GRAM THROWS HER HANDS in the air Sunday afternoon in her typical dramatic fashion. “Rand, that horrid breaker keeps tripping.”

My father places his tablet down on the kitchen table. “I told you, you need to hire an electrician. How many times a day do you go out to the garage and flip breakers?”

“Too many, that’s how many,” Gram says, pacing the kitchen around the dinner she’s prepared. She hunches next to her double oven, which was supposed to be roasting Cornish hens, but now it’s a lifeless, dark box.

It’s been a tradition—at least whenever my parents are in town—to come here for Sunday dinners, which Gram cooks herself since she gives everyone the day off on Sundays.

“My roommate’s an electrician,” I say. “I bet he could look at it.”

“Your roommate is a boy?” My mother, Bitsy, asks, eyes widening. I chuckle at the image of Mom picturing Sutter as a boy and not a strapping, well-endowed man. “You didn’t tell us that.”

I shrug. “I didn’t tell you that because it doesn’t matter. He’s a friend of Nick’s.”

“He’s an electrician, you say?” Gram asks.

I nod. “Owns his own company.”

Her arched brows rise. For as long as I’ve known her, she’s hated having contractors come and do work on her house because spending weeks with strangers invading her personal sanctuary is her idea of hell. Gram loves to keep her public life public and her private life excruciatingly private.

This is probably why her house hasn’t been renovated in decades. If anyone ever makes a movie that takes place in the eighties, they could use Gram’s place and not have to change a single thing. It’s straight out of Dynasty.

“Rand,” my mom, Bitsy, places her hand over my father’s. “Maybe we should start hosting dinner at our place?”

I try not to laugh when I think about how royally pissed my grandmother would be if Mom took over her decades-old tradition.

“Bitsy.” Dad shakes his head and his voice is so low, I doubt Gram can hear it. This is nothing new. He’s spent his entire marriage being caught in the crosshairs of their love/hate relationship.

Gram thinks Mom is too dependent on my father.

Mom thinks Gram is always judging her.

They’ve been a work in progress for the past twenty-five years, and I’m sure they’ll still be a work in progress another twenty-five years from now.

“So this roommate of yours, you think he can help me?” Gram asks, tucking a taut curl behind one ear before resting her hands on her hips.

I probably shouldn’t volunteer him, but seeing how he went out of his way last night to comfort me when he saw me crying, I think there’s a little bit of nice inside that obnoxiously sexy exterior of his.

This morning, I woke before he did, walked Murphy, went for a solo jog, then ate a bowl of oatmeal all before heading to the local precinct to file a report on Robert. I was hoping to see him this morning, to thank him again for what he did last night, but I never got the chance.

I also wanted to tell him what the police said—that they can only question him for now and that without tangible evidence, there’s a good chance the county prosecutor won’t want to bring this to trial, but they reiterated several times that it’s “good to have these kinds of things on record.”

Anyway, I can only assume we’re good now. No more fighting or cock-blocking or hurled insults. We might even be headed in the direction of something that resembles a friendship? But I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself here.

“I’ll ask him,” I say.

Dad rises from the table, heading to the garage to deal with the breaker situation, and I take a seat across from Mom.

“How was Fiji?” I ask her. Those two are always globe-trotting, and ever since I left home a few years back, they’ve been acting like a couple of twenty year olds going on honeymoons every other week.

Not that I try to think about it, but I’m sure there’s a reason I’m never invited to tag along on these little excursions.

That said, I think it’s pretty incredible that their love has stood the test of time. The divorce rate in this area is something like seventy-two percent, but these two have only ever had eyes for each other.

I can only hope to be as lucky in love as they are someday.

“Fiji was a dream,” Mom says, her eyes rolling back as she clasps her hands. “Oh, sweetheart, you should’ve seen how clear the water is. You can see all the fish and everything. Even got your father to snorkel for the first time.”

The kitchen lights flicker and the clock on the wall oven starts to flash. A moment later, Dad returns and tries not to act annoyed. But I don’t blame him … this happens every Sunday when Gram has every kitchen appliance in her house running at the same time as she whips up her elaborate feasts.

“Where are Maritza and Isaiah?” Dad asks, taking a seat next to Mom. “Thought I’d see them today. Wanted to talk to Isaiah about my nine-eleven.”

Mom swats her hand, and the stack of gold bangles on her wrist clink. “You’re never going to get around to restoring that old thing. It’s been sitting in storage since Melrose was twelve.”

My mother is a lover of all things shiny and new. My father loves his wife, his daughter, and anything that reminds him of his happy childhood—which includes that Porsche, which is a replica of the one Granddad had when Dad was younger.

“Someday, Bits,” Dad says, giving her a wink. “Someday soon we’ll be cruising down the Pacific Coast Highway in Janine.”

“You named it?” I chuckle.

Mom rolls her eyes, fighting a laugh. “Of course he did. Your father names everything.”

