Chapter 10
“Jay!”
“Anna Banana, how’d you get in here?” Jack asks.
“Someone let me in. Here’s your banister hideaway key. I was going to let myself in and wait for you, but I figured knocking first was probably better. This hole is ridiculous!”
I lift the sheet in time to see Jack grabbing “Anna Banana” up in a huge hug, lifting her off the ground and pressing a kiss to her cheek.
The look in his eye is undeniably warm, caring.
My stomach turns as he beams down at her—tall as she is, he’s taller still—and he throws an arm over her shoulders, pulling her close.
“Yeah, it is. I— No! Get away from there!” he calls.
Anna has lifted the sheet and is surveying my apartment.
I can’t make out her features, but her hair is in a ballerina bun, and her jaw is so defined it should be sold late nights on QVC as a steak knife.
She doesn’t see me sitting on the floor, and I close my eyes, awaiting exposure. But it doesn’t come.
I hear them talking in there, and I stew, a fine head of rage building. Until I hear her ask, “Why’s it smell like…like tuna fish in here?”
I stifle a laugh. I thought he’d noticed what I’d done to his radiator, but I guess not.
Anna and Jack chat comfortably, though there’s a brief indication that there’s trouble in paradise when Anna recounts an argument with her friend and Jack tries to interject with advice.
“Yeah, I don’t need you to fix this, okay? Sometimes people just want you to listen. Not fix. Listen.” Anna’s voice betrays that this is a long-standing bone of contention.
“I’m not trying to fix it. I’m just saying, if I were you—”
I’m pacing and worried about drawing attention to myself by working on the wall when Avery shows up about an hour later.
His hair is still damp from his after-work shower, and he’s in khakis and a blue button-down.
If Margie was here, she’d have told him he looked like a lumberjack accountant here to tax my wall to pieces.
“I brought you food,” he says, waving a bag emblazoned with “La Taqueria,” the name of my favorite Mexican restaurant.
“You’re a good friend for many, many reasons, but your ability to know when my stomach is grumbling and my fridge is empty has got to be one of your best qualities. The girl who wins your heart is lucky.”
He smiles and sits next to me on the sofa, handing over my veggie tacos. “Speaking of love, Mom and Dad are looking forward to seeing you on Friday.”
“Me, too. They’re my faves. I can’t even imagine being married for that long. Fifty years!”
“Fifty-plus years with the same person sounds like heaven, if it’s the right person.”
I grunt, and Avery shakes his head. He knows why. My longest relationship didn’t make it past one year. And that was one goddamn contentious year.
Anna Banana laughs on the other side of the wall.
“What’s going on in there?” Avery gestures toward The Hole.
I just roll my eyes in answer and make a jerking-off motion.
He laughs, but then his expression goes pensive. “Hey, do you think I’m too set in my ways? Too predictable?”
“No…”
Something in my voice makes him frown.
I hurry to add, “You’re just conscientious. You’re like Greenwich Mean Time. People can set their clocks off of you. But that’s amazing! Think about me and my neurotic people-pleasing. Or Margie and her dangerous, extroverted risk-taking. Stable is so much better.”
“Boring, you mean.”
“No, not boring. Avery Vaughn, what’s going on? Where did this come from?”
He shifts uncomfortably and lifts one broad shoulder dismissively. “Had a professional disagreement today at work with a visiting colleague from another lab. It grew heated and got personal. Doctor Cassidy—er, the colleague, I mean—said… Whatever. Doesn’t matter. Thanks, Pen.”
“Doctor Cassidy is now my mortal enemy. He—”
“She.”
“She can choke on a can of tuna.”
“Why tuna?”
“Hello?” a woman’s voice calls from the other side of The Hole. I tense up, but before I can warn him away, Avery pulls the sheet back.
Anna beams at him, and Avery looks momentarily shell-shocked. I mean, she’s pretty, but not stop-you-in-your-tracks— Okay, okay, fine. She’s pretty. And she’s…Jack’s sister, I realize. The girl from the photograph!
“5A, I wanted to introduce you to my sister because she won’t stop approaching this hole until I do,” Jack says, coming to stand at Anna’s shoulder.
“Do you want to come over?” Avery asks, standing to push the sofa I’m still sitting on out of the way and helping Anna step through The Hole. I want to smack him with my taco.
I wipe my hands and set down my food, trying with all I’ve got not to let my annoyance show as I face Jack and his sister.
