Page 10 of Is It Casual Now?

“What?” Jessie laughed again, shaking her head as she pressed the corners of an alphabet poster onto the wall beside the whiteboard of her kindergarten room. Jamie couldn’t understand why this particular poster had to be changed every year since it was basically exactly the same, but she went with whatever her sister told her to do. It was their tradition to set up Jessie’s classroom together—it had been for the last tenyears since Jessie had started teaching, and Jamie had only missed the chance once.

“I was saying how much I appreciate you taking time off to come help me.”

“You make it sound like I never help you with anything.” Jamie’s cheeks flushed with the familiar shame she felt about how little she really did to help her sister. But this was something she wouldn’t give up if she had to. This was their tradition, and if they did something together like this, then they wouldn’t argue as much.

“Noooo,” Jessie pulled the word out as though giving herself time to find the right words. “You try to help when I ask, but you rarely take time off in the middle of a workday to do it. And by rarely, I mean never, except for this.”

“I…” Jamie fumbled for answers. Only her twin sister could ever hit directly on the point and have her entirely flabbergasted for words. Words were her life, but that skill was rendered useless when it came to Jessie.

“You what?” Jessie dropped her hands and tilted her head as she turned her full attention and body toward Jamie.

“I wrote a blog post, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to hit hard for a…” Jamie swallowed back the lump in her throat. “…a few different reasons, and particularly for a few specific people.”

“Okay.” Jessie shrugged her eyebrows creasing together. “But that’s sort of what you do half the time.”

“Most of the time,” Jamie muttered in correction. At least she wanted it to be most of the time, but building up a blog that was full of gossip, and gossip that was mostly true, was far harder than she’d anticipated. And while she was good at blogging and finding out information, she was really crappy at being a business owner.

“Exactly.” Jessie nodded, relief washing over her face. “So why would this time be any different?”

Jamie’s face burned, and she knew without a mirror that her face was flaming a deep pink. They might as well have been Irish-born with how their emotions flared up their ivory skin.

Jessie raised her eyebrows, nodded toward one of the small chairs behind a just-as-small table and sat on one opposite it.

“Ugh. I totally should have bailed on helping you,” Jamie growled out, but the corners of her mouth lifted, and Jessie smiled softly at her.

“Tell me what happened.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does.” Jessie laughed. “Don’t make me pull out the big sister card.”

“Two minutes. You’re two minutes older than me.”

“Exactly.” Jessie pursed her lips, lifted her chin slightly and pushed back her shoulders. “So it’s time you tell your older and far wiser sister what shit you’ve gotten yourself into this time.”

“That’s just it.” Jamie ignored the “wiser” comment, and its implications, and slumped into the uncomfortable tiny furniture. “Normally, it’s just me getting into shit because I’m exposing other people’s dirt, but this time my own shit might actually bite me in the ass.”

“Oh my God.” Jessie’s mouth opened in an O, and her eyes sparkled with a little too much enjoyment.

“You look far too pleased about this.” Jamie pouted.

“I am.” Jessie chuckled. “I’ve been waiting for you to finally get caught up in one of your stories. What did you do? Get a restraining order put on you or something?”

“I wish,” Jamie muttered before she could help herself. A restraining order would be easier than a night of really hot, amazing sex and then finding out that the woman you fucked would consider you her mortal enemy.

“Holy crap.” Jessie sat back in her own chair, all humor lost from her face. “What happened, James?”

And so Jamie told Jessie without going into too much fine detail, like how the woman rocked her world only for her to find out she was one of her biggest nemeses in her career life.

“Wait.” Jessie leaned forward in the chair, legs crossed, and arms folded over her raised knee. “THESiena Frazee? The woman you curse every other week. The one who somehow manages to get on top of half your stories and all the ones that would bring your name out of the trash column and into the real-journalist sphere?”

“Hey,” Jamie shot back. “It’s not a trash column.”

Jessie’s reply was those raised eyebrows once more, those ones that Jamie was fairly certain she used on her students every single day, probably multiple times a day.

“Fine. But not everything I write is salacious and about the shock factor.”

“I know, but it’s all about the drama of other people’s lives.”

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