Page 45

Chapter 44

It’s a Grand Gesture

Jemma

“S eriously? Now?” I moaned when I noticed Joe’s car outside my building … in my parking spot, no less. I had enough going on this evening without having to field my brother’s latest complaint about my unmotivated life.

I trudged up the stairs, every step feeling more leaden. What would I say if he asked about SJ? He probably wouldn’t even ask. He’d never shown any real interest in my dating life in the past, which was why he’d known absolutely nothing about the shitshow that was Chad. But what if this was the one time he decided he needed to show brotherly concern?

Well, I was just going to lie about it. Say that everything was fine, that he travelled a lot for work, make some vague offer to bring him to brunch again when he was back in town—which Joe would immediately decline, because the purpose of our monthly brunch was for him to really ram home what a loser I was, in as many creative ways as possible. Having my ‘boyfriend’ there would ruin all his plans.

I unlocked the door.

“What have you done, Jemma?”

I paused in the doorway, my hand frozen above the key table. Okay, so we were starting the inquisition before I even made it in the door this time. Great, why not? It wasn’t as if I hadn’t already had a week full of dealing with unexpected bullshit.

“I’ll need a little context,” I hedged, dropping my keys into the bowl and heading immediately to the laundry to let Luci out. If there was one thing Joe hated, it was when I let her loose when he was in the vicinity. Most likely because whenever she got anywhere near him, she nipped.

I loved her so much for it.

“Leave the rodent in her cage, this is important!” he warned.

“Not a rodent! She’s a mustelid!” I reminded him in a singsong voice. Luci dooked at me, eyes sparkling.

“Yes, Lulu, if he’s mean, bite him hard,” I whispered, picking her up and draping her around my neck like a living stole. Like armour to protect me from whatever diatribe awaited me in the living room.

I took a deep breath and stepped out of the hallway. “Okay, I’m ready to be lectured now.” I looked at him properly.

He looked exhausted. What was it about me making men tired? Ezra had been the supportive, ride-or-die bestie all week, but even he’d had a harried look on his face when he thought I couldn’t see.

And SJ … Sally had said he’d looked haggard. But I couldn’t think about that right now. Because then my brain wanted to get stuck on the other things that Sally had said.

The letter from the university was burning a hole in my pocket. Had he been the one to post it? How had he managed to make it happen? And … why?

“Are you even listening to me, Jemma?” Joe snapped, rubbing at his temples with the middle finger and thumb of one hand.

“Sorry, I’ve had an eventful week,” I mumbled. Darn you, sticky brain!

Joe sighed. “Look, I don’t usually try to get involved in your personal life?—”

I snorted loudly, crossing my arms, while Luci hissed in his direction.

Joe flashed us a weary sneer. “But this is just a step too far. You’re making a fool out of yourself.”

I opened my mouth to protest, to argue, to back answer, but words died in my throat when he lifted his phone to show me.

“Is that all?” I asked, an incredulous giggle bubbling out of me. His phone screen read ‘Inaugural Ferretcon: A Convention for Ferret and Cosplay enthusiasts alike’. Below was a … well, it was an objectively provocative picture of slutty devil Jemma with my angelic sidekick Luci-Fur. But it wasn’t enough to get so worked up over. “Jules got that up way faster than I expected!”

“You know about this? You allowed them to use your image like … like this?” He brandished the phone like a weapon at me. I took a hasty step back. Not that I thought he was trying to hurt me with it, but he seemed so … out of control, that I wasn’t sure if he might accidentally whack me with it while gesticulating.

“I’m in partnership with them.” I put one hand on my hip, eyeing him. “Apparently I’ve made quite a name for myself in both ferret-having and cosplaying circles, and so I’m helping to promote their event in return for getting a prime space at the convention, as well as a cut of the ticket sales.”

“They’re sexualising you for profit!” he snarled, spinning to pace the room. “They’re …”

I stormed up to him, shoving him back onto the lounge. Even catching him off-guard, it was still an effort to force him down. “Gosh, you really are hitting the gym every spare minute! That chest is rock solid!”

“Stop trying to change the subject, Jemma! What were you thinking?”

“First, no one is sexualising me … except maybe you, you creep! It’s cosplay! Second, I was thinking that I’d get to make some money, that’s what I was thinking!” My fingers flexed by my sides. “Aren’t you always telling me that I need to find ways to monetise my ‘hobby’? Hell, you took me to a café run by a thieving slimeball, and you tried to tell me to be more like him!”

Joe’s face screwed up in incomprehension. “What … a slimeball? You barely knew him except for taking a few classes with him at uni, didn’t you?”

I guffawed. I was so sick of keeping everything to myself! Who was I protecting anyway? Chad? He deserved so much worse than even SJ had dealt him.

