One Wish
“Ouch,” I reply.
“Well, it isn’t like you to go off-grid. If you’re not having thousands of photos taken, you’re on social media taking more. People are naturally talking.”
“Really?”
He snorts. “Come on, sis. You’re Kendra fricking Banks, what do you expect?” When I don’t answer, he sighs. “Anyway, enough about that. Do you have any burritos? I’m famished.”
I snort back, wondering if it’s typical of my little brother to always be hungry. He somehow looks the type. He’s muscular, so he works out, which means he must also need to replace all the calories he loses. I groan at the thought that already I’m thinking about weight loss and all the things everyone tells me I focus on the most. I don’t want to be that woman again.
I’m not that woman.
“I don’t think we have burritos but let me check what I can rustle up from the fridge.”
His eyes bug out of his head. “No thanks. I don’t want to get food poisoning. Have a check and see if Eleanor left anything.”
Rolling my eyes, I open the fridge and my eyes snap onto a plate with six burritos on it. I take them out and Jack curls his hands into fists with excitement.
“Praise all that is holy in Eleanor. My favorite person on earth… other than you, of course.”
Knowing I must have been a second thought, I shake my head. “You only said that because I’m here.”
With a cocky grin, he answers, “You will never have a way of knowing that.”
“I assume you want these heated?”
“Well, duh,” he responds.
Feeling somewhat bewildered, but also amused, I place the burritos in the microwave and heat them up as I fetch two plates. Jack watches intently as I place one down for him and one for me.
He clears his throat. “You’re gonna eat one?”
I furrow my brow. “Yeah, why?”
“Wow,” he replies, his mouth forming an O. “You really have changed.” He then sits silently in thought. “That morning you said you woke up and lost all your memory, do you think you may have hit your head, or something?”
My mind scrambles back to that morning, but nothing comes. “I only remember waking up feeling absolutely awful. I did have a huge headache, but I put that down to drink…” I hang my head, ashamed. “Or something else.”
“Well, it’s no secret that you like to party.”
My head snaps up. “I haven’t touched a thing since. I don’t want to be that person.”
“Maybe you should get checked out, though.”
The thought actually scares me. “But what if I remember and then go back to my old ways?”
He shrugs one shoulder. “If you remember the now, then your present supersedes your past, right? You will be able to control your behavior in the now.”
He has a point. “I guess.”
As I’m wondering whether I should go to the doctor’s and have my head checked, the microwave pings, alerting me to the burritos being ready. I take the plate out and place it in the middle of the breakfast island, the smell of chicken and aromatic spices hitting my nostrils and making my stomach growl.
As I sit down, I notice Jack licking his lips as he delves in and picks up two at a time, making me laugh.
“You really are hungry.”
“Oh, I always make sure I am when I visit. Eleanor is one helluva cook.”
I stare at him a moment, wondering about that. “Speaking of, how long have we all known Eleanor?”