Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Brother O’ Mine
JAMIE
After a sleepless night in which none of her sleep remedies worked, including but not limited to Benadryl, melatonin, warm milk, and three stories on the Calm app, Jamie arose from her bed, groggy and muddled.
She remembered the sound of someone crying last night, which gave her a deep sense of unease, but she brushed it aside.
The sun was up. Anything was possible, goddamn it.
She tucked Dash under her arm and headed for the coffeemaker.
She heard a knock on the door, which caused her to jump, clearly a case of mild PTSD after yesterday’s maternal surprise attack. She peered toward the front door and saw Rip through the glass. She waved him in. He knew the code on the keyless entry lock.
Upon seeing Rip, Dash squirmed and entered into a fit of barking until Jamie put him down.
He quickly ran over to the ankles of Rip, who produced a small stuffed dog toy in the form of a narwhal and presented it to the little dog.
Dash stopped barking, sniffed the toy, snatched it away, and stalked off in the other direction.
Rip called after him, “You’re welcome, you ungrateful little thing. ”
“Coffee?”
“Sure.” Rip rubbed his unshaven jaw. “I can’t believe M.O.M. threw down the gauntlet.”
Jamie and Rip used the term M.O.M. not as a term of familial endearment but as an acronym for the more accurate Matriarch of Misery, a secret nickname they’d made for her when they were kids. Elaine Cromwell Frisco had never been in on the joke.
Her brother had taken a seat on her couch and proceeded to stare down at his feet.
He appeared to be deep in thought, brow furrowed.
This had to be a lot for him. Rip was a bit of a mess.
Jamie wasn’t quite sure what he was doing for a living these days, but it likely involved Door Dash or some other stopgap measure.
His aimlessness had never seemed to bother him before, but in light of this new development, she assumed he was shaken.
Jamie had a decent job, granted, one she hated, but she at least could consistently pay rent.
Only professional athletes or tech moguls could afford property in Hermosa Beach these days.
She’d come to terms with the fact that she might die in a rental unit, waiting for the landlord to repaint.
However, when it came to retirement, she and her brother had sort of unconsciously believed that when their mom passed, hopefully of natural causes, at a ripe old age, mean streak still intact, they would inherit her money.
In fact, they had probably counted on it a little too much.
Jamie sat down next to her brother, wrapped an arm around his burly shoulders, and said, “M.O.M. is nuts. This is just her last Hail Mary play to get us married off, the dramatic witch. She’s not going to cut us out of the will,” Jamie said in her best reassuring manner.
“I know.”
“That’s the spirit. Let me get you a refill on coffee.” Jamie got up.
“No, I mean, I know she’s not cutting me out of the will.”
Jamie’s head snapped back at him as she looked at her brother. “What?”
“I was going to tell you over dinner tomorrow, but then M.O.M. barged into my apartment and dragged me along to this croissant-laden Brunch from Hell to drop this bomb on us.”
“What are you saying…”
“You remember Poppy? The trainer?”
“Poppy does not look like she works out.” Jamie squinted as she recalled the last time she saw Rip with Poppy, a flat-chested, pale, waif of a girl, with thick-framed glasses and aggressive eyebrows.
“No, she’s a gamer trainer. She trains people on video games.”
“Is that a real job?”
“Well, she and I are—”
“You’re marrying a gamer?”
“Pregnant. We’re pregnant.”
Jamie’s mouth fell all the way open. She tried very hard to process what her younger brother was saying. “Impossible.”
Rip half smiled and then nodded. “Yeah. She’s due in six months. I was going to ask her to marry me at SoCal Gaming Expo where we first met, but it looks like I’ll have to move that up. Why didn’t you tell me you and Chaz broke up?”
“Sorry, this is going to take something a little stronger.” Jamie got up and stalked to the kitchen in search of something potent enough to burn the rust off a bumper, picked up and rattled an empty whiskey bottle from the pantry, angrily tossed it and then found relief in the form of sour gummy worms. Sugar would have to do.
She opened a massive Costco-sized jar and ate a handful.
Rip walked in the kitchen and stopped Jamie from grabbing another fistful of candy worms. “Jamie, why didn’t you tell me you and Chaz broke up? I wasn’t really a fan of him to be honest, but still.”
“Chaz wasn’t anything serious. He doesn’t matter.” Jamie continued to chew through her gummy worms, her face growing hot. “Besides, you haven’t exactly been forthcoming, brother o’ mine.” She ripped the jar away from him and stalked back to the living room.
