Greg’s head lolls back against the seat. “Jacky, you can ask Elsie all those things you wanted to know. Hey, Elsie.” He attempts to whisper in my ear, though it comes out slurred and very loud. “Jacky has a thing for you. Like, he stares all the time. And he asks so many questions about you.”
“Oh, Greg.” This is mortifying. “That’s . . . really not what’s happening.”
In the front seat, Jack’s silence is quietly, painfully loud.
“Full disclosure, Jacky,” Greg continues with a loopy grin, “I made up all the answers. I dunno if she likes to travel, if she wants kids, if she’s into movies. Like, how’m I s’posed to know?”
Jack’s expression through the rearview mirror is sealed. “She has a thing for Twilight, I’ve discovered.”
Greg is delighted. “The vampire or the wolf—”
“Greg, how was the retreat?” I interrupt him with a smile.
“Sooo mandatory. But then my tooth exploded in my mouth, and I got to leave early. Hey, you know how sometimes there are shoes on the power lines? Who puts them there?”
“Um, not sure. Listen, do you remember if you got a chance to check your texts on your way to the dentist? Or your email? Or listen to your voicemails?”
He stares at me with an intense, solemn expression. I tense with anticipation as his eyes go wide. Then he says, “Oh my God. We should play I Spy!”
I sigh.
Fifteen minutes later, after Greg claims to spy a bear, P. Diddy, and a can of garbanzo beans, we park outside a pretty Roxbury house carved into two apartments.
“Where are your keys, Greg?” I ask.
“I’ve got a spare,” Jack says, finishing in twenty seconds a parallel parking job that would have taken me twenty minutes and my whole dignity. “Just make sure he doesn’t wander into traffic.”
I’d like to think that Greg’s place is what mine and Cece’s would be like if we managed to lift our credenza, could afford non-bedbugged furniture, and were less prone to frolicking in our own filth. It’s simple and cozy, covered in knickknacks that remind me of Greg’s personality and his quirky sense of humor. Jack dwarfs the entrance, but he doesn’t seem out of place. He obviously spends time here, because he knows exactly where to find the light switch, how to raise the thermostat, which shelf to set the mail on.
“Cutlet!” Greg yells, fisting Jack’s shirt. “Cutlet—where is she?”
I look around, expecting to see a cat slinking closer, but it’s just us in the apartment—me idling, Jack relentlessly inching Greg toward a bedroom. “On my desk at work. Let’s go take a nap, G. Sounds nice, right?”
“Did you water her? Has she changed? Does she still remember me?”
“I watered it. Her. She looks the same. Not sure she remembers you, since she’s nonsentient—like most cactuses. How ’bout that nap?”
“Can I have a drink first, please?”
“Elsie, could you get him some water while I put him to bed?”
“Milk! Did you know that milk comes from nipples?”
Jack and I exchange a brief Isn’t coparenting fun glance, and I rush into the kitchen. I can’t find the actual glasses, so I pour the milk into a Bonne Maman jar. I’ll bring it to Greg, then leave in an Uber the second they disappear into the bedroom. I have my lecture to prep. Cece doesn’t know where I am. I can’t be alone with Jack. Yes, perfect.
“Here you go,” I tell Greg, who’s being herded to his bedroom while humming “Gangnam Style.” “You only have almond milk—technically not from a nipple.” I hand him the jar and—big mistake. Huge. Because Greg sips none percent of it before spilling the entirety of it on Jack’s shirt.
I gasp. Greg laughs uproariously while yelling something about the milk being back on nipples. Jack gives his brother a patient, ever-suffering-dad smile. “You having fun?”
“Soooo much. Hey, remember when we switched Mom’s yogurt with mayo?”
“I do. It was genius—your idea, of course.”
“And Mom puked.”
“She was pissed. Come on, let’s go to bed.”
“I got grounded for a day. But you got grounded for two weeks, because she kind of hates you.”
“Worth it.” Jack smiles, like he doesn’t mind being told that his mom hates him. Greg tries to embrace him, and Jack stops him. “Bud, I’ll get non-nipple milk all over you.”
“Why don’t I get him into bed?” I take Greg’s arm, pulling him with me. “Go find something clean.”
The bedroom is just a tad messier than the rest of the place, the bed still unmade from Greg’s last night in Boston. He’s narrating a documentary on the environmental toll of almond production, which makes cajoling him into lying down marginally easier. I don’t turn on the lights, and he falls quiet while I’m untying his shoe.
