Malik Robertson adored his wife. She was smart on top of fine on top of tough on top of kind. She would start her days kickboxing and end her days baking. She made him laugh. She listened to him whenever he needed to complain. She gave him a daughter. She held him accountable. She trusted him; he trusted her. She was his greatest love, his best friend, his home, his life, his wife. But he suspected she might be just a little bit psycho.

Not in a full-on-Kathy-Bates-in-Mercy sort of way. Elizabeth was psycho the way that those kids who made that other kid eat all those worms in that book must have been psycho. Maybe that was just a standard eldest sibling sort of psycho. Malik always suspected his own older sister was a little bit psycho, too.

Earlier in the day, after Lizzie had gone outside to gawk at Katelyn and her new boyfriend, she had scurried up to Malik in the kitchen. Gleefully, she whispered, “Oh. My. Gosh. Malik. You’re never going to believe this.”

“Believe what?” he asked.

“Katelyn brought a boy who isn’t her boyfriend,” Lizzie said with mischief in her grin. When Malik asked for clarification, she’d fished out her phone, spent a few minutes searching through it, and then passed it to him saying, “What I mean is this is her boyfriend.”

She had pulled up a picture of her brother, Connor, with Katelyn on one side and another boy, several inches shorter than Connor with broad shoulders and pretty standard white guy features. He had blondish brownish hair, palish tannish skin, and bluish, greenish, hazelish eyes.

“And that is who my sister brought home,” Lizzie whispered as her mother led in a lanky guy with dark brown eyes and disheveled black hair. The guy from the photo had been pretty mundane looking, so much so that Malik had forgotten what he looked like as soon as he passed the phone back to Elizabeth. He had enough of a sense of what the guy looked like, though, to know that he wasn’t the guy who was following Martha around.

After Martha had introduced Malik and Elizabeth to the boy and led him away, Malik looked at his wife and shrugged. “Maybe she got a new boyfriend.

Lizzie had snorted skeptically, “A new boyfriend who is also an investment banker named Jason? I doubt it. I bet she just brought a filler.”

“A filler?”

“You know, like, a stand-in boyfriend,” Lizzie had explained. Malik had wanted an escape from the conversation, but he hadn’t wanted to offend or disappoint his wife. She had, in the past weeks, been getting more distant and moody. He liked to see her gleeful, even if it was a mischievous sort of glee.

“We should mess with them,” Lizzie suggested, grinning.

“Mess with them how?” Malik asked.

Lizzie had shrugged, “I was kind of thinking...okay. You could act like an overprotective older brother type. And I could just ask him a bunch of questions, like I don’t believe that he is who he says he is. Which, by the way, is true. I don’t believe he is who he says he is.”

“You want to torment your little sister and her boyfriend?” Malik clarified.

Once, back when they were in college, Elizabeth had chastised Malik for not being nice enough to his opponent in a debate during their speech class. Then, as though niceness was reserved for nervous college kids, one decade later, she stood rolling her eyes at him and saying, “He’s not her boyfriend, and besides, the whole point of little sisters is to torment them.”

Malik had two little sisters and he had not been allowed to torment them. He had been expected to protect them, and to keep an eye on their boyfriends, but never to torment them. When they were kids, his little sister, Natasha, had broken the controller to his PS4. Angry, he’d called her a spoiled brat. Then, she started to cry and he’d been forced to apologize. Protecting his little sisters meant protecting their feelings from him as well.

Malik’s wife, who he adored, really enjoyed tormenting her little sister, though. The overprotective big brother type in him wanted to protect Katelyn from Lizzie, as Lizzie drilled pretend-Jason with questions. With each question, the poor kid got more nervous. Eventually he started babbling, and Malik was pretty sure he could see sweat beading up on the kid’s forehead. Katelyn was glaring at her sister intently throughout all of it. When their parents entered the room, Lizzie finally quit and Malik felt the pressure in his chest release.

Malik tried to distance his wife from her sister by pulling her into his side. Lizzie leaned into his chest, kissed his cheek, and whispered, “Look. They aren’t even touching.”

“Just watch the movie,” Malik told her, but her dad was still fumbling with the remote, trying to get the movie started.

Lizzie smiled sweetly at her husband, and shook her head. Her sunset hair dusted over her shoulders; she was mesmerizing. Then she leaned back towards her sister and spoke. Her voice was quiet and barely audible. She was so quiet, in fact, that Malik probably wouldn’t have heard her if it weren’t for the years that he had spent tuning into that voice. He’d listened for that voice in crowds and in cries and in whispers. Hearing her now, when she only intended her words for her sister, seemed like a sign of the strength of their marriage.

“Is everything okay? Between you and Jason, I mean?” Elizabeth asked her sister. “You don’t seem that...cozy.”

“Not all of us are fans of PDA,” Katelyn hissed back. Malik could hear her because she was all venom and no stealth. Their parents still missed it, though, because Martha was telling Jon how to set up the movie and Jon was busy repeating, “I know, I know! I know what I’m doing!”

“We’re framily, Katy-Bear,” Elizabeth laughed. “It wouldn’t be PDA. It would just be DA.”

Malik watched Jason--or fake Jason--redden at his ears. The fake Jason tugged Katelyn towards him, probably in an attempt to get her to quit arguing with her sister. Malik assumed this would be a fruitless attempt, after all, it had been a fruitless attempt when he’d used the same tactic with his wife. But then, the fake Jason whispered something into Katelyn’s ear and kissed her forehead. Rather than launching back into the argument with her sister, Katelyn leaned into his side, just a little. It was tentative and slight. It probably wouldn’t qualify as PDA even if they had been in public. Lizzie scowled at them and then nuzzled herself back into her husband’s side.

The pizza arrived before Jon had figured out the TV. Jon answered the door while Martha fetched the plates. While they were gone, Malik set up the TV so that they would just have to hit play. For a moment, Malik thought that Lizzie might try to use the opportunity to resume tormenting her sister. She had turned back to Katelyn, but then, rather than saying anything, she just watched them. Katelyn had her face turned up to the guy and they were just talking, quietly. He said something that Malik couldn’t hear, and then Katelyn laughed and tilted her head back into his shoulder.

Malik never doubted his wife. Usually, Lizzie was right. Sure. He didn’t always agree with her, but he did always support her. So he didn’t doubt that she was right when she told him that this guy was a fake Jason. But, he also suspected that this guy might be better than the real Jason. A few weeks before, Lizzie had gotten off a call with her sister that made her livid. She’d ranted to Malik about it afterwards because the guy that Katelyn was dating had made some slight about her weight and how she should be getting her lattes made non-fat if she wanted to see any improvement.

Malik couldn’t picture this guy saying anything like that. In fact, Malik got the impression that the fake Jason appreciated Katelyn’s curves. Earlier, when Martha was introducing the fake Jason to Malik, Katelyn had come into the kitchen. Fake-Jason had glanced at her, and his eyes had traveled from her shoulders to her hips before he looked away with a slight pink tint across his cheeks. Right then, while sitting in the living room, fake Jason had his hand on Katelyn’s side with his fingertips just slightly pressed into her stomach.

Lizzie decided against saying whatever it was she was going to say and turned her attention back to her husband. She pressed her cheek against his shoulder and asked, “Have you seen our little one?”

“I think she’s helping your mom fetch plates in the kitchen,” Malik said. He was proven correct a moment later when they heard a crash and a cry. Malik let out a laugh, disentangled himself from his wife, and went into the kitchen to fetch his daughter and clean up her mess.