I smile tightly. He’s the dildo who once taped down the buzzer for my apartment so it’d ring nonstop.
And left a box of trash in the lobby addressed to me.
Who just unscrewed my cabinets. Who wants my apartment.
I don’t know why I’m relieved that this woman is his sister—it shouldn’t matter.
That I had any reaction at all is aggravating as shit.
“Penny,” I grit out, introducing myself.
Anna clamps a hand over her mouth, her eyes crinkling with mirth.
“Holy hell. Okay. I’ve been dying to see The Hole, and it did not disappoint. You are a legend. Legend. This is so something I would do. And I thought there would never be anyone who got under Jay’s skin more than me, but I was so wrong.”
Anna pauses and tips her head to the side, quizzically. “I know you.”
“Uh, we met,” I say.
Jack frowns. “When would you have met? Anna’s never been here.”
“No, I was here the day you moved in, remember?”
Jack’s lips firm, and he crosses his arms. “Oh, yeah. The Seth fight.”
Anna’s bubbly smile drops, and she narrows her eyes. “Stop. It was early days for us, so I don’t blame—”
She stops herself, as if recalling her audience. To Avery and me she says, almost apologetically, “I came by Jack’s that day because I was having trouble with my then boyfriend, now fiancé.” She waggles the sparkler on her finger.
Avery looks crestfallen, but only to those who know him well. He removes his glasses and rubs a napkin over the lenses, his eyes downcast.
“And Jack, being an annoying big brother, had different ideas than I did on how to handle it. We ended up not talking for a while.”
She looks uncomfortable with the confession and glances up at her brother.
“Yeah. My ideas involved stringing him up by his balls for cheat—”
I’m close enough that I hear Jack’s muttered comments, but Anna must catch enough of them, too, since a cutting look ends them.
She turns to Avery, continuing the conversation, but Jack turns to me. “I changed, by the way.”
My brows pinch, confused, but then I take in his sweats.
He doesn’t know how much he’s changed in my mind ever since I found out he wasn’t a cheater, especially with the proof of it here in my apartment, chatting up my friend.
Thankfully, Jack’s apartment-poaching plan helps me maintain at least some of my disdain.
“We can work on the wall if you’re done eating,” he says.
“Ah, your sister’s here, though.”
“She’ll keep herself entertained.” He nods at her and Avery, deep in whatever the hell they’re talking about. I catch Anna asking Avery if he lives here with me, and he protests so much that it’s borderline insulting.
I shrug and wolf down the last two bites of my taco, then reach for my tool and goggles.
As Jack and I work on the wall, Avery—who was supposed to help make this wall work go faster—drifts off toward the fire-escape window with Anna, the two of them sharing a laugh. Anna is a talker, and she’s found the best listener on the planet.
“This sure is hard work!” I call out, mentally willing Avery to stop playing with a long vine branching in from one of my plants outside and ditch the look in his eyes whenever he gazes at Anna.
He doesn’t acknowledge my comment, but when he notices me watching him, he gestures to his eye, his heart, and Anna with an exaggerated look of longing.
I point at the plant and slice a finger across my throat.
Avery wouldn’t have appreciated this simple truth after his coworker argument, but his face is truly what you’d see in the dictionary under “reliable.” In college, he played the role of mother hen to me and Margie, since the two of us seemed hell-bent on risky behavior back then.
I squirm, thinking of a twenty-one-year-old Margie barefoot on the subway after somehow losing her shoes at a club and Avery stripping off his socks to force at least some barrier between her and the floor.
He’s endearingly earnest, gets his hair cut more regularly than any other person I know, and always carries a ready smile in his back pocket.
His heart is as pure as they come. I’ve often lamented that we had a brother-sister vibe right off the bat; he’s one of those people whose relationships have all been slipped on and off like comfy old sweaters.
He’s never a source of drama, which makes him a rare breed on the verge of extinction.
And right now I’m worried that he’s in a tailspin over unavailable Anna, which would be super out of character for him.
She does seem fun, I have to admit. She’s a little too loud, but I’ve been accused of that myself.
And there always seems to be a laugh rippling below her surface, ready to geyser its way out in an explosion of mirth and charm.
But every now and then, when she’s not talking with her wild hand gestures, when she’s just listening to Avery’s quiet and reassuring murmurs, a look overtakes her face, one that suggests there’s a vein of sadness threaded through her core.
She reaches out a hand, gripping Avery’s arm as she makes a quip, and they both laugh uproariously.