Dad grins and I think about his dorky penchant for naming squirrels that scamper into their yard, neighborhood free-roaming cats, and every car, truck, and motorcycle he’s ever owned. He was the one who named me Melrose—and it was only because he met my mother on the set of Melrose Place, where he was a production assistant and she was working in the hair and makeup department.

He couldn’t take his eyes off her teased blonde mane and cutesy Southern twang.

She lit up the room, he always says.

“Maritza and Isaiah seem to be getting pretty serious,” Mom says, studying me. “Always thought you’d be the one to settle down first.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.

Mom shrugs. “I don’t know. You’re older than she is, and you’ve always done everything first.”

“By a year, Mom. Older by a year,” I say. “Anyway, nobody gets married in their early twenties anymore, Mom.”

“I always see how googly-eyed those two are all the time, and I want that for you,” she says, offering a bittersweet smile, like she feels sorry for me and she’s offering me her sympathies. “Can’t remember the last time you brought a boy around.”

Neither can I.

And it isn’t by accident.

My parents are a bit … California-weird. If that’s even a thing. Mom is a Southern transplant who wears her Georgian accent loud and proud. Big hair, big lashes, big personality. Every once in a while, she’ll work her psychic friend, Miss Starla, into the conversation and by the end of it, she’s convinced whoever she’s talking to that they probably had a past life too. Dad is … Dad. A dead ringer for Kevin Costner, he thinks it’s hilarious anytime someone asks him for a picture or an autograph and he almost always goes along with it. Dad, too, believes in psychics, and Mom has him convinced they were forbidden lovers in a past life and this is why their love is so robust in this life—they can finally be together.

I try not to roll my eyes when they wax poetic about their previous lives, which they’ve both supposedly accessed via extremely expensive hypnotherapy sessions from some world-renowned guru in the mystic red mountains of Sedona.

Anyway, between the psychic stuff and their obsessions with crystals and essential oils, they’re good people. Just a lot to throw at somebody if I’m not serious about them, so I don’t ever subject them to the circus sideshow that is Bitsy and Rand Claiborne.

Two different timers chime in the kitchen, and Mom heads over to help Gram, who insists she doesn’t need her assistance. Same old song and dance.

“How’s work, Mel?” Dad asks. “Booked anything lately?”

I shake my head, picking at the white peonies sitting in the vase in front of me. “No gigs, but I’ve been auditioning like crazy.”

“You, uh, you doing okay?” he asks, chin tucked and his concentrated attention gliding across the room toward my preoccupied mother. I know what he’s asking.

“Yes, Dad,” I say.

My family has never been big on handouts or free rides, and I love that about them. We’ve all worked our asses off to get to where we are—except maybe Mom … she just married well. But Gram is self-made. My grandfather was self-made. My father and my uncle are self-made. Maritza is starting up her own PR agency as soon as she graduates from college. And I refuse to buck tradition.

“I’ve got enough money saved from that Lifetime movie,” I say, half-lying. It’s running out quicker than I realized despite the fact that I’ve become disgustingly frugal. Going on dates with wealthy men who took me to fine restaurants was the only way I was ever going to see the inside of Koi or Spago, and when I’m not dining on someone else’s dime, I’m eating steel cut oatmeal and avocado toast at home on the cheap. “I’m fine.”

For now.

He reaches across the table and covers my hand with his, giving me a gentle smile that crinkles the sides of his blue eyes.

Mom and Gram bring the food to the table and I locate plates and silver in the china cabinet.

“You know, Melrose, I was going to tell you … my good friend Cher always said that men are a luxury and not a necessity,” Gram says as she waves a wooden serving spoon in the air. “And I couldn’t agree more.”

I laugh to myself. She’s so random sometimes.

Gram points the spoon to me, a single penciled brow arching.

“So don’t worry about how happy your cousin is or how in love she is or any of that, my love. You do you.” She smiles and takes a seat at the head of the table. “Bitsy, pass the pepper mill, would you?”

She winks at me because she gets me.

She’s truly the only one who ever has.

We’re spirit animals, she and I.

We share a love of the dramatic arts, iconic films, and anything old Hollywood.

A lot of people love their grandmas, but I love mine more.

Sutter’s pushing a mower across the yard when I get home from Gram’s.

And he’s shirtless.

So very shirtless.

I park my car in the driveway and watch his tanned body glisten in the afternoon sun, my eyes skimming over the rippled muscles that wrap his torso, the way they bulge and move with each step and push.

For an insane little minute, I wonder what it’d be like to run my hands along them, to taste his hot flesh, to feel his full mouth against mine as the weight of his muscled body pins me until I surrender.

Yanking the keys from my ignition, I snap myself out of it and head inside.

I’m going mad.

I’m truly going mad.

He was nice to me once. Once.

And now I’m going all soft.

Good God. I need to pull myself together.