Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
JORDAN
May
Me
[picture of Dippy figure wearing a tiny pink scarf covered in flip flops]
Jo
I think that’s his best look yet and extremely appropriate for today.
Me
Because it’s hot outside?
Jo
Uh, no. Because it’s May ninth.
Me
What’s so special about May ninth? Other than the fact that it’s my first day off in ten days.
Jo
You really should take more days off, but we’ll deal with that later. His flip flop scarf is appropriate because May ninth is National Lost Sock Memorial Day.
Me
That’s not a thing.
Jo
Uh, yes it is. Look it up.
Me
Well, I’ll be damned.
Jo
Told you. It’s an important day. A day where we ask life’s big questions. Where do all the lost socks go? Is there really a portal in the back of the dryer? And if socks go there, do they get a new owner? Are they happy? Do they miss their match?
Me
Your brain is a weird place.
Jo
You truly have no idea.
[link attached]
Me
Why are you sending me a gift card to a store called Happy Socks?
Jo
Because it’s National Lost Sock Memorial Day. Keep up.
Me
I don’t need new socks.
Jo
Everyone always needs new socks. Because they get lost. Hence, a memorial day for lost socks.
Me
It’s in Times Square.
Jo
I know, isn’t it great?
Me
You know Times Square is, like, objectively the worst place in Manhattan, right?
Jo
Is it? I love it there.
Me
That is entirely unsurprising.
Jo
You’re the kind of Upper West Sider who never goes below 59th Street, aren’t you?
Me
The hospital is between 58th and 59th and the good coffee cart is between 57th and 58th, so technically I go below 59th Street.
Jo
That doesn’t count.
Homework. Go to Happy Socks and buy the most insane pair you can find. Put them on and text me a picture.
Me
Maybe on my next day off.
Jo
Today.
Me
I don’t have time for that. My brothers are here visiting.
Jo
Take them with you. You have three brothers, right? It’ll be a good bonding experience. If you’re feeling adventurous, you get extra credit for taking a picture with one of the characters that walks around Times Square.
The Naked Cowboy is preferable, but any character will do.
“Holy fuck—Jordan are you smiling?”
I jerk my head up at my brother Noah’s voice, fumbling my phone and recovering it just before it lands on the floor. Noah is leaning against the doorway between the kitchen and living room, coffee mug in hand and smirk on his face. “I didn’t know you remembered how to do that.”
“I’m not,” I mutter.
“Oh, you definitely were,” my youngest brother Cooper says, strolling out of my second bedroom in plaid pajama pants and a T-shirt. “I’ve been peeking out of the bedroom for the last ten minutes, and I saw you smile more in that time than I’ve seen you smile in two years.”
Fuck. Was I? Maybe. Probably. Leave it to a twenty-seven-year-old hurricane of energy, torn jeans, and pink sneakers to be the first person to get me to smile in two years.
In the three weeks I’ve been back from Pittsburgh, I’ve been texting with Jo. A lot. For the first few days after our museum run in, it was her texting me, and me either ignoring the text, or texting back the shortest responses I thought I could manage without sounding like a total asshole.
Then, about a week after I got back to New York, a package showed up at my door. It was a small box filled with tiny pieces of multi-colored fabric, each about the size of a band aid and covered in different patterns. The note just said, For Dippy. Keep him authentic. Send pictures .
This is exactly the kind of insanity I avoid now that I have very little patience and even less of a sense of humor, but for some reason I didn’t want to let Jo down. So, for the last two weeks, at some point every day, I put a new scarf around the little dinosaur’s neck, and I text her a picture. And if I bought a small accordion file to organize all the tiny scarves? Well, that’s between me and the cashier at the office supply store around the corner.
The pictures lead to Jo’s particular brand of text messages, which I’m learning swing between fascinating and wildly unhinged. And they always end with her giving me some kind of homework assignment that requires me to go somewhere I’ve never been or do something I would never ordinarily do.
And yeah, I guess I could probably say no, but then I remember how talking to her in the rock room was the most normal I’ve felt since Allie died. And how she didn’t get weird or uncomfortable when I mentioned Allie’s name. Or assume mentioning Allie’s name means I’m on the verge of a mental breakdown and immediately try and cheer me up.
Sometimes I just want to say the name of the woman who was my entire world for five years, and Jo somehow got that without me having to tell her. So when Jo sends me on a random field trip around Manhattan, I go do whatever weird thing she asks me to do.
