“That wouldn’t hurt you either,” Ezra said.
I made my way down the hall to the kitchen, and they all stopped talking when I came ins. Mae stood amongst a mass of dishes and food splayed out all over the counter tops. She had white powder on her cheeks and some kind of red sauce dripped all over an elegant white apron.
Jack sat on a stool pulled up to the counter, and I’m sure he fancied himself helping, but I’d imagine that he spent more time playing with the ingredients. As it was, he was juggling a tomato and a lemon when I walked in.
“Oh, you look so much better!” Mae beamed at me. Jack dropped the tomato on the counter and deliberately looked away from me. “Wasn’t that bath fabulous?”
“Yeah, it was pretty great.” I ran my fingers through my tangles of wet hair, and I could almost see Mae longing to play with it. Walking over to the mess she was making, I was careful to keep a distance from Jack. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to make you some kind of comfort food,” Mae smiled grimly at me. “I used to be an amazing cook, I swear! Everyone in my neighborhood loved my cooking!” Jack scoffed, and she reached across the counter to slap him on the arm. “I was! You would’ve been thrilled to eat anything I made!”
“Whatever you say.” Jack leaned back in the stool, moving farther out of arm’s length, in case Mae decided to swat him again.
“It’s just been so long since I’ve cooked anything.” Mae looked sourly at the mess around her, which consisted of everything from cucumbers to pears to pie crusts. “I’ve just forgotten what everything tastes like.” A spoon was in a bowl of something red, and she gave it one superficial swirl, then looked apologetically at me. “I don’t think that I’ve made anything that you can actually eat.”
“What about this?” Jack held up the tomato towards me, but I just shook my head.
“I’m okay. I’m not even hungry.”
“Oh!” Mae shouted, her eyes glittering. “Your brother is a cook, isn’t he?”
“Not professionally, but yeah, he’s really good,” I told her hesitatingly. I liked Milo and all, but there was too much going on over here, and I didn’t really want him to come over. At least not tonight.
“Oh fantastic! And I’m sure he knows all of your favorite recipes!” She overflowed with her own genius. “Here. Why don’t you just give me his phone number and I’ll give him a call. Oh, what time is it? It’s not too late is it?” She glanced around for a clock, and it was only a quarter to nine. “He’s still awake, isn’t he?”
I nodded, and Mae whipped her phone out of her pocket, and I gave her his number.
“Oh, Milo!” Mae smiled so wide, it looked almost painful. “I’m so glad you answered! Oh, I didn’t wake you, did I? I’m sorry, love. I don’t want to disturb you.” He must’ve answered with something positive, because she laughed lightly, and continued about making me the perfect meal to make me feel better.
“I’m really not very hungry.” I lowered my voice considerably, just in case Mae might hear, but she was talking to Milo and swooping around the kitchen, gathering pots and pans and whatever she thought she’d needed. “Why do you guys have pots and pans anyway?”
“It makes us look more normal.” Jack rolled his shoulders. “I mean, we don’t really need kitchens, and in a household of four people, we have seven bathrooms.”
“Bathrooms add resale value!” Ezra said. From his tone, I gathered that this wasn’t the first time they’d had this argument. “We’re not going to live here for that long, so its best if we get our money’s worth.”
“What do you mean you’re not gonna live here long?” I had been leaning on the counter, but I snapped my head sharply and looked over at him.
“I can only be twenty-six for so long before the neighbors start to notice,” Ezra elaborated, but it still took a minute for it to sink it. They were never going to age, but everyone around them would. “We move every five years so, but we’ve been staying around Minneapolis for quite awhile.”
“I’ve never lived anywhere else,” Jack added.
“You were born here?” I gave him an odd look. For no real reason, I had just always kinda imagined that he was a transplant from California or Vegas or something like that.
“Stillwater, actually, but it still makes it tricky living that close to my family.” He had said it casually, like it was no big thing, but something had just dawned on me, and he noticed the shift in my expression. “We can’t see our families. We change, at first, to look better, and then we don’t change at all.”
“And it’s too hard watching them grow old.” Ezra had somehow managed to take something that was really terrible sound at least vaguely soothing, but my heart still clenched.
I looked over at Mae, standing at the stove and chatting amicably with my brother, and felt the full ramification of what he was saying.