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“Hey, thanks for agreeing to meet so last minute.” Maddie said as she smiled at her brother.
“Shut up, you don’t need to thank me for spending time with you. You’re my sister.” Buck snorted as he waved her inside. Eddie and Chris were playing video games, which she suspected would be happening. “Jee, wanna go try and mess Uncle Eddie up?”
“Yeah.” Jee cheered, wiggling out of Maddie’s arms and running to the couch. Eddie smiled brightly as she crashed against his legs, his character dying dramatically. Chris cheered and high-fived Jee.
“We can talk on the patio if you want?” Buck offered, getting them each a drink.
“That’d be great.” Maddie breathed out, stepping onto the patio, Buck following and handing her the drink he’d grabbed. “This is my favorite part of you living here, just to get that out.”
“Mine too.” Buck chuckled, watching her closely. “What’s going on? You seem … pensive.”
“It’s complicated and I hope I can get it out right.” Maddie said, taking a breath and letting it go. “I was trying to work up the nerve to talk to you when I came back from Boston, but things sort of just kept happening. Anyway, the point is, I finally took therapy seriously. I know you always told me to just give it a chance, and I thought I had. But I hadn’t really dealt with all the emotional crap until I was practically drowning in PPD. A few things came out that … that I never wanted to look at too closely. Part of it is that I’ve been a really crappy big sister.”
“What? No you haven’t.” Buck argued defensively. She couldn’t help smiling as her baby brother prepared to defend her from herself.
“I have, but that’s because I never thought about things from your perspective. I couldn’t afford to, and I honestly didn’t want to. Because that meant seeing myself as someone who runs away. When I turned 18 and could finally leave, I didn’t even think about anything else. I didn’t think about you being alone with mom and dad. I just wanted out of that house and away from it all.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.” Buck frowned.
“I know, it’s the whole natural order thing. Kids grow up and move out and away. I get that. But by doing things the way I did, I abandoned you. And I never saw it that way. I was going to do the same thing again when I first got to LA, though. I was planning to stay here a few days, at most, and then run again. Without telling you. I basically abandoned you emotionally when I got mom and dad to agree to come out here because I cared more about getting that family back than I did about how hurt you might be that they never showed up for you, not once, since you’ve been in LA.” Maddie noticed as Buck stiffened slightly. He didn’t look at her, only took a drink of his bottle and fiddled with it. A nervous habit he never grew out of. “I asked you not to tell them I was here, but I never asked about how often you talked to them. I never asked about if they came to your shield ceremony. I didn’t even think about them purposely not coming out when the ladder truck crushed your leg. I got so used to talking to them every so often that I never thought about why you wouldn’t.”
“You know they never liked me.” Buck said quietly. “I know why now, at least, but it doesn’t bother me, Mads. I don’t care if they don’t like me. I have you.”
“And I appreciate that you feel that way. But it’s not ok with me. It bothers me, Buck. It’s this deep, gnawing, guilt, really, about what you had to deal with alone with them. I left you alone with them- I saw you when you were 12, then you were 18. You were almost a completely different kid. And then you were freshly 26 and I realized, having dinner with you, that I didn’t actually know anything about you. The baby brother I knew and loved is stuck at 12 years old, at the oldest, when I moved to Boston. I remember when you were ten and used to barge into my room after school blabbing a mile a minute about what happened at soccer practice after school, or how Johnny Garrety kissed you at the bike rack and ran away.”
“Hey!” Buck exclaimed, his face turning red. He was probably shocked she remembered his first kiss was a boy that practically ran away after doing it.
“That was Evan, not Buck. He was so young and full of life and ridiculous ideas about what he wanted to do. You wanted to skate in the X-Games, surf the coast of Australia or New Zealand so that you could also go see where they filmed Lord of the Rings because you loved the books so much and the extended editions of the movies even more. You wanted to backpack through Europe on a summer exchange program or just because you could.”
“Sounds like a whole different person when you put it all like that.” Buck said, biting his lip.
“I loved that kid, because he was mine. But we haven’t actually talked about important things since we’ve been reunited. We’ve talked about things happening currently, or that could happen in the future, like me and Howie looking at houses together, but we avoided anything before LA.”
“You have my postcards.” Buck said reasonably. Which meant he was trying to distract her and avoid the direction of her conversation.
“Which told me a fraction of what you were doing.” Maddie argued. “They were sporadic and dated so randomly I couldn’t get myself to look at why. I was … I love you. And I need you to know that.”
