CHAPTER TWO #2
I get up and follow my sister to the kitchen, and for a few minutes the board and the firm and the Meridian deal and all of it recedes to a manageable distance.
She's already plating when I sit down at the island. I made way too much food. I cook when I’m stressed.
"Have you given any more thought to Jade?" she says, her back still to me. Casual. Conversational. Like she isn't lobbing a grenade over her shoulder. "She's really sweet, Mike."
I let out an exaggerated groan and finished chewing. Mostly to give my brain time to stop my mouth from saying the wrong thing.
"I'm not interested in dating." I pick up my coffee. "We've talked about this, Rose."
"You're almost thirty."
"Oh, we're not pulling punches today, are we?"
"I never pull punches." She turns and leans against the counter with her own plate. "You're almost thirty, you're brilliant, you're — when you're not in a fountain — reasonably presentable, and you have been on exactly zero real dates in the entire time I've known you. Which is your whole life."
"I date."
"You are photographed on dates." She points her fork at me. "That's different, and you know it."
I know it. I say nothing.
"Jade is a criminal defense attorney," she continues. "She reads actual books. She laughed at my jokes at Sarah's dinner party, which is not nothing because I was on fire that night and most people just stared."
"You were on fire," I confirm. “That bumblebee joke, chef’s kiss.”
"So, you'll meet her."
"I didn't say that."
"Michael." She whines. Literally whines.
"Rose." I set my fork down and look at her directly, because she deserves that much. "I appreciate it. I do. But I'm in the middle of a PR crisis, a nine-figure acquisition, and apparently a board intervention. I don't have the bandwidth for a dating life right now."
She studies me for a long moment. The attorney look, not the sister one. The one that means she's deciding how hard to push and in which direction.
She lets it go.
Which means she's filing it, not dropping it. With Rosalie, there's a big difference.
"Fine," she says, and picks up her coffee. "But I'm not canceling on Jade forever. She asked about you."
"Of course she did."
"That wasn't a compliment; it was a warning."
I almost smile. "Noted."
She starts moving her food around her plate, seemingly lost in thought.
I perch my chin on my steepled fingers and watch her.
It's not often I catch Rosalie struggling for words — she has built an entire career on never being without them — but there's something sitting right on the edge of her tongue that she can't quite decide to say.
So, I wait. I've learned how to wait her out.
When she looks up and finds me staring, she rolls her eyes.
"Well?" I ask.
"Well, what?"
"Whatever it is you're holding back. Say it."
She pauses. Sets her fork down. Picks it up. Sets it down again.
"It's not—" she exhales. "Michael, are you gay?"
My eyes go wide. Of all the places I thought that sentence was going.
She raises both hands before I can speak.
"I won't judge you if you are. You know that.
But you won't date, and I know you're not actually a womanizer — I've known that for years; you're playing this role up for the press.
And you've never once hit on any of my friends, not even when they were clearly interested.
You just—" She tilts her head slightly. "You don't seem interested in women.
In anyone, really. And I've been trying to figure out how to ask you for a while, and apparently now is when I lose my filter entirely, so. .."
She gestures vaguely. There it is.
I stare at her.
Well. Fuck me.
My sister — Yale Law, fifteen years practicing, the sharpest person I know — has looked at the evidence available to her and reached a completely reasonable conclusion that is also completely wrong.
I pick up my plate and walk it to the trash, raking the rest of my eggs in. I've suddenly lost my appetite. "No, sis. I am not gay."
"You're sure?"
"Reasonably certain, yes."
"Because it's okay if—"
"Rose. I'm not gay."
She studies me for another beat, like she’s not sure if she believes me yet. "Then what is it? Because normal, straight, almost-thirty men who look like you do not voluntarily live like monks."
"I'm not living like a monk. I go out constantly."
"You go out and come home alone constantly. There's a difference." She leans forward slightly. "You're content with living a life so...devoid of companionship?"
"I said I was content."
"You said it like a person reading from a card." She tilts her head. "Michael. Something keeps you from letting anyone in, and it has for as long as I can remember and I have given you space on it because you need space. But I love you, and I'm asking."
The kitchen is quiet for a moment.
There is a version of this conversation where I tell her. Where I sit at this island on a Sunday morning and say, you want to know what it is, Rose? I'll tell you what it is.
But I can’t. I have never said the words out loud. Not to anyone. Not even to her.
"I'm content," I say again, and this time I mean it to land like a door closing gently but firmly. "I have the company. I have you. I don't need anything else right now."
She looks at me for a long moment.
Then she picks up her fork.
"Okay," she says quietly.
Not I believe you. Not I'll drop it. Just okay. Which with Rosalie means she loves me enough to not make me say the thing I'm not ready to say. I love her for it. I love her so much that it's almost difficult to look at her directly sometimes.
"Thank you."
She walks over and takes my head in her hands, settling it against her shoulder, and presses a kiss to my forehead.
"Anytime, Bennet."