HAPPY PEOPLE FREAK ME OUT
7
Prudence : Where are you?
Jack : Medical appointment.
Jack : Ikram is driving me.
Prudence : Oh.
Prudence : Can I do anything?
Jack : We’re good.
Jack : Stop worrying about me.
Jack : See you in a few hours, Sunshine.
PRUDENCE
My laptop pings with a new email, and I jump from my chair in excitement. The LAPD confirmed our last interview for tomorrow morning, asking me to bring every document they need to sign my freelance contract.
It’s been a week since we moved here and I offered my services as a freelancer. They did their background check, checked my references from the other police departments I’ve worked with, and we already had two hour-long calls. They mentioned that they were actually looking for full time forensics sketch artists and that they would prefer me going full time but, given my current situation with my brother, they were okay with me going freelance for now.
I’m still jumping up and down in the kitchen when I hear giggling behind me and I turn around with a gasp.
Evie is standing with a huge smile at the front door, a brown paper bag full of groceries in her arms.
“Are we celebrating something?” she asks, closing the door softly with her foot before walking towards me.
“Oh, hum… I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you coming in.”
“It’s alright, I’m sorry if I scared you.”
She drops the bag on the round dining table with a sigh before wiping her brows on her forearm.
“Dear lord, that rain is taking its sweet time…”
She starts unloading the groceries, humming softly, and I still haven’t moved. Why am I so weird every time she or Ikram is around?
“Do you need any help?” I ask tentatively, fumbling with the pen I grabbed on the table.
“Absolutely not! But if by any chance you’re about to make yourself some coffee, I’d be happy to have one too.”
She winks at me and I smile awkwardly. Is she really this cheery all the time or is this an act? Happy people freak me out.
“Sure.”
I pour two coffees while she puts the groceries away in the cupboards and fridge. As soon as she’s done, she turns and beams at me.
“Care to join me on the terrace for a little coffee break?”
“Hum… Sure, yeah.” My smile is so forced it makes me cringe.
We both sit at the little wooden table, facing each other. What’s the protocol here? Are we supposed to make small talk? I think she already knows enough about Jack and me. Exchange about the weather? The sun is trying to fry us alive and this furnace is literal hell. Next.
“So, I thought that maybe we could clear the air now rather than later,” she says kindly, and I tense. “You’re obviously uncomfortable with our presence and I understand. But, I’d like you to explain to me why.”
“Sorry?” I ask, nearly choking on my sip of coffee.
“I don’t like walking on eggshells,” she explains, “and Ikram is way too nice to ever ask you directly what’s bothering you.” I frown but she continues. “Can I make any guesses? Jack told us on our first day that to this point, it was you taking care of everything. Are you bothered that he’s not relying on you anymore?”
I stare at her, lips parted, and I can’t produce any sound. Stupid brown, too expressive eyes… I bet my worries and reservations were written across my face all along.
“If that’s what it is, you need to understand that our job is not to replace you,” she says, insisting on that particular word. “We’re here to assist, and make both of your lives easier. To allow you to live normally. Jack has only one wish, it’s for you to have a life of your own, so he can simply be a part and not the center of it.”
“I know change is hard, especially when it’s been just the two of you for so long, but you need to understand that Jack is, first and foremost, your big brother. And seeing you taking care of him for so long has been really hard for him, because you’re twenty-seven, and you should be pursuing your dreams, having friends and a career, building a life of your own.”
“I don’t want to build a life that I know he’s not going to be a part of,” I blurt out through a tight throat, tears gathering behind my eyes.
I’m surprised by my own revelation. Feelings have always been hard to express for me. She exhales a sad breath, her expression pained. She leans forward until her hands are cupping mine around the coffee cup.
“I don’t need your pity—”
“I’m not pitying you, Prudence,” she quickly interrupts with a soft but firm voice. “I’ve been doing this job for six years. And I’m not going to lie to you, your brother is not fine. He is in a lot of pain, and his disease is… It’s bad. But you’re here . With him. And that alone is bringing light into his life. It’s not because he doesn’t need you to take care of him or that he doesn’t need you period.”
I try to swallow the tears away, but a few manage to fall down my cheeks. She quickly wipes them with her thumb.
“It’s alright, darling. It’s okay to let it out. Your brother loves you more than anything, and I know you do too. And losing him, either in a few months or a few years, it’s going to be hard. But we’re all going to be here for him and for you. All the way. With us being here with you guys, you can focus on your good moments. Spending quality time together. Making new happy memories. Let us deal with what is hard and painful and focus on each other’s relationship. You’re his family, not his caretaker. And he doesn’t want to feel like a burden to you anymore.”
“He’s not a burden,” I sob, and she slides her chair closer to me to rub my shoulder gently. “I’ve always taken care of him, since we were kids. Now he’s all I have and I don’t know what to do if he doesn’t need me anymore.”