“I know you do.” Buck nodded, his head tilted a little like he was confused.
“I’m not good at opening up. I probably won’t ever be, not after spending so much of my childhood being forced to keep the secret of Daniel and then dealing with Doug. Therapy has helped to a degree, but there’s a lot that I want to try to talk about with you. Just you. Not a therapist or psychologist or even Howie.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t.” Buck said quietly. “It’s been years, what good does bringing it up now do? You wanted mom and dad back in your life, so they are. That doesn’t mean they have to be back in mine. Which they aren’t. Unless we’re doing something for or with you.”
“Albert showing up and staying opened a wound that neither of us would admit to.” Maddie said firmly, Buck tensing up a little. “No one knew Howie had a brother before he was here, and no one knew you had a sister before I was here.”
“It’s not the same.” Buck argued defensively.
“It’s close enough.” Maddie argued back. “It’s close enough to the same thing and we never talked about it, not with each other. We were both hurt by what Howie said, by how he acted, but we did the same thing!”
“It wasn’t the same!” Buck exclaimed somewhat loudly, pursing his lips in a line as he tried to calm down.
“Everything ok?” Eddie asked quietly from the doorway, but he was only looking at Buck.
“Can you keep the kids distracted a little longer?” Maddie asked carefully. “We need to have this conversation and we can’t be worried about scaring them or making them upset.”
“Maddie-”
“Sure.” Eddie agreed, cutting Buck’s argument off.
“Eddie.” Buck called, asking Eddie to be on his side with a look. Maddie used to do the same thing with Buck when he was just a little boy.
“You need to talk.” Eddie said gently. “I had to have some hard talks with my sisters when I was cleared after my breakdown that YOU helped me through. I’ll take the kids to the park or something, or to the ice cream parlor a block away. That way you can scream or yell or cry and not worry about them.”
“Eds-”
“Talk to your sister, Evan.” Eddie cut him off. Maddie felt dumbstruck by how soft Eddie said her brother’s name. And how the argument and fight practically bled out of Buck the instant it was out of his mouth. “She loves you and wouldn’t do anything to purposely hurt you. She’s here to make sure it doesn’t happen again. But you need to be honest and use the words floating in that big brain of yours. You’ll be ok. I’ll bring you a sundae back.”
“Fine.” Buck sighed. Eddie gave him a proud smile before shutting the door and going back to the kids.
“He called you by your name.” Maddie said dumbly.
“He’s done it before. Once.” Buck admitted with a small shrug.
“When was this?” Maddie asked curiously.
“When he was discharged from the hospital after being shot.” Buck shrugged. “He- it- …”
“You don’t have to tell me.” Maddie said gently.
“I was so freaked out by the whole thing.” Buck said quietly. “I was terrified I’d lose my best friend and then doubly terrified that I’d have to help Chris grieve his only parent before he’d be taken away if he didn’t make it. Because his grandparents would have come and taken him back to El Paso. Or that’s what I thought. Until I was signing Eddie out. He- when I got there, thinking I was just picking him up, he asked to talk to me. He said- he started talking about when the well collapsed on top of him.”
“I remember Howie talking about how torn up you were when it happened. And the video of you trying to dig him out was heartbreaking to watch.” Maddie nodded.
“He changed his will after that.” Buck said softly. So softly Maddie almost missed it. “He changed his will because he doesn’t want Chris to go to his parents if something happens to him.”
“They must be as bad as our parents.” Maddie said quietly, pumping a fist internally when Buck snorted and laughed, his whole body shaking as he snickered.
“They’re pretty awful, yeah.” Buck said, still smiling. “They keep telling Eddie Chris needs a new mom.”
“That’s stupid!” Maddie exclaimed, annoyed on Eddie’s behalf.
“That’s what I told him, too.” Buck nodded in agreement. “Anyway, when he changed his will, he did it so that Chris could stay in LA. So he could still have this support system of people who cared about him and his dad.”
“His aunt, right? Pepa?” Maddie asked curiously.
“Uh, n- no. Not Aunt Pepa.” Buck cleared his throat and fidgeted with the bottle some more, shifting his weight around as if he were worried about telling her the truth. “Look, no one else knows. I don’t think his family, his parents, I mean, know. Definitely no one at the 118 knows.”
“So?” Maddie encouraged. Buck fidgeted a little more before glancing up and meeting her eyes momentarily.