Thank God he’s asleep. I’ll be out of here in a minute and—
“I like you, Elsie.”
I look up from Greg’s boot. His eyes are closed. “I like you, too, Greg.”
“Remember how you said we could be friends?”
“Yeah.”
“I want to be friends.”
My heart breaks a little. Not when you snap out of it and check your email, you won’t. “Awesome. Let’s be friends.”
“Good. Because I like you. Did I mention it?”
“Yup.”
“Not like like you. I don’t know if I can like like people.”
“I know,” I say softly. I pull the boot off and get started on the other.
“But you’re cool. Like . . . a Barbie.”
“A Barbie?”
“You’re not blond. But there’s one of you for every occasion.”
Something catches the corner of my eye and I turn. Jack. Standing in the doorframe. Listening to us. His expression is dark, his brow is furrowed, and his chest is . . .
Bare.
He’s taken off his soiled shirt, and for some reason I am physically unable to look anywhere but at his body. Which has me realizing that I was totally wrong about him.
He is . . . well, he is big. And well muscled, very well muscled. And I can see all the . . . all that stuff that people always talk about—the bulk, the mass, the abs, the biceps and the triceps stretching under the ink. But he’s not made the way I thought he’d be. I expected a gym rat body with 0.3 percent body fat and bulging veins, but he’s a little different. He’s real. Imperfectly, usefully strong. There’s something unrefined about him, as though he stumbled upon all this mass by chance. As though he’s never even thought about taking a mirror selfie in his life.
Something warm and liquid twists behind my navel, and the feeling is so rare for me, so unfamiliar, for a moment I barely recognize it. Then I do, and I flush hotly.
What is wrong with me? Why do I find the idea of someone not going to the gym attractive? Why can’t I stop staring at him, and why is he staring back?
Jack clears his throat. He turns to reach for something to wear in Greg’s dresser, and whatever’s happening between his shoulder blades looks like a religious experience.
“Elsie,” Greg mumbles from the bed. I’m grateful for the reminder to look away. “Is soy milk from a nipple?”
“Oh, um . . . no.” My voice is hoarse. Breathing’s hard, but marginally easier once Jack walks out of the room. “Soy’s a bean.”
“You’re so wise. And full of layers. Like . . .”
“An onion?”
“Like a yogurt with the fruit on the bottom.”
I smile and drag a quilt over him. “Let’s play a game. I’ll go in the living room, and we’re both going to count however high we can. Whoever counts highest wins.” I have vague memories of Mom making Lucas and Lance do this. Of course, like everything with Lucas and Lance, it always devolved into them fighting over who could count the highest and waking up the entire house.
“What a shitty game.” Greg yawns. “I’ll kick your ass.”
“I bet.” I close the door between thirteen and fourteen. Jack’s waiting on the green Lawson couch, wearing a too-tight hoodie that’s probably tentlike on Greg. The mysteries of genetics.
He doesn’t look up. He sits motionless, elbows on his knees, staring at one of Greg’s colorful, artsy wall prints with a half-vacant, all-tense expression.
My stomach sinks.
He’s pissed. Really pissed. I’ve seen him amused, curious, annoyed, even angry last night with Austin, but this . . . He’s furious. Because I’m here. Because he thinks I extorted his brother. Because I overfilled the milk jar. There’s going to be a whole messy confrontation, and after the last three days, I’m not even sure I want to avoid it.
“Listen.” I take two steps toward him, one back, two forward. If we have to argue, we might as well be close. Keep the volume down to avoid waking Greg. I run my sweaty palms over the back of my leggings. “I know I haven’t been exactly . . . truthful. And I assume you’re figuring out what’s going on between Greg and me. But this entire shit show is reaching a quantum-entanglement, spontaneous-parametric-down-conversion, decoherent stage. And I’m asking you to wait till Greg feels better to have a frank conversation with him.”
Jack opens his mouth, no doubt to unleash his wrath, and then . . .
He doesn’t.
Instead he closes it, shakes his head, and covers his eyes with his hands.
Oh, fuck. What is this?
“Jack?” No answer. “Jack, I . . .”
I debate what to do for a moment, then go sit next to him. If he starts yelling now . . . well. R.I.P. my eardrum.