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“I’m sorry, Jas,” I said. “I wish I was there. I’d do something to make you feel better. Tell them I said they have to get you Chinese takeout tonight.”
“I will. Thanks for calling.”
“Anytime. Listen, you need anything, call me. I don’t care if I’m in a meeting, I’ll step out. You understand?”
“I appreciate it. But I’m not calling you at work. Have a good evening and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Or sooner if I find a way to ditch the monolingual asshole scientist.”
“Don’t alienate a paying client for my sake. Be good,” she said.
“Bye,” I told her, and as soon as I hung up, I messaged the guys and said they had to do Great Wall with extra black bean stuff immediately.
Jake got on board with that and said he’d order it right away. At least I could do that for her from a distance.
I started a separate group with only my brothers and suggested we meet for a late breakfast after I got home tomorrow. We needed to talk about Jasmine, how best to keep her safe and how we were going to manage a relationship going forward if that was what she wanted. I had no problem sharing, but I didn’t want any animosity with my brothers. They were my best friends, and we ran a business together. I didn’t want anything harming that bond or creating bad feelings between us.
As far as I was concerned it could be something we shared like a home and a business. But I needed us to be up front about it so there was no jealousy or bad feelings. The last thing I wanted was to start a rift among us in any way.
I stressed about it until I walked into the restaurant the next day. We all arrived about the same time and settled in at a table. After we ordered, they all looked at me in unison as if they’d rehearsed it.
“What?” I said.
“You called the meeting. You sounded dead serious,” Drew said. “What’s wrong?”
“Just like I said in the message. We need to be on the same page about Jasmine. How we’re going to protect her from her stalker ex and how we decide which one of us is going to pursue her,” I said and then heaved a sigh just relieved to have the words out in the open.
“What, are we going to arm wrestle for her?” Jake asked. “Because I’m in good shape but Drew works out like twice a day, so I think it makes sense to forfeit and save ourselves the humiliation. Also, the last time I arm wrestled Eli, he tried kicking me under the table to distract me because he was losing. He’s a cheater. Just know that going in.”
I laughed. Eli made an offended noise, and we all looked at each other. We laughed and slapped Eli on the back good-naturedly. Then we ordered heaps of food and devoured it.
Drew spoke again first. “I want to know what you think about—nobody bowing out. We don’t make a big deal and stand in a line like we’re on the stupid Bachelorette show for her to pick one of us.”
“Well,” Eli said, “it makes sense. She’s amazing.”
“Can’t argue with that,” I said with a nod. “So what do you all think about what Drew said? We share a business. We share a home. What if Jasmine is someone we have in common as well?”
“I think that’s the lady’s choice,” Drew said.
“Agreed. If she’s up for it, I can’t think of anything better,” I said.
“I’m in if she’s in,” Jake said.
Eli replied, “Same, brother.”
I gave a sigh of relief, “That would be perfect. As long as Jasmine’s into it, I don’t see a problem. The last thing I wanted was to have hard feelings between us.”
“If it comes to that, we’ll figure it out. We haven’t let anything come between us yet. And I think we all care enough for Jasmine that we don’t want to put her in a position where she’s uncomfortable in any way,” Jake said.
“Exactly,” Drew and Eli said in unison.
“That sounds about right,” I said.
We toasted to family and set about planning a strategy to keep Jasmine safe from her ex without any or all of us committing a felony. Jake had a list in his phone of security measures to switch up or add. Eli offered to call in favors to get her out of town in a hurry thanks to a lot of his friends in private aviation.
Drew favored direct intimidation—track him down, scare the shit out of him, and run him out of town. I offered to call him vulgar names in several languages. When nobody laughed, I mentioned a couple of associates I had in the State Department who could be called on in a dire emergency.
“Could we have him deported?” Drew said.
