rather than later, Pablo and I made eye contact, and the look he gave me was reassuring. Maybe we couldn’t easily change the whole world, but there wasn’t anything wrong with changing someone’s world every once in a while. I just hoped we didn’t regret it. OceanofPDF.com

“T CHAPTER 11 MARCH hanks for bringing me.” I glanced in my side mirror as I changed lanes instead of focusing on the man sitting in my passenger seat. We were on our way to his hotel to pick up his things. “You’re welcome.” I hadn’t planned on leaving the house today, but when I’d caught Moore looking over his transportation options, on the cusp of picking that ride- share option again, I’d decided I might as well finish up this whole “helping someone out” thing and drive him myself. His hotel was only twenty minutes away. I’d drive twenty to get a sno-cone. But driving him around wasn’t going to be a regular thing. This was just a one-off. It had been an hour since the end of Pablo’s home tour, and in that time, we’d gone over house rules and what temperature we kept the house at. The thermostat wasn’t really a point of contention since Carly had installed an impressive AC panel that we could control through an app on our phones. When I’d asked Moore when he wanted to move in, he’d said what I’d expected: the sooner, the better. Since I’d already discussed the possibility of him requesting an immediate move-in date with Pablo and Carly, I told him it was fine, put that on the agreement, and handed it over to him. I’d made sure to use a really big font.

He had picked up the pen I’d slid to him and peeked up at me with those emerald green eyes. “I should read through this, huh?” he asked. I didn’t even bother stopping myself from pinching the bridge of my nose. “Yes, you should.” He’d laughed, and I shook my head while Pablo had made a confused face. But God bless him, Moore had read through the contract. At one point, he’d asked me a question about a sentence he didn’t understand, and I had to explain it. And before I could remind him that he could trust me, but maybe shouldn’t trust other people’s explanations, he’d said on his own, “I’ll look things up on my phone in other situations.” I nodded and said, “Good.” Then I tapped the contract and said, “Now you can finally give me your autograph.” “Finally?” His amnesia had kicked in again. “You’ve asked me twice if I wanted an autograph,” I reminded him. His eyebrows scrunched together before he suddenly snickered. “Oh. Yeah.” He laughed. “Sorry about that.” That reminded me… I lifted a finger and went to my purse as he signed the contract, a very simple and legible “G Moore.” When I got back, I handed him the little box I’d put his closing gift in. “For me?” “Yes.” “Thank you.” He plucked the top off the box and stared at the card. “What’s it say?” I should’ve reprinted it in big letters. “It’s a gift card so you can get an eye exam, and there’s enough on there to buy three nice pairs of glasses or contacts,” I explained, realizing he couldn’t read the writing. “Oh!” He drew the box away from his face and narrowed his eyes, finally able to see the print. He shot me a genuine smile. “Thank you.” “But use it.” I gave him a pointed look. “I will,” he agreed. “But you really think I need it? Because I feel like I’ve made it work this long.” “With all due respect, I genuinely don’t know how you’ve made it this long.” He didn’t argue about it after that, and now we were heading to his hotel.

“You said you need to pick up a sign after this?” he asked, referring to the detour we were making after picking up his bags. I figured, if I was leaving the house, I might as well knock out an errand since it was close to his hotel, and I’d gone ahead and put on jeans and a baseball cap. I nodded as I changed lanes again. “Yeah, my clients are closing on Monday, so I want to get the sign before the new owners get their keys,” I explained. “Congratulations.” “Thanks. It took about six months to sell it, so I’m glad we all get to move on.” This was the best month I’d ever had so far. Moore’s head bobbed. “My place in Michigan took a year to sell.” I blinked. “Do you think there was a reason why it took so long?” There were so many factors that could go into why a listing would take that length of time to get off the market. I wanted to know what he thought it was. More than anything, I wanted to know if my hunch was right. “It might have been overpriced.” I glanced at him. “Might have?” “It was overpriced,” he admitted blatantly. Didn’t that sound familiar? It was hard not to gloat. I’d save it for later. “Someone tell you that you could sell it for that price just because you were the owner?” I asked, feeling like I knew this story already. That finally got me a side look. “How do you know?” I looked forward so I wouldn’t be tempted to smirk. “Some realtors will blow all the smoke up your ass you want. Did you lose money on it?” The tips of his ears turned pink, and I shook my head. “You don’t need to tell me if you don’t know for sure. But next time, check, all right?” I told him. “I was really busy—” “No need to explain.” I was giving him an easy way out without pointing fingers. I mean, there was a reason why he was paying a business manager to handle his stuff. He should’ve been able to trust them. “We’re here.” He watched closely through the side window as I pulled into the parking lot, taking a spot right in front of the entrance doors. Moore reached for the handle. “I’ll be ten minutes. I haven’t unpacked.” “I’ll wait here.”

