Chapter 11

Ranée came home after dinner. She had a piece of straw in her hair and another one stuck to the bottom of her Vans. I almost asked, then decided I didn’t want to know the answer. A different question popped out. “Why is Sean all up in Jack’s business?”

She was opening the washing machine lid but paused and stuck her head out of the tiny utility closet at the end of our galley kitchen.

“Pardonnez-soy?”

“Moi.”

“What about you?”

“No, you’re mixing languages. The expression is ‘pardonnez—never mind. You mentioned that Sean is the one who wanted you to make me talk to Jack again.”

“I never said that.” She disappeared into the laundry closet again.

“It’s what you meant.”

“You read minds now?” Her voice was muffled as she stuck her head almost into the machine.

“You said you wanted Sean to get off your back and it had something to do with me talking to Jack.”

“I guess if you’re reaching you could connect those dots.”

“I’m connecting them.” There was a loud thump as the washer lid clanged shut followed by a curse. Ranée knew a lot of good curses. I made a mental note of this one for the next time the network went down at work.

I waited until she rustled around in the laundry closet for long enough that there was not possibly anything else she could be doing in there, even if she decided to separate and fold all her clothes before she reappeared. When she finally walked out, she had a big old piece of lint from the dryer guard clinging to her hair on the opposite side from the straw. I almost told her. Then I decided she deserved it.

“Are you ready to talk about this now?” I asked as she veered toward the hallway and her bedroom.

“I didn’t know there was anything to discuss.”

“Ranée. Stop being weird. Why does Sean care if I talk to Jack?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then why not just say that?”

“I don’t know.” She ran her fingers through her hair and caught the lint, holding it in front of her to glare at it with slightly crossed eyes before she changed direction to drop it in the kitchen garbage can.

“Seriously. Something about this smells funny.”

She immediately checked the bottom of her shoes, discovered the piece of straw, and sent it after the lint into the trash.

“Not literally smells funny. I mean about this whole you/Sean/Jack situation.”

“There’s no situation.”

“Then why do you keep pushing the issue?”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why do you suddenly have so many questions about Sean?” Then they shot wide open. “Wait, are you crushing on my brother now?”

I snorted. “Am I sixteen? No. Stop deflecting.”

“Then it’s Jack. This is about him. Why so many questions?” She gave the same gasp she gave every time she found a new carton of ice cream in the freezer like it had been delivered by magical freezer elves instead of me. “Have you been talking to Jack? Do you love him now? Isn’t he way better than Paul?”

It was my turn to examine her face, trying to figure out why she was being deliberately obtuse. I wouldn’t mention that I’d been talking to him yet, mostly because I didn’t want her to think she’d succeeded in bossing me into it. But also because I’d thought of another angle to get the information I wanted.

“I don’t actually even know anything about your brother. He’s older, right?”

“Five years.”

That would make him in his early thirties. “So if you’re both from Nevada, how’d you both end up on the west coast?”

She walked back into the living room and kicked off her shoes before settling on the couch. “School and then work for both of us.”

“You didn’t like Nevada?”

“It’s Nevada.” She said it like it explained everything. I’d only driven through it on the way to other places, and based on what I’d seen from the interstate, maybe it did.

“What does Sean do? I know he’s outdoors a lot.” Maybe it would give me some insight into how he knew Jack.

“He is. That’s his job.”

“What does that mean?” I remembered the flannel shirt she’d bought him. “Whoa. Is he an actual lumberjack?”

“No. He’s an outdoor nature guide. He works in the national forest outside of Portland.”

“So pretty much a lumberjack.”

She rolled her eyes. “Actually, he was a nurse, but he burnt out and had a career change.”

“Isn’t he kind of young to have burned out of one career already?”

“He worked in a pretty intense unit. There’s a million things you can do in nursing, but he wanted a total change, and he moved to the woods. Well, near them. I think he can’t get enough of them right now because of growing up in the desert. I don’t know if he’ll ever get tired of the rain and the green.”

I glanced out our window, and even though my view was another building I smiled. Even on the sixth floor I could still hear faint snatches of sound from the street. “I get that. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of the city.” I’d grown up north of LA in the most stereotypical suburban neighborhood imaginable, where all the houses and shopping centers and schools looked the same as they bowed to the power of the HOA.

I loved the chaos and constant change of the city, the way millionaires lived next to condemned buildings, and half the walls of both places were covered with spray paint, and sometimes it was graffiti and sometimes it evolved into art.

“Me either,” she said. She rose and stretched. “I’ve had a long day. I’m going to go hit the hay.”

I pointed to the spot in her hair where the straw had made itself at home. “Looks like you already did. What were you up to today?”

She smirked and plucked it from her hair. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she asked as she dropped it in the trash can.

“I think I really, really wouldn’t. But I’ll tell you what I would like to know. How Sean knows Jack and why he’s on your case to connect me to him. If Jack’s so great, why not hook you two up?”

“This is how I’d know you don’t have a brother even if that was the only thing I’d ever heard you say. Brothers don’t set their sisters up with anyone, ever. And Sean is overprotective.”

“So…Jack’s not good enough for you but he’s good enough for me?”

“No. It’s that Sean still doesn’t think I’m old enough to date.”

“Does he know you’re twenty-seven?”

“No. He still thinks I’m fourteen. But he knows you’re thirty-one, and he knows I think you’re all right, and that’s good enough for him.”

“You think I’m all right? Aw, you love me.”

“You’re fine. Good enough for Jack.”

We’d been joking again until she said that. My eyebrows went up. What an interesting way for her to put it. “It’s your job as my friend to make sure he’s good enough for me, isn’t it?”

She smiled. “Jack’s a special case. You should get to know him.”

“I kind of have been,” I admitted finally and waited for the interrogation to start.

“Well, well, well,” she said, but softly, and with a smile she slipped into her bedroom and shut the door.