The Off-Limits Rule

Chapter 1

Lucy

I’m splayed out like a starfish ripped from the ocean and dried up on the carpet of my new bedroom. I’ve been here for an hour, watching the fan blades go round and round, thinking I could have turned on a show by now, but what’s the point anyway? My fan friends are just as entertaining as anything on TV these days. Besides, fan blades don’t fill you with romantic illusions about this crappy, crappy world and make you feel that you will get everything you’ve always wanted. No, Fanny, Fandrick, Fantasia, and Fandall don’t tell me I’ll get my happy ending in this life. They just—

“Oh my gosh.” The sound of my older brother’s voice pulls me out of my fan entertainment, and I roll my head to the side, squinting at his blurry figure filling my doorframe. “This is next-level pitiful, Luce.” Drew strides into my room, steps over my useless body covered in candy wrappers, and mercilessly rips back the curtains.

I hiss like a vampire that’s just been easily beaten in an overcomplicated plot when the light falls onto my body. Light was the key the whole time! My muscles are too puny and wasted away from my forty-eight-hour feeling-sorry-for-myself binge to even throw my hand over my eyes. “Stop it, jerk. Close those and leave me be!”

He towers over me and shakes his head of brown hair like he can’t believe the pitiful excuse of a human I am. I peek up through my melancholy just enough to register that I should trim his hair soon. “Look at you. Your face is covered in chocolate, and you smell.”

“Rude. I never stink. I can go weeks without deodorant and still—” I lift my arm and wince when I get a whiff of myself. “Oh yeah, shit, that’s bad.”

His eyebrows are lifted, and he’s nodding with a humorless smile. “You need to get out of this room. I gave you a few days to pout that things didn’t turn out like you wanted, but now it’s time to get up and get moving.”

“I don’t pout.”

“Your lip is actually jutting out.”

I suck the offending lip back into my mouth and bite it. Drew extends his hand, and I take it, but only because I really have to pee and not at all because I secretly know he’s right and I’ve wallowed long enough. When my world went south a few days ago, the first thing I did was call Drew to come get me and my son, Levi—not like, come get us from the restaurant but come get us from Atlanta, Georgia, where I was paving my own way, making my life happen for myself, living the dream, and failing miserably at all of it.

Drew didn’t even bat an eye when I asked him to come help me pack up my dignity and haul it back home. From the beginning, he wasn’t thrilled about my decision to move out of Tennessee and away from our family, so without hesitating he said, “Be there tomorrow, Luce. I’ll bring a truck.” And he did. He spent the whole next day helping me pack everything in that dinky (very smelly) apartment, and then he drove me back to his house in Nashville, where my son and I will be living (rent-free, bless him) for the foreseeable future.

The only reason I’ve been able to spend the past few days interviewing my fan blades is because my amazing parents took my four-year-old for a few days while I get unpacked and settled. I don’t think they meant for me to settle my butt into the carpet and lie here for the entire weekend making excellent fan friends, but it’s what I’ve done, and no one is allowed to judge me because judging isn’t nice.

Once I’m standing, Drew sizes me up, and let me tell you, he does not like what he sees. “I think you have a bird’s nest in your hair. Go take a shower.”

“I don’t feel like showering. I’ll just spray some dry shampoo to kill the stink. And maybe the birds.”

He catches my arm when I try to turn away. “As your older brother, I’m telling you . . . get in that shower or I will put you in it, clothes and all, because honestly they could use a wash too.”

I narrow my eyes and stand up on my tiptoes to look more frightening—I think the effect would be better if I didn’t feel chocolate smeared across the side of my face. “I’m a grown, adult woman with a child, so your older-brother threats aren’t effective anymore.”

He tilts his head down slowly—making a point that he’s, like, nineteen million feet taller than me—and makes direct eye contact. “You’re wearing dinosaur PJ pants. And as long as you call me, pulling that baby-sister card when you need my help with something, the older-brother threats count.”

I raise an indignant chin. “I never do that.” I definitely do it all the time.

“Take a shower, then put on a swimsuit.”

I make a disgusted ugh sound. “I am not going swimming with you. All I want to do is eat disgusting takeout, fill my body to the brim with MSG, and then crawl under the covers until next year rolls around with shiny new promises of happiness.”

He’s not listening. He’s turning me around and pushing me toward the bathroom. “Get to it, stinky. Like it or not, you’re putting on a swimsuit and coming with me. It’s been too long since you’ve seen the sun, and you look like a cadaver.” I feel blessed that he didn’t mention I smell like one too.

“I hate the pool.” I’m a cartoon now, and my arms are long droopy noodles, dragging across the floor as I’m pushed toward the bathroom.

“Lucky we’re not going to one then. My buddy and I are taking the boat out to wakeboard for the afternoon. You’re coming too.”

I’m standing motionless in the bathroom now, eyebrows-deep in my sullen mood as Drew pulls back the shower curtain and starts the water. He digs under the sink and pulls out a fluffy towel, tossing it onto the counter. He’s giving me tough love right now, but I know underneath all this dominance is a soft, squishy middle. Drew has one tender spot in life, and it’s me. The tenderness also extends to Levi by association and because my son’s cheeks are so chunky and round you can’t help but dissolve into a pool of wobbly Jell-O when he smiles at you.

“Isn’t it, like . . . frowned upon to skip work on a Wednesday?” I ask, trying to needle him so he’ll leave me alone with my candy bars and sadness.

“Yes, but it’s Sunday.” The judgment in his voice is thick. “And unless one of my patients goes into labor, I have Sundays off.”

I blow air out through my mouth, making a motorboat sound because I’m too lethargic and wasted on chocolate from my pity party for snappy comebacks. Which is sad because snappy comebacks are my thing.

“Lucy,” Drew says, bending to catch my eye like he knows my thoughts were starting to wander back down the dark tunnel to mopey-land. He points behind him to the steaming water. “Lather, rinse, and repeat. You’ll feel better. Promise.” He leans forward and gives a dramatic sniff. “Maybe even repeat a few times. Then move on to the toothbrush, because I think something crawled into your mouth and died.” Siblings are so sweet.

I punch him hard in the arm, and he just smiles like he’s happy to see me showing some signs of life. “But seriously, thank you,” I say quietly. “Thanks for taking me in too. You’re always rescuing me.”

The day I realized I was a week late for my period, Drew was the one who drove to the store and bought my pregnancy test. He’s the one who held me when I cried and told me that if I wanted to keep the baby, I wouldn’t have to go it alone because I’d have him (and then my parents quickly hip-checked him out of the way and reminded me I’d have them too). This is part of the reason I moved to Atlanta a year ago—not because I wanted to get away from them but because I wanted to prove to myself I could stand on my own two feet and support my son.

Spoiler alert: I can’t.