“He’ll always need you. But relationships change with time. Right now he needs you to be his sister. He needs you to live your life and come home and talk about your day. He needs you to find your place in the world, so he knows that when he’s gone, you’ll be sad of course, but fine on your own. With friends to look out for you. A job you like to keep you busy. A potential partner who’ll love you.”
She wiggles her eyebrow and I snort grossly. Alright, I guess I was unfairly cold and mean to her. She’s kind of nice. Really nice.
“How do you know all that, anyway?” I ask, taking the tissue she hands me to dry my eyes.
“Well, your brother talks a lot,” she answers with a kind smile and a knowing gaze. “He told us how he felt on our first day, before you arrived. And we quickly noticed that you didn’t like us much, so we asked him about you. About your relationship, about your dynamics. I know you don’t see him as a burden, but he feels like one. And it’s important to him that your relationship dynamics change.” She pauses for a moment, and our eyes meet. “Do you think you can do that? Include us in your dynamics with Jack? Be his little sister and let us take care of the rest?”
I sigh, willing the last of the tears to just go away.
“I guess I can try.”
She circles my shoulders with her arms and hugs me for a couple of seconds. I’m not a huge fan of physical contact, but right now, her presence is comforting me.
I guess I can learn to like her.
“Great! How about Ikram and I take you out for drinks tonight? Maybe you’ll feel better once you get to know us better?”
“I don’t know,” I sigh, actually a little disappointed about probably not being able to go. “I kind of have an interview tomorrow morning…”
“We’ll bring you back before 11. Come on, it’ll be fun! There’s a singles night at that nice cocktail place 10 minutes from here. Ikram and I were going anyway.”
“A singles night?” I snort.
“Yeah, when you go inside the bar, they give you a green or red wristband—green for singles, red for taken,” she explains excitedly, “and when you wear the green one you can have 25% off cocktails. You also get hit on by other green wristband wearers but, who cares? We’re there for the booze and to get to know each other.”
I’m surprised that I’m actually considering it. Making friends has never been my thing. But it was mainly because I knew that I wasn’t hanging around long. And also because I wanted to be near Jack in case of emergencies. Now, Jack has a whole team of personal care workers to take care of him, and he seems adamant on settling us here. So maybe Evie’s right. And after all, that’s what Jack wants me to do…
“Alright. But I really need to get home at 11 or before. I can’t screw up the last part of the interview by showing up hungover at the LAPD.”
“At the LAPD? Oh my god, what job did you apply to? Wait—don’t tell me. You’ll tell us all about it tonight.”
She claps her hand frantically as she stands up, and the smile I give her doesn’t seem so forced anymore.
“Alright. I need to get moving. I promised Jack that I was going to prepare my mother’s famous Cape Malay Chicken Curry. I’ll make a lot so I can put it into little containers and you guys can have it for a few meals.”
That does sound good. “I’ve never heard of that dish,” I admit.
“It’s an African dish,” she beams. “My mom’s a chef, and she loves to cook recipes her own parents cooked for her when she was a child. She grew up in Porto Novo, Cape Verde. My grandparents loved to travel and try out food everywhere they went. Learned all the recipes and taught them to my mom, who opened her restaurant here with my dad, and then taught the recipes to me. Cape Malay Chicken Curry is actually one of my favorites. I’m sure you’ll like it!”
She walks back inside and I stay here, staring at nothing in front of me.
Evie seems actually nice. I don’t think I ever doubted that to be fair. I really hope I can manage to let go of my constant need to help Jack. What if he needs help and they aren’t around? Will the personal care worker on call be reactive enough?
Why is it so fucking hard to trust people?
Wait, actually, you know what? Scratch that. I know why. Because of our parents and siblings. Because when he needed them the most, they turned their back on him. On us . Because until now, most of the people we trusted left us behind. Jack’s sexual orientation and personal life should never have mattered. Our parents were still our parents, and no matter what gender he prefers to share his bed with, he still deserved to be cared for.
I stay outside for a couple of hours, working on my composite drawing techniques using my tablet. The last time I worked as a forensic sketch artist was in Chicago, just before we moved to Seattle. So, roughly seven months ago.
I’ve studied towards it in university, graduating in fine arts and studying 3D modeling and computer sciences. I also took a couple of anatomy classes with the biology majors—Nate being one of them—and got some of them to pose for me a few times. Well, not really “some”. Actually, only Nate. The other kept standing me up…
I was nine years old when I decided I wanted to be an artist. Thirteen when I chose to focus mostly on drawing and sketching people. Fifteen when I first mentioned composite drawing, after watching an episode of Bones and telling Jack that Angela’s character was my role model.
If it wasn’t for Jack’s condition, I would probably be working full time. I love that job, despite how tough it can be. The worst is recreating the crime scenes, but as a freelancer, I don’t get much of those.
