AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I rolled my eyes and turned into the garage. The gate opened as it read the pass on my dash. “That doesn’t even make sense. No one ‘peddles’ bitcoins.” She watched in mute amazement as I headed for my parking spots, and I resisted the urge to laugh at her expense. “It’s a parking garage, June.”
“Idon’t get a parking garage,” she said, eyes still wide. “I have to scrape snow off my windshield with my dustpan.”
I gave her a pained look. “Babe.”
“Don’t you dare judge me. Those scrapers are pricey.”
She continued to look around with round-eyed wonder as we walked across the dirty parking garage and into the painfully conventional elevator where I punched floor nineteen. When the doors opened, she peered out like she might see something interesting, but in all reality, my floor wasn’t anything special. The building liked gold and bronze as far as decorative touches went, but they didn’t line the walls with celebrities like June seemed to think she’d find.
I punched in my key code for my front door, and she leaned around me, gawking at that, too. I turned to her with a derisive scowl. “Are you going to do that all night?”
“Yes,” she said honestly.
With a sigh, I pushed open the door and tapped the digital smart switch on the wall to wake up the apartment. The lights blinked on, the door locked behind us, and the blinds on the eleven-foot windows rose to reveal the city lights beyond.
June looked at me like I’d taken her to an amusement park. I squished her cheeks together—something that was fast becoming my favorite hobby—and gave her a hard look. “Cut it out. You’re making this weird.”
When I released her, she whispered, “Youareweird. No one lives like this.”
“I live like this. What do you want for dinner?”
“Um,” she leaned into me, and I wrapped my arm around her. “Pancakes?”
I made a face. “Pancakes?”
“Yeah, pancakes are easy.”
“I didn’t ask what was easy. I asked what you wanted,” I said.
She pulled away slightly, one auburn eyebrow quirking up in challenge. “Sushi.”
“Got it,” I said easily, and released her so I could lead her out of the foyer and into the open concept living area. I slid her white purse off her shoulder and placed it on the foyer table.
“You do not have sushi,” she accused, following me.
I turned right, pausing to toe-heel my sneakers off at the end of the short hallway, and then went straight for the fridge. I opened one side and plucked a clear container from a neatly organized shelf. I held it out to her. “Sushi.”
She gave me a distrustful tilt of her chin. “What would you have said if I’d asked for ramen?”
“No,” I smiled blandly, grabbing a container for myself. “Wasabi?”
“Why yes, mister hoity-toity. I’d love some.”
“DoctorHoity-Toity,” I corrected, tossing a few packets of wasabi on the counter.
She threw them back at me.
While we ate, June played a game of twenty questions… as in, she asked me more than twenty questions about myself and barely took a break long enough to eat. She wanted to know about my sister in Denver, and when I told her we were half-Israeli, she looked like I’d told her we all had gills on our necks. Which was then quickly replaced with enthusiastic curiosity and wanting to know every minute detail about my childhood and upbringing. I assured her that it wasn’t that interesting or different from any other kid. I left out the part where the reason my mom didn’t express her Jewish faith and embrace her ethnicity much was because my dad was an ignoramus who thought eagles and light beer were the only cultural elements worth celebrating.
It was a sore spot for my siblings and me. Our mother, Jewish in her heart but fearful of what life would have handed her in the seventies, had chosen to live her life in camouflage. She had been an American-born Israeli, but you wouldn’t have known it by looking at us. And then, my mother had died when I was young, and any ties I’d felt to our heritage had died with her.
Cade and I had bonded over that fact in medical school. We’d both watched our fathers destroy our families, and then we’d both lost our mothers in high school. He considered his brother his family and support system, but maybe a bit embarrassingly, I didn’t feel the same about my siblings. None of us had taken the train wreck of our upbringing particularly well. I’d mostly shut down and learned to live without relationships. Azura had done the same, but she had gone feral and become a lawyer shark who was more liable to rip out your throat with her teeth than be intimate. At least she was willing to help when the people closest to her needed it.
Zev had buried himself in women and a social life that he’d rather let smother him than try for a life of any true substance.
June curled up her feet on the low-back bar stool, pulling them to her with her arms around her shins, and regarded me with a sharp gaze that seemed to piece me together like a mosaic. “So, you’re grumpy because it’s easier than trying and failing at relationships.”
“I don’t fail at relationships,” I clarified, leaning my elbow on the counter. “I make necessary ones—like Cade—and I don’t bother with anything else.” I paused, leaning my cheek on my fist. “And I’m not grumpy.”
