Page 43 of Every Version of You

He groans loud enough to make me turn my speaker volume down. “Fine,” he mutters.

When a new call pops up, it’s the devil himself. “Hey, Jonah is calling me right now. Hang on, I’ll be right back.”

When I do, my baby brother’s cheery voice fills the room. “Hey, sis! Do you wanna go to the shore tomorrow?”

“Hey,” I smile, fighting the urge to fix my brothers’ issue immediately. “Yeah, I don’t have plans.” I look down at my best friend still laying in my lap. “Raf, you coming?”

“Count me in,” he smiles.

“Yes!”

“Hey,” I say with trepidation. “Have you talked to Dane lately?”

“Ugh. Yeah, he’s being a dick. Can you tell him to stop being such a jerk at practice?”

Pinching the bridge of my nose, I sigh. “No. You need to talk to him yourself.”

“Fine, whatever,” he says as if Dane being mad at him isn’t affecting him. “Hey, do you have a spare TV I can have?”

That has me chuckling. “No, Jonah. Who just has a spare TV laying around?”

“I don’t know. You just moved, I thought maybe you had enough TVs at Raf’s place.”

I roll my eyes. “I keep my TV in my room. Nice try. What happened to yours?”

“Um…” he drawls, panic evident in his tone.

“Jonah,” I say through a tight smile. “What happened to your TV?”

“My dog knocked it over.”

“When did you get a dog?” I exclaim. He’s nowhere near responsible enough to own a dog—and this is why!

“Um, last week…when I got two from the shelter.”

Rafael jerks upright and spins to face me, his knee bent across the cushion, as if to gain more leverage to understand the situation. “You what? You got two?” I scream.

“They needed me!”

“Jonah, oh my god. You just barely graduated college, are subletting an apartment with three roommates, and what ever happened to the dog you adopted in college?”

“Paris and I broke up! She took the dog, you know that.”

Yeah. I do. And I warned him then that he shouldn’t get a dog with a girlfriend he’s only been with for two months—especially while living at college.

“Jonah,” I sigh.

“You can meet them tomorrow! I’ll bring them to the beach with us. Hey, I gotta go, see you tomorrow!”

“Jonah, youcantbringdogstotheshore—” I try to scramble out before he hangs up. Raf’s laugh shakes the sofa as he leans his shoulder against it. When I see my call with Dane has been disconnected as well, I toss my phone on the cushion, throw my head back and let out some cross between a sigh and a scream.

“I’m sorry,” Rafael chuckles. “I don’t mean to laugh. But you’re doing great, Angel. Really. As difficult as it may be, you’re setting those boundaries. And Jonah will get there. He’s gonna man up some day. You can only do so much to help that kid.”

“He’s gonna give me gray hairs before this baby ever will.”

“Oh shit, that reminds me,” Raf smiles, leaning his tall frame down to show me the top of his head where he’s parting his dark hair. “I found these the other day.”

“Gasp!” I hiss, clamoring to push his hands out of the way and see for myself. “Oh my gosh, there are so many white hairs! One, two, three, four—”

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