“So, what is it that has you smiling?” Noah asks, dropping down on the couch next to me.
I eye his mug, thinking deflect . “You made coffee in my kitchen and didn’t pour me one?”
He scoffs. “You’re not in the throes of grief anymore. Get your own coffee.”
To anyone else, what he said might seem callous, but to me, it’s a huge fucking relief, and from the way Noah looks at me, he knows it. For years, everyone has treated me with kid gloves, and to some extent, my friends still do. But not my brothers. They may be annoying and overbearing most of the time, but I can’t deny they’ve expertly ridden the waves of my confusing and ever-changing emotions over the past two years.
“I’ll get it,” Cooper says, heading into the kitchen.
“So, the smile?”
I narrow my eyes at Noah. “Do you ever give up?”
He scoffs. “It’s like you don’t even know me. Anyway, if you didn’t want to share your life, why did you even invite us to come visit you?”
“I didn’t invite you, asshole. You just texted me brothers’ weekend and a date.”
He shrugs, propping his legs up on my coffee table and leaning back on my couch like he doesn’t have a care in the world. And honestly, it’s entirely possible he doesn’t. Never has there ever been a more cheerful guy than Noah Wyles. “We don’t really do invitations in this family. We just show up. We like it that way, and it’s not like you ever do anything, anyway.”
“I could be working.” I accept the mug Cooper hands me and take a sip while he settles down on the opposite end of the sectional. Unsurprisingly, the coffee is exactly how I like it. Of the four of us, Cooper is the quiet caretaker of the bunch. He eyes me in that soft, appraising way of his and seems to approve of whatever he sees.
“We knew you weren’t working because Mom gave us your schedule.”
“Of course she did,” I mutter. Once, when I didn’t call my mom for a week straight and didn’t answer my phone because I didn’t feel like talking to anyone, she asked me for my hospital schedule so she knew when to worry about me being dead in an alley and when I was probably just in surgery. I could have explained to her that I’m a grown man and have been keeping myself alive for thirty-four years, but it would have been useless. No one wins a fight with Pamela Wyles. It’s her world, and we’re just living in it.
“I think we’re losing the thread of this conversation,” Noah says. He might be the third-born, but everything about him screams youngest child. Especially the way he’s like a dog with a bone when he wants something and lives to give the rest of us shit. “You were just sitting on this couch smiling down at your phone, and I want to know why.”
“Jordan was smiling?” I groan as Elliot walks through the front door to my apartment wearing sweaty running clothes and carrying a big paper bag.
“Sure was.” Noah is grinning like he has the world’s biggest secret, and I just fucking know that this morning is going to end with me telling my brothers all about my daily texts with Jo. And I’m positive they’re going to make more of it than it is. I do not love this for me. “He was texting furiously on his phone and smiling away like it’s normal instead of something he hasn’t done in two years.”
“Leave him alone,” Cooper says. “If he doesn’t want to tell us, he doesn’t have to. He’s entitled to some privacy.”
“Are you new here?” Elliot asks, as he sets the paper bag on the coffee table and heads for the kitchen. “We don’t do privacy.”
“We really should do privacy,” I mumble, leaning forward and peering into the bag Elliot put on the table. Bagels. Fuck yes. If I’m going to have to subject myself to my brothers’ ribbing, at least there’s breakfast.
“How was the park?” Noah asks as Elliot comes back in with a stack of plates and knives in one hand and a coffee mug in the other.
“Amazing.” Elliot sits right down on the floor and opens the bag, pulling out assorted bagels and tubs of cream cheese. “Running in Central Park in the spring is the best. You really should have come with me instead of laying around here like lazy asses.”
“Fuck that.” Noah leans forward to grab a bagel, scowling when Elliot slaps his hand away. “I’m on vacation. I’m not running when I’m on vacation.”
Cooper eyes him skeptically. “Do you run when you’re not on vacation?”
“I’m an oral surgery resident. I don’t even have time to go to the bathroom. When, exactly, am I running?”
“This morning. In Central Park. I don’t see any wisdom teeth that need to be removed today.” Elliot hands each of us a plate with our preferred bagel variety and the cream cheese flavor we like, his attention to detail immaculate, as always. It’s the computer scientist in him.
