“Settle down. I know. But that’s just m’point. Eventually, most people will stop looking at you and seeing a fresh-faced boy who can’t take care of himself. You’ll get older, for one thing, and life leaves its mark in other ways, too. Miranda, though? She never, ever, will look at you and think, ‘Oh, Jess is all grown-up. Well done me, guess I’ll go take a kip.’ She’ll always want to protect you. That’s her job. Your job is to let her.”
That brought Jess up onto his elbows. “You can’t mean you think I ought to let her stop me from seeing you. Or worse, let her think she can somehow talk me out of being gay!”
“ ’Course not.” Frankie’s eyes were deep and black in the soft, filmy morning light. “But don’t throw her care and concern back in her face, either. You’ll regret it as much as she ever does, I promise you.”
Jess, who had never lost the habit of noticing every minute detail about Frankie, saw the way his brows tightened as if warding off some remembered pain. In the midst of his own agitation and gut-deep disappointment in his sister, Jess stared at Frankie and realized that he wasn’t giving advice based on some self-help book or movie of the week.
“You lived this, didn’t you?” Jess breathed.
Frankie’s immediate flinch was all the confirmation he needed. He got more when Frankie curled up from their nest on the floor, hitching his black jeans over his narrow hips and padding barefoot to the jacket he’d discarded by the door. Jess watched the search for cigarettes with impatience.
He waited until Frankie’d lit up and taken one good drag to bounce up on his knees. “Come on! Tell me.”
Frankie puffed a couple more times in intense silence. A thought struck Jess like a dart letting the air out of a balloon.
“You don’t have to talk to me about it,” he offered, unable to completely keep the tremor out of his voice. “Not if you don’t want to.”
Blue smoke streamed out of Frankie’s mouth on a frustrated breath. “It’s not that, Bit. I don’t mind you knowing. It’s the telling part I don’t fancy.” He cocked his head at Jess. “You see the difference.”
Jess got off his knees and walked over to where Frankie was standing. After last night, it didn’t feel so daring to put his arms around Frankie’s waist and hold on, or to bury his face in the taut silk of the skin stretched between Frankie’s jutting shoulder blades.
Not so daring, but oh so right.
“No pressure, no guilt,” Jess said. “I swear. But I’m here. Anytime you want to tell me, I’m here.”
The noncigarette-holding hand stole up to lie across Jess’s tight-hugging arms. Frankie’s velvet-soft answer was better than a kiss.
“Not right now, then. But sometime.”
“Sometime,” Jess echoed happily. He squeezed Frankie’s ribs and reveled in the sense of continuity, of future, that word implied. Nothing concrete, oh, no. Frankie didn’t work like that, and Jess knew better than to try and pin him down.
But it was a promise, all the same, a pact between the two of them.
And in that moment, Jess knew he’d do anything, defy anyone, to keep his part of the promise.
Her first emotion when she caught sight of Jess was annoyance that he didn’t have the courtesy to look as miserable as she felt.
Part of her had hoped that a night sleeping under whatever rock Frankie Boyd habitually occupied would’ve cured Jess of his infatuation with the bohemian lifestyle. However, it didn’t look like things were going to be that easy.
Jess sauntered up the path toward her looking terribly young and carefree. He was wearing his same clothes from yesterday, but if the lack of freshness bothered him, his loose-limbed stride and neutral expression didn’t show it. His short hair glowed dark red in the buttery summer sunlight. When she’d gotten home, she’d been grimly unsurprised to find the apartment empty. Jess had answered his phone promptly, however, even though it was clear he was still with Frankie. She’d asked Jess to come home; he’d countered by inviting her to meet him in Central Park.
Miranda understood, and could even respect, the desire for neutral ground. She also suspected that Jess was hoping a public meeting would curtail her desire to rant and rave and make a scene.
