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Jourdan’s name glowed as it bounced across the glass, and I felt like it was taunting me. There were not many times when I didn’t want to talk to my best friend.
But now was definitely one of them.
I knew that he and Juniper… shit, Nell… were estranged and that he and his mother hadn’t so much as spoken to her in quite a few years. But I had no idea if they had been keeping tabs on her.
Did he know that she lived here? I can’t imagine him knowing and not saying anything about it before I ran into her out of the blue. But I also can’t imagine him and his mother, Justine, letting Nell live her life without at least checking in on her.
What if I say nothing about running into her, about finding her lease nestled in one of the file cabinets, and he finds out I’m lying? Or what if I say something to him about running into her and I open up an old wound, scraping it raw for him when he had already begun to heal?
I had no idea how to move forward with this.
I stared at the screen for a split second longer, but I knew if I didn’t answer, he would just try again. I sighed, steeling myself as I pressed accept and brought the phone to my ear.
“Hey man,” I said, trying to keep my voice cool and calm.
“Hey, were you able to get out to Queens today?” Jourdan asked, and I flinched.
“Yeah, I’m here now, actually.”
“You alright?”
I cursed to myself; I must not have done a good enough job of hiding my feelings as I thought.
“Yeah.” I took a quick pause as I tried to sort through exactly how much to tell him. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I never really had a choice to begin with.
If the roles were reversed and I found out he had run into the sister I hadn’t seen in over six years, I would be pissed. And besides, Nell hadn’t said anything about not telling Jourdan. So, it wasn’t like I would be betraying her in any way, either.
“I ran into someone.” The words left me in a rush, afraid that if I paused for a moment to catch my breath, I wouldn’t be able to get the rest out. “Juniper. Outside of the Queens building. I guess she lives here and has for quite some time now.”
There was a long, drawn-out silence on the other end of the line, and I began to pace.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.
“Jourdan?” I asked hesitantly, wondering if he had hung up.
“Yeah.” His voice was barely more than a croak. It was so thick with emotion. “Yeah, I’m still here.”
“Listen, maybe I shouldn’t have told you. But it just caught me so off guard, and I didn’t want to feel like I was lying to you.”
No,” he answered quickly. “No, I’m glad you told me. I’ve actually been thinking about her a lot lately.” He gave a quick, hoarse chuckle. “How is she? How does she look?”
“She looked great. Healthy, and like she’s happy,” I answered as honestly as I could. “We didn’t talk for long, though. I’m sure you can imagine that she wasn’t too happy to see me.”
A dark chuckle sounded on the other end of the line.
“Yeah. I can’t imagine that things would have changed so much that she would be happy to run into you. She hated you, man.” Jourdan said, amusement lacing his words.
“Still does, apparently. She’s going by Nell now, I guess. Said it was because of her middle name?”
“Eleanor,” he confirmed. “Makes sense. She always hated all of us having the same initials anyway. J.E.A. Me, her, and our mom. So that tracks that the first chance she got, she’d figure out some way to put even more distance between us and her.”
There was another pause, but it felt less fraught than the first. I could hear Jourdan on the other end of the line, and it sounded like he was pacing, exactly like I was.
“Listen,” Jourdan finally said after a bit. “I need some time to process this. Other than running into Juniper, did everything go okay at the new building?”
“Everything else appears to be in order. It’s gonna need some updating, and I have some extra amenities in mind. But the bones are good.”
“Good. I’m gonna let you go. Try to think about what the hell to do about this whole situation.” He huffed out a breath.
