Trying my best not to constantly think about Satan and his coach, I had loaded my plate up with a portion of noodles and chicken parm before I took a stool around the kitchen island we were all eating at. The only time the dining room was ever used was if it was a holiday. I’d only gotten about three bites in, chewing slowly, when my brother asked the question I should have seen coming. I’d been too quiet, and that didn’t happen often.
Before I could think of what the hell to tell them, my mom made a noise as she made her way around the island, one hand holding a plate, her other hand holding a glass of wine so big, she had to have poured at least half a bottle inside of it.
“Damn, Mom. You should have just brought the bottle over instead of dirtying a glass.” I snickered as she set the glass down more carefully than she’d probably ever set me down as a baby.
She rolled her eyes as she put her plate down beside it. “Mind your own business. I’ve had a long day, and it’s good for the heart.”
I snorted and raised my eyebrows as I finally got a chance to take in her clothes: skinny jeans I’m pretty sure were mine and a bright red blouse I thought I could remember my sister wearing before she’d moved out.
“Anyway, Grumpy. What’s up your butt? Did you get in trouble at the LC?” she asked as she took a seat, oblivious to the looks I was giving her for “borrowing” my clothes.
She had sent me a message halfway through the day asking how the meeting had gone. I hadn’t responded. I hadn’t even given myself a chance to think about whether I wanted to tell them anything about my offer or not. It wasn’t like I lied regularly. I didn’t. But… what if it didn’t work out? What if I got them excited for no reason? I’d let them down enough over the years.
Yeah, that thought was a shard of glass right down the windpipe.
Drawing my gaze away from the woman who got hit on more in a week than I had in my entire life, I focused back down on my plate, twirling the tines of my fork into the noodles with a shrug. “Nothing,” I answered too quickly, immediately aware that I’d screwed up by saying that.
There were three different scoffs around the island. I didn’t need to look up to know they were all sharing a look with each other like they thought I was full of shit—which I was—but it was my brother that finally snorted. “Damn, Jas, you didn’t even try to pull that lie off.”
I made a face at my food before looking at him and bringing the middle finger closest to Jonathan up to my face and pretending to rub at my inner eye with it.
The only member of my family that sort of looked like me with his kind of tan skin, black hair, and dark eyes, stuck his tongue out. Thirty-two years old and he stuck his tongue out at me. What a little bitch.
“We might have believed you if you hadn’t said ‘nothing.’ Now we know you’re lying,” our mom egged him on. “You not telling us when something is bothering you?” She pretty much snorted, her attention down on the chicken she was cutting into pieces. “Ha! Since when have you done that?”
This was what I got for making them my best friends over the years. Other than Karina, who I spoke to less and less over the last few years, and a couple of other people I didn’t mind, my family was it for me. My mom said I had serious trust issues, but honestly, the more people I met, the more I didn’t want to meet more.
“You okay, Jas?” James, my brother’s much better half for the last ten-ish years, give or take, asked, his tone worried.
Moving my fork tines in the noodles some more, I looked over at the most handsome man I had ever seen in my life and nodded my head. With dark hair, the clearest hazel eyes, and his skin color a shade of honey brown that didn’t give anyone a single clue about his heritage, he could have dated anyone. Anyone. Literally. I’d seen straight men check him out countless times. If he had decided to be a model, it would have been over for every other male model in the world. Even my sister, who was all about women 24/7, three hundred and sixty-five days out of the year, had said before she’d marry him if he asked. I would marry him even if he didn’t ask. He was the nicest man, good looking, successful, and down-to-earth. We all loved him.
He loved us back, but not the same way he loved my brother Jojo.
People liked to say love was blind, but there was no way love could be that blind. I’d stopped trying to figure out my brother Jonathan and James’s relationship a long time ago. How he’d ended up with the biggest idiot in the family, I didn’t get. My brother had giant Dumbo ears and a gap between his two front teeth that my mom had claimed was so adorable his whole life, he’d never bothered getting braces. I’d had a little bit of an overbite and ended up with braces for three years.
Not that I was hung up over it or anything.
“I’m good. Don’t listen to them,” I said to James, sounding distracted enough that I knew I was messing up again. So I tried to change the subject and chose the most obvious one: my mom’s husband, who should have been at the table with us… but wasn’t. “Where’s Ben at, Mom?”
“He’s out with his friends,” the redheaded woman who had given birth to me, explained quickly before raising her gaze and aiming her fork in my direction. “Don’t change the subject. What’s wrong with you?”
Of course that didn’t work.
I just barely held back a groan as I shoveled a piece of chicken into my mouth and chewed slowly before answering, “I’m fine. I’m just… thinking about stuff, and it’s putting me in a bad mood.”
My brother snickered beside me. “You? In a bad mood? No.”
I reached over before he knew what was happening and pinched him on the puny thing he called a biceps.
“Oww,” he cried, yanking his arm away and cradling it.
I tried to do it again, but he flailed his elbow to keep me from being able to.
“Mom! Look at her!” my brother whined, gesturing toward me like there was someone else attacking him. “James, help me!”
“Snitch,” I whispered, still trying to pinch him. “Bitch.”
His husband laughed but didn’t choose sides. No wonder I liked him so much.
“Quit hurting your brother,” Mom said for probably the thousandth time in my entire life.
When he moved his hands to block me around the area of his waist, I reached up, quick, quick, quick and flicked him on the neck before he turned his mouth to try and bite me. “Momma’s boy,” I whispered, snatching my hand back.
He tipped his head from side to side with a smirk, mocking me like he always had when Mom took his side. She always did. The suck-up was her favorite, even though she’d never admit it, but the rest of us knew the truth. I loved both my brothers, but I got why my mom loved him the most. If you ignored the similarities between him and Pluto, he always put a smile on someone’s face. Those giant ears had that effect on people.
“Baby girl, even I know something’s up with you just from the way you’re talking. What’s wrong?” my brother’s husband asked, leaning forward over the table with an expression so full of concern, it made me feel guiltier than anything my mom or Jojo could have said.
I wanted to tell them.
But…
I could, and probably always would, clearly remember how my brother had cried angry tears when we first found out I’d been left without a partner. My mom would never admit she’d been devastated, but I knew her too well to not see the signs. I’d seen the same signs after every marriage before her current one had failed, when she knew her life was changed forever and there was no going back to the way things were before.
Right after I’d quit training to compete—because you couldn’t exactly practice a lot of elements in pairs skating by yourself, and I’d been totally aware of how slim my hopes were in women’s singles—I had emotionally turned into myself majorly. The right term might have been depression, but I didn’t want to think about it. It wasn’t the first time it had happened; I was a sore loser.