Coming Up For Air | ✓

2 | new dogs, old friends

"Tell him to leave."

Quick to sweep her phone up from where it lies atop the white wooden dresser, Stella takes it off speakerphone. Granted, her bedroom door is closed and Jake is still downstairs, but the last thing she needs is for him to overhear one of his supposed best friends speak of how he should get lost.

"I cannot tell him to leave, Faye," She half-whispers, phone pressed between her shoulder and ear as she shimmies into a light blue denim skirt. "It's his house."

"Do you need me to tell him to leave?" Her sister asks from her end of the call. "Because if you do, I will."

Regarding herself in the head-to-toe mirror stood in the corner of the room, Stella exchanges an eye-roll with her reflection. "No. Please don't."

"I'm serious Stella; the house is yours for the summer. Geoffrey and Angelina said so themselves."

"Technically, they said it's ours for the summer."

"You know what I mean,"

A beat of silence follows Faye's words, replaced by the sound of fingertips lightly tapping the keys of a laptop.

"Point being: you give the go-ahead and I'll have him out of there faster than you can say 'Grande White Hot Chocolate, two shots of espresso, two pumps of cinnamon dolce syrup with cinnamon-sugar on top',"

A small smile pulls at Stella's lips; she doesn't doubt that.

"No one would blame you if you decided to kick him out, you know," Faye adds gently. Stella presses her lips together, already knowing where this is going. "Even if it's Jake. Things are different now. We all know that."

"It's fine." Stella reassures her sister, sinking into a seat atop the floral sheets of her bed.

Glancing at herself in the mirror, she smooths her palm over her knitted sleeveless top. The wide shoulder straps don't exactly do the job of covering the tan-lines etched into her skin from the past decade's summer practices, but it'll do.

"Stella–"

"Really," Stella lets herself fall back against the mattress, changing phone-holding hand. "It's fine."

"What is he even doing there? He's supposed to be clerking at some hotshot firm in Boston."

"I don't know. I came back from a swim and there he was. Golden Retriever and all."

"Golden Retriever?"

"He's dog-sitting, apparently."

A beat of silence passes on the other end of the line and Stella can almost picture her sister lean back in her desk chair, heels up on the table. "Huh."

"Anyways, we're headed out for breakfast now," She says and sprawls her fingers toward the tilted ceiling, regarding the dark-red shade painting her nails. "I guess I'll know more after that."

"At Lottie's?"

"What?"

"Are you going to Lottie's?"

Stella pushes herself back into a seat, twirling a strand of her thick brown hair around her finger. The last time she'd been to Julio – her hairdresser back home – he'd gathered it up in his hands with a sigh and a small shake of his head, spoken of its beauty before clicking his tongue; too bad it's so worn out by all that chlorine.

"How am I supposed to know?"

"God I haven't been there in years," A wistful sigh sounds through the phone with Faye's words. "Remember how we always went there? The place at the corner of Daisy Avenue and Blossom Street? With the heart shaped pancakes!"