“Me.” Buck admitted in a near whisper.
“Come again?” Maddie blinked.
“If- if Eddie doesn’t make it, if he dies, then Chris comes to me.” Buck said carefully.
“So you moved Eddie from boy-crush to dilf in your head now huh?” Maddie asked innocently, smiling when Buck threw his head back and laughed. “You’re back-up dad, so that means you could be a dilf to him, too. You never know.”
“Oh my god, you’re the worst.” Buck groaned, still laughing as he shook his head.
“What was it you said once upon a time? About how you see each other at your worst and still want to give things a try? To make things work?” Maddie teased. “It’s ok if you aren’t sure what you feel for him. You got to witness all that crap with me and Howie. Which I feel only a little bad about, but having you there meant we didn’t have to acknowledge that we were dating while pretending that wasn’t what we were doing.”
“Chris likes when I tell those stories.” Buck shrugged.
“Because you and Eddie are doing the same thing, just with a child as your third wheel instead of one of your sisters.” Maddie stated confidently. She wasn’t surprised when Buck frowned and blinked a little confusedly. “Not the point right now. The whole thing with Albert showing up was so close to what happened with us, that I had trouble separating it out. Everything Howie said out loud, at the bar, felt like it must have been what you were saying internally to yourself when I turned you away in Hershey.”
“I … was pretty upset when you didn’t meet me. When all I got was a note.” Buck admitted. “I got over it, eventually, it’s why I started sending you post cards. You asked me to take Albert in, and we both knew that it wasn’t even a question. Because of course I was going to.”
“Because we both still remember how devastating our own experiences at showing up unannounced were.” Maddie said gently. “When you showed up in my ER, I was terrified you’d see what I was hiding.”
“I was a scared kid back then.” Buck shook his head. “If it wasn’t about me, I didn’t notice.”
“Which was what I told Doug.”
“Mads.” Buck said disappointedly.
“He was going to call the jeep in and report that it was stolen.” Maddie shook her head. “He was going to do that and then somehow get you caught up and arrested for something you didn’t do. I got him to accept that with the family I cared most about out of the way, there wouldn’t be anyone left to notice what was happening. And then I ran when I finally had the guts, and I ran to you. I didn’t even consider going to mom and dad. Albert showing up reopened that wound for both of us because we both experienced different sides.”
“Chimney said I didn’t know what it cost you.” Buck said quietly.
“I’m sorry, I must have misheard you,” Maddie took a breath and twisted her own drink around before drinking half of it, “the father of my child told you, my baby brother, that you didn’t know what leaving like you did cost me? Just- just clarifying.”
“He said I didn’t know what giving me your keys cost you.” Buck restated. “And it’s true. At the time it happened, I didn’t know. What I knew was that no one wanted me at that point.”
“And what about you? Huh? Did he even ask what that whole fucked up situation cost you?” Maddie couldn’t help gesticulating a little wildly. “You were fucking homeless, Buck! Yeah, I got beat for giving you my keys, but those were keys to the only home I could give you at that point!”
“He didn’t care.” Buck shook his head. “He didn’t care about when someone catfished people with my picture, and he certainly didn’t care about what happened when you and I were separated for seven years. I wanted to hit him, Maddie. He said those stupid words and I just- I wanted to hit him. Because he was such a hypocrite for saying them.”
“He was!” Maddie agreed vehemently. “I’ll be having a conversation with my partner later, it seems. Because that was not ok. I know I was in a domestic violence situation. But that does not negate your experience as a fucking homeless teenager.”
“What even brought all this on, anyway? The need to suddenly talk about all our missed time or ignored missed time?” Buck asked curiously. “We’ve been back together for five years now.”
“Mom and dad are coming out in a few months.” Maddie said defeatedly. “They want to help me and Howie buy a house, so they’re doing the only thing they know how to do in relation to their children.”
“Throwing money at us and hoping we go away.” Buck nodded understandingly.
“I wanted to clear the air and just see how you really felt about having them around so much for me and Jee knowing they were absent, at best, for you.”
“For both of us.” Buck argued, shaking his head. “They’re responsible for your trauma associated with families as much as mine.”
“Yes, but you didn’t get in contact with them and guilt me into seeing them after a decade of next to no contact.” Maddie argued back.
“I still can’t believe you hid things like that from me, if I’m- if we’re being completely honest with each other. It wasn’t just hiding a brother, it was hiding relevant medical information.” Buck said irritatedly.
“How so?”
