Chapter 13 #2
Jude took a long pull from his beer, set the second one on the dresser within my reach, and leaned his shoulder against the doorframe.
“Matt called you,” he said.
“We had coffee at Holloway’s.”
“And now you’re moving to Riverside Pines.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Because of Becca.”
“Because Travis is circling and she won’t stay with Matt, and somebody needs to be nearby.”
“Right.” He nodded slowly, in the exaggerated way that meant he was being very deliberate about not saying the obvious thing yet. “And this somebody needs to be you specifically.”
“I was available.”
“Uh huh.” He looked at the ceiling for a moment.
“You know what’s funny? I’ve been your brother since birth, and you still try this with me.
The reasonable-voice thing. The I-was-just-in-the-neighborhood thing.
” He looked back at me. “You packed a duffel bag in four minutes flat, Levi. You haven’t packed that fast since the academy. ”
I put another shirt in the bag and didn’t dignify that with a response.
“I’m just noting,” he said, “for the record, that normal people do not relocate their entire living situation because a woman they are definitely not in love with might need someone nearby.”
“I’m not relocating my entire living situation. It’s temporary. She needs—I don’t know what she needs, but I’ll be there when she needs it. Okay? It’s not a big deal.”
He pushed off the doorframe and came into the room properly, dropping into the chair in the corner with the easy sprawl of a man who’d decided he was staying for this conversation, whether I wanted him there or not.
He spun his beer bottle slowly between his palms. “Matt’s a good guy,” he said, and his voice had shifted, the humor still there but underneath it something more careful.
“I’m not saying he isn’t. But all he cares about is Becca.
Their parents are shit. He practically raised her himself.
You know that.” He looked at me steadily.
“You’ll be under the bus, with a broken heart, and he won’t care as long as she’s okay. ”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m not wrong,” he said.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“So you’re going anyway.”
I folded a flannel shirt and set it in the duffel.
“She’s out there alone, Jude. Travis is circling.
Matt’s losing sleep over it, and he’s not a man who loses sleep easily.
” I reached for another shirt. “And yeah, maybe this is something I should think about more carefully, but she’s alone, and I know how to be nearby without making it a thing. So I’m going to be nearby.”
Jude was quiet for a moment, turning the bottle in his hands.
“You know what kills me?” he said. “It’s not even that you’re doing it.
It’s that you’re going to be really good at it and she’s going to let you be nearby and you’re going to be so damn happy about that that you won’t notice you’re also miserable.
” He paused. “That’s the part that keeps me up at night.
Not the Travis stuff, not the Matt stuff.
Just you, sitting in a borrowed trailer in the cold, grateful for the scraps of her attention. ”
“That’s a bleak picture.”
“I’m a realist.”
“You’re a catastrophist.”
“I’m a twin,” he said, “which means I’ve watched your face for years and I know what it looks like when you’re about to do something that’s going to cost you more than you’re admitting.
” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“I just need you to go into this with your eyes open. That’s all I’m asking. ”
I stopped what I was doing and looked at my brother. At the genuine, uncomplicated worry on his face, the kind that had nothing to do with judgment and everything to do with knowing each other better than anyone else alive.
“I hear you,” I said.
He held my gaze for a moment, making sure of it. Then something shifted in his expression, the serious version of Jude folding back into the regular version, and he sat back.
“She’s going to hate it, you know,” he said. “When you first show up. She’s going to be so prickly about it. Do you remember when we were fourteen and she thought we were following her to that party at the lake and she didn’t speak to either of us for a week?”
“I remember.”
“Classic Becca. Full ignoring capabilities. Very impressive range.” He finished his beer. “She’s going to do that thing where she’s very polite and very cold at the same time. You know the thing.”
“I know the thing.”
“And you’re going to have to stand there and take it while she decides whether she’s going to let you exist near her.” He shook his head with something that was mostly fond and only a little mournful. “I do not envy you that part.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m saying it because I’ve also seen her when she decides to let someone in.
” He stood, stretched, and picked up his empty bottle.
“And for what it’s worth—and I will deny saying this if you ever repeat it—when she finally stops doing the thing and starts actually talking to you like a human being, it’s going to be worth every cold shoulder between now and then.
” He pointed at me. “Don’t tell her I said that. ”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
“Good.” He headed for the door, then stopped with his hand on the frame and turned back.
“I want you to know I support you fully in this, and I think you’re doing the right thing, and also she’s my friend too, and I’d really like Travis to stop being a problem.
” He shrugged, magnanimous. “I’ll help you hitch the trailer if you need me to.
I know how to do it, and you’ll just stress yourself out trying to do it alone. ”
“I know how to hitch a trailer.”
“You’ll stress yourself out,” he repeated. “I’ve seen you try to parallel park when you’re thinking about something else. We’re not doing that with a full trailer on a wet road.” He held up a finger. “One condition.”
“What?”
“I’m keeping the coffee maker.”
“You’re not keeping the coffee maker.”
“Moving tax.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“It is now. I just made it a thing.” He grinned, the full version, the one that had been getting him out of trouble since we were eight years old. “I’ll also need your parking spot. And I’m calling dibs on your room for a home gym.”
“Jude.”
“I’m just thinking about the future.”
“Get out of my room.”
“I love you too, brother,” he said cheerfully, and disappeared down the hallway. A moment later, I heard him drop back onto the couch, the television volume go up, and the sound of him opening another beer.
I turned back to the duffel and kept packing.
Outside, the rain came down steadily against the windows, and somewhere across town, a woman who didn’t know I was coming would be sitting alone in a trailer that leaked, and I was moving toward her the only way I knew how—slowly, carefully, with no guarantees and no expectations and absolutely no ability to do otherwise.
Jude wasn’t wrong. He was almost never wrong, which was one of the more inconvenient things about having him as a brother.