She agreed to meet Jess at the Turtle Pond. She got there early and then had nothing to do but stand and try not to stare at the many partially clothed sunbathers littering the grass beside the pond, scant inches from the path. The banks of the Turtle Pond weren’t as packed as the Great Lawn, she was sure, but the glaring heat of midday had called the sun worshippers out in full force. Every summer, as soon as the mercury topped seventy, the city dwellers left their glass-and-concrete caves and gathered in Central Park to bare their pasty, winter-white skin. Bathing suits were almost never employed; instead it was deemed preferable to wear skimpy tank tops and minuscule shorts that were then rolled up as far as possible, or to strip down to skivvies.
Miranda shaded her eyes from one painfully thin hipster sprawled on a batik blanket wearing nothing but tightie whities and a pair of three-hundred-dollar sunglasses. She experienced a brief, violent surge of hatred—how dare this boho boy lie around in his underwear, looking happy, when Miranda’s life was circling the drain? It was a disgustingly familiar bitterness, her lifelong companion, although it seemed all the stronger and more vicious for having abated somewhat in the last few weeks. It was tough to be bitter around someone as unrelentingly generous and lively as Adam Temple.
Quit mooning, she lectured herself. You had your moment in the sun, soaking up Adam’s energy and passion. Now it’s time to head back to reality.
She turned back to watching the path, and that was when she saw Jess loping steadily toward her, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed and none the worse for wear.
Miranda felt a wave of relief that he was okay. She wanted him to come to his senses, sure, but she didn’t want him to suffer while doing it. Unreasonable, maybe, but as he got closer, she could see a faint red line at the corner of his eyebrow where he’d been bleeding last night.
He’d already been hurt because of Frankie. No matter what Adam said in defense of Frankie’s character, nothing was worth endangering Jess’s life. She’d sell her soul to keep him safe.
“Are you all right?” were the first words out of her mouth.
Jess didn’t roll his eyes, but with instincts honed by years of parenting a teenager, Miranda could tell he wanted to.
“I’m fine. I told you I would be.”
“Good, that’s good.”
They looked at each other, each waiting for the other to make a move.
Miranda broke first. “Why don’t we walk up to Belvedere Castle? It should be quiet up there, and maybe not so hot.”
“Sure,” Jess said, turning to lead the way.
Was she imagining it, or had some of Frankie’s smug, cooler-than-thou attitude rubbed off on her brother?
They followed the winding stone steps up to the top level of Belvedere Castle. The castle was more of an observation point, cunningly worked to look like someone’s idea of a medieval fairy tale, complete with arched windows and a turret. There were usually people grouped around the stone platform enjoying the view, gaggles of children running around playing knight of the realm, but today there was no one.
Miranda would’ve wondered if her luck were changing, except she recognized the stubborn tilt to Jess’s chin.
He moved to lean against the granite balustrade, hitching one hip up to get comfortable. Miranda thought it probably wasn’t a coincidence that the position accentuated the couple inches of height difference between them. Jess had always been good at strategy games; he’d been beating her regularly at Risk since he was eleven.
Her shoulders tightened. The fact that he viewed this as some sort of power struggle didn’t bode well for her chances of getting him to respond rationally. She and Jess shared a tendency to chuck logic out the window while clinging blindly to a fixed idea. Miranda had worked hard to overcome it, but Jess was still so young.
/> Young, but not without confidence, she saw, as he firmed his mouth and squared his shoulders.
“I’ll start,” Jess declared. “It’ll save time, since I already know what you’re going to say. You want me to promise not to see Frankie anymore, and better yet, you want me to find a nice girl and settle down, maybe spawn a litter of kids, and live happily ever after. Am I close?”
Miranda drew in a breath, feeling sucker-punched by Jess’s casual scorn for the dreams she’d harbored for him.
“Would that be so atrocious?” she heard herself say. “It’s the life our parents had. They thought it was pretty great.”
Jess’s eyes widened as he acknowledged the hit, then narrowed dangerously. Silence expanded between them like the shock waves of an exploding bomb.
“Oh, nice. Bring Mom and Dad into it,” Jess finally ground out.
Miranda flushed with guilt, although underneath it she couldn’t help but feel that Mom and Dad were in it already. She could practically feel their spirits swarming behind her, poking and prodding her.
