Page 24 of Yours to Lose
“I could be working.” I accept the mug Cooper hands me and take a sip while he settles down on the opposite end of the sectional. Unsurprisingly, the coffee is exactly how I like it. Of the four of us, Cooper is the quiet caretaker of the bunch. He eyes me in that soft, appraising way of his and seems to approve of whatever he sees.
“We knew you weren’t working because Mom gave us your schedule.”
“Of course she did,” I mutter. Once, when I didn’t call my mom for a week straight and didn’t answer my phone because I didn’t feel like talking to anyone, she asked me for my hospital schedule so she knew when to worry about me being dead in an alley and when I was probably just in surgery. I could have explained to her that I’m a grown man and have been keeping myself alive for thirty-four years, but it would have been useless. No one wins a fight with Pamela Wyles. It’s her world, and we’re just living in it.
“I think we’re losing the thread of this conversation,” Noah says. He might be the third-born, but everything about him screams youngest child. Especially the way he’s like a dog with a bone when he wants something and lives to give the rest of us shit. “You were just sitting on this couch smiling down at your phone, and I want to know why.”
“Jordan was smiling?” I groan as Elliot walks through the front door to my apartment wearing sweaty running clothes and carrying a big paper bag.
“Sure was.” Noah is grinning like he has the world’s biggest secret, and I just fucking know that this morning is going to end with me telling my brothers all about my daily texts with Jo. And I’m positive they’re going to make more of it than it is. I do not love this for me. “He was texting furiously on his phone and smiling away like it’s normal instead of something he hasn’t done in two years.”
“Leave him alone,” Cooper says. “If he doesn’t want to tell us, he doesn’t have to. He’s entitled to some privacy.”
“Are you new here?” Elliot asks, as he sets the paper bag on the coffee table and heads for the kitchen. “We don’t do privacy.”
“We really should do privacy,” I mumble, leaning forward and peering into the bag Elliot put on the table. Bagels. Fuck yes. If I’m going to have to subject myself to my brothers’ ribbing, at least there’s breakfast.
“How was the park?” Noah asks as Elliot comes back in with a stack of plates and knives in one hand and a coffee mug in the other.
“Amazing.” Elliot sits right down on the floor and opens the bag, pulling out assorted bagels and tubs of cream cheese. “Running in Central Park in the spring is the best. You really should have come with me instead of laying around here like lazy asses.”
“Fuck that.” Noah leans forward to grab a bagel, scowling when Elliot slaps his hand away. “I’m on vacation. I’m not running when I’m on vacation.”
Cooper eyes him skeptically. “Do you run when you’re not on vacation?”
“I’m an oral surgery resident. I don’t even have time to go to the bathroom. When, exactly, am I running?”
“This morning. In Central Park. I don’t see any wisdom teeth that need to be removed today.” Elliot hands each of us a plate with our preferred bagel variety and the cream cheese flavor we like, his attention to detail immaculate, as always. It’s the computer scientist in him.
Noah tears off a piece of his bagel and swipes it through cream cheese, shoving it into his mouth. “You know it’s not just extracting wisdom teeth, right? The other day I did surgery on a man who got part of his face mauled by a dog. When I have the chance to rest, you better fucking believe I’m resting.”
I slap him on the back of the head. “Talking with your mouth full is gross. So is dipping your bagel. You’re a grown man; spread the cream cheese with a knife. And you weren’t resting. You were ribbing me about my facial expressions.” I inwardly wince, knowing it’s a mistake as soon as it comes out of my mouth, and Cooper slides a sly glance my way.
“Speaking of facial expressions. What were you smiling at?”
I give him a bland stare. “Weren’t you just saying I’m entitled to some privacy?”
He shrugs, spreading cream cheese on his bagel. “I changed my mind. I’m curious.”
“Little shit,” I mumble, taking a bite of my own bagel, letting the carbs comfort me. New York mostly sucks, but if I ever leave, I’ll miss the shit out of the bagels. Everything bagels with vegetable cream cheese are where it’s at, and no one does it like the bagel store at the end of my block.
Elliot finishes slicing his bagel into two neat halves and looks up at me with open curiosity and a smirk. “Spill it, Jordan.”
“Why do I like any of you?”
“Because I brought bagels?” Elliot says.
Cooper shrugs. “I made your coffee the way you like it.”
Noah leans over and plants a kiss on the top of my head. “Because we drove all the way from Boston to see you in this hellhole of a city and bring some life to this boring ass white-walled apartment you call home.”
I blow out a breath. “I was texting with Jo Evans.”
Silence.
I watch my brothers look at each other and then, in unison, turn their gazes to me.
“Jo Evans?” Noah asks, furrowing his brow.
