“You’re sure this is okay?” Charlie asks the following afternoon, his handsome face creasing worriedly in the brutal midday sunlight. “Because we really can—”
“No, no, no, this is great,” June promises, reaching out as casually as she can to pluck a fat black water bug from the plastic tub of organic fruit salad. When he asked her to lunch she was thinking maybe Nobu or Little Dom’s but instead he showed up at the house with an enormous bag from Erewhon and asked her how she might feel about a picnic. Thirty minutes later—once her sisters had gotten their gander at him, the quartet of them draped dramatically over the upstairs railing like old women on a fire escape back in Sicily—and they’re sitting on the marshy bank of the man-made pond at the center of the development, an unsubtle whiff of sulfur wafting through the air. June wipes a bead of sweat from her upper lip as surreptitiously as possible, telling herself it has nothing to do with him not wanting to be seen with her in public. “It’s perfect.”
“Are you sure?” Charlie looks deeply unconvinced. “I had it in my head that this would be, like, romantic and unusual, but I also kind of didn’t anticipate the . . .” He waves his hand, presumably to indicate either the heat or the smell, which seems somehow both fishier and more pungent than it did even a moment ago. “Whatever. We’re good. We’re good!”
“We’re good,” June assures him, trying and failing not to be charmed. He was like this at Rebecca’s party, too—bashful and a little bit dorky, like he was surprised she’d be talking to him at all. She keeps waiting for the gotcha, the moment when he reveals that he has half a dozen cardboard cutouts of himself propped in various locations around his home or that he thinks showering is overrated and so just does his pits with a Clorox wipe every couple of days, but actually he’s just sort of fun and cool and nice to be with—an easy and generous smiler, a good asker of questions. He talks a lot about how hard it is to find good deep dish in Los Angeles. He talks a lot about his dog.
“Four sisters, huh?” he asks now, handing her a tomato and mozzarella sandwich, balsamic vinegar soaking into the crusty baguette. June smiles—he must have googled her; she’s been a vegetarian since she was twelve—then sets it down on the blanket, hoping he doesn’t notice she doesn’t actually take a bite. It’s nothing to worry about this time, her diet. Like three more pounds and she’s going to stop. “What’s that like?”
“It’s incredible,” she says, which is mostly true. “And, you know, an occasional feral catfight. We contain multitudes.”
“You’re the oldest, right? Does that make you the boss?”
June shakes her head. “Lilly’s the boss. Of all of us, including my parents. And maybe your parents as well, actually.”
Charlie laughs. “I will be sure to let them know.”
“It’s possible she already sent them a certified letter.”
“Sounds about right.” He holds the bag of chips out in her direction; June shakes her head automatically, and he reaches in for a handful of his own. “I get it, though,” he says, taking a bite of his sandwich—roast beef and Vermont cheddar, she notes, probably twelve hundred calories all-in. “The sister-in-charge thing. I mean, look at me and Caroline. It can be nice to let someone else handle the details, right? Especially if they’re going to do it anyway.” He sets the sandwich down then, brushing his palms off on his jeans. “Okay,” he says, broad shoulders dropping, “real talk: that smell is, like, really bad, isn’t it.”
June wrinkles her nose. “I mean,” she admits, “it isn’t great? Also, I don’t want to alarm you, but I’m pretty sure I just saw a rat the size of a cocker spaniel take a swan dive off the fountain.”
“Do you want to get out of here?” he asks, getting to his feet and holding a hand out. Gazing up at his broad body silhouetted against the brilliant blue sky, all at once June understands why they cast him as Major Fantastic: He looks like someone who could leap tall buildings. He looks like someone who could snatch bullets clean out of the air. “Go to an actual restaurant? Somewhere indoors, even. Real big swing.”
“Real big swing,” June echoes with a grin, tucking her uneaten lunch back into its waxed paper wrapper. Lacing her fingers through his.