{Dedicated to Alayna, who forgot that she told me she was going for a bike ride for the 4th of July. Also, she's pretty funny and brilliant.}

"He had absolutely no respect for the show whatsoever," I griped as I stood on my tippy toes, reaching up for a glass in one of the kitchen cabinets. "It was absolutely appalling to think that such uninformed people live in the world today."

After several seconds of watching me struggle in vain, my brother, Carter, finally stood up, letting his chair clatter back behind him, and got the cup for me. "Here," he muttered, placing the cup firmly in my hand. He yawned widely, stretching with one arm in the air as he ran the other hand through his ruffled hair. "Good Lord."

"Thanks," I said. I made my way to the fridge to take out the orange juice, which I swished a couple time in its container pouring it out into my cup. "But Carter, don't you see how annoying—"

Carter cracked his back loudly. "Sis," he said groggily, "please shut the hell up."

"Don't you be a butt too!" I called back to him, setting the orange juice down with a loud clink. "I need a male figure in my life to understand and empathize with me, regarding magnificent musicals like Guys and Dolls."

Instead of replying to me, my brother trudged back to the kitchen table, pulled out his chair with a screech, hurled himself down on the chair, and placed his head on his arms. Therefore, I found myself rolling my eyes at his bird's nest of dirty blonde hair. I sighed. With more than a little grouchiness, I took my orange juice and my bowl of cereal with me to the kitchen table chair facing my brother.

After I sat down, I poked his hair, which felt like an overly unruly field of grass. His face appeared behind his hairy arms. "What?"

"You have to listen to me!" I stuffed a spoonful of cereal in my mouth. I continued thickly, still chewing, "Besides, it's not like you're even doing anything later."

Carter yawned.

"God, you're no fun," I muttered.

There was an awkward silence in the kitchen for a couple minutes as I continued to consume my breakfast and Carter continued his sleeping session on the table. Then, luckily for him, our mother came into the kitchen, her high heels clacking and a couple files in hand. (She looked impeccable. I really did wish I had her sense of style...but again, I wasn't a London-born, fast-talking lawyer.)

"Lottie, dear, good morning." She kissed me on the cheek. "And Carter." She ruffled my brother's hair.

I grunted out something that could pass as "good morning" and slurped my orange juice loudly.

Mom went to the fridge, grabbing a yogurt container and a smoothie bottle before she turned around, frowning at my brother and me. "Lottie, it's only 8am. Don't you want to sleep in?" She paused. "And Carter. Lottie, did you wake up your brother?"

I finished my cereal with a flourish, setting down my spoon with a cutting clink. "Actually, Mom, I didn't. If I had to be exact, the alarm clock woke him up. Besides, he isn't doing anything anyway, so I think I'm doing him a favor by waking him up; that way, he won't die in college this fall when he has to get up for his classes."

Carter mumbled something from behind his arms.

"Sit up, Carter, and please repeat that for all of us to hear." My mother took a seat next to me at the kitchen table. She'd probably be leaving for work in a couple minutes, however.

"She woke me up to rant about some guy," Carter grumbled, rubbing his eyes moodily. "I fucking didn't go to sleep until 4am last night."

Mom shot him a sharp look about the language, but she didn't comment on that. (She was no angel herself, so, as she explained to me one day, she felt as if she had no right to reprimand someone for doing something that she did.) Instead, she turned to me. "Charlotte, I'm sure you're excited that your brother's home from college, but you should let him rest in peace for the first couple of weeks."

"Mom!" I protested, standing up and heading to the sink to put my empty cereal bowl in it. "I'm supposed to be the baby of the family!"

"Please shut your mouth." Carter scrunched his eyes and stretched his arms behind him. Crack, crack, crack. Dear God, that was disgusting.

I snapped and pointed at him. "See? He's absolutely nasty. Besides, he shouldn't be too tired anyway because like me, he recently finished his finals, and he hasn't been doing anything much since. And look at me. Do I look tired to you?"

Carter opened his eyes and rolled them at me.

"Plus," I added, while I was still on a roll (and while my mom was still watching me with an amused raised eyebrow), "one cannot rest in peace, especially while still in school, until one is dead."

There was silence in the room.

I was going to take that as a sign that I had officially out-debated both my mother and my brother. (Now I had enough ammunition and experience to face the caustic Cara, I hoped.)

"Your stupidity never fails to amaze me," Carter said flatly after a while of watching me with scandalized eyes.

Well, I didn't ask to be bullied by another male figure in my life. Goodness gracious.

Unfortunately, my mom didn't seem to feel bad for me—she could barely hold in her giggles behind her hand as she shifted her gaze from my brother to me. And really, all I could conclude right now was that my family was incredibly and completely supportive of me.

↔

I was still reveling in my success as I walked through the colorful aisles of the grocery store with Dacey, so I wasn't quite listening to her—until she dropped a bombshell on me. She really shouldn't have done so. I hadn't quite recovered from being insulted for the entire morning. And now this?

