“Don’t you work tonight?” I call over my shoulder as I wander out of the kitchen toward the packages.
“Heading in right after this is done,” he calls back.
I scan the mishmash of shipping labels and find the sender’s name: Julia Nowak. An address in Chicago.
Then the receiver’s name: Julia Nowak, but with our address.
I pad back into the kitchen. “What are all these boxes?”
“No idea,” Miles says.
On cue, the front door flings open, and Julia crashes into the room with more packages. “Hey, Daph,” she says, bustling past.
I follow her into the living room, and she sets the boxes down with a huff. “What you got there?” I ask.
She passes me on her way back to the kitchen. “Just the essentials.”
I peek my head back in as she’s grabbing a sparkling water from the fridge.
“Essential what?” Miles asks.
She’s already squeezing between us to leave the room again, her voice growing fainter as she retreats to the cardboard treasure trove at the far end of the apartment.
“Whatever I can’t live without,” she calls. “Paid my roommate to box it up. Once I find a place, I’ll go back for the rest.”
Miles’s head snaps up from the pasta pot.
Our eyes lock. He shakes his head, a general I have no idea pantomime.
“It’s okay,” I say under my breath.
He shakes his head, calls loud and clear, “Jules? Come here for a sec.”
She pops her head back into the kitchen. “Yeah?”
“Quick question,” he says. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
With doe-eyed innocence, she asks, “What do you mean?”
“Why do you need more stuff,” he says. “Your stuff is already swallowing the apartment.”
“I told you I was thinking about sticking around longer,” she replies.
“Thinking about staying another week,” he says. “That’s what you said. A week ago.”
“Exactly. I’m going to stay for another few days. Then fly back to Chicago to pack up the rest of my stuff and drive it out here. But I needed my good clothes for job interviews, so I had Riley mail some stuff.”
“Job interviews,” he says.
“I’ll need a new job,” she says. “I can’t live with you forever.”
He runs a hand down his face. “When did you decide all this?”
“When I got here and realized you were in total denial about what you’ve just been through and you obviously need me.”
“Julia, I’m—”
“—fine,” she finishes with an eye roll. “You’re always fine.”
“I’m going to just . . . go in the other room,” I say, creeping away.
“No, don’t,” Julia says cheerily, already backing toward the front door. “Ashleigh’s actually double-parked downstairs waiting for me, so I have to run!”
She whirls out the same way she whirled in.
After a beat of silence, Miles and I look at each other.
“I’ll get her a hotel,” he says. “Or I’ll get you a hotel.”
“First of all, any hotel that will have a summer vacancy this last minute is not one I’m going to stay in,” I say. “And second of all, I can handle one more week of flat irons in the sink and bronzer on the floor.”
His brow lifts. “You sure?”
“Positive,” I say. “But how do you feel?”
He clears his throat and turns back to the noodles, scooping one out with a fork to test it before carrying the pot to the strainer in the sink. “I don’t know,” he says. “She’s still acting like everything’s normal, but I know my sister. She’s hiding from something, and she doesn’t usually hide.”
“Maybe she really is just worried about you,” I tell him.
He dumps the noodles back into the pot. “Why should she be worried about me?”
I stare at him.
“It was three and a half months ago,” he points out. “What does she need me to do to prove I’m okay? Get a tattoo that says HAPPILY SINGLE on my forehead?”
“That would scream ‘I’m okay,’ ” I say.
“You know what I mean.” He dumps the pesto in with the noodles and swirls the pot around. “I’m thirteen years older than her. I’ve been on my own since she was a kid. I don’t need my barely grown sister worrying about me. Especially when worrying about me mostly just consists of leaving her dirty clothes on the hallway floor, and setting her phone alarm to top volume, then snoozing it five hundred times.”
I get down a couple of bowls and some forks, and pass them to him to start dishing it up. “Do you want me to kick her out?”
He eyes me briefly, then goes back to scooping pasta into the bowls. “I can’t,” he says. “Not when I don’t know what’s going on.”
He adds a couple whole basil leaves to each bowl and passes me one.
I set mine aside and touch his shoulders, ease them down. “If you ever need to vent,” I say, “text me. You know I love complaining, and it’s no fun to be the only one.”
His jaw softens. He sets his pasta aside too and pulls me into a hug that makes my bones liquefy, his breath warm against my neck. I close my eyes and breathe him in, and it’s not complicated: I want him, I like him, and I care about him enough to push those first two thoughts aside.
