Last night, covered in borscht, then after, face stuffed with stroganoff, I hadn’t quite processed Knox told me Brady had some history Knox didn’t know.
I sure didn’t know it.
Therefore, I prompted, “And that shit is?”
“Just keep Gem away from the Russian,” Knox replied.
Now I was watching Knox closely.
This was bro stuff, I could see.
I’d never get any bro stuff out of him, that I knew. What I further knew was, unless he got the go ahead from Brady to share it (which he clearly didn’t), it was uncool for me to push about it and therefore put Knox in a bad place, caught between girlfriend and bud.
As such…
Foiled.
“Nice hat,” Shaw said.
I turned to him and smiled.
All the men focused on my smile.
But only Gabe muttered, “Fuck, it’s a sex thing.”
My smile got bigger.
Lan made a pained noise.
And it got even bigger.
Knox cleared his throat.
At this point, all the men caught sight of something behind me, and then they twisted to look in the opposite direction.
I turned to the first point that took their attention and saw Roam staring across the courtyard.
Therefore, I, too, twisted to see what he was staring at.
And I saw Alice, a new resident at Oasis Square, coming in the gate laden with what looked like a very heavy laptop bag and what appeared to be an overstuffed (but stylin’) tote, both hanging from her shoulder, the handles of two Trader Joe’s bags were in her other hand.
She was very new to the Oasis, so we didn’t know Alice well.
We knew she was a social worker. We knew she was Moses’s (Shirleen’s husband and the manager of the control room at NI&S) daughter from his first marriage. We thought she was on tap to be an Angel because we knew she’d jumped to the front of the very long waiting list to get a unit at Oasis Square, and that was normally a prelude to a new pop portrait turning up at the Angels’ Lair. We were surprised that hadn’t happened (yet?). And we knew, even though she’d moved from Denver just a few weeks ago, she was super busy because we never saw her, except how she was now. Loaded with stuff and hurrying somewhere.
Last, we knew she was Roam’s stepsister because Roam was Shirleen’s son.
I had deeper intel on this, since Cap was also Shirleen’s son (yeah, this whole thing was a family affair in a variety of ways), and Raye was my bestie. So I knew Cap and Roam didn’t meet Moses and his two daughters until both the boys and the girls were in their late teens. And then both the boys went off to do their thing, and both Moses’s girls went away to college. So it wasn’t like those men grew up with those women.
And looking back at Roam, I was seeing his feelings about Alice were not at all brotherly.
However, he didn’t make a move to help her get up to her apartment carrying her burdens.
That was so un-Nightingale Man I was stunned.
Hmm.
“I’m outta here,” Shaw said into my reverie. “Later.”
