38. Jo

Playlist: My Mind Ain’t Always On My Side | Molly Grace

“I’ve never seen her like this,” Josh whispers loudly, like I can’t hear him.

I can. He’s a very bad whisperer.

“Yeah, this isn’t good,” Nic attempts to whisper back. God, these two shitty whisperers are perfect for each other.

“What do we do?” he hisses.

“I don’t know; it’s been a minute since she’s been like this!” my sister says at practically full volume.

“You know I can hear you right?” I ask. There’s no response, and I assume they’ve resigned to talking with those obnoxious couple looks again.

“Josh,” I groan.

I hear some scuffling behind me before he responds. “Uh, yeah?”

“More chocolate milk, please.” I thank him a few minutes later when he places a fresh glass of chocolate oat milk on the table.

“JoJo? Do you want to talk about it?” Nic asks softly, placing her hand on my forearm.

“Nope.”

It’s silent for a moment while I assume Nic and Josh give each other more looks over my head.

“Well, that’s that,” Josh says. “She doesn’t want to talk about it, Buttercup.”

“Hey Joshy? Why don’t you go grab that first edition Lisa Kleypas you found at the used bookstore last week?” Nic’s tone is sickly sweet, and I immediately know she’s up to something. “Jo would love to see that.”

Josh, the sweet, brainless, golden retriever that he is, does not see the signs.

I look at my sister out of the corner of my eye as her boyfriend jogs up the stairs. She’s watching Josh as he leaves, her eyes following his movements, and once he’s upstairs, her eyes are on me. “That should keep him busy for a few minutes.”

I sigh. “What are you doing?”

“Gaslighting my partner so I can get whatever is bothering you out in the open. Spill.”

God, she’s unhinged.

“Nothing’s bothering me.” I reach for the glass of chocolate milk, and gasp in horror when Nic snatches it from my grasp. “What the fuck , Nicoletta?”

“No chocolate milk until you spill.”

I roll my eyes and reach out for the glass. Nic jerks away and I narrow my eyes. “Give. It. Back .”

She responds by taking a sip.

“You’re dead to me.” I lunge for the glass and Nic jumps up from the couch.

“If you make me spill on the new couch, you’ll end up in the same realm of infamy as Leo. Leo . You don’t want that. Come on, just tell me what’s going on.”

“Becky and Kelsey canceled the wedding.” I hold my hand out expectantly. “There. Can I have my chocolate milk now?”

I watch the confusion on her face give way to understanding. “The money.”

“Yep. I only get fifty percent. It’s not enough to open my business.” Saying it out loud makes it feel more real, somehow. More concrete.

“JoJo,” Nic sits down next to me. “I’m so sorry.”

I shrug. “It’s whatever.”

“It’s so whatever you showed up at my house tonight demanding Miss Congeniality and chocolate oat milk and watched said movie three times without reacting or saying a word. Totally, completely, whatever.”

“I hate you.”

“I know. But it’s almost midnight and we need to talk about this.”

I groan loudly, stomping my foot like I’m a petulant teenager. “I just did .”

“More,” Nic demands.

“I don’t wanna,” I whine.

“That’s why you gotta. Why are you here and not at home?”

“I needed my big sister. Is that so hard to believe?”

“Impossible, actually.”

“I’m in love with Hunter.” It comes out before I can even think about saying it. it just comes out. “I think falling again made me believe that life could be good, that my dreams were in reach.”

I inhale shakily. “I still have my wedding suit, you know. I love that damn thing. I don’t think about Kelsey when I look at it, I think about how beautiful I feel in it. I let myself believe the life I wanted for myself was in reach. Then Hunter said she loved me too, and more than that, she showed it. I felt like even the most impossible dreams were at my fingertips.

“She stayed and supported me through multiple lows and now I feel like the rug’s been ripped out from me again. Becky wants to promote me to partner, but I don’t want to be a partner at her business. Even if it’s legally half mine. I don't want to work with her in any capacity and…”

“What do you want?” Nic asks, a touch of curiosity in her voice.

“I want to move home and do my little beach walks every day and I want to bring Hunter and Dolly with me and…I want to open my own firm. The way I have always wanted. I thought my hard work was paying off and my dreams would be able to come true. Now I have nothing.”

“Did you two have a fight?”

I shake my head. “Not even a little one. She encouraged me to take the space I needed to process everything. She…” I try to swallow the lump that manifested in my throat, but it’s no use. “...she told me she trusted me. That she knew I’d come back.”

I look up and meet Nic’s eyes, which I’m taken aback to see are watery. “JoJo,” she sniffs. “I think she really loves you.”

“I…think she does too.” It feels weird to say it to someone else, almost cocky. Like, hi! The greatest human decided I’m worthy of their love so I can’t be a complete piece of shit.

“But what if I hurt her? She’s so open and warm and I feel so closed off and cold.”

“Have you met my partner and I?” Nic says flatly, and it makes me fight back a smile. Josh is annoyingly happy all the time, and Nic has an infamous scowl that graces her face ninety-nine percent of the time.

