Page 27 of Misfortune and Mr. Right

“Yeah. I’m currently working on a big idea while I’m between jobs. I have to make a payment on my credit card. It’s due this week. I didn’t want to ask Mom and Dad again, so I was thinking you could front me some cash and we’d look at it as a sort of investment in this invention, venture thing I’ve got going.”

“Which is it? An investment, invention or a venture?”

“You could call it a loan. I’d pay you back once I’m working again.”

“What happened to the job at Olive Garden? The one I referred you to.”

“Oh, yeah. That. Well, for starters, they wanted me to work weekends. I can’t work weekends. That’s for high schoolers. Grown men don’t work weekends.”

“Plenty of grown men work weekends, Jacob. And when you’re out of work …”

I let my words fall off. He’s not going to listen. And it’s his life. I don’t need to direct him or intervene. Two months ago, I called my friend who works in corporate at Olive Garden to get the local manager to set up an interview for my brother. Jacob didn’t even take the job after I went to that trouble? Well, there’s my answer.

Jacob sticks around for another half-hour. I end up turning on a televised golf tournament just to pass the time while Jacob eats a sandwich and then helps himself to a bowl of cereal. I could tell him not to raid my kitchen, but he is my younger brother, and we haven’t seen one another in a while.

Rhett and I walk Jacob to the door to see him out.

“Seriously, Logan. You should come out with me and my friends next weekend.”

“I’ll consider it,” I say as I open the door to usher him into the hallway.

“That’s your way of declining without declining, isn’t it?” He taps his pointer finger to his temple.

“You got me. I’m not really the clubbing type,” I tell Jacob, feeling as old and stodgy as he has been implying I am.

I’m saved from his response when Olivia rounds the corner on her way to the elevator.

She’s wearing a Boston University sweatshirt and yoga pants. Her hair is pulled up in two little tufts on top of her head.

Jacob turns at the sound of Olivia’s footfalls. Rhett dashes past me and runs to Olivia, circling her and wagging like he’s seeing an old friend.

“Well, well, well,” Jacob says. “Olivia Pennington. What are you doing here?”

“I live here.”

She squats down and scrubs Rhett behind the ears. Rhett stretches his neck and kisses under Olivia’s chin while making an embarrassing number of random noises.

“Awww, Rhett,” she coos.

“You live here? On the same floor as my brother.”

“So it would seem.”

Olivia doesn’t look at me or Jacob. She simply keeps loving my dog like he’s her favorite.

I watch her, unable to tear my eyes away from the soft, gentle way she’s touching Rhett, the kindness in her eyes, the way she giggles when he plants yet another kiss on her chin.

“Okay, then,” Jacob says. “This is certainly an interesting development.”

I scowl at my brother. I can tell I’m scowling. My face feels like my forehead is trying to descend to my nose.

Jacob holds up his hands in a gesture of innocence.

“Next weekend,” he says, shooting me finger guns. “And I’ll text you the amount for that investment.”

I don’t say a word except, “See you later, Jacob.”

I’m not loaning or investing or venturing with him. He’s a grown man—who still lives with my parents. He doesn’t need handouts.

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