Page 48 of Brother in Law with Benefits

"Is it, though. Is it, Grant."

"There's a management component."

"Sure. You're managing plumbing."

"I hate you," I say, without any heat in it at all, and she grins against my chest, entirely unbothered, entirely pleased with herself. We goth giggle.

Somewhere in the middle of me explaining flow rates in more detail than she asked for, she goes quiet and asks, "Where are you going to live?"

I hadn't planned to get into this tonight. I'd planned, vaguely, to let it sit until the timing was better — as if there's ever a better time than a woman's head on your chest at midnight, sated and honest, asking you a question that matters more than she's letting her voice show.

"I thought I'd figure that out. My room at mom’s house is fine." I pause long enough that she notices, her hand going still against my ribs. "Unless there's a better option."

She goes still against me entirely now, not just her hand. "Are you asking to move in?"

"I'm asking if you'd want me to."

She's quiet for a second. "My apartment has one succulent and too many scrubs," she says finally.

"I've seen it. It'll do."

She laughs again, softer this time, and presses her face into my shoulder, and I feel her nod against my skin before she says anything else out loud, like her body answers before her mouth catches up.

She's asleep within a few minutes, her breathing gone slow and even against my chest, one hand still loosely curled at my ribs like she's keeping watch even unconscious.

I stay awake a while longer, running a hand slowly through her hair, looking at the ceiling of a room I intend to know very, very well for a very long time.

I turned down two hundred thousand dollars for this.

Best deal I ever made in my life, and it isn't close.

15

Grant

Three weeks into living with Sophie, and I've started noticing the small architecture of a life that isn't mine alone anymore.

Her shampoo crowds mine in the shower. The succulent, migrated from the kitchen counter to the windowsill in the good light, thriving in a way it apparently never did under her care alone, a fact I have wisely chosen not to mention more than the one time. Scrubs draped over the back of almost every chair. A grocery list on the fridge in her handwriting that includes, halfway down, in smaller letters like she wasn't sure she wanted to commit to it:maybe try the recipe Patty gave you? worth a shot.

I've been at Sullivan for five weeks. Learned the crew — Deb the backhoe operator, who has opinions about everything and is right more often than she's wrong; a kid named Bobby who reminds me uncomfortably of myself at twenty-two, all forwardmomentum and no patience; Camden, steady, sharp, the kind of boss I'd have wanted running a project overseas if project management overseas worked anything like it does here, which it doesn't, and I'm still learning the difference between the two kinds of urgent.

It's a Tuesday. Ordinary, unremarkable, exactly the kind of day I spent nineteen years not getting to have. I'm in the site trailer going over trenching depths with Camden when my phone rings.

Chris.

I haven't seen that name light up my screen in longer than I want to admit. We text maybe twice a year — birthdays, the occasional forwarded article neither of us comments on. A phone call from Chris is not a normal event. A phone call from Chris on a Tuesday afternoon, out of nowhere, is the kind of thing that makes my stomach drop before I've even answered it, the way it used to drop at the first crack of distant fire before my brain had caught up to naming what it was.

"Give me a minute," I tell Camden, and step outside the trailer.

"Chris. Hey."

"Aunt Carol called me." His voice is flat. Controlled in a way I don't recognize from him. Chris has never once in his life been the controlled one in our family, that's always been my job, and hearing it come out of him instead puts me immediately, completely on guard.

"Okay."

"You want to guess what she told me, or should I just say it?"

I lean against the trailer, the metal siding warm under my hand even through the fall chill. "Say it."