“Please?” I ask.
“Sorry, June,” Levi says, voice quiet but unshakeable. “Your car’s in the driveway. I’m gonna go make toast and eggs. You’re welcome to some if you’d like.”
And with that, he leaves, walking down the stairs as I close my eyes, fighting tears of frustration.
Kid sister.
Even at twenty-nine, you’re just Silas’s kid sister.
“Thank you!” I force myself to call after him.“He’s always been a lovely young man,” says my mom, sitting at the kitchen table, red pen in hand, reading glasses on her nose. “He used to rescue your stuffed animals from the top of the refrigerator when Silas put them there and you were too small to get them down on your own. You had quite a crush on him when you were younger.”
“I never did that,” Silas says, half his torso in the fridge as he hunts for something.
“It wasn’t a crush,” I say quickly, leaning against the kitchen counter. “He was just nice to me, that’s all.”
Silas pulls his head from the fridge to look at me. I ignore him.
My mom flips a paper over, skimming down it, occasionally marking something with the red pen.
“Perhaps that was it,” she says diplomatically. “In any case, good thing he came along when he did. You should take him something nice in thanks. What about those cookies you used to bake?”
I imagine myself showing up at Levi’s door, a plate of saran-wrapped cookies in hand. In this particular imagining I’m also wearing a poodle skirt and my hair is in victory rolls for some reason, but anxiety still swirls in my chest.
“I haven’t baked for a while,” I tell her.
“It’s just like riding a bicycle,” she says, still grading papers. “Besides, all you do is follow a recipe.”
“I’ll see,” I say, as the microwave beeps and I pull out a bowl of leftover chili.
I’m lying. I’m not bringing Levi cookies. I’m still put out about this morning.
Are you mad about the project, or disappointed that Levi doesn’t want to spend time with you?
Why not both?
“Silas, the refrigerator isn’t meant for cooling the indoors,” my mom says, and he sighs.
“Where’d the mashed potatoes go?” he asks.
“I ate them,” she says.
“Mom!”
“I made them, I get to eat them if I want,” she says, not looking up from grading papers once. Silas makes a grumpy face, but doesn’t say anything.
“June, there’s a bottle of your father’s pizzazz sauce on the door if you’d like some for the chili,” my mom says. “And I think there’s still some of his butt burner if you want to go ahead and use that up.”
I make a face, because your father’s pizzazz sauce is a phrase I could happily go a lifetime without hearing, and that goes double for your father’s butt burner. He’s turned to making hot sauces in his retirement, because everyone needs a hobby, I guess.
“Thanks,” I say, and Silas hands me a bottle of unmarked bright red liquid from the fridge. I’m not sure whether it’s pizzazz or butt burner, but I like to live dangerously sometimes.
The floorboard just outside the dining room creaks, and a second later, I hear my father’s voice.
“Let me know how that one is,” he says, coming into the room. “I tweaked the recipe slightly from the last batch but I’m not sure that this round of serranos really hit their full potential. I might have had them too close to the bell peppers and I think they got cross-pollinated.”
“So it’s not that spicy?” I ask, tilting the bottle.
“Nah,” he says. “It’s too bad that my habaneros didn’t take this year, I think I shouldn’t have put them down in the shady corner closer to the house, they didn’t get enough sunlight…”
Silas finally pulls a container from the fridge as I splash hot sauce on my chili.
“Butt burner,” he murmurs, quiet enough that only I can hear.
“Stop it,” I say.
“Buuuuuuutt burner.”
“I have to eat this.”
“Have fun eating butt burner,” he grins, and I clamp my lips together so I don’t laugh.
He takes meatloaf out of the container, puts it on a plate, licks one finger.
“Did you come here just so you wouldn’t have to make lunch?” I ask. “Or did you also bring laundry?”
“I haven’t brought laundry home in years, thank you,” he says, snapping the lid back on.
Then he pauses, drums his fingers on it, and I have a feeling I know what’s coming.
“You spent the night with Levi?” he asks, voice still low enough that my parents can’t hear it over their conversation.
I roll my eyes at him.
“I spent the night at Levi’s house, and if you’re about to give me any of your bullshit about it—"
“It wasn’t bullshit when you called me to come talk to Brett last month,” he says.
I take a deep breath, because he kind of has a point.
“Brett was pointing a boombox at my window and refusing to take no for an answer,” I point out. “Levi is your very own best friend who was a total gentleman about helping me out of a jam.”