“I dated him for almost a year, Joe! Huh, I suppose you really don’t get involved in my personal life, seeing as not only did you have no clue that I’d been in a relationship with him, but that he cheated on me with that little waitress you knew by name … oh, and he’s the reason I never finished my degree!”

“He … what? How?” Joe’s eyes were like saucers, his skin a weird dirty grey colour.

May as well twist the knife while I was on a roll. I explained to him the same long and sordid tale that I’d told SJ. I’d kept this story in for seven years, and now I’d told it twice in the space of weeks. Joe’s face went whiter and whiter with every detail I revealed.

When I’d run out of things to say about the whole debacle, I sighed. “So, yeah, that was the end of my university career.”

It might not be the end , I thought, my fingers flitting to my skirt pocket.

“Why didn’t you tell me at the time?” Joe asked, his voice hoarse, his expression tight. “Why didn’t you let me help you?”

I flashed him a tired, sad smile. “You never approved of my choice of degree. You never wanted to come along to student exhibitions when my work was on display. You wanted me to be more ‘responsible’, more ‘driven’, more ‘career-minded’ … more like someone other than myself.”

More like you , I thought.

I sank into the chair across from him. Luci scuttled across the back of the chair and down onto the floor, looking for random trash she’d pilfered. Tucking my knees up under my chin, I sighed. “But I was driven, and I was responsible. Just because you couldn’t see a future with my degree, didn’t mean I didn’t have plans for myself.”

Joe pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. He sat like that for a very long time. I wondered if I’d finally broken him. He started shaking. Oh God, I’d driven him insane! He was cackling like a fiend!

“You are so much like Mum it scares me.”

He looked up, his eyes swollen and damp. He was … crying? I hadn’t seen Joe cry once, not even at the funeral. Not even after he’d come back from identifying Mum and Dad.

“I … I am?” I whispered, leaning forwards, my legs sliding off the chair, my knees knocking the coffee table. “How?”

He looked at me, properly looked at me, in a way I didn’t think he had since before he became my guardian. I found myself clambering across the coffee table, climbing onto the lounge beside him.

“She was so talented … so creative. She found a way to turn her artistic bent into a career. Dad used to joke all the time, when Mum found inspiration, ‘Don’t expect a home-cooked dinner for the rest of the week.’ She’d get so fixated on creating that she couldn’t think of anything else.

“I … I thought when you started your degree that maybe you were going to turn out like her—and maybe you have, you certainly seem to be very … focused on your ferret costume hob … business. But when you … well, when you let me think that you’d dropped out in your final semester of uni, I didn’t know what you wanted to do with your life, or if you even had any aspirations at all!”

“So instead of talking to me about it, you just lectured me, and belittled me, and made me feel like shit at every turn!” I shouted, nails digging into the lounge fabric.

Joe scoffed. “Well, you didn’t talk to me about what happened with … with that Chad bloke.” Joe rubbed his forehead, scowling. “You sat there, at that table, and you let me tell you to … to look up to him, and the whole time he’d cheated you out of your degree!”

I laughed bitterly. “You know what? It doesn’t even matter that I have history with him. This is your MO, Joe! You take me to brunch, sit me down and remind me how much of a disappointment I am to you because I haven’t lived up to your lofty expectations … and then you proceed to harp on and on and on about how I could be better if only I did this, or that … or changed everything I like about myself.”

My head fell back against the lounge. “If you’d known about Chad, sure, you might not have chosen that particular café. But there would have been another café and another person I should try to emulate. There always is. Ever since high school, you’ve been like this. Not a brother, not … not a father figure. Just a perpetually disappointed taskmaster.”

My words were met with silence and an empty feeling inside me that I realised was because all these thoughts and feelings I’d been bottling up when it came to Joe … I’d just vomited them all out.

Wow. I felt so much lighter. Who would’ve thought?

I cracked an eye, peering over at my brother. His head was in his hands again, shaking the way I’d thought was laughter earlier.

Guilt started creeping in, taking root in all the places I’d just emptied out. Had I gone too far? It was nothing more than the truth, but maybe I’d been too harsh?

“Hey, Joe … I’m sorry if I … if that came off as unkind, I …” I didn’t even know what words I could say to make him feel better. So, I did something I couldn’t remember doing—not in any meaningful way—since the day of Mum and Dad’s funeral.

I scooted across that space between us—the one that felt like a gaping chasm, when in reality it was only a few inches of lounge—and I hugged him.

Properly hugged him. Wrapped him up as tight as I could in arms that were too short to fully reach around his muscular frame, and I rested my head against his shoulder. I didn’t speak, just held him.

