Page 6 of Red Flags Only

Scally…

Is my eye twitching? I think my eye is twitching.

Her truck is not making it through this week.

“Here’s your mail, sir! Come again!” She grins,finally finally finallyplacing the box on the counter and sliding it toward me. I snatch it before she changes her puny little mind.

“Regrettably, I will,” I say in farewell before thoroughly enjoying the stomp of my boots on the tile as I head for the door. No sweeter sound have I ever heard thanthe sound of my feet taking me away from Brianna Single’s irritating, mail hostage taking presence.

Approaching my truck, which Mars calls my attempt at cosplaying the poor, I settle the box on the floor in front of the passenger seat and pluck my precious green letter out to enjoy the drive home on my lap. No dirty, candy-bar-wrapper-littered floors for this one. I’d put it on a velvet pillow if I had one.

Hmm.

I pull out my phone, tapping out a reminder to buy a velvet pillow – a peach one, if I can find it, Lyra’s favorite color.

It takes roughly 10 minutes to get to my house from the post office, five of which are spent on a pit stop to let the air out of Ted Yeats’ tires.

He knows what he did.

When I walk in the door of the small house I share with my brother, Mars greets me from the couch where he lounges, head half-hanging off the side and leg tossed up over the back cushions as he flips through movie options, green eyes several shades lighter than my own languid with boredom. “Hey, babe. I ordered pizza for dinner. And I made a carrot cake.”

I hum my approval. I love carrot cake. It goes great with milk. And fresh letters from Lyra.

Speaking of fresh letters from Lyra…

I drop the box of fan mail on the dining room table as I pass it, ready and waiting for Mars to sift through later, then gently pull the adorably green envelope out of the chest pocket of my coat. It’s warm from my body heat andLyra’s love for me.

I get two steps toward my bedroom before Mars speaks, stopping me dead next to his hamster, Ginger’s, enclosure. “Before you lose yourself to stickers, midline markers, and wax seals, it’s meeting day.”

I frown. It is very distinctlynotmeeting day. “It’s Friday,” I tell my clearly amnesiad brother. “Meeting day is four days from now.”

Ginger squeaks ominously beside me as her father rolls off the couch, slinking upright with a quickness that puts me on edge. What, pray tell, is my little brother doing?

I eye him warily as he approaches, jabbering nonsense, “Don’t you just love when days cosplay as other days? Sure, it looks like a Friday, but there’sTuesdayenergy here. It crawled up on us… sincesomeonehas been mysteriously absent for the past two Tuesdays.” A spark of dastardlysomethingsparks in his eyes as he reaches me, lifting long-fingered hands to squish my pouting face. “Have a seat, Jovey. It won’t be too painful.”

Yeah, says him.He’snot the one who can’t write.

My shoulders slump, and I stick my tongue out to lick his fingers.

He, unfortunately, does not remove them from my face, instead choosing to wiggle me back and forth with them like he’s practicing for being someone’s great-aunt.

I huff, then raise one quick hand to flutter my fingers against his side. He yelps, jumping away from me with much the same speed as he approached and startling Ginger into her substrate to hide.

Heh.

I smirk. “What were you saying?”

Green eyes glare, then soften. “Seriously, what’s going on? Is this new project not working?”

I sigh, fiddling with Lyra’s letter in my hands and avoiding eye contact. Perhaps if I watch the clouds float away in the sky outside the window of our modest home, my problems will float away with them.

Shocking no one, this does not work.

“Jupiter?” Mars asks, and my jaw clenches.

He’s just socaring. Loving. Wonderful. He picks up all my slack, of which there is much, and then more, taking on the emotional burden that is me. I might be the oldest, but Mars has always been the one taking care of me. Picking up after me. Fixing my mistakes and filling in the holes of inadequacy I leave behind, in life and in our work.

After our mom died, Dad became a shell of a man, barely able to feed himself, let alone us. I wasn’t much better. Mars though? He took care of us, even through his hurt and his grief. He was barely six, feeding us PB&Js and making sure Dad got off to work on time so we’d have money for more.

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