Page 17 of Where You're Planted

Jack

“Finally!” came Amy’s loud call as soon as Jack let himself into his sister’s house.

He followed her voice and the sounds of pop music and clattering pans toward her kitchen. Amy was wearing plaid pajama bottoms and one of Omar’s fire department sweatshirts, its sleeves shoved up around her elbows. “You’re late,” she accused, jabbing a spatula at him.

“You’re still cooking,” he pointed out. “Actually,whyare you cooking? Andwhatare you cooking?”

“Excuse me. I’m an adult.”

“I’m gonna get food poisoning, aren’t I?”

“Relax. It’s pancakes.”

“This is your adult meal? Pancakes? How have you survived this long?”

“Hey, how about don’t criticize the person feeding you?”

Jack shrugged out of his coat. He’d left his muddy boots bythe door and now was hyperaware of the hole in the big toe of one sock. “Is Omar on shift?”

“Yep,” she said, turning off a burner and adding charred pancakes to a heap already on a plate. “Sorry, you’re stuck with just me.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “I’m fine with just you.”

“You sure? Because I binged this new reality dating show, and I have theories I’m dying to tell someone.” She switched off her music and handed him the plate with a dozen too many pancakes on it. Before herself, she placed a bowl of chicken broth and a sleeve of saltines.

“What’s with the soup? You sick or something?”

She faked a cough into her hand and wiped it on his shoulder, saying, “So sick and contagious.”

“Who raised you?”

She beamed at him. She loved this joke. He’d grown up without a mother, her without a father. For three years in their childhood, his dad and her mom had dated, and they’d all lived together. Even though their parents split up and eventually married other people, Jack and Amy had already bonded as siblings. When her mom passed from a genetic heart defect shortly after Amy’s nineteenth birthday, Jack became her only remaining relative, even if it wasn’t a legal bond.

He put away six of the pancakes while Amy filled him in on her new show. Then she said, “Okay, now tell me all your work drama. Who’s hooking up? Who’s in a love triangle?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Do y’all ever go out together?”

Ian and Jorge had invited him out for drinks before, and a few weeks ago, the interns had tried to get him to join some trivia night thing, which he’d declined on account of it sounding like a nightmare. Too much noise. Too many people.

At his expression, Amy amended, “Okay, maybe not with your coworkers. But if you’re as busy with work as you seem, I worry about you going full hermit in the woods and forgetting how to function in society. What ever happened to that Parks and Wildlife lady you were seeing?”

“I wasn’tseeingher. We went out twice.”

“Why’d you stop?”

“Because she wanted me to meet her sisters. Right before Thanksgiving.”

Amy exaggerated a gasp. “Heaven forbid.”

“It was gonna be a fast track to matching sweaters at holiday parties and being her plus-one at weddings.”

Now Amy rolled her eyes. She had opinions about his lack of a love life. He wasn’t in the mood to hear them.

“Anyway, if you want to know what’sactuallygoing on at work, it’s the same as it’s been since the storm. Greta’s holding out hope the commissioner will finally approve the flood-mitigation projects before she retires, but I don’t trust that guy. He rejects every request we put in but then he turns around and expects us to pull a fucking Japanese friendship garden out of our asses.”

He pushed his plate away, working himself up about this all over again, even though he hated to bitch and moan about problems instead of just fixing them. “Also, the library folks moved in a couple days ago,” he said. “Their leader’s a real piece of work.”