“You’re right,” she conceded. “We’re getting off track. The main issue here is Frankie.”
Jess immediately got his back up. “This isn’t about Frankie, either, and I hate it that you’re trying to make it be about him. This is about me,” he continued, more quietly. “And the fact that you can’t accept me for who I am. But I’m not ashamed of being gay. And the infuriating thing is, I know you’re not a bigot. You didn’t have any problem with Grant being gay. But when it’s me, your own brother . . .”
“Jess, no.” Miranda was very firm. “Listen to yourself. I love you. You know that. I have always accepted you, encouraged you, supported you. But you have to see that I can’t support this crazy crush Frankie has somehow suckered you into.”
“It’s not a crush,” Jess cried. “And Frankie isn’t the bad guy here.”
Miranda’s eyes burned. “And I suppose I am? I’m not the one who nearly got you beaten up.”
She reached a trembling hand to the cut on his forehead and Jess shook her off as if he were swatting at an annoying insect.
“It was nothing, I told you that last night.”
“See, that terrifies me, Jess. This lifestyle you’re so eager to join, it could get you hurt, make you sick. You could die. The dangers—”
Jess cut her off with a sharp chop of his hand through the air between them.
“Stop right there. Being gay isn’t a ‘lifestyle’ choice. It’s not a choice at all. It’s just me.”
That statement stole Miranda’s breath. “Okay. Okay.”
They stood looking at each other while the noises of the park drifted around them.
Miranda gazed at Jess, and for the first time, she saw a young man rather than the small boy who’d slipped his hand into hers at their parents’ funeral. Her heart cracked a little at the self-knowledge and determination in his blue eyes—a determination that couldn’t quite mask the vulnerability underneath. Miranda breathed, and thought hard about what she was going to say next. She knew instinctively that it would set the tenor for her entire adult relationship with her brother.
“When you first told me you were gay, I did everything wrong. I cried. I yelled. I blamed everyone in sight, including myself. I acted like being gay was this horrible thing, when I don’t even think that—but Jess, it is different, because you’re my brother.” She swallowed hard, but the light starting to fill Jess’s eyes dissolved the lump in her throat.
“We grew up in such a hurry after Mom and Dad died,” Miranda faltered. “The two of us against the world. That car accident robbed you of so much—your childhood, your innocence, countless memories of our parents and the beautiful life they made together. I swore to myself you’d have those things one day. I imagined every detail. Countless dreams of a perfect, normal life—a wife, a nice house in a safe neighborhood, kids. I wanted that for you even more than for myself, and hearing that you were gay . . .”
Miranda lost her voice without warning. She realized she was crying, tears rolling wet and messy down her cheeks.
“God,” Jess choked. “Miranda.”
“Let me finish,” she begged. “I don’t think less of you, and nothing you could ever do or say could make me stop loving you. But I’m afraid. I’m afraid of the way the world treats people who are different. And there’s a part of me that’s afraid it’s my fault. That it’s something I did, or didn’t do, and that if Mom and Dad were alive they’d have done better, protected you or . . .”
Jess took her by the shoulders, his hands sure and steady, his face serious. “But you know that’s wrong.”
“I do,” she swore, pushing every ounce of sincerity she could muster into her voice. “I know that’s not how it works. Your sexuality has nothing to do with me, and I had nothing to do with it. I let my own fears and insecurities govern my reactions when you came out to me, and I will regret that till my dying day.”
“Stop it.” Jess’s voice made her ache with love. He shook his head. “I don’t care how the world treats people like me. I care about you, and what you think. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t immediately perfect the instant I told you. You’re saying all the right stuff now. That’s what counts.”
Miranda let him hug her, only slightly surprised to register that he was tall enough for her to rest her chin on his shoulder. She wanted to savor this moment, when she finally felt connected to Jess, the way it used to be when he was little—only better, because he was all grown-up. But she knew the next thing she had to say wouldn’t be quite as welcome.