Rip followed her. “Jamie, I’m thirty-nine. You’re forty-one. Maybe M.O.M has a point.”
Jamie whirled on him. “How dare you say that about that controlling old crone!”
“Okay, I’m sorry. But when she called us middle-aged, it hit a nerve. I just think that growing up is probably going to happen whether we adapt to the idea or not.”
“I am grown up. I have a lease, a car, a job. What else does she want from me?”
Rip shrugged and quietly said, “I know it’s jarring, especially coming from our ice queen of a mother, but even I’m noticing that you aren’t…”
“What?”
“That you haven’t really moved on since Nathan.”
There it was. Fucking Nathan again. Exasperated, Jamie threw up her hands and stared at the floor, images of Nathan’s pregnant girlfriend/wife flashing through her mind. She muttered, “I’m fine. I’m over him. I’m over it.”
Rip gently reached for her chin and lifted it up so he could look her in the eyes. “It was brutal what he put you through. I would have beaten him to a pulp if he hadn’t left the country. But if you stay here in this headspace, you might never get out from under it.”
Jamie nodded, knowing he was right, but not knowing the first thing about how to move on from that kind of heartbreak.
Rip added, “Plus you’ll be dead broke if M.O.M. gets her way, and she’s mean enough she might just follow through. We can’t let that that happen, now can we?”
Jamie gave a half smile and nodded. “Leave it to M.O.M to sidle up to some new codger, black-widow style, and march toward wedlock again. I can’t even get a date.”
“I’m just saying, maybe put in some effort?”
Jamie suppressed the urge to clamp her hands around her little brother’s throat. Rip was edging precariously close to never seeing their mom’s money either with that kind of mouth.
“I put in effort!” But Jamie’s retort sounded hollow.
She stood there in giraffe pajamas, holding her gummy worms, trying to be defiant.
It occurred to her that she was both incensed at the implication that being alone was somehow sad and alarmed that she had gone from “a great catch” to “We’re worried about you” in the time it took to blow out her digital birthday candles.
She mentally avoided her chardonnay addiction, her delivery-fueled lifestyle, and being on her second day without washing her hair.
Rip shrugged helplessly then offered, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say. I’ve got to pick up Poppy in an hour. Ultrasound appointment is today.”
Jamie put down the gummy worms, as if really hearing his words for the first time. Her kid brother was going to have a baby. “Rip. You’re going to be a dad.” Her voice cracked with a half sob as she mustered up genuine love and happiness for him.
Rip turned toward her and beamed, like a natural soon-to-be proud father would. “Yeah, I am.”
Jamie ran over to her brother and wrapped her arms around him. “You’re going to be great,” she said into the nape of his neck, then sniffed. “Just like dad.”
He chuckled. “Thanks, big sis. Hopefully I’ll be around a little longer than he was for us, though.”
She loosened her hug as they both fell silent, remembering their father and all his brightness and fiery love, his tenderness, his dance moves, his uproarious sense of humor, his way of protecting them from the emotional brutality of their mother.
Jamie smiled to herself for a moment, but in a flash, those memories began to mix with others; darker memories crept in, of his unpredictability, his lies, his disappearance.
The whole cycle lasted around ten seconds.
It was all she could take before muting it all and pulling back out of the hug with her brother.
“I swear, I will be the best, most kickass auntie ever. Even though all outward appearances would lead you to believe I am a train wreck.”
“You’re not a train wreck.”
“Yeah, well, M.O.M. changed all that. I have motivation now. I can’t wait to spend my inheritance on my little niece or nephew.”
“That’s the spirit. Where’s your laptop?”
Jamie pointed in the general direction of the kitchen counter where her laptop sat and realized she didn’t have the faintest idea where to start.
Jamie hadn’t dated in earnest in a decade.
Dating now seemed like a quaint idea from the mid-2000s that included sidling up to one another at a bar, exchanging phone numbers, meeting at a restaurant and having awkward conversations about first concerts over spinach artichoke dip.
It was nerve-racking then. Surely, things had improved.
Rip interrupted her thought process. “You have to get on the apps.”
“I’ve been warned by my friend Kristy that the apps are a warped romantic hellscape.”
Rip nodded assuredly and said, “Oh for sure, but it’s where everybody is. I’d like to say you could still meet people in bars, but I don’t think that’s a thing anymore.”
“So, you’re telling me if I go to a bar, I won’t get hit on?”
“Anything’s possible, I suppose, but unlikely. Things have changed.”
“What happened to flirting, playful banter, buying people drinks?”