Page 90 of Break Your Fall

They’re bold, unique, and mesmerizing.

“Are these yours?” I ask with a hand gesture toward the ones I was studying.

“Those, yeah,” Jessa answers from the kitchen area. “Some others in the back belong to artists who are good enough to hang with me.”

I smile pointedly at the returning twinkle in her eyes. “Are you an art snob?”She’d have a right to be.

She laughs. Hysterically. And I find myself gaping once she calms enough to say, “You got the wrong Wescott.”

“Dad doesn’t like your work?” I ask on an immediate assumption as I step farther in her direction.Now I’m calling him dad.And offended for my sister. “He won’t let you on the walls?” flies out next.

Jessa holds her hands up, her shoulders bouncing once with her laugh. “I appreciate your defense, but Daddoeslike my work. He just has a certain style for his gallery and mine’s not it. And I don’t need to be on the walls,” she adds as my mouth opens again to protest. “I’ve got my own thing going on.” She sounds confidently content, so much so that I let it go.

“Something to drink? Eat?” she asks next from behind the mini bar, which is more like an island since it’s not attached to anything but the floor. “I have teas, coffee, water, milk. Leftover chowder? I can make you a pickle sandwich.”

I find myself laughing, then saying, “What? Like, pickles on bread?”

“No, like mustard, ham, cheese, and tomato between two slices of pickle,” she explains with amusement, and I make a face. That sounds like something Banks would eat. I shake my head and she continues, “I can put some ployes on the skillet.”

I make another face. “Ugh, no, thanks.” I’ll stick with the pancakes at A Flying Grit, where I’m now wondering if she’s ever been. But I don’t ask, because I’m more focused on the fact that my sister can cook, and I can’t.

One more point for our father.

Or for her mother? Jessa has yet to say anything about her mother and our dad hadn’t said anything about another woman in his letters.

Maybe Jessa taught herself.Like I could’ve done.She seems capable of being her own teacher for everything.

“You’ve just committed a sin,” she tells me about my distaste for ployes as she approaches me, and my eyes fall to her exposed stomach as I’m now just taking in her outfit. She’s wearing another pair of denim shorts, sans paint splatters, and a plain white belly shirt.

“Is my stomach bothering you?”

My eyes dart up at the question, and she gives me her pursed-lipped laugh. “I have more if you wanna borrow one,” she offers. “Or I can make you one.”

I don’t say anything for a long moment; instead, fingering the skirt of my dress, imagining sharing clothes with my sister, something I’d briefly thought about when I was younger, trying to get Camille to shop with me and try on dresses, becauseshewas the only sister I knew. Now I have a blood sister, one who looks like me, is an artist, and loves clothes.

“I’m being too much, huh? Too soon?” Jessa asks, her tone conveying she’s unbothered and just wants to know.

“No, no,” I rush out with a light laugh that settles to a smile. “You’re being … perfect.”

The smile she returns to me is slow and a little shy. “I wish we’d met sooner,” she says, then pulls a deep breath as she looks down at my dress, playfully mocking the way I eyed her belly shirt. “So, are dresses your thing?”

I grip and sway the skirt around over my thighs. “When it’s warmer. I practically live in them. But I’ve been expanding,” I note, thinking of the new additions to my closet.

“New style?”

“Kinda,” I say, feeling sheepish.

“Change can be fun,” she says.

“I’m not really changing,” I reply. “I’m just … learning.” There’s a confidence in my words that resembles the confidence Jessa has been showing me.

Her look is curious, but before she can ask me the questions spinning behind her eyes, another text interrupts my time, and after glancing at my phone, I’m racing out of the loft.

26

Safe Harbor

Reyna

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