Kori wouldn’t have put money on which sibling would show up first. Usually they were both pretty on time, though part of her wouldn’t have counted on Brandon being first. But she smiled when he showed up and nodded.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” she retorted, only some of the tightness in her chest receding. He must’ve been expecting Leah to have already shown up too, since he looked around like he was trying to find her. “Unless you were looking for someplace else, in which case, you’ve totally got the wrong place,” she forced the teasing, like she could will it to be like any other sibling gathering. She knew better than to act like everything was okay, but she didn’t want things to spiral into awkwardness straight off. Especially before Leah even showed.
There was an inward sigh of relief at Leah’s entrance, though she knew that if she hadn’t seen her siblings that much, they’d seen each other even less. Or she was guessing at that actually, but she was very seldom wrong on things like that. “It’s fine, Lele, you couldn’t deny the princess a story,” she waved off the apology, leaning to her left to stash her book where she would be able to find it again.
“No, not much. He just barely got here too.” At least neither one had no-showed. That would have been a strike to her resolve that she just couldn’t have handled. “Turns out the both of you can still be depended on to show up mostly on time.” She pushed some hair behind her ear and re-situated where she sat.
“So, how are…” she trailed off. Bad question to ask, she thought. “I brought a deck of cards from the rec room. Thought we might be able to play one of the games we used to.” Even the suggestion sounded a little juvenile to her ears, but what else was there to do in the Lilah’s place but stare at each other awkwardly. There was absolutely no way she was going to do that.
“You know, Cheat or Spades, maybe?” Kori had always been pathetic at Cheat, even when she got older, but it was one of the only card games she could think of that wasn’t poker.