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“Oh.” Jackson rolls his eyes. “What’d she do now?”
I pick up the bottle of wine from the table, knowing it’s probably a faux pas not to let our server do the pouring, but I’m determined to steer the conversation in another direction.
“Nothing. She seems like a bit of a spitfire, is all. Practically told me to take a hike the two times I’ve seen her. It was…interesting.”
“Yeah, that’s PJ,” Jackson says, picking up his wineglass and taking a sip of the cabernet. “She has big opinions, and she’s pretty loud about them. Not her fault. When you’re the youngest, you have to shout louder, or you get ignored.”
“She wasn’t shouting,” I tell him, wondering why I feel the need to defend her. As an only child, I was the eldest and the youngest, and even though there was only one of me, it was still hard to get my parents’ attention. Both scientists, they were devoted to their labs, and I spent a lot of time with babysitters.
I can’t help feeling weirdly protective of PJ, as if she experienced anything like that while her older siblings took the lion’s share of their parents’ attention.
“You like her,” Archer observes, scooping the last piece of yellowtail onto his fork.
I shrug. “Sure. I don’t come across many people that into chess. As I said, she’s interesting.”
Archer leans back and crosses his arms. If it were possible to shoot missiles from a person’s eyeballs, Archer would have killed me eleven times in under a minute. I meet his stare with a stony look that conveys nothing. It’s not the first time we’ve faced off. In fact, it reminds me of all the times he and I disagreed back in college—about everything from what class to take to which girl to date.
Archer always had opinions then, and clearly he still has them now.
“What?” Jackson asks, looking back and forth between us.
Archer continues to glare, and I shrug.
“Tell me what I’m missing,” Jackson says, peering at Archer with a lopsided grin that says he knows what’s bugging Archer but enjoys any chance to bait his older brother. “Did something happen between you and Peej?”
Before I can answer, Archer bites out, “She’s not ‘interesting.’ She’s normal. And often a pain in the ass.” Archer takes a sip of his wine. From the distasteful look on his face, you’d think someone substituted paint thinner for cabernet.
Jackson laughs, enjoying his brother’s discomfort way too much. Knowing Archer as well as I do, there’s about a fifty percent chance of him losing his shit if Jackson goads him. And as long as I’m not the one baiting him, it might be fun to observe. “Dude, you’re being way too protective. I didn’t hear Colin say he’s trying to bang PJ.”
I think actual smoke spirals from the top of Archer’s head. His face gets red, and he bites his words out with such intensity that he risks chipping a tooth. “Don’t even fucking say those words.”
I nod slowly, understanding now that Archer’s sudden mood shift is all about guarding his younger sister. From me—the guy whose marriage imploded and who hasn’t dated anyone seriously in five years. Work is my priority one hundred percentof the time. There’s no point in trying to wedge a relationship where it couldn’t possibly fit.
I’d find Archer’s reaction comical if I wasn’t forced to admit that I found his sister a bit more than interesting. But I’ve been warned now, so interesting is where I’ll leave it.
“Understood.” I put up a hand as a sort of peace offering in a fight I didn’t know I was having. “I wasn’t even considering going there. But…understood.”
Archer lets out a long exhale. “Sorry. Just…Jax, you’re such an asshole. Why do you need to bait me all the time?”
Jackson’s guilty grin says exactly why. It’s what younger brothers do. “Let Colin date her if he wants to.”
Archer’s shoulders creep up again, his voice tense. “Just…stop it. Colin is here to escape stress, not create more of it. Why do you fucking persist, Jax?”
“Because it’s really fucking fun, dude. That’s why.” His grin widens, and Archer matches his look with a scowl. Turning to me, he takes one last swing. “You have my permission to date PJ if you want to.”
I play it straight, hoping to defuse Archer’s brain grenade before it explodes. “Thanks, but Arch is right. Work’s a bear these days. I don’t need more drama in my life.”
Archer points a finger at Jackson’s chest. “A year ago, this guy’d be agreeing his ass off. But he falls in love and all the attitude disappears. I dunno who you even are anymore, Jax,” Archer mutters. He’s probably just jealous. I haven’t met his girlfriend, Ruby, but I can see that Jackson’s new relationship looks good on him.
Even before he fell in love, Jackson never had anywhere near his brother’s intensity. For that matter, neither do I. Looking back, it’s hard to imagine how Archer and I ever became friends. The first time I met him in the dorm cafeteria, he stood in the food line, glaring at the salad bar. I remember wondering ifhe saw a bug crawling among the lettuce leaves or something equally horrifying, so I waited and gave him space.
When he didn’t move for a minute straight, I cleared my throat. “You good?” I asked, having no real desire to get into a conversation about bugs or lettuce. I’d seen this guy around a little bit. He was tall, muscular, and lean, like he spent several hours a day at the gym. I figured he was probably an athlete, and I’d lay money on football being his sport of choice.
And it didn’t take a research professor to observe that the women of Stanford found him easy on the eyes. I’d never observed a hush fall across a room when a person entered until I saw Archer. The sea of people practically parted for this guy.
All that is to say that I concluded he was probably a dick, used to having people fawn over him, and unlikely to have anything in common with a guy more interested in staring through a telescope than staring at porn. At age eighteen, that made me a major outlier, and I was used to it.
In the years up until college, I’d kept my head down, excelling in the STEM classes and science fairs that were the only way to get any attention. I hit puberty so late that I thought it had skipped me entirely.
