“They’ll judge it like they know about me and you”
“Wow, since when do you actually bundle up in a coat?”
Hearing her brother’s voice as he opened his hotel room door to her she rolled her eyes, pulling the green army bomber jacket closer around her tighter. His eyes looked her over before he put his arms out, pulling her into the tightest bear bug that he could manage. She puffed out a dramatic strangled sound, teasing him as he pulled away from her finally.
As he pulled away he reached in his pocket and pulled out a small box of which he placed into her hands with a perfect gold bow tying it together. She smiled up at him holding it.
“Happy Birthday Princess. How are you already 17? Where did the years go?”
With a tug to the gold bow she pulled the ribbon off of the small jewelry box. A small lion pendent lay in the box on a necklace. She smiled at him as he pulled it from the box and pulled it around her neck, fastening it without questioning if she even liked it.
Soon as it was clasped around her neck she turned around to face her brother, leaning up on tiptoe just to kiss his cheek. Quincy was always on top of everything, he always had been. He pulled her into another hug, kissing the top of her head as he pushed the door open in back of them.
“Go say hi to Cees and Jude. He might have a present for you too. I’m not actually sure, he’s hiding things from me. His neck is marred from some girl and he won’t tell me anything about her.”
Quincy missed the glint in her eye as she stepped past him into the hotel room, the way she bit her lip to silence her smirk from shining through. This wasn’t the time for any of those truths to come out. She just wanted to enjoy her seventeenth birthday without the third degree of her protective big brother coming through to haunt her.
“Quince, don’t be so dramatic”
Jude’s voice made her chest flutter tightly as she rubbed her hand against her neck before turning to spot him. They shared a look for a moment before she went straight over to him, a usual move that Quincy wouldn’t be suspicious of as Jude wrapped his arms around her, picking her up in a tight hug.
She’d missed him in the couple of hours she hadn’t seen him between Quincy arriving and her going out to lunch with Richard and Fiona. She clung to him tighter than normal as he placed her back down on her feet, knowing that she couldn’t just kiss him like she so badly wanted to. Not with Quincy in the room just yet, that would come.
“Beautiful, I believe this is yours”
As he took a step back from her he reached into his pocket and produced a red Cartier box. Shaking her head at him, a smile broke across her features as she took it out of his hand and opened it up to the silver bracelet that she’d had her eye on as they strolled past the shop just days before.
“I can’t keep up with you people. Your gifts cost more than my rent for a year”
Ceecee and Quincy began to shamelessly flirt behind her as Jude took the box from her hands and took the bracelet out of the box to put on her.
“Also, that is an unfair advantage Jude, take it back, she’s supposed to like my presents best.”
Quincy had pulled himself away from Ceecee to look over their way and whine yet again. As her eyes got caught on the bracelet now around her wrist the sound of Jude’s laugh filled her ears as he glanced in Quincy’s direction again.
“Quince… I always win when it comes to her and birthdays. One of these years you’ll face that.”
Well she couldn’t defend her brother with that one this year, that much was for certain. Jude had won all the way around so far.
“Well watch out because I don’t want your new girlfriend getting the wrong idea about you and my innocent baby sister”
She wasn’t sure how innocent her big brother would have thought her if he’d known about the past couple of days. The words in her head must have been contagious because she heard Jude suddenly cough and turn it into trying to clear his throat then. It for once wasn’t Quincy that gave out the questioning look, that belonged fully to Cecelia as she stared at the two of them then. Something told her that the girlfriend of six months mad a lot more brains going on than Wave had originally given her credit for. They’d probably be in for an interesting conversation later, she just hoped she could actually trust her brother’s girlfriend.