“You’re not listening!” Mattie’s voice jolted Alice out of her daze.

Her head snapped up and she clutched her iPhone, pressing it closer to her ear and mumbling, “I am, I’m listening. Something about neuropeptides being responsible for pair-bonding in humans…”

“That was two paragraphs ago.” Mattie’s mouth sounded like it was barely moving. Alice knew that meant her sister was really mad.

Alice snuggled deeper under her mountainous down comforter and decided to try to lighten the subject a little. “So you’re telling me Wade and I are together just based on brain chemistry?”

Maddie sighed. “I’m trying to finish my dissertation and you want to talk about your boyfriend? Where are your priorities?”

She grinned. “What priorities?”

“Grow up, Alice!”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, although now she was thinking about Wade-about his big smile and big eyes and big hands that turned her this way and that way, and his big…

“Can I just finish this chapter?” Maddie interrupted her thoughts again.

“Go on.” Alice assured her, “I’m listening.”

And she tried, she really did, but distraction came easily to Alice, always had.

Once when she was young and Maddie was babysitting, Alice had wandered off at the beach chasing a lizard across the sand, panicking her older sister to tears and, when she finally found Alice on her belly staring at the rock the lizard had disappeared under, to a sub-zero sort of anger as well. They hadn’t spoken for the rest of the day. Alice hated when Maddie was angry and tried to do everything she could to avoid it. If that included listening to the latest chapter in Maddie’s dissertation, well, certain sacrifices had to be made.

But Alice couldn’t help it-her eyes were already closing, her mind drifting. A faint mew from somewhere way down there on the floor made her smile. Then Dinah jumped up onto the bed, her motor running, rubbing her white head against the hand Alice was using to hold the phone. Alice petted her with the other hand, scratching behind the cat’s ears, tracing the line of her spine, making her tail rise. Wade says I do that when he pets me. The thought made her shiver.