Noah tears off a piece of his bagel and swipes it through cream cheese, shoving it into his mouth. “You know it’s not just extracting wisdom teeth, right? The other day I did surgery on a man who got part of his face mauled by a dog. When I have the chance to rest, you better fucking believe I’m resting.”
I slap him on the back of the head. “Talking with your mouth full is gross. So is dipping your bagel. You’re a grown man; spread the cream cheese with a knife. And you weren’t resting. You were ribbing me about my facial expressions.” I inwardly wince, knowing it’s a mistake as soon as it comes out of my mouth, and Cooper slides a sly glance my way.
“Speaking of facial expressions. What were you smiling at?”
I give him a bland stare. “Weren’t you just saying I’m entitled to some privacy?”
He shrugs, spreading cream cheese on his bagel. “I changed my mind. I’m curious.”
“Little shit,” I mumble, taking a bite of my own bagel, letting the carbs comfort me. New York mostly sucks, but if I ever leave, I’ll miss the shit out of the bagels. Everything bagels with vegetable cream cheese are where it’s at, and no one does it like the bagel store at the end of my block.
Elliot finishes slicing his bagel into two neat halves and looks up at me with open curiosity and a smirk. “Spill it, Jordan.”
“Why do I like any of you?”
“Because I brought bagels?” Elliot says.
Cooper shrugs. “I made your coffee the way you like it.”
Noah leans over and plants a kiss on the top of my head. “Because we drove all the way from Boston to see you in this hellhole of a city and bring some life to this boring ass white-walled apartment you call home.”
I blow out a breath. “I was texting with Jo Evans.”
Silence.
I watch my brothers look at each other and then, in unison, turn their gazes to me.
“Jo Evans?” Noah asks, furrowing his brow.
“Hallie’s sister?” Elliot drops the half of a bagel he picked up and screws up his face like he’s thinking.
“Are you friends with her or something?” Cooper takes a bite of his bagel and chews thoughtfully.
“Or something,” I mumble through a mouthful of bagel.
Noah sets his plate on the coffee table and swings his legs up, crossing them and resting his elbows on his knees, ready for story time. “Yeah, I’m going to need more information than that.”
I shrug and take a sip of my coffee. “It’s really nothing. I ran into her when I was at Ben and Hallie’s a few weeks ago to meet the twins.” I give Elliot a pointed look. “You know, the trip Jeremy kidnapped me for because you gave him a fucking key to my apartment.”
Elliot shrugs, unbothered. “Got you there, didn’t it?”
“And apparently it got you talking to Jo Evans,” Cooper says. “Elaborate please.”
“The house was fucking loud, and I needed a break, so I ended up going to their backyard for a while and Jo was out there. We talked.”
“Talked or talked ?” Noah makes air quotes around the second talked and waggles his eyebrows.
I shove his shoulder and he has to stop himself from toppling off the couch. Serves him right. “Just talked. Like normal people. Then I ran into her the next day. I went to the museum, and she works there.” I leave out the fact that I was sitting on the bench staring up at the museum like a weirdo and that when she offered me her hand to stand up, the jolt that went up my arm shocked the fuck out of me. Again. That’s nobody’s business but my own.
“She showed me some cool stuff and we talked a little more. Apparently, she’s coming to New York for the summer for work, so she asked me for my number. She’s been texting.”
“You’re not ignoring her texts or doing that thing you do where you only give one-word responses, are you? Jordan, baby, that’s really not polite.” I almost fall off the couch myself when my mom’s voice fills the room. My gaze flies around the room like I’m somehow expecting to see her standing somewhere in my apartment. My brothers all collapse into hysterical laughter, and Noah holds up his phone, my mom’s face filling the screen.
“You called mom?” I growl. Fucking great.
“For heaven’s sake don’t growl. Noah, give Jordan the phone.”
“No.” I cross my arms and glare at the screen.
Noah holds out the phone, tears of laughter streaming down his face. “Sorry, I just thought she would want to know that her oldest son finally smiled. It’s a big milestone.”
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter, taking the phone.
“What?” I ask, looking into my mom’s smiling face. Her bright red glasses sit on her nose, and her signature red hair curls wildly around her face. I can’t deny that seeing her settles something inside of me, even while I’m irritated as shit that she now knows what’s going on. It’s important to disseminate information to my mom judiciously.