“He loves me just like this,” she continues, “all crotchety and complaining and me . Maybe he deserves better than me, but he chooses me every day. And I somehow make him even happier ? Maybe everyone deserves better than an imperfect, human love. Maybe that’s why people read that weird alien smut Nellie told me about. But even better is finding the perfectly imperfect person for us. The one who makes waking up easier, makes doing life better. Who sees the real you annoyingly well, and wants to see you even better . Is that Hunter for you?”

God, I love Hunter so much, it hurts. I’d loved Kelsey, but now I realize there was something missing. It was Hunter’s strength and hope and fiery, righteous anger at injustice. It was our little monster and her mom’s loud offkey singing through the apartment.

She’s always seen me, and wanted to see me better. When we were fifteen, and even more now.

It was always her.

“I like her. A lot. She makes you laugh that ugly laugh and you seem…more healed. More you .” Nic’s eyes are still watery when she takes my hand in mine and squeezes. “Ever since she moved in with you, I’ve slowly been seeing parts of you I haven’t seen since before Kelsey. Parts of you I’d missed, and I know it’s not just her. I know it’s so much hard work on your end, and I’m so glad my sister’s back.” Nic throws her arms around my neck in a tight hug. In a move that surprises even me, I hug her back, long and tight and full of the endless love we have for each other.

I think about how Nic, since dating Josh, has felt almost like a new Nic. She’s still the same grouch she’s been her entire life, but it’s like new facets of her are being unlocked. Maybe I’m getting to experience that for myself, too. Maybe that’s why I hug her back—I feel safe softening in my big sister’s embrace instead of hiding.

“You’re going back to her, right?” she whispers in my ear.

I nod my head. “I’m going to text her tonight, but I’ll go back in the morning. Is it okay if I crash here?”

Nic still hasn’t let go of me. I can’t believe this sentimental woman is the same human who used to karate chop our parents when they attempted to hug her for the sign of peace at Mass.

“Of course it’s okay, JoJo. You’ll always be welcome wherever I am.”

“Even if Josh says no?”

She scoffs as she finally breaks the hug. “Like Josh would say no. He loves you, too.”

I bite back a smile. “Do you maybe want to stop gaslighting him and call him back?”

She sheepishly pulls a weathered paperback out from its hiding spot next to the couch cushion. “Joshy!” she hollers over her shoulder. “It’s down here!”

Seconds later Josh is sliding into the living room. “Thank god, I was about to disassemble Dad's desk.”

I shoot Nic a disapproving look, which she way too naturally ignores. “Here you go, baby,” she coos obnoxiously at him, holding the book out to him. This man blushes from his neck to his ears as he takes it from her, an adoring look on his face. I, of course, roll my eyes, despite a feeling of comforting warmth spreading through my entire body. Josh looks the way I feel when I look at Hunter.

Maybe the world is a little better because we can love.

“JoJo’s sleeping over tonight, is that okay?” Nic asks, a light pink blush on her two cheeks. These two losers are so disgustingly enamored with each other.

“Of course it is.” This simp manages to tear his eyes from Nic and looks at me. “You’re always welcome here…Jo.”

“Not calling me Josephine looked painful,” I tease.

“It was, thank you for noticing.” He looks back at Nic. “Why don’t you two take the bed, and I can take the couch in the office?”

I try to refuse, “I couldn’t…”

“Shut up, Josephine.” Josh swivels his head and narrows his eyes at me. “You’re family.”

“There he is.”

A few minutes later, Nic and I are snuggled beneath the clean sheets with Miss Congeniality playing in the background. She’s pointing out the constellations on the ceiling mural she’d had painted for Josh for their first anniversary.

“You know, I’ll miss you if you leave the city,” Nic says suddenly, turning onto her side to face me.

I smile, only seeing her by the fuzzy light of the TV. “I’ll miss you too. But I think we needed each other more at other points in our life. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll always need my big sister.”

“Considering Kat is useless,” she interrupts.

“Exactly. But you have Josh. And I have Hunter and we’re moving forward in our lives in ways I didn’t think possible, at least for me. I didn’t think I’d get to experience love again, let alone a deeper, fuller love.”

“Life’s funny that way,” Nic says with a giant yawn. “It throws you someone from your past and they become your soul’s reason.”

Nic and Josh had gone to the same elementary school and hated each other as kids. When they bumped into each other one night on the train ride back to the city last year, it was the beginning of a comedy of errors, one that ended in where they are now. I’ll never forget how angry Nic was after running into him. I’ve seen Nic pissed a bajillion times throughout my life, but never to that degree. A year later, she looks at this man like he hangs the moon, and she paints him the stars.

She refers to him as corny shit like her “soul’s reason.”

I think about Hunter, how my heart finally was ready to heal because she believed in me, encouraged me, and took me seriously. How I was finally ready to let myself simply be again.

I fall asleep thinking about a certain chaotic blonde as Sandra Bullock and Benjamin Bratt banter in the darkness.