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“According to you, arrests aren’t convictions,” she says now. “If they were, you wouldn’t make nearly as much money as you do plying your noble trade.”
“Now who’s being sarcastic?”
“Me!”
“We having any fun yet?”
We’re silent now, as our entrees are delivered to the table. Like a bell has rung and we’ve retreated, at least temporarily, to neutral corners.
“You know, sometimes I get the idea that you like him more than you like me.”
“I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”
“You? Never!”
“But sometimes it’s almost as if you go out of your way to make me not like you.”
“Because I’m such a tough guy?”
“You said it. Not me.”
Don’t be a tough guy now.
Tell her.
“I need to tell you something,” I say.
Twenty-Seven
SHE PUTS DOWN HERfork and stares at me. Maybe it’s the tone of my voice. Maybe she sees from across the table some change in my body language.
She really is the pretty one,I think.
Even now.
I wait.
And then chicken out.
Some tough guy.
“I need you to stop visiting him at the jail. It’s not a good optic for either one of you.”
“He’s not a killer,” she says. “And he’s still my friend. And I’m not going to be one of the friends who has abandoned him, the way even his own children have, those spoiled twits.”
“This isn’t about him. It’s about you. You need to be as far away from him, and from all this, as possible.”
“Are you telling me as my sister or as his lawyer?”
“Little of this,” I say, “little of that.”
“How about this? How about I’ll think about it?”
I can’t help myself. I laugh. In the moment it feels surprisingly good.
“My experience with my older sister is that has always meant no.”
“I’ve grown,” she says.