He opened the door and put one leg out before turning to me. He gave me a smile that was way too sweet and unlike the man I’d expected. “Thanks, Veronica. I appreciate —” I shooed him out. “I know. You’re welcome. I appreciate that you appreciate it.” That sweet smile turned kind of funny, but he got out, disappearing through the doors. I shut off my car and leaned back, going through Picturegram. But when ten minutes turned into fifteen, then twenty, I went into my texts and sent him a message. Me: “Everything okay?” He really needed to go to the eye doctor. Another five minutes went by. I called him, and on the second ring, he answered. “I’m sorry,” Moore said. I could barely hear him over a bunch of loud voices in the background. “I’m trying to make my way out, but—” Did he need help? I hung up, locked my car, and beelined for the hotel lobby. I didn’t even make it through the second set of sliding glass doors before I found what the issue was. Above a small lake of heads was a black beanie with tufts of blond hair sticking out from the sides. In the middle of the crowd, he towered over just about everyone around him. Moore was surrounded. Literally. He happened to look up from what I assumed was him signing autographs and spotted me almost immediately. He gave me an apologetic smile before frowning and saying something over his shoulder. It had been easy to forget sometimes over the last few weeks just who exactly he was and what he meant to people. He was a puppy, but seeing him surrounded and knowing what I did about the impact he’d had on the whole country made me think of him more like a baby bald eagle. He had the sharp beak and claws in him—I’d seen it in his expression a time or two in person, and more than a few times on TV before he swam—but I had a feeling he didn’t know how to use them that well in certain situations. Especially the ones he’d willingly admitted he hated being involved in. He’d been firm with those girls at his house, but he hadn’t known the word “no” the other times people had asked him for his autograph, which I didn’t think was a bad thing.

But I knew one thing for sure now. He could not stay at a hotel, an apartment, or anywhere with nosy neighbors. There was no doubt about it. My neighbors minded their own business and didn’t give a shit unless something happened to involve them. It was the beauty of people being busy. They had too many other things to worry about to care who he was. As long as we were careful. I watched as Moore frowned again and said something else over his shoulder, his expression turning annoyed. I could’ve sworn his cheeks had started turning pink. I should let him do his thing and wait. He can handle himself. Whatever was going on— Damn it. I walked over, taking the long way around the crowd, and came up behind him, ignoring the glares some people gave me as I shouldered my way through them. I poked him in the back. Nothing. I poked him in the back again. Still nothing. I rolled my eyes and tugged at his sweatshirt, hard. That finally got him to glance over his shoulder, eyebrows knitted together before his surprised expression disappeared instantly. “How’d you get over here?” “I walked.” I blinked. “I’m not rushing you, but I saw you keep looking over your shoulder like someone’s bothering you.” He glanced up at the crowd that had somehow grown in the time I’d come into the lobby. Moore dropped his voice so only I heard him. “I’ve gotten my butt groped twice, and I’m feeling a little claustrophobic. Every time I look up, there’s more people.” He didn’t have to tell me twice. “All right then. I’ve got your back. Sign as we walk,” I instructed him, pushing on the middle of his back so hard he actually stumbled forward a little. I must have really caught him off guard. He gave me a questioning look. I swept my hand out, shooing him forward. “Sign as we walk,” I repeated.

I knew Moore had taken me seriously because he started moving, and the group around us went with him. He signed the things people handed him fast, taking one quick selfie after another on the way, going back and forth from left to right, very politely saying, “Thank you, thank you,” over and over again. It didn’t take that long until we made it to the automatic doors, but that was when I noticed he was empty-handed. “Where are your bags?” I asked. His expression went sheepish. “They’re around where I was standing. I started signing and forgot about them until now.” He could not go back in there, and we both knew it. I was pretty sure he’d signed something for everyone that had been around, but from the looks of it, even more people had found their way to the lobby in the meantime. “Do you promise not to steal my car?” I asked him as I reached into my purse for my key. “I promise,” he agreed instantly, not seeming even a little offended I’d asked. I dropped the fob into his gigantic palm. “I’ll be back then. I’ve got some sunglasses in the glovebox; you can put them on if you want to hide.” I pointed at him before heading back into the hotel. After saying “excuse me” over and over and some shoving, I found two suitcases left off to the side in the distance. Each suitcase had a tag with the word “MOORE” written on it. I grabbed the handles and pulled the bags behind me, huffing because these sons of bitches had to weigh seventy pounds each, even with the good rollers. What the hell did he have in here? Dumbbells? I ignored the people standing around. Moore, in my cat-eye sunglasses, popped the trunk and loaded both bags inside, lifting one after the other like I hadn’t gotten exhausted just pulling them. I forgot about the muscles he had hiding under his baggy clothes. Moore gave me another sheepish smile after he shut the trunk. “Thank you.” “You’re welcome.” I fought the urge to laugh at him in my sunglasses. We made it all the way down the street before I asked, “Your irreplaceable stuff, you didn’t put that into storage, did you?” His medals

hadn’t been in the house—as far as I knew, unless there was a secret safe no one had told me about—but there’d been a couple of awards, like Athlete of the Year from a sports magazine and multiple Swimmer of the Year awards from the U.S. Swimming Federation, that had been displayed there. Moore shook his head. “Someone I trust has my medals.” He trusted someone? Who was that? “Is this all you want to take to the house?” I asked him. His furniture was out of the question. His nod was matter-of-fact. “It’ll be easier to not have a bunch of stuff to move in a month.” I felt slightly guilty for giving him a one-month deadline to stay with us. The sound of him taking a breath made me feel even worse, but out of the corner of my eye, I watched him square his shoulders and lean his head back. I didn’t say a word, but I did look at him when I stopped at a red light. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, because it’s not my business, but are you okay? With everything going on?” A small part of me didn’t want to ask because I didn’t want to dredge up painful memories, but we might as well have this conversation now. He seemed to think about it for a moment before nodding. “I am. I talked to someone who used to help me with my mental health when I was younger. I know some of it is my fault for not choosing to be involved as much as I should.” He paused. “For not caring enough to check too, but everything that’s happened is mostly because I trusted the wrong people, and they took advantage. That’s not on me. That’s on them for being shitty.” Regardless of what he said, it was obvious this was a difficult subject to talk about. It had been over ten years, and I still refused to say my ex’s name, and I was over it. For a long time, I didn’t want to talk to anyone about what he’d done and how stupid I’d been, but I was past that. It had taken a long time though. It didn’t help that I’d always been wary of strangers, and that had only gotten worse as I’d gotten older and learned more about people’s true natures. Now my tale was one of wisdom, and my family could make fun of me for it.

