AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Because I want to know these things.”
There’s something unsaid in this.Because I want to know your life, maybe, orBecause I want to know you. My eyes fall on the kit, and I picture myself using words likereservoirandexpiration advisoryandketoacidosis. Explaining how each component works. I’ve never said some of those words out loud. They live exclusively inmyhead, together with the rest ofmyproblems.
Even Cece knows only the basics. But this is Jack. So I swallow. “Do you have any disinfectant?”
The dimple is back. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Less than an hour later, I settle between his long legs on the couch, toes brushing against his calves, his hand splayed on my stomach under the hoodie. He refuses to watch the end ofTwilight(“I think I’ve seen enough”) but agrees with me thatNew Moonis the best in the series (“Relativistically”), curls around me for a two-hour nap duringEclipse(“You smell like me—you should always smell like me”), and then wakes up as the afternoon stretches into evening, just in time for Bella’s unexpected pregnancy.
“This isatrocious,” he says, laughing at every single thing the characters do.
“Shut up.”
He laughs harder against my nape.
“Shut up—she coulddie!”
More laughter.
“It’s about the hardships and sorrows of the universal human experience,Jonathan.”
He nibbles on my ear a little too hard. “Still better than2001,Elsie.”
“Obviously.” Something occurs to me. “By the way, is Millicent okay?”
“Yup. Why do you ask?”
“It’s Sunday. Shouldn’t she be calling you with a vital emergency? Isn’t the newspaper boy tossing theTimesinto her rosebushes or something?”
“Pretty sure newspaper delivery hasn’t worked like that since the early 2000s. And she did her weekend routine yesterday. Sent a photo of an alligator coming out of a toilet in a Florida gas station. Claimed it was happening in her en suite.”
“She knows how to send pictures?”
“Impressive, right?” He drums his fingers against my stomach. “I stopped by for lunch. Gave her the novel. Got scolded for not taking you.”
“Oh.” I flush. With... pleasure?
“Can’t remember the last time she liked someone. Not that she’d admit to liking you.”
I laugh. Then, after a few seconds, I hazard, “She told me she liked your mom.”
There is a change in Jack, but not for the worse. He doesn’tstiffen, just seems less relaxed, a little more on guard when he says, “I think so.”
I’m encouraged. “She was a physicist, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Theoretical?”
He lets out a deep, overacted sigh that lifts me up and down. “Unfortunately.” I pinch his forearm in retaliation. Rudely, he doesn’t notice.
I’m tempted to bring up the article. Find out how he could do something like that to his mother—to all of us—and demand that he take ownership of its consequences. But I also don’t want to disrupt this... fragile, new, radiant thing we have. And after a bit of arm wrestling, the latter pull wins, and what I ask is “Do you have memories of her?”
I feel him shake his head. “She died too early.”
“Did she”—I roll around till I’m facedown on top of him—“look like you?”
“There aren’t many pictures. My family mostly scrubbed the house clean of them.”
