To Sir, with Love

“Fancy engagement party,” she answers, sipping the wine and pushing her trademark silk headband—also red—a little farther back into her dark hair. It’s tucked into a tidy bun now, the way she wears it for work, but I know the second the job’s over, she’ll pull out the elastic and let her amazing black curls do their thing.

She moved into the building about a year after I did, and we met when her pasta was delivered to 4C (my unit) instead of 5C (hers). Thinking it was my own Chinese delivery, I accepted it before realizing it was the wrong one. I’d taken the bag upstairs to deliver it to her myself, and hearing The Big Bang Theory theme song through the door, decided to make whoever was on the other side my new best friend.

She picks up my sad-looking peanut butter sandwich, and shaking her head, scolds me. “It’s not even homemade peanut butter.”

“I don’t know how to get this through your gorgeous head, but not everyone makes their own nut butters.”

“They should.” She helps herself to a bite and licks jelly off her thumb. “Okay, I’ve got a boring train ride with my irritable boss ahead of me. To get me through, tell me the latest on your sexy pen pal, and if it hasn’t evolved to the point of cybersex yet, lie to me and pretend it has.”

“God, I hope I’m not that hard up,” I mutter. “Am I?”

She finishes my sandwich. “Well, let’s see, your last date was…?”

“A respectable two weeks ago.”

“Uh-huh. And last kiss…?”

I don’t reply—I’m too busy trying to remember—and she shakes her head. “I repeat. Cybersex.”

“For, oh, I don’t know, the thousandth time, Sir and I are just friends. Also, quit saying the word cybersex. I don’t think that’s a thing anymore.”

“Oh, it’s a thing,” she says with a little smirk as she finishes her wine. She glances at her phone. “Damn. I’ve gotta run, or Grady’s going to start with the lectures.”

“Speaking of kissing and sexy times…” I waggle my eyebrows. Keva and her boss, Grady, have an intense I-hate-you-so-much-but-I-secretly-want-you vibe going on, and the rom-com lover in me is not-so-patiently waiting for them to get to the good stuff already.

“I’d rather eat imitation crab than hook up with Grady,” she says with enough disgust to let me know that imitation crab is as low as it gets in Keva Page’s book.

I sigh. “So, neither of us is getting any.”

“I didn’t say that.” She winks.

Maybe I should invest in some red underwear…

Keva grabs the handle of her suitcase and swats my ass before heading to the door. “Put on Big Bang, finish your masterpiece, and then do the big bang, even if it’s virtually. That’s an order.”

She blows me a kiss and closes the door. Shaking my head, I sip my wine and decide to do two out of the three.

To Sir, with frustration,

Do you ever feel like the people closest to you are the ones who get you the least?

Lady

* * *

My dear Lady,

Quite often.

Yours in mutual frustration,

Sir

* * *

To Sir, in follow-up,

Do you ever find that the person who gets you the most is a person you’ve never met?

* * *

My dear Lady,

Yes.

Seven

“Oh my God.” I lean closer and peer at my laptop screen. “Is that a goatee?”

My brother laughs and rubs a palm over the scruffy hair on his chin. “Yeah. What do you think?”

“I love it,” I say at the exact same time Lily announces from the left side of my screen that she hates it.

It’s a little after eight on Sunday, and we Coopers plus May are finally getting around to our family video chat. Lily from her apartment, Caleb from his house in New Hampshire, and May and me from the shop.

“It’s really good to see your face,” I interject quickly before Caleb and Lily can start squabbling. “Facial hair and all. Though I’m shocked. They have Internet where you are?”

My brother grins, taking a quick sip of his beer. “I rigged something together with two sticks and some fishing wire.” His eyes flick away from me, presumably looking at Lily’s head on his screen. “Where’s Alec?”

My sister shrugs. “Work thing.”

On a Sunday night?

Having poured us each a glass of sparkling brut from Sonoma, May nudges me aside and takes her place in front of the laptop’s camera, scowling at Lily. “You know, I can’t think of the last time I saw that boy.”

I smile a little at überserious forty-one-year-old Alec being described as a boy.

Another shrug from Lily. “You know how busy his job keeps him.”

May has never tried to insert herself into our lives as a maternal figure, even after she and my dad started seeing each other. She let us come to her, and we all eventually had. Even Alec. And as far as May was concerned, once you wandered into her nest, you were hers for life, to peck at and to protect.