I was a firm believer that things might not work out the way you want them to, but it was up to you what happened after that. “There’s nothing wrong with having an open heart and wanting to believe in the good in people. It’s hard to trust everyone, but it’s also hard to be leery of everybody you meet too. My mom said learning who you can and can’t trust is a part of life,” I let him know. “That’s how we all learn: the hard way.” His was just also an expensive way, but I wasn’t about to bring that up. “That’s why I only trust two handfuls of people, and I’m related to all of them.” That must have hit the wrong spot because his expression dropped just a little bit. “Well, I’ve only got one of those now.” One? I needed to shut the fuck up. “You can borrow a couple of mine. We can split custody. Tommy’s young, but he’s very reliable. According to my mom, Abuela used to have really accurate aim with spoons. She’s good backup.” “Why would Miss Gloria throw spoons?” Did it have to sound kind of endearing when he called her that? “At my mom. She was bad. She never did that to us.” “I don’t see it,” he argued in her honor. “Well, we all love her so much we try not to piss her off, and I think she’s chilled out now,” I explained. “Just don’t walk into her house with muddy shoes.” “I’ll remember that,” he said with a genuine smile. “She’s such a nice person. Both your brothers seem that way too. I like Pablo.” Pablo was a fucking idiot with a heart of silver and gold, but Moore would find that out soon. Or maybe he wouldn’t. I shrugged. “Yeah, they’re great. You haven’t met JJ or Carly yet, but they are too.” “It’s only five of you?” “Only?” His laugh almost made me smile. “It makes sense now that you’re the oldest.” He paused and slid me a look. “How old are you? Can I ask that?” “Thirty-one.” “I’m thirty.” I nodded, pretending as if I didn’t know that. I changed the subject. “I was wondering something.”

“I wonder a lot of things.” I slid him a look but went with it. Maybe I’d get used to his personality after a while. I was still slightly hung up on the man I’d met when he was having a shitty day. “How are you getting to the pool without a car?” Houston was not a travel-friendly city without a vehicle. Not on our side of town. It was why it didn’t make sense to me for him to live here but have to “work” way on the other side. “I’ve been taking a shared car,” he replied, his tone sounding tense. “I’ve been meaning to look into other options.” There was no side-eyeing then. I purposely kept my eyes ahead of me because there was no way I could control my facial expressions. “Oh? You ride over there with strangers?” The smallest hum in history left his throat. “It’s usually fine.” Usually? If he was anybody else, it would be no issue, but George Moore was George Moore, as I’d just learned in the hotel lobby. Would someone try to kidnap him? Or would some driver take him to the wrong location to get him to do something? Sure, he was having issues right now money-wise, but what if someone didn’t know that? Would they try and hold him for ransom? I was aware that it wasn’t like he had a ton of options. He couldn’t afford a car. Not right now. Then there was the whole “no big purchases” thing. Maybe I should sit down with him and have him look up the bus schedule. There were commuter buses that traveled from outer Houston neighborhoods into the inner Loop and beyond. It might save him some money too. When I had time, I could look into the route situation before suggesting it. Just to be sure it was a possibility to begin with. I doubted anyone would look twice at him in one of the commuter buses. “I’ll find a way to get there,” he promised. “I have to. I’ve got a year and a half to get my shit together and make it work.” Yup, that got my attention. I decided to play a little dumb, even though I had a very strong suspicion already. “What do you want to do in a year and a half? If you don’t mind me asking.” Moore’s green eyes sparkled, and he narrowed them in a way that made me feel like he was deciding whether or not to tell me. But he made his decision when he shared, “I want to win a few more medals. Four would be

nice.” His smile tapered. “I want to make enough money so that I don’t have to worry anymore. I didn’t know how much I took for fucking granted until the last couple of weeks.” I tried not to sound patronizing when I said, “Those are good goals.” That sharp jaw went tight, and for a moment he seemed uncomfortable. “I want to be proud of myself too.” Damn. Once upon a time, I’d had that same exact thought. I want to be proud of myself. Me, the most critical person in my own life. That was a feat that made climbing Mount Everest seem easy. My lungs squeezed, my chest tightened, and I must have made a face because he blinked. His smile completely fell off. “Is that too much?” “Are you asking me if you’re asking for too much?” His “yeah” was short and simple. “No. I wasn’t making a face because of you. What you said reminded me of… me.” I shook my head. “Being proud of yourself might be harder than winning four more medals, but you can do it.” I pressed my lips together. “Sometimes it’s hard for me to see the guy that was in those promo pictures who stared straight ahead at the camera, dead-eyed, ready to kick everybody’s ass. You know what picture I’m talking about, right? The up-close one of your face with your cap and goggles on.” He nodded. “When I used to think of you, that’s who came to mind. And sometimes that’s felt like a totally different person than the one I’ve gotten to know—I don’t mean it as an insult. I like this you. You’re not what I expected—in a good way. You’re nicer. You’re humbler. And I’m meeting you in person after life took a shit on you. Those things change you. I don’t see why you can’t be both. That pool killer and… this one. “I know you’ve done things no one else has, but there has to be something more in you that you can be prouder of. Being able to change and do better is what makes us human.” I shrugged at him. Moore looked at me for a moment before one corner of his mouth slowly rose, and I would swear on my life, from one blink to another, there was a glint in those deep green eyes that hadn’t been there a minute ago. For a moment, I thought I was looking at that George Moore. The serious, cocky one. The one who made swimmers in other countries despise

him because he’d been so damn arrogant. The one who was capable of not giving a shit what people thought of him. Maybe it was confidence. Or maybe there was something in the middle. All I knew was that his hand clenched as our eyes met. “Thanks, Veronica.” He nodded. “Thanks a lot.” OceanofPDF.com