"Your brother's hot."

I stopped in my tracks, somewhat reminding myself of the incident at the theatre a couple days ago with Dom and my favorite musical. I choked. "Excuse me?"

Dacey shrugged unapologetically. "Carter's kind of cute, don't you think?"

Considering that I'd spent half the morning staring at the top of his head instead of his face, I honestly couldn't think of any redeeming quality that Carter had to be deemed as "cute". I coughed a couple more times, scowling as I hid behind my fist for as long as I could. Oh God. Dacey had single-handedly induced a cough attack.

"Don't die of horror," Dacey said, sounding a little amused as she slapped my back a couple times (like we were teammates on a football team and I had pulled off a particularly difficult play). "It's a genuine observation."

I gasped. "Oh God," I wheezed. "I've heard that so many times, but I was hoping that I'd never hear it from anyone as close to me as you."

Dacey frowned. "You're overreacting."

As usual, her expression added.

She was really mean that way.

I crossed my arms over my chest. "Okay. Let's assume that I've gotten over this...terrifying revelation."

Dacey's face stretched into a grin. "Really?" Her expression added, for the first time in never.

I didn't know which scared me more: the fact that I could practically read her mind judging from just her face or the fact that she thought I was going to not overreact.

I shook my head adamantly. "No! This is all hypothetical. The key word in my last statement was 'assume', all right?" I closed my eyes and breathed out heavily. At this rate, I was going to need to go to a retreat to expunge these frightfully worldly events from my memory. Okay. I was going to be okay now. "But dude, that's nasty. You're, like, a sister to me, and, like, Carter's my actual brother. In conclusion, that would be—"

"Nasty." Dacey's expression was scrunched, which I noticed when I looked over at her. "This was an easy-going confessional conversation until you decided to bring technicalities into this."

All of a sudden, I wondered why we were talking like balding, middle-aged English professors who had nothing to do with their time save for torturing young, brilliant minds with their expectations of impeccable grammar, advanced vocabulary, and convoluted sentence structure.

(I even confused myself at times.)

"But seriously," I said, turning myself around fully to face her, "why have this revelation just now? You've seen him for, like, the past three years."

My eyes slowly shifted from her face to food. Behind Dacey's head, there were several rows of cookie boxes, which were really, really tempting me although my mom had sent me here to buy fresh produce, not junk food. Dear God, I wished I could have cookies...but after all, I was trying to get myself back in shape for cross country season.

I was really hungry.

Dacey snapped her fingers about three inches away from my nose. "Come on, Lottie. I have an earth-shattering issue that needs solving immediately."

At times like these, I wished that Cara was my companion...except for the fact that she would constantly be speculating about her boyfriend in Buenos Aires. And as cute as their relationship was, I was not at all interested in his travel experiences when he wasn't my significant other.

"Talk to my brother about it." I grabbed a package of mint Oreos. "Mm, I don't think my mom would mind if we got these." I held up the pack, which felt nicely heavy and full of saturated sugars that would surely cause me to gain ten pounds. "What do you think?"

Shaking her head emphatically, Dacey snatched the Oreos away from me and put them back next to the other packages. (They had strawberry cream Oreos? Fantastic.) "Do you wanna be slower than the freshmen when it's back to cross country season?"

I gasped, sinking down to the ground as I pretended to shake. "No, no. That's terrifying."

As she rolled her eyes, Dacey grabbed my left arm and yanked me up. Ouch. She had no sympathy...but again, she didn't do any sports in school (unless Food Club counted). "Seriously, Lottie."

"Where were we again?" I sulkily reclaimed our shopping cart at the end of the aisle, which was full of leafy greens and carrots and other vegetables—exactly what my mother had ordered. "Right. My brother."

"You asked me something." Dacey leaned on the side of the cart, leaning her chin on her hands. "Something about not saying anything for three years, right?"

I turned my head around quickly, feeling my ponytail whip behind me, and checked behind me. There were people strolling up and down the aisle, and if I was right, Dacey, the shopping cart, and I were blocking the way out. With a jerk, I pushed the cart forward and rushed out, leaving behind a stumbling Dacey, who spat out several profanities and limped after me.

"You really need to stop avoiding the topic," she complained as she stood beside me in the checkout lane. I noticed how pink her cheeks were. "But Carter...he's Carter."

"Exactly." I started to load the vegetables onto the conveyor belt. "I don't know how anyone could possibly find him attractive except for the fact that he's a college boy." I frowned as I lugged two gallons of milk from the cart. "And he's not even an older sort of college boy. Like, he just finished his first year, and I swear, the first time he called home, he was crying."

I heard Dacey snicker from behind me. "I don't know if that was supposed to deter me from making a move on him or not."

"Wait." I turned around, still holding a bag of leeks. "That's why you told me?"