“Do you remember the testing you said you, mom, and dad all went through to see if you were matches?”
“Kind of.” Maddie wobbled her head. “It was basically blood work.”
“I was conceived with IVF.” Buck said firmly. “In a clinic. But since I was a match, there was more testing than any of you went through. Ravi and I talked about it a little, but part of that is an insane amount of allergy tests. The medical records that I had sent out to me that had been buried in Hershey, with Daniel’s, causing a shit load of issues with the hospital for not filing mine independently, show that the hardware they put in my leg never would have worked because I was allergic to the metal as well as the anti inflammatory they soaked it in before the surgery. Knowing that I was a savior baby, as a former ER nurse, means you should have known that I had extensive medical records from infancy.”
“I never thought about that.” Maddie frowned. “If you couldn’t tell, I can’t really think clearly when you’re hurt.”
“I know.” Buck said gently. “And I get it. Now. I do. If you had been honest with me about this when we were kids or even when you came to LA, I could have binge researched everything I did when I talked to Ravi about it a lot earlier than I did. I could have asked you questions about it, and I know you would have been on my side. But you kept it hidden. Why? I was 26 when you saw me again. Why was keeping it a secret at that point still worth it?”
“I spent the better part of 30 years forgetting Daniel.” Maddie said, hating that she was tearing up. “Sometimes I hear you or Jee laugh, and I feel like I was punched in the gut because it brings back a memory of him laughing the same way. He laughed with his whole body, just like you do. Or I’ll see you and Christopher sharing a crooked grin and I’ll see the way he used to do that with you on the rare occasion you were allowed to visit him in the hospital. I spent so long being forced to forget him that it’s even harder to share and talk about than just the missing years after I gave you my keys.”
“Ok, but if you want us to talk about all this emotional crap, hinging it on Albert and Chimney’s reunion, then you need to work on remembering or even just mentioning Daniel from time to time. I want to know the brother you got to love before me. The one I never knew about and have no tangible memories of. I’ll hate talking about being homeless because no one aside from you and Eddie has put the pieces together to realize that’s what happened to me. I didn’t know what giving me your keys cost you, but you also only guessed that I was homeless. We’ve both boxed up all this trauma and hidden it away in our heads.”
“Guess we’ll have a wine and unboxing night.” Maddie sighed. She smiled when Buck laughed. “We’ll need dramatic mood music, plenty of wine, and as many snacks as you can either trick Bobby into making for us or Eddie’s aunt. I’m totally ok with either one.”
“I will let Pepa know we need her best comfort snacks because Bobby would give me a look and I’d cave and tell him what was going on and it would make him too worried not to check up on either of us.” Buck chuckled, shaking his head. “I have a few playlists we can choose from. Therapy homework kind of deals.”
“So they should be the right kind of sob over wine and trauma vibes.” Maddie nodded certainly, smiling as Buck nearly fell over the patio chair he was leaning by when he laughed this time. Maddie missed seeing her brother so happy. She missed being the one to make him laugh so hard he couldn’t breathe or fell over. “Let’s show the Han boys who the real OGs of trauma bonded siblinghood are!”
“Hell yeah!” Buck laughed, lifting his bottle and clinking it with hers. “It sucks they don’t see how similar we are to them. And it sucks more that Chimney never wants to acknowledge it.”
“I think he’s deluded himself into thinking our childhood was more traumatic, and that means he shouldn’t have to talk about his. He has so much good from when he was a kid that sometimes I get mad and bake about it.”
“Ok, but that’s the healthiest outlet either of us have ever had.” Buck argued. “You could be getting high, and I could be … I dunno. Working at one of those bars where the staff wear barely more than banana hammocks for uniforms and washing ridiculous amounts of glitter off every night.”
“And Eddie would work security as a secondary job because he knows you wouldn’t be able to turn people down nicely.” Maddie added, smiling as Buck laughed again. “You’d try drugs once and realize it didn’t do anything.”
“They could.” Buck argued. “They just- it’s just not my experience with accidental drug use so far.”
“I’m telling you right now, if you ever tried speed or even ecstasy, you would be incredibly shocked because you would be able to focus on what was right in front of you instead of ten steps ahead and around what your initial thought was.” Maddie stated. “I tried telling mom and dad you needed to be tested for ADHD when you were in second grade and at risk of getting kicked out of school altogether, but they refused.”
“So? You came by and had a conversation with the counselor and between her and my main teacher I had my own individual learning plan. It’s how I skipped a grade when I got toward middle school.”