I CHAPTER 12 APRIL was in the middle of taking a sip of my margarita when Pablo started clinking his fork against the plastic cup he was drinking root beer out of. “Ahem.” He cleared his throat. “We need to have a family meeting before JJ gets here,” he announced, still tapping away. Carly, who was sitting beside him at the restaurant during our monthly sibling dinner, frowned. He hadn’t trimmed his beard lately, and it made him look tougher than the man-boy I knew who closed his eyes during scary movies. “Damn, that’s annoying.” “Why would we have a meeting without JJ?” Tommy asked from beside me, his dark eyes sweeping the restaurant like he was expecting JJ to magically appear. He’d texted me less than ten minutes ago to let me know how late he was running. According to my calculations, we had about five minutes before he arrived, so we were going to have to keep this conversation short. “This doesn’t affect JJ or you, but we don’t want him knowing, and you already do,” Pablo explained as he lowered his cup and fork, but not before shooting Carly a middle finger. Tommy’s lips formed an O, but he nodded, clueing in on what this impromptu meeting was about—the big secret we’d been keeping from everyone except for him. He’d shown up to the house one day and given us a bunch of shit for not telling him about the man he found living with us.

We’d passed the three-week mark of George Moore’s one-month stay a few days earlier, and Pablo was right to bring this up now. A decision had to be made, and we needed to discuss it. I couldn’t believe it had been so long already. To me, it seemed like a week, tops, but I’d been so busy lately with work. It had been nothing short of a blessing to have two new listings and three new clients looking for homes. Merry Christmas to me. On top of that, one of my parents’ employees had quit, and we’d all been helping at the restaurant when we could. Pablo leaned forward conspiratorially, dropping his voice dramatically. “How’s everyone been feeling about Jorgito?” I almost spit out my margarita. “Personally,” Pablo went on, “he hasn’t bothered me at all. I’ve only seen him six or seven times. I can’t tell he’s even at the house.” Carly shrugged as he stroked his chin, fingertips disappearing into his thick beard. “I’ve talked to him a few times. He seems cool. If he’s in the kitchen when I get home, he goes into his room. He wakes up earlier than I do, so we haven’t had an issue with hogging the bathroom. He told me the two times he cleaned the toilet and the tub.” He shrugged. “He left it cleaner than Pablo used to when we shared a bathroom.” “When did I leave the bathroom dirty?” Pablo scoffed. I snorted, thinking back on the many, many years I’d been stuck sharing a bathroom with my brothers. I did not miss those days. I could remember all the times I’d had to yell at them because “something” had been clogging the strainer in the bathtub. Then there were all the times they “forgot” to flush after taking a dump. “All the time. You left skid marks all over the toilet every day. You don’t remember? We all begged you to use the damn brush; it only takes ten seconds.” “Nah, I never did that,” he tried to claim, and I think we all rolled our eyes. He had been the worst about cleaning. I could remember at least two different occasions where I’d grabbed him by the ponytail—he’d had long hair for years—and dragged him into the bathroom because I got fed up with asking him to clean it and him not doing it. In those moments, I’d made my mom prouder than ever. “What about you, Shorty?” Carly asked, moving the conversation along. Looking at my second-youngest brother, who I saw regularly—but not often enough, considering we lived under the same roof—I finally noticed

he had bags under his eyes that had never been there before. He looked a little haggard now that I saw him up close. Was there something going on with him? I was going to need to remember to talk to him. He was quiet, and it was easy to assume he was always fine. But I didn’t like what was in front of me. There wasn’t anything I could do about it at the moment. “I see him in the mornings,” I told them. I got up early, but not as early as Moore did. We usually ran into each other in the kitchen as he was leaving and I was starting my day. My newest roommate had kept me up to date in his life enough that I was aware things were working out so far with his new coach and facility. He’d been training there five days a week, twice a day, with a break in between. I had no clue what he did between sessions other than nap. He was in bed by 8:00 p.m., asleep by 9:00 p.m., and most days I didn’t get home until 7:00 p.m. I had gone out of town one weekend to visit our cousin, and the other two weekends had been jam-packed with back-to-back showings for the couple who were moving in from out of town and my other clients, the parents of an old friend from high school. “He doesn’t leave his laundry in the dryer for two weeks, unlike someone I know,” I told them, side-eyeing Pablo. “And he hasn’t eaten my leftovers—” “When does she have leftovers?” Pablo whispered to Carly, who snickered. These fuckers. They were lucky we were on a time crunch with JJ arriving. “He hasn’t bugged me at all. He loads the dishwasher better than you, Carly. Not great, but almost good enough.” I shrugged. “But just because he’s been fine doesn’t mean we have to invite him to stay longer.” Carly scowled. How he loaded the dishwasher was a never-ending battle with him. He loaded it like he was blindfolded. “Has he gotten his money stuff figured out?” Tommy asked. My two middle brothers both turned to me for an answer. I shook my head. “There’s no way he’s even made a significant dent in it by now. As far as I know, they’re still investigating his situation. It’ll be months, if not years, before they go to trial.” If they did. I didn’t know much about how cases were handled. I hoped he’d paid off the debt he was in with the money from the sale of his house, but I hadn’t asked.