“I never cried in front of you, Jem. But sometimes, I sobbed into my pillow. Those first few months after … when I was trying to transfer to a uni closer to you, and I was trying to hold down two jobs, so I didn’t burn through Mum and Dad’s insurance money too fast. Trying to make sure you had counselling, had someone to talk to about what had happened. I had no choice. I had to keep it together for my little sister, who’d just lost her whole world.”

“Joe, I …” Words failed me, but my tear ducts did not. My sadness for him … for us … trickled down my cheeks and into his shirt.

“I had to be strong for you. The thought of letting you see me falling apart when you needed me so much … I pushed you because I knew that Mum and Dad had such high hopes for you, and I felt like anything less would have let them down. I was a mess, Jem. And I made a mess of raising you.”

“You didn’t, you know,” I mumbled against his damp shoulder. “You were a barely eighteen-year-old boy, and you gave up so much. I know it’s hard for you to see me as anything but that ten-year-old who you had to piece back together when they died, but I’m not that person anymore. You need to let me make decisions. Make mistakes. And if I do … make mistakes, that is … it’s not because you failed me. Besides,” I gave a watery chortle, “I think I’ve turned out pretty great, actually.”

He huffed out a half-laugh, half-sob. “You are great. I … I should have acknowledged that so many times over the last eighteen years. I just … I spent so much time worrying that you wouldn’t be able to be independent that I was blinded to the fact that you are. You’re living your life the way you want to, and … well, that’s what Mum and Dad would have wanted.”

He shifted, wrapping an arm around me and squeezing me gently. To the shock of both of us, Luci climbed up onto his lap and curled up in a ball, promptly falling asleep.

“I guess she’s … forgiven me?” he murmured, tentatively reaching out to stroke her.

“That’s the seal of approval,” I agreed. “And … you’ve got my forgiveness. If you can forgive me, too.”

He frowned at me. “What do I need to forgive you for?”

I shrugged. “Oh, you know, getting all passive-aggressive in every conversation we had, rather than just being honest with you, and … for not telling you about Chad and what happened with uni. Maybe if I’d addressed it properly when it happened, I wouldn’t have had to spend the last seven years feeling like I was just treading water.”

I took a deep breath. “I got a letter from the professor who expelled me today. He … acknowledged that he’d made a mistake, and he offered me a position in his first-semester class next year. All my previous credits are being honoured, so … I can finish my degree after all.”

I hadn’t realised until I said those words that I’d decided. I was going to finish that final credit. I was going to get my bachelor’s degree. And I was going to keep studying until I could call myself a qualified art therapist, and not just a volunteer one.

Joe blinked at me, his arm around me going tense. “So, did the professor know all along that he’d expelled the wrong student?”

I shrugged. “No idea. All he said is that there had been a misjudgement on his end, and he wanted to make amends.” I tried to close my mouth, but the rest of the story was clamouring to get out. My teeth throbbed as if the words were banging on the backs of them. And there was no keeping them in.

“I think SJ had something to do with it. I told him, that day at brunch, what had happened. I think he went to the uni and confronted the professor.”

Joe’s eyes widened. “Well. That’s … it’s quite a gesture, isn’t it?”

I really shouldn’t have said anything, because I’d just stopped crying over Joe, and now my tears were welling for the umpteenth time for SJ.

“It’s a … a grand gesture,” I blubbered, and Joe cupped the back of my head and held me as I sobbed. “It’s more than grand. It’s … inconceivable.”

It’s so romantic , that cheeky, sappy part of my brain that would be more than happy to ignore reality informed me.

“He must really care about you,” Joe remarked, his voice thick.

“I …” How to explain … without collapsing in a blubbering heap again … and without revealing SJ’s secret identity? I gnawed on a fingernail.

“He does care about you, doesn’t he?” Joe pressed.

Luci saved me from having to answer. She startled out of her sleep, leaping from Joe’s lap and dooking madly, racing around the living room.

“Does she do this often?” Joe asked, a hint of a smile on his face. I silently thanked my crazy ferret for distracting my brother from all talk of SJ as I hopped off the lounge to chase her.

“What is up with you, Miss Lulu?” I demanded, trying to scoop her up. She darted away, returning to the spot in the corner. The same spot where?—

“What the hell is that?” Joe rasped. My heart pounded against my ribs as I turned towards the magenta light that pierced the room. I gaped as it grew, and sparkled, and stretched.

No.

It wasn’t …

It couldn’t be …

Shit! Joe!

My eyes darted to him. He sat, staring agog at the growing portal, his skin so pale it was a perfect canvas to the flashing lights.

“I … Joe, I can ex?—”

“Oh, goody! Two blithering Blisses.”

My head snapped back towards the portal, and my mouth fell open.

That was not SJ.