Page 33 of My Brother’s Best Friend

“You’ve paid me for my trouble,” Jordan said. “And fed me, for that matter.”

“Those were snacks,” Nana said. “I’m talking about a meal. The artistic process is exhausting. I won’t have people saying I took advantage of a genius’s talents and left him depleted and unable to paint for months. You’re staying for lunch, and that’s that.”

9

JORDAN

Cam seemed shocked when I let Doris herd me to the patio table for lunch. Maybe I should have been shocked too. It was pretty fucking awkward, making him spend more time with me after I’d basically molested him last night. But at the same time, shouldn’t it have been more awkward?

I’d spent all night wondering what the hell had possessed me to make out with him—a straight guy—my brother’s friend—in public. Not just make out with, but get handsy. I knew I needed to apologize, and I was dreading it.

But as soon as I had, I’d felt…shockingly normal? Not just normal, but good. Talking to Cam was easier than it had any right to be. Around everyone else on Summersea, I had my guard up. With him, I just felt like myself.

A better version of myself, actually. Cam seemed to see a me who I wasn’t quite sure existed. But I wanted him to.

So even if Cam was never going to be into me—even if the best I could hope for was Quincy forgiving me and agreeing to meet up again—I couldn’t help wanting to stick around for lunch. Being around Cam felt too good. I wasn’t ready to cut myself off.

Cam helped Doris make sandwiches while Arthur grilled me about life in New York. He’d lived there when he was in college, studying engineering, and he had an endless list of bars, restaurants, and bookshops he felt I needed to visit.

Apparently, he and Doris had met in the city. It made my heart ache, hearing about their romance. I wished my life there had been half as beautiful as theirs sounded. The closest thing I’d had to romance recently was my aborted attempt to meet up with Quincy, and I still hadn’t heard back from him.

Maybe that was for the best, though. Making reckless decisions with a stranger had seemed a lot more appealing before I’d spent any time with Cam. Even though my crush was hopeless, it was hard to get excited about anyone but him.

Still, it was a lovely lunch. The only thing I would have changed was the part where Doris brought Cam’s shirt out of the dryer, and he put it back on. I wouldn’t have complained about more time to ogle him when he wasn’t looking, but Cam seemed relieved to be fully clothed again.

He was quiet through most of lunch, but he didn’t seem unhappy. I was pretty sure it was just his default setting. He did get more animated when Doris began telling a story about how, one year, he’d waited up all night on Christmas Eve for Santa to come.

“I want to make it clear,” he said, “that I did not still think Santa existed at age thirteen.”

“My mistake.” Doris patted his hand. “You were waiting up to see the reindeer, not Santa. You always did love animals.”

“Nana, if I didn’t believe in Santa, why on earth would I believe in his reindeer?” He gave her an affectionate look. “I was waiting up because someone had heavily implied I was getting a puppy for Christmas, and you always put the presents under the tree on Christmas Eve, so they’d appear magically the next morning. I was worried you were going to put a puppy in a box and then leave it there for eight hours. That’s all.”

“So what did you do?” I asked. “Creep downstairs and stick your ear to every box, listening for panting and snuffling?”

Cam’s cheeks turned a faint pink. “Not quite.”

“No, he was much more troublesome,” Arthur grumbled. “He filibustered us. Said he wanted to read to us from the book he was devouring at the time. Something about fungus, if I recall correctly.”

“Mushrooms Demystified,” Cam said with a sheepish laugh.

“That’s the one!” Arthur said. “I like a portobello as much as the next guy, but a thousand pages on the subject? Come on.”

“He started on the first page of chapter one and read until his voice gave out.” Doris shook her head fondly. “Described the pictures in minute detail.”

“But why?” I asked. “How was that supposed to keep a puppy from suffocating?”

“I figured if I read through the night, they couldn’t set the boxes out at all, so they’d have to bring the puppy out to me, unpackaged, from whatever room they were hiding it in,” Cam said.

“Weren’t you worried it was already in a box, just in some other room?”

He laughed. “You know, the thought never even occurred to me.”

“If it had, we might have been spared several chapters,” Doris said. “It was months before I could even look at a button mushroom again.”

“He fell asleep, book on his lap, at about five a.m.,” Arthur said with a grin. “Just dozed off mid-word. We hustled to get those boxes out before he woke up again, and you should have seen his face when he opened all of them, and there wasn’t a puppy to be seen.”

“Wait, after all of that, you didn’t even get one?” I said. “Are you serious?”