“What you’re saying is, he’s still fucked?” Pablo asked. “He has to be.” Credit problems weren’t fixed overnight. “Did you try finding him another place to live?” “I’m not his assistant,” I explained. “But, yes, I’ve tried.” Only twice, but I had. I’d even tried calling in a favor with someone I didn’t deal with unless it was necessary. “There’s someone I know who’s trying to lease out their house, but she’s firm on the credit score she wants.” Tommy held up his index finger, his face going very sweet. “How do I work on my credit?” I patted his shoulder. “I’ll tell you later. You don’t need to worry about it yet.” When he nodded, I faced the other two dumbasses again. “So? How are you two feeling about letting him stay longer? If you don’t want to, it’s fine. If you do want to, we can do another month-to-month—or three months if you’re feeling generous.” “Bro, month-to-month? That’s mean.” Carly grimaced. “I’m fine with three. You bother me more than he does.” I wrinkled my nose at him as Pablo nodded. “Sure, me too. The money helps you out too, doesn’t it, Shorty?” I nodded because it did. A few hundred dollars was a few hundred dollars. I might have made more off Moore’s closing than I did in a year, but I never took it for granted. Anything could happen. It could be months before I closed on another house. So many people sang praises about being your own boss and blah, blah, blah, but no one ever mentioned how stressful it was to have a job that relied entirely on countless factors out of your control. I had tried so many times to explain to my brothers that there was something nice about being able to clock in and out of work and being able to leave it all behind when you got home. The point was that Moore was a phantom of the house. “I don’t think he’s broken any of the rules we gave him,” I let them know. “I don’t think so,” Carly agreed. Pablo nodded. “He hasn’t been sneaking girls over. I’ve been keeping an eye out.” “Stalker.” I grimaced, briefly thinking about those dates Moore had mentioned before. Nothing must have come from them. Then again, he didn’t really strike me as a relationship kind of guy. He’d even kind of

claimed he wasn’t either, but that didn’t mean there weren’t women in his life. “Shut up,” Pablo scoffed. “If I had the kind of pull he does, I wouldn’t be shy about it.” He scrunched up his face. “Could you imagine how much attention he’s gotta get?” I could, and it made me uncomfortable to think about that, for reasons that had nothing to do with Moore himself. “Are you over him being an athlete?” Tommy asked me pointedly, steering the conversation away from how much Moore had to get hit on regularly. I shrugged. “Yeah, he’s nice.” Carly and Pablo’s dumbasses looked at each other and smirked. “Oh, he’s nice?” one of the two asked in a tiny, mocking voice I couldn’t recognize. I stared at them, trying to decide whether or not that little comment had come from Carly. “He is nice. What the fuck are you two looking at each other like that for?” “Bro looks like a supermodel, but ‘he’s nice,’” Pablo chortled. “Yeah, okay.” Carly chuckled, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw even Tommy smiled a little. I reached across the table to try to whack one of them—either of them— in the arm while debating whether or not I could still beat their asses. Maybe not in public. It had been at least a couple of years since I’d reminded Pablo who used to put him in a headlock when he would be a little shit. “What are you smiling about?” I griped when they both dodged me. “You should be worried about him falling in love with me. Worry about my honor here.” Pablo snorted that time. “You? Have honor?” “Where?” That was Carly. The two idiots across from me started laughing at the same time. Checking over both my shoulders to make sure no one was paying us any attention, I raised both middle fingers up beside my neck. “For the record, you know, he told me I was cute one day.” They didn’t need to know he’d been on the verge of trying to let me down easy because he’d thought I’d been propositioning him. It was Pablo who bared his teeth in a grimace. “I mean, if you squint.”

Just as I started to give him another middle finger, Tommy slipped his arm over my shoulders almost effortlessly. “They’re just kidding, Shorty.” He patted me. “They’re just kidding. Remember my friend who asked me for your number? He thought you were in high school too.” “But was he squinting?” Pablo cackled. I made a mocking face at him. “Ha, ha, you’re so funny. So, so funny.” I glared. “Stupid ass.” “Pab failed Spanish, remember?” Tommy reminded me, his arm still around me as he kept patting my shoulder. I glanced at my baby brother. He knew me well enough to say the right things to make me feel better. At least half my brothers cared about my feelings. These other two were getting disowned. “How does somebody who speaks fluent Spanish fail the class?” Tommy kept going, solidifying his spot in my will. “By being stupid,” I explained. “You’re right.” “First of all, carro means car. I don’t care what that teacher—” Pablo started to argue before Carly waved his hand to shut him up. “JJ is coming. So is Jorge staying, or is he going? I say three months. Pab?” Pablo shrugged. “Three months. But if he starts doing weird shit, we kick him out.” I nodded. “Three months is fine—no weird shit, of course. I’ll put that in the contract. Keep the rules. Maybe by then he’ll have figured out some financial stuff, things will have popped up on the market for the summer, and we’ll all have done something nice, earning us some good karma.” I tried not to look at kindness in that way—expecting something in return. But it wouldn’t hurt. “You do need all the good karma you can get,” Pablo agreed. I blinked at him. “Do you want me to spell pendejo, or can you figure that out yourself?” He laughed right before JJ suddenly appeared at the head of the table and raised his chin. At almost six feet, he was the tallest of all my siblings. He and Carly were almost replicas of each other, both having oval faces, especially now that they both had facial hair. But where Carly had curly hair, JJ kept his straight hair nice and short for work. Where Carly was very casual with his clothing, JJ could usually be found in a golf polo shirt

