Page 15 of The One Next Door

“Sarah,” my other brother, Max, answered. “His roommate. Remember?”

I nodded. Kieran’s younger sister, Sarah, had been staying with Elias temporarily. Andtemporarilyhad turned into several months.

“It’s like she’s trying to get under my skin,” he continued. “She puts her feet up on the coffee table and she plays musicallthe time.”

“So she behaves like most humans.”

“You don’t get it. She’s loud and rude and is always trying to get me to hang out and drink with her…”

“Aw, poor baby. Your hot girl roommate wants to drink with you,” Max said, losing his patience.

“Yeah. Your girl roommate is your mother,” I chided him.

Max rolled his eyes. “I was referring to a different woman drama.”

“Oh, yeah. Holly.”

“True,” Elias conceded.

“I still don’t get how you can have a baby with someone you can’t stand,” I added.

Max groaned. “I don’t either.”

“Obviously, there was a minute there where you could stand each other,” Elias teased.

“Don’t remind me,” he muttered. “Fuck, if I could go back and redo any one night of my life…”

I almost felt bad for Max. He’d come back to Blue Creek for a visit and hooked up with a… well, kind of a frenemy of his from high school. Long story short, he got a call from said hookup and learned that he was going to be a father.

“She told you that you didn’t have to be involved though, didn’t she?” I reminded him. “I mean, you didn’t have to move back to Blue Creek and stick around.”

Both Elias and Max stared at me, wide-eyed, like I said something offensive.

“Yeah, that’s what she said,” Max told me. “But, come on. That’s my kid. Of course I’m going to be there.”

“I didn’t mean to piss you off. I mean, you just said that if you could—”

“I know what I said. I don’t know that I’m ready to be a dad. And fuck knows that I’m not ready to co-parent with Holly Zeigler. The woman has already put a hundred pages of legal documents in front of me dictating everything from our living situations to this kid’s college plans. We can’t agree on anything.”

“Yikes,” Elias said. “Yeah, I’m going to stop complaining now.”

“You both should, really. Elias, if you can’t stand Sarah living with you, ask her to leave,” I said, cutting him off. “Tell her she can stay at Mom’s place. Maybe another person around could take the focus off Max.”

“I can’t just kick her out. She’s Kieran’s sister.”

“She’s been there long enough to get her feel on the ground. You’ve done your friend duty. Youcanask her to leave. You just won’t.”

He sighed and downed the last of his beer. He flagged down our server and ordered another. His third. I gave him a strange look. Elias had a pretty strict two-beer rule for himself. Frankly, though, Elias had a lot of weird, arbitrary rules for himself.

“She’s just… she’s…” he stammered. “She’s…”

This was interesting. Sarah must’ve been doing a number on him. Elias was never at a loss for words. Elias didn’t stammer.

“She’s too much.”

I clapped my twin brother’s shoulder and stole his beer from him before he tried to drink it and rendered himself unable to drive. “You know what I think? I think you like her.”

“What the fuck?”

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