Sweet Talk by Cara Bastone
Chapter Twenty-Two
Eliot
“Do not call her.”
I glare at the two people sitting across from me at the restaurant. We’ve just finished dinner and now we’re sharing a couple desserts and talking about our lives. Well, my life. It’s been five days since I had the epiphany to turn Jessie into a character in my webcomic. I took some vacation off of work and did nothing but draw, edit, eat, and take catnaps. I currently have a cold-pack ace-bandaged to my drawing hand.
The chapter went live this evening and instead of just anxiously prowling my home like an alley cat, I decided to call up Vera and Fred and force them to have dinner with me. And instead of keeping all these secrets locked up in my brain where nobody could see them, I tried something novel and I told both of them the entire story. Starting in Vegas and ending with uploading my webcomic a few hours ago.
I feel like I’ve been to church. Like somebody just dumped out all the rocks that have been in my shoes. I didn’t even know they were there but now I feel like I could jump ten feet in the air if I tried. I should have known that these two would listen to me with nothing but compassion and curiosity. Joyfully crowing over the triumphant parts of my story and calmly listening through the more dubious chapters.
“I’m serious, Eliot,” Vera says, jabbing a very know-it-all finger at me from across the table. “Don’t call her. I know you’re going to go home and you won’t be able to handle the suspense so you’ll call her and see if she’s read the comic yet, but don’t do it.” Her pointy finger finally relaxes and she immediately channels that energy into polishing off the key lime pie in front of her. “I still can’t believe you’ve been creating one of the most popular webcomics on the internet for years and you never mentioned it. Can you believe that?”
That last part is directed next to her, to Fred, who blushes all the way down to his eyelashes when she turns to him. They had their first in-person date after Vera’s expo this weekend and apparently things have been going well because they both look so thrilled just to be sitting next to one another that I could almost puke. Fred, however, is still the Fred I know and love and having the full attention of my pretty sister is definitely raising his heart rate.
He winces a little bit at her question. “I, um, actually already knew.”
“What?” Vera and I intone at the same time, sounding exactly like the twinsies we definitely are not.
“How did you know?” I demand.
He’s glancing between us, looking a little sheepish. “When you left the company to start your own business, I helped wipe all the design equipment they’d issued to you.”
I groan and face-palm. “All my initial mock-ups were on there. I totally forgot to delete them.”
He clears his throat. “Yeah. But you never directly mentioned it to me so I figured it was none of my business.”
“Have you been following it?”
He blushes again and scratches the back of his head. “Um. Yeah?”
“And . . .” I prompt him, rolling my hand through the air.
“And . . . Rowan’s out of the picture, right? Shaker’s definitely gonna end up with Hertzog?”
I groan and toss my hands in the air. “I’m surrounded by Shaker and Hertzog shippers.”
“Oh, my God.” Vera leans in, her eyes lit with mischief. “There’s a love triangle in your webcomic? Now I have to read it.”
“Yeah. But now that I introduced Jessie’s character I might have to rethink—mmmph!”
I gape at Fred who—typically a fairly nonconfrontational person—has just lunged across the table and jammed a bite of pie into my mouth.
“No spoilers,” he says. “I haven’t read the update yet.”
He blushes a little more and sits back in his seat, glancing between Vera and me and scratching at the back of his head again.
“Hey, got any more secrets about my brother?” Vera asks him, prodding at his side.
He dips his head and glances up at her, trying to contain his shy smile and failing miserably. “Probably?”
“Hey,” I tell him, swallowing the bite as fast as I can. “Don’t tell her. Bros before—” I cut off abruptly at the look on Vera’s face. “Never mind. Tell her everything, Fred. Save yourself.”
He leans in and says something quietly to her and the look on her face morphs from mutinous humor to soft affection.
I can no longer justify my presence as the thirdest of wheels. It’s time for me to give the lovebirds some unchaperoned time.
“All right, kiddies.” I stand and throw enough cash on the table to cover dinner for all three of us. “Thank you for the confessional. But I’m gonna get home.”
I hug them both, give a quick wave, and am out on the sidewalk before Vera catches up to me. “Eliot! Are you sure you want to go home? You could come over and watch a movie. Or I could come to your house!”
I blink at this unusual offer before I realize what my wonderful baby sister is really doing. I told her about the break-in tonight but there was so much ground to cover between the Vegas wedding and the anonymous girlfriend and the webcomic and romantic gestures that we didn’t talk about it nearly as much as I’d guessed we would. “BB, really. It’s okay. I’ve been doing a lot better recently. I’m fine to go home on my own.”
She bites her lip. “You promise?”
“I promise.” I tug her into a hug. “You’re a good sister. Now, get out of here and go have fun with Fred.” I wince. “But not too much fun. Oh, God. It’s just occurred to me that we’re only like four blocks from your house. You’re totally gonna go back there together, aren’t you? Never mind. Don’t answer that. Never answer that. Oh, boy. I’m really gonna have to get used to you and my best friend dating. Okay. Bye. I’m going now. I’m going to find the most interesting movie on earth and watch it fifty times in a row. I’m going to pin my eyelids open, Clockwork Orange style. That’s the only way to get this line of thinking permanently erased from my poor, poor brain.”
Vera gets a maniacal glint in her eyes and she opens her mouth, surely to say something I will have to scrub from my memory with steel wool and hydrogen peroxide.
“No!” I shout, shoving my fingers in my ears and leaping away from her. “I’m leaving. Keep your thoughts to yourself!”
She’s laughing and waving but I hear nothing as I jog toward my apartment. Because I’m a masochist, I pull out my phone. Nothing. No calls or texts. I pause for a second and go into the webcomic app, just to make sure—for the hundredth time—that everything has been uploaded correctly and yup. Wow. There are already a boatload of likes and comments. I quickly scroll through them and I nearly sprain my cheek muscles when I see what people have to say about the Jessie character I included, named JB in the comic.
Let’s just say she’s . . . already pretty freaking popular.
I sigh and kick at a sidewalk crack as I shove my phone back in my pocket. Of course people love her. She’s incredibly magnetic and interesting and fierce and . . . even better in real life.
I’ve walked half a block further when I stop still in my tracks. My phone is vibrating against my leg. I nearly rip my pocket off in my desperate attempt to see who is calling.
“It’s her!” I shout at the top of my lungs, scaring the pants off about a dozen innocent bystanders. I scramble to answer the call, my big, dumb thumbs barely cooperating. I have no plan, I have no idea what to say, I have nothing but my heart in my throat and zero air in my lungs. But I don’t care. Being cool is for the birds. Jessie is calling me. She’s calling me. I answer.