whenever he wasn’t at work. Today his polo was lavender, and his shorts were khaki. “Tommy, scoot over,” my closest sibling in age said. Tommy scooted closer to me, and the oldest son in the Rubio family slid in. He leaned forward and tipped his chin up at everyone. “What did I miss?” Pablo and Carly both glanced over at me expectantly. “What?” I asked. “Do we need to keep it between us still? Because I don’t think I can make it three months,” Pablo whispered, even though it wasn’t like JJ couldn’t hear every word. Oh, that. I shrugged. “How about we just keep it in the family? The immediate family.” Fortunately, we’d managed to keep Jorge’s living situation a secret from Abuela. The thing was, I didn’t want her getting attached. She already brought him up a couple of times since the last time she’d seen him, and I’d promised her that I’d heard from him and he was fine. I felt bad keeping it a secret, but my intentions were pure. “Mom, Dad, JJ, and Abuelita, then?” Carly wanted clarification. His expression went tight. “I guess I don’t have anybody else to tell anymore.” He was referring to his ex, Jackie. Mom and I had hugged when they’d split up. “You’re not gonna tell Rosa?” Pablo asked, changing the subject. Rosa was the cousin I was closest to. I snickered. “Fuck no. She’d be the first person to tell me not to tell her. That girl can’t keep a secret.” It was part of her charm. “What are you all talking about?” JJ asked in confusion as he picked up Tommy’s cup and took a sip. We ignored him. “Anyway, let’s keep it to those four. Mom asked to come over a few days ago, and I had to make up some bullshit excuse why it would be better for me to visit her. It’s too much trouble keeping it a secret,” I told them. “Deal,” Pab, Carly, and I all agreed. It was Pablo who turned to JJ and said, “Bro, we got a roommate.” JJ reacted the same way I imagined he would. He wrinkled his nose. “Who? Why?” He turned his attention to me. “You need money?” I held out my hand, palm up and cupped.

Another hand bumped mine out of the way. “I need money,” Tommy announced. It was Tommy’s turn to get ignored, but I told myself to give him a twenty later. He always said he didn’t have money, but I knew for a fact my parents gave him lunch money, and he worked on the weekends and got tips. Sure, those tips fluctuated, but he wasn’t struggling. We all also spoiled him too. He was full of shit. Tommy dropped his hand right after I did. “Okay then,” he huffed. “Why did you get a roommate?” JJ tried again, his confusion evident. Pablo’s smile was pretty sly for someone who hadn’t recognized Moore in the first place. He dropped his voice to what I was pretty sure someone might call a stage whisper. “It’s a secret, so don’t tell anybody.” JJ didn’t get the memo about trying to keep this between us. “Why’s it a secret?” He was getting more confused by the second. “’Cuz.” Pablo was infuriating, but I kinda loved him at that moment for being such a pain in the ass. Mostly because he wasn’t directing it at me. I could appreciate it when he used his powers of evil on other people. Carlos sighed. “It’s George Moore, JJ,” he explained, earning a groan of disappointment from Pablo. My big little brother’s expression was blank. “Who?” “George Moore,” Carly repeated, lowering his voice that time. God bless JJ, who had gone to a prestigious college, had two babies before being able to buy beer, and somehow managed to finish cum laude with those babies, but couldn’t seem to grasp why the hell we were all trying to keep this to our table. “Why are you whispering?” he demanded in his laidback way. “Because it’s George fucking Moore,” Pablo hissed. JJ gave all of us the most blank face ever, and I had to roll my eyes toward the heavens. “Why do you keep saying it like I know who that is? I’ve never met a single George that you know —” Tommy leaned into JJ and whispered something in his ear that got a blink before his face morphed. “What?” It was JJ’s turn to hiss. The four of us exchanged the “dumbass” nod we’d perfected over the years. “That George Moore?” he gasped.

“How many George Moores are there, stupid?” Pablo asked, back to his stage whisper. “You can’t be serious,” JJ insisted, looking from one sibling to another like he was trying to find signs that we were fucking with him. “You sure he’s not a lookalike? Someone passing off as him?” “It’s not,” I confirmed. “His ID is legitimate. So is his social. I even found this mole on the back of his neck in a picture and confirmed it was there one morning. It’s him.” Juan José’s mouth literally dropped open. “How?” he whispered finally. “How the hell did that happen? It’s George Moore.” Yeah, that was what we’d been trying to tell him. It was Tommy who explained just how he’d come into our lives. “Shorty sold his house.” Later that night, I found the scuffed white shoes by the front door. After dropping off my keys on the console table, I wandered through the house, finding the first floor empty. Pablo and Tommy had taken off from the restaurant to do something together, JJ was meeting his family at his in- law’s, and Carly was going to hang out with his friend, so we’d split up after finishing dinner at the restaurant. Moore should’ve been the only one home. The only way I ever knew he was home was because of his shoes. Most of the time, he wore the same pair, but sometimes he alternated, and he was really diligent about never leaving multiple pairs lying around, unlike the rest of us who always had at least two by the door at all times. Every Wednesday, though, I’d gotten a notification on my doorbell camera when he got home later than any other day, but still earlier than I did. Heading upstairs, I found a sliver of light peeking out from the bottom of the door closest to my room. I knocked lightly. “Moore?” His “Come in” was instant. I turned the knob and stepped right into the doorway, finding him sitting with his back against the wall between his room and the bathroom, spine straight, a rod that looked like some kind of recovery tool pressed into his thigh. His laptop was propped on the edge of his bed, the screen aimed toward him, with something playing on it.