“Once they got you an actual aide, it was easy to see how well you did.” Maddie shrugged. “You’re smart, you’ve always been smart, but no one was helping you. I don’t blame them, public school teachers are not to blame, I just wish they had more resources to help kids like you.”
“Not gonna let it go, are you?” Buck sighed, catching on to what she was irritated about.
“You never applied to college!” Maddie exclaimed. “Mom and dad would bitch about it on the phone when I called, so why the hell would they straight up lie to me and say you failed out of community college when you were just trying to leave?”
“Maybe, but that’s not why you aren’t letting it go.” Buck pointed his drink at her.
“Ok, fine, it isn’t. You played. You did so well you got accepted to the National Conservatory of Music at 16. You played with them for two and a half years and just … you just walked away from it!”
“I had to.” Buck said quietly. “Maddie, I had to get out of that house. You have to know that. I couldn’t stay, but I had no means to get away. As long as I was there, they could get the accolades of how well I did, but … they killed all the joy I found in it. Sure, I could play, sure, I was good, and I probably could have asked to go to another location to play, but I was drowning, Mads. Like you before you got help for your PPD. I was just … I was ready to just let it all go, to … to give up. So when the accident happened, when you gave me your keys, that was my chance.”
“Go get it.” Maddie said, nodding inside.
“What, now?” Buck gaped at her.
“No, next week.” She gave him an unimpressed look. “Go get it, let’s see if we can try to bring some of the joy back to it.”
“Can’t hurt, I guess.” Buck sighed, finishing his bottle and taking Maddie’s since it was empty, while walking back inside. Maddie grabbed them each another drink from the fridge before Buck was coming down with his massive carrying case for his keyboard. He set it up on the balcony, and finally sat down in front of it. He didn’t get any sheet music out, just got it turned on and ran through some scales. She couldn’t help smiling as she watched his fingers dance along the keys. “I’m hella out of practice.”
“Oh! Do ‘I’ll Be There’.” Maddie cheered, ignoring his statement. Even out of practice she knew he was still amazing.
“You singing?” Buck arched an eyebrow at her.
“Absolutely. The dynamic duo of Buckley and Buckley, one night only!” Maddie stated, making her brother snort and roll his eyes. So Buck played and Maddie sang, both of them smiling like idiots. Maddie spotted Eddie and the kids walking curiously toward the closed balcony door while they had their concert, but didn’t say anything to Buck. When he transitioned into ‘Fallin’ by Alicia Keys, Maddie groaned but did her best to sing along. Buck just closed his eyes and played.
“Woo!” Jee-Yun and Christopher screamed when the song was over, startling Buck into doing a key smash.
“Mama sing wif Unca Buck!” Jee-Yun cheered, hugging Maddie’s legs as the door opened, Eddie releasing them.
“That was so cool!” Chris agreed, hugging Buck’s neck. Buck flushed as he chuckled bashfully. “Why didn’t I know you could play?”
“Why indeed?” Eddie asked, watching Buck with a look that was … someone really needed to tell them it was ok for them to not feel platonic feelings for each other. Because Eddie was looking at her brother like he was a second away from kneeling and proposing with a sundae instead of a ring.
“I- I never hid it.” Buck stuttered. “I just also … never brought it up. But Maddie wanted us to have this weird conversation intervention ordeal, and part of that was trying to figure out why our parents called her and told her I failed out of community college. I never went. Maddie knew that, too. We were trying to figure out why they would lie to her about it.”
“So the conversation went ok?” Eddie asked hesitantly.
“It’s a start.” Maddie gave Eddie a grateful smile. “Thank you for giving us some time for it.”
“Of course. Like I said earlier, I did the same thing with my sisters. There’s a similar gap between me and Adriana as there is with you and Buck. So when I finally got her to talk to me, after a little screaming, it came down to her feeling abandoned by me more than our parents. Our parents weren’t ever really there for her, not like I was. So she didn’t care what they thought of her life. She’s turning 19 soon, and almost done with her first year of college. Now she pretty much just asks me if the parties I had in the Army were anything like the frat or dorm parties she’s gone to. They aren’t, just to clarify.”
“What sundae did you get me?” Buck asked, smiling innocently at Eddie. Chris had wiggled his way into Buck’s lap and was playing with some of the sounds.
