Page 25 of Crossing the Brooklyn Briggs
“Has anyone ever told you that you think too highly of yourself?”
“I’m pretty sureyouhave.”
She lets out a deep sigh. “Can I go to bed now?”
Still grinning, I nod and head for the door, though I pause before I reach the hallway and look back at her, tucking my amusement away so she knows I’m no longer joking. “I’m serious about helping you in the middle of the night if you need it, Queens. I’m a light sleeper anyway, so I’ll probably wake up regardless.”
She cringes, but to my surprise she nods. “I’ll let you know. Thanks, Jordan. For all of this.”
I can’t help but smirk. Something about Brooklyn Briggs just brings out my annoying side. “How painful was it for you to say that?”
She groans. “Close the door on your way out.”
I do, chuckling to myself as I make my way to the couch that is going to be my home for the next two nights. It’s late, and I am strangely tired from having spent most of the day looking at the TV. But instead of settling down to try to get a few hours of sleep, I grab my computer and pull up my schedule now that there’s nothing to distract me.
This weekend is pretty sparse in terms of jobs, which is why I’m mostly okay with letting my team handle the rest of the jobs we have lined up. But it’stoosparse. Granted, No Mow Problems has only been up and running for about six months, but even with Houston putting in all of the startup money, I’m barely breaking even right now.
“Not enough,” I mutter as I send an email to my website guy with a few tweaks I want him to make.
My dad brings in a pretty decent paycheck with the contract work he does with the military, and I know Alejandro and his wife, Paige, are paying for the kids’ care even though my mom tried to refuse them because they’re in a lot of debt. But my mom’s medical expenses aren’t small, and I need to start bringing in more money so I can actually help more than making meals a few times a week when I have the time. I haven’t even let myself think about what it would cost to get myself a house so I don’t have to crowd my family, even if I’m dying being a twenty-eight-year-old living with his parents after being on my own for almost a decade. My mom is already stressed enough with whatever is going on with Mateo, my niece Madi is showing signs of needing extra tutoring because of a potential learning disability, and there’s basically nothing I can do to help. And it’s killing me.
I used to work with the biggest names in California, making more money in five years than my parents have seen in a lifetime. I don’t regret giving everything to Natalie after what went down, but sometimes I wish I had thought to give more to my parents when I could.
There were a lot of things I neglected back then.
Needing a distraction, I pull up another Jane Austen movie—this one calledEmma—and turn my focus back to my work while it plays in the background. I need to find a way to get my client list to a sustainable level and start bringing in some better money.
It’s the only way I’m going to get back to a real life.
October 12
When I wake, my computer slides from my lap, and I barely catch it before it crashes to the floor. Nice way to get my heart rate going, I suppose. I’m not sure what woke me up—could have been anything—but the room is a lot lighter than I expected.
“Hi.”
I should have taken out my contacts, but I wouldn’t have been able to see my computer. Fine time to forget to bring my glasses with me. I have to blink a few times before I realize Brooklyn is sitting on the ottoman with a bowl of cereal in her hand as she watches me. How did she get there?
“Hi,” I say, rubbing my face. Did I sleep through the night? I don’t remember the last time that happened. (Though, can I really call itthrough the nightif I fell asleep around three? Not that the semantics really matter…)
Brooklyn smiles, and it’s the kind of smile that usually precedes a prank. “Did you know that you talk in your sleep?”
It takes everything in me not to cringe. I thought I’d made it through life unscathed when she didn’t figure this out about me in high school, but now that secret’s out. That could be dangerous. “I did know this,” I say warily, eyeing her phone where it sits beside her. “What did I say?”
Her grin grows wider. “You were complaining about the price of eggs being atrocious. I didn’t know you were such a cheapskate, Jordan.”
I mean, eggs really have gotten expensive, but I have no idea why I would be dreaming about it.
“Don’t worry,” she says, as if I actually had a response. “When I tried to record you, I only ended up with about a thousand pictures of my forehead, so you’re safe.”
I’m not sure I like knowing that the only reason the whole internet doesn’t now know my stance on egg commerce is because Brooklyn is technologically challenged.
I need to change the subject. “What are you eating?” I ask, putting as much disgust into the question as I can.
The face she makes at me reminds me of seventeen-year-old Brooklyn, the one who somehow figured out that I was making out with my girlfriend under the bleachers during a football pep rally and sent one of the assistant principals to put me in detention, all because Iaccidentallyspilled ketchup on her quarterback boyfriend’s jersey at lunch. She’s trouble.
The best kind of trouble.
“I’m eating breakfast,” she says lightly. It’s like a switch got flipped overnight, and I’m not sure if it’s because she no longer has a migraine or because that concussion knocked some sense back into her. The quiet and subdued Brooklyn I saw yesterday was fine, but this morning she seems more like the girl I knew.