“Nothing, baby, I’m just proud of you that you’re finally smiling, and I love when you boys are all together. I won’t be around forever, and it makes me happy to know that you’ll always have each other.”
I roll my eyes, well used to her antics. “You know discussing your impending death isn’t all that effective when you’re a fifty-five-year-old tennis playing Zumba instructor right?”
“Be that as it may, you look lighter than you’ve looked in a while honey, and I’m happy to see it.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m hanging up now. I have some brothers to kill. You really should have stopped after me. Why mess with perfection?”
“Holy fucking shit,” Noah breathes. “He made a joke. Quick, someone, write down the date and time.”
“I marked it on the calendar,” my mom says. Elliot snorts out a laugh and Cooper kicks him in the back, presumably to get him to stop, but then he collapses back into hysterical laughter too.
“There are literally none of you who I don’t hate right now,” I say, glowering at all of them. “I’m hanging up now. Go find someone else to bother.”
I hit the end button and glare at all three of my brothers. “Was that really necessary?”
“Maybe not, but it sure was funny as fuck.” Elliot wipes under his eyes, still chuckling.
“She’s been worried about you,” Cooper says patiently. “This was good for her to see.”
I sigh, feeling the weight of her worry settle on my shoulders. I know it’s her job to worry, but it’s been so fucking hard over the last two years not to feel smothered by it. It’s why I’m here and not in Boston.
“So what have you and Jo been texting about?” Noah reaches for my phone like he’s about to hop right into my texts and see for himself. I slap his hand away and shove the phone between the couch cushions.
I don’t know what possesses me to tell them the truth, but all of a sudden, it’s pouring out of my mouth. The rock room and Dippy and the little scarves and the homework assignments and Jo’s insistence that we be best friends this summer and National Lost Sock Memorial Day. It’s probably the most words I’ve spoken at once in two years, but I can’t deny the comfort and familiarity of being sprawled around my apartment, eating morning bagels with my brothers and talking about my life.
Fuck, is this what healing feels like?
“You like her.” Elliot’s voice is quiet while he studies me with an appraising gaze.
“I don’t,” I say quickly. “Not like that.”
“You know it would be okay, right?” Cooper says gently. “If you did like her like that.”
I shake my head, my brain immediately rejecting the notion, and I rub my hand over the ache that forms in my chest. Grief? Fear? Anger? Loss? I have no idea what the ache means, but I’m not in the mood to explore it right now. For lack of anything better to do, I pick up my coffee mug and drain it, wishing the kitchen wasn’t so far away. I really need more caffeine.
“Okay, well at least we know what we’re doing today.” Noah slaps his thighs with his open hands and stands up. “Get dressed boys; we’re leaving in ten.”
“Leaving to do what?” I ask.
Noah looks at me with an are you for real expression. “Leaving to go to Times Square so you can pick out the most insane pair of socks you can find.”
I roll my eyes. “We’re not.”
Elliot stands too. “Oh, yes, we are. She was nice enough to send you a gift card. You’re going to spend it and do exactly what she asked you to do.”
Cooper leans over and lays a hand on my shoulder. “It doesn’t matter if you like her like that or not. She made you smile, Jordan. That’s enough.”
Without any reason not to, I stand and help clean up, and then I get dressed and let my brothers take me to Times Square. Because Cooper was right. Jo did make me smile. Even if it was only once, and even just for a second, it was exactly, perfectly enough.
* * *
Me
[Picture attached of feet wearing socks covered in Oreos]
Jo
A+, both on the socks and the snack choice. Oreos are the absolute perfect cookie.
Me
[Picture attached of socks covered in Fireballs]
For you.
Jo
No way! I love a present. And Fireballs.
Me
You love everything. And if I’m wearing ridiculous socks, you are too.
[picture attached of the Wyles brothers with the Naked Cowboy]
Jo
PROUD FRIEND ALERT. Oh, my god, Jordan! This is amazing. I love that you made your brothers get in the picture.
Me
You have that backwards. They forced me into it, and now I need to shower for ten years.
Jo
Be that as it may, you did the thing, and I am very proud of you.
Jo
Seventeen days until the J’s Summer of Fun begins. I hope you’re prepared.
Me
I’m carbo-loading in preparation
Jo
YOU JUST MADE A JOKE OH MY GOD.
Me
Goodnight, Hurricane.
Jo
Goodnight, bestie.