“Peanut Butter.” Eddie said deadpan. Buck pouted at him until Eddie rolled his eyes. “What do you think? Chris said you’re in a strawberry phase again, so he picked it.”
“I like strawberries.” Buck agreed, his eyebrows quirking up as he- well, his whole face, really- brightened up.
“Buck was on his way to being a famous musician, once upon a time.” Maddie stated, picking her daughter up so she didn’t wander too close and get tangled in the cords or anything.
“No I wasn’t.” Buck argued, finally tearing his eyes away from Eddie to scowl at her. “I wasn’t that good.”
“You played for a national music organization.” Maddie snorted. “You were gonna be a famous pianist, can’t change my mind. Your interviews would have been as epic as your interviews from your probationary firefighter time.”
“I hate that you found those.” Buck muttered petulantly.
“You hate that Howie told me about them and I looked them up.” Maddie argued. “Anyway, I think this was enough trauma bonding for today. I should get home and … figure out more of a plan for this whole house hunting deal.”
“Let us know if you need anything- thanks, Eds.” Buck smiled as Eddie handed him his sundae. The way they looked at each other made her feel like she was intruding in something not meant for her to see. Which … was probably how Buck felt with her and Howie in the beginning.
“Oh, actually, I did want to ask something.” Maddie snapped her fingers, getting both men’s attention. “I’m not asking this to jinx you, I’m not, but who do you have as your medical power of attorney? I know between the hospital and LAFD, things can sometimes move slowly, so as two of your emergency contacts are here now, we should probably know.”
“I thought you still had Bobby?” Eddie frowned thoughtfully at Buck.
“Can I tell you and neither of you get mad?” Buck asked, pointing his spoon between them.
“We’re not mad and we’re not going to get mad.” Maddie promised.
“Athena.” Buck said, scooping some ice cream in his mouth and grimacing as he got a brain freeze. “Fuc- -udge. Why?” Buck would never learn that ice cream always gave him a brain freeze. No matter how slow he ate it, his brain just did not like it.
“That’s what I want to know.” Eddie said, giving Buck an expectant look.
“Should be obvious.” Chris said, turning on a drum beat somehow. “Bobby acts like his dad, only Bobby already lost one family before, so Buck doesn’t want to hurt him by forcing him into that kind of decision again. Maddie lost a brother and he doesn’t want her to feel guilty if he doesn’t make it. And you lost mom. He doesn’t want you to have to make a decision for another partner.”
“Smart kid.” Buck said, kissing his head dramatically, making him giggle. “All those reasons. All my emergency contacts have lost someone close to them. And I didn’t want to put that sort of decision on any of you. I talked with Athena about it, and she said she’d do it if she had to but that I better not put her in that position or she was gonna beat my ass when I woke up again.”
“Thank you for telling us.” Maddie said gratefully, holding a pinky out to him. He smiled bashfully as he hooked their pinkies together. “Now we can make sure that everyone knows who they’ll be dealing with if anything happens. Because Athena Grant-Nash will not hesitate to get an entire hospital fired if they mess up.”
“No doubt.” Buck agreed. “She has copies, but also no one else knows. I guess in hindsight that’s not a great way to go. You good to get home?”
“You gave me non-alcoholic beers. Yes, I’m fine to get home.” Maddie rolled her eyes. He smiled and shrugged.
“Wanted to see if you noticed or not.” He admitted.
“Be good, Buckley-Diaz boys.” Maddie pointed between the three of them, unsurprised when Buck and Eddie both flushed but Chris smiled happily. “We’ll talk again another time and see if we can traumatize Howie with our lack of filters.”
“Uh-”
“Yes, Eddie, you can come supervise.” Maddie cut him off.
“How about we wait until you actually have a house before we get into that?” Eddie rolled his eyes. “We’ll do a housewarming and then have a Buckley-Han-Diaz night where I can sit back and watch you and Buck trauma dump before Albert joins along and you all horrify Chimney into a drunken stupor?”
“That’s what I said.” Maddie shrugged, smiling when Buck cracked up laughing. “Thanks for letting me get this off my chest and for taking it seriously. We’ll talk again soon. Love you.”
“Love you too.” Buck smiled softly at her. She turned around when she got to the door and saw Eddie stealing Buck’s spoon and taking a bite of his sundae before handing it back. Her brother, the menace he is, just stuck the spoon directly in his mouth without ice cream, maintaining a level of homoerotic eye contact she never thought she’d witness in person. She pulled the door shut and shook her head as she headed for her car.