Steeling herself, she pulled away and said, as gently as she knew how, “I understand that being gay isn’t something you chose. But honey, Frankie Boyd is a choice, and a very dangerous one. He’s older than you, more experienced, and look at the way he lives! No sane person would get involved with someone so unstable.”
“What’s so unstable? He’s got his own apartment, he pays his rent, he’s got a good job.”
Miranda must have made a face without meaning to, because Jess jumped all over it.
“What? Suddenly being a chef isn’t good enough for you?” he asked. “Wonder what Adam would say if he knew that.”
“Don’t talk to me about Adam Temple right now—I’m so angry at him for not telling me what was going on with you, I could scream.” She couldn’t help but think that if she hadn’t been blindsided by Jess’s revelation, she might have reacted better.
“But look,” she continued. “This is what I’m getting at. The restaurant kitchen culture, especially now, in the age of the celebrity chef, is insane. These cooks have women throwing themselves at them all the time. It’s like being a rock star; crook a finger, and anyone you want will be thrilled to bend over your kitchen counter.”
Adam had sure cashed in on the chef hoopla, Miranda remembered. He’d slept with that investor, Eleanor Bonning, to get capital for his restaurant. How could she have forgotten that?
Easy. She simply hadn’t wanted to think about it. In the glaring light of Adam’s personality, his easy charm and warm, flirtatious manner, it had been easy to rationalize what Rob had told her. But she shouldn’t have forgotten. Adam was someone who believed the end justified the means—and that included lying to Miranda about her brother.
Nausea threatened to overtake her, but Miranda forced herself to keep going. Jess watched her with big eyes, his face open and searching. He was finally listening to her.
“Sex doesn’t mean to them what it does to you and me,” she told him. “I don’t know how far you and Frankie have gone.” Jess flushed and ducked his head, and Miranda hurried to say, “Nor do I want to. But honey, his reputation, even in the kitchen, among his friends and colleagues who presumably like him—he’s known for short-term flings.”
No one in the kitchen had ever used such decorous language for Frankie’s exploits, but she couldn’t bring herself to repeat what she’d heard verbatim while staring into Jess’s wide blue eyes.
/> It would be cruel and unnecessary. She could see in his face that he knew exactly what she meant.
Please, oh, please let him believe me. I want him to be happy, and Frankie is going to make him miserable.
Jess stared down at the rough-hewn rocks beneath their feet. When he met her gaze, his eyes were older, somehow. It shocked Miranda out of her brief moment of hope.
“I heard those same rumors when I first started working at Market,” Jess told her. “And there’s nothing concrete I can show you to prove that what Frankie and I have is different. He could be playing me. Except that he’s never broken a promise to me yet.”
Jess met her stricken stare head-on. “He could be seeing someone on the side. Except we’ve spent part of every night together for the past week, so I don’t see when he’d have the time. It doesn’t matter. I want him. More than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
Miranda’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly. All those nights he’d gotten home late, told her he’d been out with the other servers. God. She’d known, of course, that this thing with Jess and Frankie had to have been going on for a while, but she hadn’t wanted to believe it was serious.
Getting right to the heart of the matter, she said, “I want you to quit your job. Meet some people your own age. If you stay away from Frankie, these feelings will fade. You’ll see. In a few weeks, it’ll be like ‘Frankie who?’ ”
“And now we’re back to this again.” Jess pushed away from the wall and stalked past Miranda. She caught at his shirtsleeve but he shrugged her off, only turning to glare at her.
“Once you’re not seeing him every single day, you’ll—”
“I like working at Market. I like the people there. Grant’s been really good to me, and Adam gave me a shot when no one else would’ve.” Jess sighed. “And honestly, I love seeing Frankie every day. I don’t want to give that up. I’m not giving him up, Miranda.”
She drew breath to argue, but Jess cut her off with a sharp hand gesture. “The issue of Frankie aside, I can’t afford to quit.” He squared his shoulders. “You don’t want me working my way through college, but I need to help pay for my own education. It’s important to me. And I know you don’t really have the money for NYU.”
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