Dacey nodded, arms crossed over her chest. She wasn't even helping me. I wondered how she would react if I told her that Carter was the one who was really supposed to take this shopping trip with me, not she. After a split second of consideration, I decided that the outcome wouldn't have changed: she would tag along anyway.

"First, girlfriend, I have to remind you that he's a college boy." I nodded at the cashier and handed over the necessary bills to pay for the groceries. "He's under no obligation to date a high schooler."

We headed out of the air-conditioned store, feeling the heat hit us once again once we were outside. I grabbed all the bags in both of my hands, grunting and stumbling to the parking lot. Beside me, Dacey easily strolled down the lines of cars. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to warn me away from Carter."

Actually, that was exactly what I was trying to do, because honestly, I didn't think I could handle watching the two of them together.

"Second," I continued, feeling the weight of the bags strain on my hands, "he's completely oblivious. I should know. You have to be blatant, but if you're too obvious, he'll call you desperate."

Dacey shrugged. "That's okay."

We stopped next to my car, where I placed the groceries on the ground with a thump (I'd surely broken more than a couple eggs). I groped for my keys in my pocket, then proceeding to unlock the car and open the trunk. Dacey picked up a couple bags and dropped them in the now open trunk.

"Third of all, he's my brother." I stopped to look at her squarely in the eyes. "I cannot hook him up with you."

Dacey stared right back into my eyes with her bright, determined eyes shining. "But you will, because you're almost like my sister, right?"

She wouldn't drop the subject. I lugged the final two bags into the trunk before heading to the driver's seat. Once both Dacey and I were in the car, I started the engine, stuffed on my seatbelt, and pulled out of the parking space as smoothly as I could.

"Lottie," Dacey called, as if she thought I'd forgotten in the past two minutes.

I rolled my eyes, turning on the radio and pulling down the windows. A strong breeze pushed my bangs back, and I reveled in it. Summertime was beautiful...except for the fact that it gave my annoying friends and relatives more time to bother me.

"All right, whatever."

I swore I heard Dacey exclaim "yes!" under her breath in Russian, which happened to be the language she was taking in school. (I wished I'd chosen Russian instead of Spanish for my foreign language requirement, but I supposed it was too late to switch gears for my senior year.)

"Did you fucking fist pump?" I asked her, rolling my eyes.

"Eyes on the road," she responded smugly, snapping and pointing in front of us. We were on the highway. That was a good point, but she didn't need to act like I had just gotten my driver's permit when I had, in fact, received my driver's license about six months before she did.

The smell of success never felt right for the defeated party.

I breathed through my nose very heavily.

All right, now that this grocery shopping trip was over, I still had to run about five miles, drag Carter out of bed (he'd returned to his room after breakfast), and finish reading something for my Spanish course next year. Oh, and return Dacey back to her rightful place, which was her car, so that she could drive home and stop bugging me.

"Hey, don't feel so bad." Dacey patted me on the shoulder heavily. (Why did she have to utilize so much brute force to express her empathy? Maybe it was because she didn't empathize with me at all, and she was overcompensating now.) "I can help you with Dominic in return, right?"

First of all, I wanted to retort to her that most people called him Dom, not Dominic. Then, I thought that she was not to bring up my crush for any matter. Next, I remembered that he was the very same fucking asshole from Friday night who'd denounced my favorite musical right after we watched it. Finally, I imagined those dark eyes watching me, which was pretty much enough to make my hands that were on the steering wheel feel a little sweaty.

"Shut up," I muttered to her from the side of my mouth. "And I'm very sure I can deal with him on my own."

Or not. Converting a person like him to my way of thinking regarding musicals would really require luck to be on my side. And having that happen would be harder than rolling the dice and getting five sixes in a row.

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Hey everyone!

To all Americans, happy 4th of July! I hope you guys enjoy a day of binge eating, hanging out with the family, and fireworks. To all non-Americans, I hope you've had a wonderful day. For me, it's been a little hard to squeeze in writing while socializing with my family (and two screaming infants, who are, in fact, blessing my eardrums at the moment), so sorry if this update is a little late!

So, you get to meet Carter, the older brother! What do you think? Lottie's a little bit overenthusiastic, and he can tell you all about that. And of course, you get to hear a lot from Dacey. I think she'd be a good cat—persistent, funny, and cuddly at the same time.

Above is a picture of some horse-betting tickets from the '50s. Remember in the last chapter when Lottie was explaining how the first scene of the musical/movie opens with a shot of three gamblers betting on horses? This is what would have happened. (And Valentine happens to be the name of one of the three horses on which the gamblers were betting. Also, I thought its name was appropriate for this chapter.)

I hope you liked this update! If you did, I'd so greatly appreciate it if you guys voted, commented, added this to your reading list/library, or did anything else :) You're all so fantastic no matter what you do, so of course, you're not obligated.

Thank you!

Anne xo