He leaned forward and paused it. “Hey,” he greeted me. I eyed his heather gray sweats and tight white T-shirt. “You busy?” “No, just rolling my quads out.” He gestured toward the tool. I was kind of surprised he knew how to do that himself, or maybe I was just being judgy. He looked almost sheepish. “I’ve gotta do what I can between massages.” I nodded. “Everything going okay?” I asked since the last time I’d seen him in person had been three days ago at a little after 5:00 in the morning. I’d been half asleep, and he’d been rushing out the door. That was how the majority of our interactions went. “Yeah,” he said almost too quickly. “You?” “All good,” I told him, even though I could think of two people I wanted to give the flu to if I could get away with it. One was a realtor I was working with, and the other was an asshole employee for a title company— the neutral, third-party company who prepared the documents needed for closing and made sure everything on both ends was legal. “I wanted to talk to you.” He smiled, but I could see the tension that shot across his features. I peeked around the room, taking in how organized he had his belongings; his closet door was open, showing his suitcase lying flat inside, neatly folded clothes stacked in it. The only thing out of the ordinary was a glass of cloudy liquid on the nightstand next to a gallon jug of water and a couple of small packets. I could read the word “electrolytes” on one of the packages. “How are you feeling at the house?” I asked, realizing he hadn’t exactly settled in. His reply was quick. “It’s great. I’m thankful to be here.” Look at this sweet son of a bitch. I wanted to pry. “You’ve been okay with it? We’re pretty far from your training facility,” I told him, like he didn’t know. Moore shook his head. “What I’m saving in daily hotel rooms more than makes up for it, and I’ve been riding the bus. Thanks again for suggesting that. It’s saved me so much, and nobody sits next to me most of the time either. I can sleep on the way.” I’d almost forgotten about the conversation we’d had a few days after he’d moved in, when I’d told him about the commuter bus that would drop

him off on the other side of the city. I wasn’t sure how he got to and from the park-and-ride stations, but he’d found a way to make it happen. Look at my baby eagle growing up. America could thank me next summer. If everything worked out. “That’s great. Good.” “I’m making it work.” His green eyes were steady on me. “I know we’re coming up to the month ending, and I wanted to say—” I did not want to hear him thank me again. “If you’d like to stay longer, we can try three months if you’re interested,” I offered him before he could say anything else. He stopped talking. His Adam’s apple bobbed before he leaned forward a little. His expression looked pretty disbelieving. “You’re sure?” The way he lowered his voice to ask that made me feel slightly bad, like he was shocked. I nodded. “Yes. You’re clean. You’re not creeping anybody out.” It was my turn to clear my throat. “You’re welcome to stay.” Moore sat up straight, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if his spine had been pressed tightly to the wall behind him. “You mean it?” he asked slowly. My throat suddenly hurt. I thought my chest might have felt a little tight too. He’d said that question so, so… “Yes, I mean it.” I watched his eyes. “But we have to tell our parents, and today we told our brother JJ. I have to tell Abuela. That’d be it. It’s too much of a secret to keep between us. They’ll all be able to keep it to themselves, so you wouldn’t have to worry about your privacy.” He set his stretching tool aside, his face lighting up. “Sure. Yeah.” His mouth seemed to fight a smile. “Thanks.” I nodded. “You know you don’t need to hide in your room all the time. You can hang out even when someone is home. You can watch TV downstairs. You’re paying electricity too.” There was a chance I could regret making the offer, but I also didn’t want him to feel like a prisoner confined to just his room because that wouldn’t be fair. The expression on his face made me think he was trying his best to keep his relief contained. “Okay.”

“I’ll write up another agreement and have you sign it in the next few days, all right?” “Deal,” he agreed again, his voice still kind of low. I scratched my cheek and glanced at the time on my phone before making a decision. “Want to go with me to see Abuela and break the news to her?” When he nodded, I couldn’t help but feel that same pang of awareness again. The one that told me we were doing the right thing letting him live with us. That George Moore was a good person. At least with us he was. I did still wonder from time to time what the hell kind of fake relationships he had that he didn’t have people to turn to. Was it his choice? I had a hard time believing he pushed people away with how friendly and normal he’d been around my family, but he’d had his moments with me before his life had gone to shit. Maybe he didn’t trust people now either. Or maybe he was changing. But that got me thinking about how we should all be allowed to grow. Very few people in this life, if there even were any, made perfect decisions all the time. Some things were unforgivable, but a lot weren’t—with the exception of people who had deeply wronged me. They could become saints, and I would still give them two middle fingers if I came across them. I didn’t waste my time worrying about them or even thinking about them, but if the opportunity presented itself, I was going to take it. Regardless of whatever else he might have been, George Moore was all right with me because he liked my abuelita. As he followed me downstairs, I heard the door to the half-bath slam shut and frowned. When we walked by it, I banged on the door with my fist. “Going to Abuela’s!” I told whoever was on the other side. There was a brief pause before a voice slightly different than Carly’s normal one replied, “Okay.” I blinked and stopped walking so fast that Moore almost bumped into me. “Are you okay?” I asked my little brother through the door. He’d been supposed to be hanging out with a friend. “Fine.” I was sure he was lying based on how weird his tone was. I wanted to annoy him and tell him I knew he was full of shit, but being a big sister required that balance between being a mom and a friend. And

