“At least ten,” he said. “The fried egg makes it, though. They fry it perfectly and add their sauce. That combo is perfection.” He used the plastic knife to cut it in half and stared as the egg yolk ran down the burger. “See? Perfection.”
“Not a big fan of runny eggs,” she replied. “Or waiting thirty minutes for a burger, Colter. Do you eat like this every day?”
“No, but your office is down the street from this place, so I thought you could grab it for me. Usually, I’ll just grab something from the nearest place or have my assistant do it for me.”
“I know you don’t have someone who is only your assistant as a city councilor.”
“I have staff,” Colter said.
“And they all have actual titles that probably don’t have the word ‘assistant’ in them.”
Colter took a bite, and as he chewed with his mouth half-open, which was something India had always found to be annoying, he asked, “What do you want, India?”
India reached into her purse and found another candy bar. She unwrapped it, put it in her mouth, and chewed for a moment with her mouth closed as if to entice him to do the same.
“Your campaign.”
“What about it?” he asked, wiping his chin with a napkin, bringing her attention to his five o’clock shadow.
“How is it going?”
“Fine. Why?”
“Just curious.”
“You’ve never been interested in any of my campaigns before,” he noted, eating a French fry. “This is my fourth.”
It was true: he had run for a couple of lower offices, lost once, won the second time, and then ran for his current position after buying a condo in the district that had an open and vulnerable seat so that he could claim to be part of the community. India wasn’t sure he’d ever even spent a single night there. He’d had it furnished, and he’d taken a lot of publicity photos there, but he had been given a very nice house in the Garden District by his father over a decade ago when he got out of Princeton.
Colter was only her half-brother. When her mother had left her father, she had met Colter’s father, married him, and had Colter, who was seven years her junior. At his thirty-two, he’d never had a day job outside of the offices he had held, hadn’t had to work for anything in his life, including those offices, and had been handed the keys to a four-bedroom estate in the richest part of the city at age twenty-two. While India had gone to business school, Colter had graduated at the bottom of his class from Princeton and had come straight home, where his house awaited him. He had spent most ofhis time partying in the Quarter with his friends and sleeping with any interested woman in sight. As a result, he now had three children from three different women whom he had to pay child support for but didn’t actually parent.
India never saw her two nieces and one nephew. They weren’t recognized as actual family members by her mother and stepfather, who viewed legitimate heirs as children born to a husband and wife. In India’s case, it would be wife and wife, and she had already talked to her mother and her own father about the fact that she’d never marry a man, so if she had kids, it would be with a woman. They had not made too big a deal about it, but every so often, she got a comment or two about how it would’ve been easier if she were straight. They hadn’t liked Finley at all, and neither had Colter. They were all so stuck-up, while Finley was the opposite of stuck-up, so her mother telling her repeatedly that she’d only been with Finley because it had been a fun fling had been one of the tactics she had used to try to get India to end things. When India had finally told her that it was over between them, her mother had sent her the names of three eligible women she’d known of who dated women. India considered that a positive thing but annoying at the same time.
India had a half-sibling on her father’s side as well, but she hardly saw her. They talked on the phone a lot, but Isabella lived in a small town in California. Arguably, her sister was the smartest of them all: she’d taken the money and run far from the family’s sphere of influence. Isabella was always busy with her husband and two kids, as well as running her own Etsy business from home on the side, which made her more money than Colter’s city council salary. India laughed at that silently.
“How’s the girlfriend, India?” Colter asked when India hadn’t said anything for a while.
“We broke up.”
“Again?” he asked as he took another bite of his burger. “Are all lesbian relationships this complicated and dramatic?”
“For good this time,” she said. “And how are your kids,Colter?” she asked, lifting an eyebrow at him.
“I don’t know. Rich?” he replied. “With the amount of money I pay their mothers every month, they should be more than happy.”
“When was the last time you saw them?”
“Which one?” He shrugged.
“Literally any of them.”
“The oldest one, I saw a few months ago when I had to drop a check off for her mother because the direct deposit into her account didn’t work. The other two…” he said with another shrug. “Maybe a year or so.”
“Have you never thought of being a father to them?”
“Why are you up my ass about this? You’ve never cared before.”
“I cared. They’re my nieces and nephew. But I’m not allowed to see them.”
