NINE

JESSE

“You’re going to tell her, Sean,” I demanded, heart thumping at irregular intervals. “You’re going to tell her everything.”

Sean scoffed, not believing me, a lop-sided grin tugging at his lips. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing,” he said. “It was nothing. It meant nothing.”

“I saw you! I saw everything. So you can tell Claire, or I’ll do it for you.”

His smile faded, replaced with a hard scowl. “You don’t have any proof. It’s your word against mine.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter. See, everyone knows you have a thing for Claire. God. You’ve been dreaming about this day ever since I asked her out.”

“That has nothing to do with this!”

“It’s just going to make you look desperate, you know,” he says. “Chasing my leftovers.”

The heat of anger sprang to my face, burning my cheeks. “I do not have a thing for Claire,” I said, forming the words slowly and deliberately. And she isn’t a leftover.

Sean smirked. “Yeah. You play it so cool.”

Claire was a friend—my friend—and as my friend she deserved to know what my brother—her boyfriend—did in his spare time.

“If you want to spread rumors around no one is gonna believe, then fine,” he continued. “But you’re not going to break us up over this. I won’t let that happen.”

My jaw tightened. I would not let him bully me, and he was not going to flip everything around like it was my fault. “I’m not breaking anyone up,” I told him. “You’re going to manage that just fine without me.”

For the first time in forever, I felt empowered. There was justice in this world, and Sean was finally going to get exactly what he deserved. “You have twenty-four hours to come clean, or I’m going to tell her myself,” I warned.

Sean’s face flushed red, an angry vein bulging in his neck. “I guess you think you’ll jump right in and take my place. Is that it?” he asked, his voice rising. “That she’ll fall into your arms? Realize she had the wrong brother the whole time? Wake up, loser. It’s not going to happen.”

Wake up, loser.

“You okay?” Claire asks.

I snap back to attention. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“You seemed sort of lost for a minute,” she says.

“I just . . . spaced, I guess.”

“Must be the food coma coming on.”

“I don’t think I’ll need to eat for at least a week,” I reply, stretching my arms in the booth of Renato’s. I’m grateful she blames the food—that I have the excuse. Because the truth is I’m spacing out a lot since I’ve been home. At school, distractions ran rampant. I could get lost in my courses and homework. Friends. The occasional party. When I was four hours away I didn’t have to think about the house, sitting empty. My family, all gone. But here it’s impossible to run or hide. They’re everywhere. All around me. I’m thinking of things I haven’t thought of in years. Remembering more than I care to remember.

“Did you get enough, Nolan?” I ask.

He nods, even though half of his slice of pizza is cut into pieces only nibbled on, the pepperoni removed and stacked in a pile at the edge of his plate.

“Do you need more drink?” she asks, lifting his child’s cup and shaking it to see how much remains.

“A cask of wine,” he says.

Claire frowns. “A cask of. . . . Nolan, where on earth did you hear that?”

He grins and points his finger across the table, directly at me.

“Do I even want to know?” she asks.

“You were right. He is a sponge.”

Nolan goes back to coloring the paper placemat the waitress provided when she sat us. He’s done pretty well with it, considering he only had a red and orange crayon to work with. Between the puzzles and Claire’s phone, she did a great job keeping him occupied. I didn’t know how he would do at a restaurant—I haven’t been around many kids—and even though it was hard to keep any kind of deep conversation going because of all the interruptions, I found I didn’t mind it so much. Our pasts were like a field of landmines, anyway, most topics best left avoided. The future didn’t even exist. In a few weeks I was out of here. All we really had was the present—the now—and I was okay with that. I was also okay with sharing the now with Nolan if it meant dinner with Claire.

When the waitress returns with a box for leftovers and our ticket, Claire reaches for her purse.

“I’ve got it,” I tell her, going for my wallet.

“No. Please let me pay for me and Nolan,” she insists.

“No. It was my idea. I invited you. This is my treat.”

“Are you sure?”

“Come on, Claire. Let someone do something nice for you.” She frowns. “Next time it’s on you,” I promise. I know it’s risky—and fairly brazen of me—putting this out into the world, the idea that a “next time” is within the realm of possibility. More days and nights like this for us in the weeks to come. But it works, because she relents.

I pay for our meal and box the pizza and we head back out into the early evening. The sun is just beginning to set, buildings casting shadows punctuated by the occasional burst of golden light. Claire holds Nolan’s hand as we navigate streets between the massive skyscrapers. Bank buildings and attorneys’ offices. High-rise condos. A warm breeze scatters leaves through every alley.

“God. I love the city,” she says as we pass a collection of bistro tables spilling onto the sidewalk from a restaurant patio. Nearby, a street performer plays a trumpet and someone drops a few bills into the black case at his feet.

“I’ll have a view like this.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Fortieth floor.”

“Wow. So you’ll be right in the middle of everything.” She pauses. “Haleford has some great festivals.”

