Jamie
Allan offered Jo a beer first and, when she shook her head, he held it out to Jamie. If Jamie refused, he knew Allan would make some excuse about really just wanting a water. He wouldn’t drink in front of Jo if Jamie signaled that he shouldn’t.
Jamie nodded and took it. “Thanks.”
“Hey, so.” Allan circled the island so he could take up a position next to Jo, which meant he was out of Jamie’s way but also just closer to Jo. He pointed back and forth between the two of them before turning to her as he cracked open his own can. “All I’ve got from Mom is that she came home one day and you two were together. So how’d that happen?”
On Thursdays Jamie prepped on the kitchen island because it meant facing, and being able to fully participate in, a conversation with Jo, but he carefully kept his eyes on the cabbage. That was two months ago, and he hadn’t talked to Allan about Jo. It wasn’t like he’d been keeping her a secret, but this was his own brother. The one who’d just split with his girlfriend, sure, but that was recent. Jamie could get away without talking to Shane, maybe, but …
Jo just snorted. “For the record, I did not accuse him of being the Milwaukee Millennium Murderer.”
“Wait, what?” Allan laughed.
Jamie looked up. It was safe. He should’ve known it was, because Jo wasn’t going to get mad at him for things like that, even if being in this house with any of his nuclear family brought him back to those feelings. “I was kind of insulted at how quickly she dismissed me.”
“No, wait.” Allan couldn’t seem to figure out which one of them to confront, and he turned to focus on Jamie. “Anyone who’s ever met you would know you aren’t a serial killer.” He frowned as he turned to Jo. “And I thought you met him in May. Why would you say he wasn’t the Milwaukee Millennium Murderer?”
“Wait, wait.” Jamie held up a hand. “Mom didn’t tell you?”
“Aw, man.” Allan ducked his head. “Listen, I love her, but sometimes when she calls I put it on speaker and just say uh-huh in the pauses, you know?”
So that meant Jo had to explain, yet again, and Allan’s eyebrows went up when he realized Jo was that friend, and he demanded to see all the research she’d pulled together. Jo said she’d go get it, and as soon as she left Allan leaned across the island and stage whispered “Dude, do you see the way she looks at you?”
It was totally out of left field, but Jamie did see it, and his smile was unbidden.
“Man, I thought …” Allan shook his head slowly, gaze drifting either to follow the memory of Jo or maybe to keep an eye out for her, and the smile slipped off his face. “I wondered if you were gay and I should’ve said something to Mom and Dad.”
Jamie blinked, because wait, what?
He gestured to himself. “Bisexual. Not all those breakups were girlfriends.”
No, it wasn’t computing. Allan was a ladies’ man, period.
“Yeah, see.” His older brother slouched a little and turned the can between his palms. “I figured I was already a big enough disappointment, so I wasn’t going to add all that. Didn’t even come to my wedding.”
Jamie realized he’d stopped chopping and he debated before setting the knife down instead of continuing to work. He hadn’t known how much that bothered Allan. At the time he’d laughed it off, drinking it up and partying and focusing completely on Suzanne. “I’m asexual,” he found himself saying as Jo came back in, and then he shrugged and added, “and grayromantic.”
Jo blinked but didn’t hesitate more than that. “Nonbinary,” she offered as she put the folder on the island and resumed her seat.
“Uh.” Allan needed more than just the single blink. “Bisexual,” he belatedly told Jo. “So, uh …”
She pushed the folder a little closer. “You want to be the one who comes in, reads what we’ve got, and pulls a name out of a hat?”
“I mean.” Allan grinned the grin that meant so many women—and apparently men—jumped right into his bed. “No pressure.”
Jamie sort of faded into the background for them as Allan asked questions or made comments like “Oh, man, Jamie’s haircut!” He was used to that on so many levels: being the third wheel. Having Allan’s date ignore him.
Whoa, where had that come from? Sure, the house held those kinds of memories, but this was Jo. He was okay with Jo spending time with any of their other friends without him, even one-on-one, but, what, because they came in pairs? It wasn’t because none of them would be interested in her, but they did all call the Jamie-Jo couple at first sight. They all acknowledged that Jo was special to Jamie, so he needed Allan do that, too? Or …?
When Allan went to set the table, which hadn’t been his chore in years, Jo got up, too, and came around to Jamie. She pressed her mouth against his shoulder, not quite a kiss, and one hand slid along his belt as she put an arm around him: walking the line between the all-clear and the risqué. “You could’ve told me it was some sort of rice bowl,” she murmured, teasing.
“You could’ve guessed,” he countered, maybe not teasing so much.
“Yeah, but then the conversation’s over, and I like talking to you.” She went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek absently, like maybe she hadn’t noticed how irked he was.
And just why was he irked? Jo and Allan had to meet eventually. Just because Allan was suave and confident and popular and all the things Jamie had never been, he couldn’t keep them apart forever.
Despite his attempt to remain distant, he caught the way her eyes followed Allan out of the kitchen. His footsteps went upstairs, so it was probably more to drop off his stuff than to just use the bathroom, and Jo sighed. “I didn’t really feel like I could just ask him to leave,” she said in a low voice, as … an apology?
Jamie looked up from plating three servings and tried to figure out what all was going on in, and behind, her eyes.
She shrugged one shoulder. “I mean, he seemed sincere about offering, but oh, yeah, leave your mom’s house?” Jo wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “Doesn’t feel like my place. Oh,” she added suddenly, brightening. “This means I get you to myself all weekend.”
He blinked, and blinked again, and the first thing in his mind was a litany of protests: there’d be game night, and the farmer’s market, but that wasn’t her point. Her point was … him. Or even the two of them, alone together, because maybe she felt bad about how Allan was taking her attention on date night, because she’d rather just be with Jamie.
Nobody ever preferred Jamie over Allan. That was simply a fact of life.
The toilet flushed and jerked him back to the present. Allan wouldn’t linger up there forever. Jamie focused back on Jo’s eyes, bright and clear and maybe just a little too understanding. “Stay over tomorrow night.” It was hoarse, and rushed, but her entire face lit up with a grin, and Jo nodded, and he’d be damned if he was going to kiss her for the first time in front of Allan but he almost did it, anyway.
Chapter Thirty-One – coming October 31