I tip my head, appraising the situation. She’d be easy to mistake for a manic pixie dream girl. Or at least, that’s the facade she’s rolling with. Either way, Avery is ensnared.
Jack mops his brow with his forearm, and his own expression is inscrutable as he takes in Anna and Avery giggling by the window, their heads bent like coconspirators.
The look on his face is gone as quickly as it appeared, and then he’s bent in front of me to retrieve the dustpan at my feet, teasing my nose with the salty scent of sweaty Jack and smoky pine.
“You don’t have to—” I start to say, but he ignores me and straightens, peering down at me while clutching the dustpan.
I could reach out and rest a hand on his navy-T-shirt-covered chest. I could flick one of those pebbled nipples with a nail.
Instead, I look up at him with an undoubtedly dumb expression and snap, “Or clean. Whatever.”
He arches an eyebrow and moves away, sweeping and tidying up. I sneak glances at him, unsure what to think of him now that I know my initial prejudice was bogus.
He started out friendly. Did I drag the dickishness out of him?
Or is he hiding around everyone else, and I just got to see the real him?
I think back. Our exchanges have nearly always been obnoxious.
But how many times did I misinterpret something he was doing or saying and lash out when maybe he wasn’t planning on being a jerk?
How many of our sparring matches were my doing entirely?
How many of his actions have just been one-upmanship?
“Let’s grab a drink!” Anna shouts, startling me out of my reverie.
Avery is on his feet so fast I’d swear he had a spring attached to his ass.
I glare at him. We are not grabbing a drink with these people.
“Let’s do it,” he says.
“No—” Jack says.
“I can’t—” I start. I turn my glare on Jack. He rejected the idea even faster than I did. Rude. I’m rejecting you.
“Fine. We’ll go alone,” Anna pouts. She presses a kiss on Jack’s forehead and calls for Avery to follow. He does, with ludicrous speed.
“Heel, doggy,” I whisper as Avery hugs me goodbye.
He whispers back without a pause, “I’m in love be happy for me call you later love you.”
They’re out my door a second later.
“Ugh.”
“What’s your problem?” Jack mutters.
“Besides the pleasure of your company? How about the never-ending saga that is taking down this impossible wall?”
“Well, we could take it down faster, but I’m trying to avoid kicking around lead-paint dust. Or asbestos.”
“What?”
Jack smirks.
“Why aren’t we wearing masks or something?” I cry.
“Relax. There’s no lead paint or asbestos. Probably.” He ducks the pillow I wing at him and laughs out loud. Then he retrieves his trusty vacuum and begins methodically tackling every inch of my apartment.
“Was the thing you said about vacuuming real? About your job?”
“Yes.”
“Why? How does it help?”
“The people I work with just want to make their lives better, want to stay here to do it. Sometimes the system isn’t fair to them.
The vacuuming… Cleaning soothes me, I guess.
I like ticking one item off my to-do list. When I was sixteen, my dad fell ill and a lot rested on me, so I needed an outlet. ”
The confession feels real. It thaws something inside me, releasing a twinge of contrition and embarrassment along with other things I don’t want to examine.
I cover it by wiping my end tables with a rag.
I’d always assumed his vacuuming was about me.
How vain. And here I’ve been trying to strip him of something that brought order to the chaos of his day. I can understand the impulse.
“I garden for the same reason. It’s a de-stressor.”
“De-stressor because some dick is vacuuming all the time?”
“Not everything is about you,” I say, smiling up at him. “Besides, it’s you soundtracking my life that’s more annoying than anything.”
“So I shouldn’t play ‘In Dust We Trust’ tonight on repeat?” he asks.
“I don’t know that song.”
“Chemical Brothers. It doesn’t really have lyrics, though. Maybe ‘Dusty’ by Soundgarden—”
“Play whatever crap you want. I bought noise-canceling headphones, baby.”
“I play my music for myself, 5A, not to torment you.”
I make a sound that expresses my disbelief about his claim and bend to pick up a nonexistent speck on my rug.
He wraps the cord around the vacuum and squints at me, clearly debating something.
I’m shocked by what it is.
“I was thinking of ordering pizza.”
My eyes are Jupiter-large. I remain silent.
So does he.
“If you want to join.”
I want to say no. This feels dangerous. This is uncharted territory. This is… My stomach rumbles. Two tiny tacos clearly weren’t enough for dinner.