I’d crossed that line enough times to know that unless it was something potentially life-changing in a bad way, I should stick with being a friend. But maybe I’d ask Pablo if something was going on. If anybody knew, it would be him. If he caught on to something—when he wasn’t oblivious— he bulldozed his way into things until you told him everything. “Okay, we’ll be back,” I said before continuing toward the door. Moore and I were on the sidewalk when he spoke up next. “How good are you at keeping secrets?” I peeked over my shoulder and was kind of surprised to see he’d put that black beanie on sometime after we’d left his room. It made his bone structure really pop. “You’ve been living here for a month and nobody knows,” I reminded him. He kind of smirked. “I’m good with them, as long as someone tells me it’s a secret.” I paused. “Why?” His swimmer’s shoulders hunched, and I had to tip my head pretty far back to look at him. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but I’m kinda worried about Carlos,” he admitted. Maybe he was the person I needed to have a conversation with and not Pablo. I raised my eyebrows. “What do you know? This’ll stay between us.” “I’ve heard him crying in his room.” I turned all the way around. “Carly?” I spat. “Crying?” What the hell did my brother have to cry over? Was he still upset about his ex-girlfriend? They’d broken up a few months ago, and I’d been worried he was going to get back together with Jackie ever since. It wasn’t that I thought no girl would ever be good enough for my little brother, but she’d had this glint in her eye that set off my big sister alarm. I could be wrong. Maybe he was upset about something else. “It’s that or he’s hiding a sad puppy in there,” Moore said. “I woke up to pee in the middle of the night, and that’s what I heard. I’ve heard enough people cry and try to hide it to recognize the sound.” I narrowed my eyes. “Can you keep a secret?” I asked him right back. I was a little surprised at myself for being willing to share this information, but if he could tell me something, I could do the same. I was a businessperson.

His face took on one of the most serious expressions I’d seen on him yet. It reminded me of the George Moore I’d seen in pictures before. Laser- focused. Determined. Even the way he said, “I can keep a secret,” came out stone-cold sober. “He’s the most sensitive one of all my brothers.” The seriousness disappeared from his features, and he blinked. “That’s a secret?” What the hell? “Are you disappointed? I don’t usually talk to people who aren’t in my family about my family, especially not private stuff.” He nodded suddenly like he found that acceptable. “Thank you for telling me. I’ll see what I can figure out.” I thought about what had happened. “He sounded like he was crying right now, didn’t he?” “Yeah,” Moore agreed. Damn it, Carly. I was going to need to get to the bottom of this. In the meantime, I was grateful that Moore told me about Carly. And because of that… “Since you’re going to be here for a while, Abuela and I pay our bills together every month. If you want, you can join us,” I offered, giving him our set date and time, thinking suddenly that if he got his finances together faster, it would be better for everybody. “You pay your bills in front of each other?” he asked. “Yeah. We have our spreadsheets with every bill we owe, and we tick everything off. It’s more for accountability. You don’t have to come, but if you want to, you’re welcome. Maybe you already have your own system set up —” “I don’t. I had three late bills this month. I’m still getting used to it,” he admitted honestly. Getting used to paying his own bills. I looked at him. “Well, you’re invited to our financial convention if you want.” He nodded, the corners of his mouth tipping up into a slight smile. We’d see if he remembered, but I’d made the offer at least. When we got to Abuela’s, I knocked before turning the knob. “¿Abuelita?” I called out as I swung the door wide and waved Moore inside. “¿Mi niña?” her familiar voice replied from across her house.

“I’m not alone. I brought your friend,” I answered as I shut the door and removed my shoes. Moore had already taken his off, his white sock-covered toes scrunching on her tile. “¿Cuál amigo?” She wanted to know which friend. “¿Pues cuantos tienes?” I asked her just before her face peeked around the corner. Her expression went from curious to delighted. “¡Jorge!” “Hola, Miss Gloria,” he called out. Abuela hustled down the hallway faster than I’d seen her move in a while. “What is he doing here?” she asked in Spanish. She knew we’d closed on his house, and in every other case, that usually meant I was done seeing my clients for a while, if never again. “She’s asking what you’re doing here,” I translated for him before answering her. “I have a secret. He’s been living with us the last month,” I admitted, earning myself a surprised look. “He’s going to be living with us for three more months.” “Hija de tu…” She trailed off before coming for me first, putting her hands on my face and tugging me slightly down so she could plant a kiss on my cheek. I returned one right back to her. “Que bueno, amor. Que bueno.” I knew she wouldn’t be upset. My mom and dad on the other hand… Nah, they wouldn’t be upset either. “She’s happy you’re living with us,” I told Moore right as she reached for him, her hands stretching as far as they could. He leaned down, pretty much bending at the waist, and let her clasp his face before kissing him on the cheek too. His throat bobbed for a moment before he smiled, and she turned and touched my wrist. “¿Tienen hambre?” I wasn’t, but I didn’t have the heart to say no. “Yes,” I told her. “She wants to know if you’re hungry.” “I could eat,” he replied a second before his stomach growled loudly. “Vengan, vengan,” she instructed, already making her way toward the back of the house. We had only taken a few steps when I heard Moore sigh. I glanced over my shoulder, and he smiled in a way that made me think it was bittersweet. “You’re really lucky, you know that?” he asked. “I know.” I was fully aware of it.

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“I CHAPTER 13 MAY know you want to disconnect the power today, but you have to wait until tomorrow.” My client, Marisol Marie, groaned. “You’re no fun sometimes, you know that?” I grinned as I flicked my turn signal on and guided the steering wheel to the right when I got to the corner. “I know. I’m sorry. They’re signing at 9:00 a.m.; you can call at 9:30 a.m.” She groaned in disappointment, and I had to hold back a laugh at her pettiness. There was a reason why we’d gotten along so well. The buyers purchasing her home had been a monumental pain in the ass. Easily in the top twenty shittiest, pickiest, demanding buyers I’d ever dealt with. They had given us both headaches. Twice, Marisol Marie had gotten really close to wanting to back out of the deal, and I’d been just as close to suggesting that she should, but together in our misery, we’d pulled through. “Fine, I’m just glad this is finally over,” she acknowledged with a reluctant sigh. “Thanks for all your help. I wouldn’t have survived them without you.” Marisol Marie had been a great seller, and I told her that as I took one of my final turns on my way home, slowing down when I spotted someone on the sidewalk with a duffel bag thrown across their body.