“Watch the calendar. If there’s something you and Nolan want to do, come up and we’ll make it happen.”

“Okay.”

Another pause.

“So were you always planning to stay after graduation?” she finally asks. “I mean, Hamilton has finance jobs all over the place.”

“I didn’t apply for any jobs here,” I admit. “No. I didn’t have to stay in Haleford, but a good opportunity arose and I decided to take it. I didn’t apply here because, to be honest, I didn’t want to come back. Being here—being in that house—it’s hard.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to get into your personal business, and I suppose I understand why you’d want to start over somewhere new. I definitely see the appeal.”

“Yeah. When I took the job I didn’t exactly have anything keeping me here.”

I don’t tell her that finding out about Nolan—spending this time with her—has planted more than a few seeds of doubt in my mind. That I am second guessing every decision I’ve made since that day at the hospital, when I punched my way through those doors and didn’t look back. When I let her slip out of my life.

And she’s right. Hamilton is a finance town, full of fantastic jobs. Why didn’t I expand my job search? I know I was acting on limited information at the time. I hadn’t heard from her in years. I knew nothing about Nolan—didn’t realize I still had family. But everything would be different right now if I were staying—if I knew then what I know now: that I have a good enough reason to come back to this town and make it my home again. Maybe two good enough reasons.

We pass a group of young coeds who smile at Nolan, still in his karate uniform, and I realize how closely—to the outside world—we resemble our own little family unit. To the unsuspecting, we look like any other mom, dad, and kid heading home after a dinner out.

A family at twenty-two?

I push the thought out of my mind.

“I’m tired,” Nolan says.

“We’re almost there, bud,” Claire tells him. “A few more blocks.”

I stifle a laugh. “It’s a little more than a few.”

She shushes me. “He has no concept of time or distance right now. You say what you have to say to keep him going.”

“You’re a liar,” I tease.

She smiles, amused, as the wind plays with her hair. “I’m a parent. Ninety percent of my time with him is coercing him to do what I need him to do.”

“You mean lying to him.”

“You’ll get it one day,” she assures me. “You’ll get married, have some kids, and you will understand exactly what I mean.”

“We’ll see,” I reply. “You tired of walking?” I ask Nolan.

He nods.

“You down for a piggy-back ride?”

Another nod. I hand Claire the box of leftover pizza, pick Nolan up and stand him on one of the benches so he can hop on my back. He wraps his arms around my neck. “Ready?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“All right. Which way?”

“Um, that way,” he says, pointing straight.

“Good choice.”

Claire smiles at us, and we start walking. Now that we aren’t trying to keep pace with a three-year-old, we can move faster.

“When Jesse gets tired, Nolan, you’ll have to give him a break,” she says.

“Or we can make it all the way back to the house,” I tell him. “What do you think?”

“Yeah!”

Claire laughs. “I can tell you’ve never carried a thirty-eight-pound kid through the city, either.”

“You seriously underestimate me, Claire,” I say.

You have always underestimated me.

Still, she seems unconvinced.

“Here’s the deal. If I can’t make it all the way back to my house with Nolan strapped to my back, you can take me to dinner, just the two of us, and pay for everything. If I win, you have to help me price, tag, and sell all of my furniture.”

“Sounds to me like you win either way,” she says.

“I won’t complain at all about you paying for my dinner.”

“Gosh. When you put it that way. . . .” She smiles.

“You can come to my field trip!” Nolan says.

“What?”

“My class is going to the science museum,” he explains. “You can come! My mom is coming.”

“Oh, Nolan. Jesse is super-busy right now.”

“You don’t like dinosaurs?” he asks.

“Who doesn’t like dinosaurs?” I reply.

“Please come,” he says. “Please?”

“I’m not sure if I can,” I say. “I don’t know how these field trip things work.”

“It’s Friday,” Claire says. “The school is taking the three-year-old class to the Museum of Natural Sciences. It’s just for a few hours. I signed up to chaperone so I took the day off. I know you have a lot going on, but you’re welcome to come.”

“Please do it, Uncle Jesse. Please! Please!”

Uncle Jesse.

Even if I had other plans, at that moment, I would’ve canceled them. I’m not going to say no to Nolan—not when he called me “uncle” for the first time. Not to mention I don’t think anyone has wanted me to go somewhere this badly. Ever. It’s nice.

“You’re positive it’s okay?” I ask Claire.

“Absolutely. I can call tomorrow and tell them to add one more chaperone. I’m sure they’ll appreciate the extra pair of eyes. You can be my plus one.”

Her plus one. I like the sound of that.

“So here’s the deal, Nolan. If I make it all the way home with you on my back, I’ll go to your field trip on Friday, and your mom will help me price and tag my furniture. How does that sound?”

“Yes!”

At this point, I don’t care if my knees buckle or legs cramp or if my arms spontaneously detach from my body. I am going to make it home with that kid on my back. I am going on that field trip, and I’m getting that day with Claire.