“What’s up, Sunshine?”
I lift my head in surprise, and my eyes meet Jack’s smiling ones.
“Hey, how was your appointment?”
“It was fine,” he waves a hand dismissively and I cock a brow at the gesture. “You know, the usual shit. I’m sick, it’s sad, I’m doomed, they’ll monitor me, make me do way too many ECGs, and then eventually I’ll die and they won’t be able to do shit for me.”
I frown. He’s not usually so blunt about all this.
“Are you sure you’re alright?”
“Yeah. It’s been brought to my attention that I needed to be more… Transparent. With how I truly feel. It’s been a long day, and my back hurts, that’s all. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” I add quickly, leaning to take his hand in mine. “Never apologize for what you’re feeling and going through. Is there anything I can do?”
“Well…” He pauses and rolls his eyes innocently. “Actually, Evie told Ikram that she wanted to take you out for drinks tonight. And since I’m in pain and I’m most likely going to call Nate to torture me a little more, I think we should skip dinner. So you can go for drinks AND food.”
Okay…
“You don’t want me around when Nate’s here.”
Not a question, but Jack nods anyway.
“Why?” I ask. “Is it because of what you thought was happening back in university?”
“What?” His eyes widen in surprise. “No! Absolutely not.”
“Is it because you have a secret crush on Nate and you want me out of there so you guys can have weird physical therapy sex on the table?”
His eyes are now so wide open that they might fall from their sockets at any moment. I’m totally picturing them bouncing on the table between us.
And then he burst out laughing. The same laugh I heard when he was with Evie and Ikram on the beach. Real. Free. Like back when we were in our shared year of college, before it all got worse.
“Oh god, no,” he says when he finally gets his laughter under control. He lifts his thumb in front of my face. “First of all, Nate is hot but not my type. Too tall, too broad, too broody, too perfect… I like a guy who looks more like Ikram. A little shorter than me, who smiles more than frowns, and who doesn’t torture me on a daily basis. Second of all,” his index finger lifts to make his point, “Nate’s definitely straight.”
“Why, because he fucked most of the girls on campus?”
“Mainly, yes.” He chuckles, shaking his head in disbelief.
“What if he was in the closet?” I insist a little. “What if he fucked all those girls to convince himself, but secretly had a crush on you?”
“Definitely not,” he shakes his head again with a grin. “You need to remember that I shared a dorm with him. Worse, he was my damned roommate. I loved the guy more than all our other siblings combined, but come on. I’ve heard enough moaning during our four years of university that sometimes I still hear random girls yelling “I’m coming” in my dreams. And I’ve never made one come, that’s for certain.”
If I was drinking something, I would have spit it all over his face. Instead, I’m just choking on air like a lunatic.
“I don’t want you here because I’m in pain, Sunshine,” he finally says with a little sigh. “I’m in a lot of pain, and the hour I will spend with Nate will be difficult. I’ll feel better afterwards, but I might scream and grunt for the whole sixty minutes. And before your twisted brain reacts to what I just said, no , it’s not going to be the fun grunting and screaming kind.”
“And you don’t want me to hear.”
“And I don’t want you to hear,” he repeats with a small smile, but the amusement is now gone from his face.
I exhale a long slow breath. He’s been more open lately about what and how he feels. Maybe Evie, Ikram, and Nate had something to do with it, but it makes me realize how much he was hiding from me.
“Okay,” I concede. “I’ll go for drinks and food with Evie and Ikram. But I won’t be back late, because I have that final interview with the LAPD tomorrow morning.”
His face lights up. “You didn’t tell me you applied!”
“I did and I’m supposed to sign the paperwork tomorrow. I’ll probably start working on Monday.”
He leans close enough to grab me in his arms and holds me tight.
“Oh god, I’m so happy for you! Where’s the precinct from here?”
“About a fifteen minute drive. And I’m only freelancing, so I won’t be working all the time, but I think it’s better for now.”
He lets go of me and gives me a broad smile. “Sure. But I know they’ll be pushing you to go full time soon. You’re just too good at this.”
“Well, I’m not ready yet,” I shrug with a faint smile. “They know, and we’ll see how it goes.”
“Alright, enough talking,” he says quickly, wheeling backwards to give me some room. “Let’s get you ready. I’m thinking about that hot black dress, some high heels, and bold make-up. And let’s curl your hair. Definitely.”
I roll my eyes with an annoyed grunt, but stand up to follow him anyway. After he got over that weird overprotective phase in college, he took it upon himself to choose my dresses, makeup, and hairstyles for most of the dates I’ve been on. I’d never admit it, but I secretly love the couple of hours we spend together when he thinks of himself as a personal stylist. And it’s been a while since I actually got out for a planned night out.