Page 26 of Fighting For You

Vacancy

NORA

"I heard from the fire investigator."

Ian was leaning against Gracelyn's kitchen counter with a glass of water in his hand. He looked up.

"They're calling it arson. They think it was neighborhood kids." I set my coffee down. "You've been staying with Jesse's family since the fire. Have you heard anything? Anyone talking about it?"

"No." He said it without hesitation. "I don't know anything about that, Nora."

I looked at him. He looked back.

I believed him. Ian had never given me a reason not to.

"I got a job at Rudy's."

I picked my coffee back up. "Rudy's. The auto shop?"

"Yeah. Jesse's brother and his friends run it. They said they could use someone this summer."

Jesse's brother. Wayne. The black Civic in our driveway, the cigarette at seven in the morning, the gold chain, the smile that hit all the right marks and still left something sitting wrong in my chest. I remembered standing on the porch watching that car pull away and not being able to name what bothered me about the man behind the wheel.

"Wayne runs it?"

"Yeah. You met him."

I had met him. And if I was being honest, nothing he'd done was wrong. He drove his brother and his friends to school. He was polite. He smiled at me and said he'd have Ian home after class. The unease I'd felt that morning on the porch was mine, not his.

I set my coffee down.

"Ian, you don't need a job. I'm still sending you money every week. And I've got a shortlist of apartments for us. There are three two-bedrooms I'm looking at this week."

"You're looking at apartments you can't afford."

"Let me worry about that."

"That's all you do. You worry about everything so I don't have to, and I'm tired of it." He was calm about it, which was worse, because it meant he'd thought about this before he walked through the door. "I'm almost seventeen. Summer starts in a few weeks. I can work."

"So this is a summer job."

"Yeah. A summer job." He set his glass down. "And you need all the help you can get right now. The fire wiped us out. You lost everything. I don't want to be a burden anymore."

I looked at my brother. He was leaning against the counter with his arms crossed, his shoulders filling out a borrowed shirt that still didn't quite fit him. When did he get so tall? In my mind, he was still the twelve-year-old who needed help understanding his math homework. Now he was standing in someone else's kitchen with a plan and a set jaw, telling me he wanted to contribute because he thought he owed me something.

"You have never been a burden to me, Ian. Not once."

"You might think that. But I do. I think I am." He paused. "You're twenty-six and you're single."

"Hey!"

"Seriously. When's the last time you went on a date?" He was looking at me with that face he made when he knew he was about to land one. "Have you ever even dated someone?"

"Oh my God, Ian."

"I don't want to be the reason you're an old maid, Nora."

I closed my eyes and exhaled through my nose. He wasn't wrong about the dating. He was wrong about everything else, but he'd found the one angle I couldn't argue with, and he knew it.