Page 27 of Mostly My Girlfriend
“When are you two going to get girlfriends and get married?”
Devon hit Robbie’s arm. “Oh, you’ll be meeting Kathy. Robbie’s sweet on her but Mom doesn’t think she’s cut out for the farm.”
“She’s from Des Moines,” my mother said, as if that was the big, bad city. “Works in retail.”
“How did you meet her?” I asked.
“Please, Tinder in Iowa. There are, like, twenty of us. Total,” Robbie said. “Hey, Sheldon! What’s happening, my man? You bone our sister, yet?”
I slammed a short punch into Robbie’s ribs, which he had been anticipating.
“Easy, sis,” Devon said. “We like the guy. He’s been here the last two years for Christmas. With presents!”
“Pretty big present you got for us this year, though, wasn’t it, Sheldon?”
I turned to John who was staring at Ethan. I didn’t like the expression on his face. It was drunk and bitter.
“Now, John Junior, none of that,” my mother said, shooing him into the kitchen. “We’re going to eat and catch up. I have your favorite, Ethan, shepherd’s pie.”
“Ethan getshisfavorite?” I asked.
“Your favorite is grilled cheese and that wasn’t fancy enough,” Mom said. “Now, get your things upstairs. Julia, you’re in your room. Ethan, you’re in Robbie’s.”
“I even changed the sheets for you,” Robbie said with a smile.
“Awesome,” Ethan said, then into my ear, “Because one wonders where he and Kathy might do the deed.”
“Don’t be gross. He’s my brother.”
We walked upstairs together, and I stopped in the doorway of my old bedroom. I felt Ethan behind me. Immediately my eyes narrowed. “You’ve snooped in here, haven’t you?”
“Shamelessly,” he admitted. “I wouldn’t even call it snooping really. I just told your mother I was going to study every crevice of the room and she laughed and told me that was fine.”
“Do I want to know what John meant downstairs? You didn’t do something extravagant, did you? The sixty-inch, flat-screen TV last year was already too much.”
“I didn’t get them a TV,” he said. “I might have gotten Robbie and Devon a Play Station this year, because otherwise, what’s the TV for? Netflix?Big Bangreruns?”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry they call you Sheldon.”
“I looked him up,” Ethan said, slightly affronted. “I don’t look like him at all!”
“You’re smart. It’s their shortcut word for Smart Guy.”
“What do they call you?”
“Julia, or I punch them in the nuts.”
“Not Jules?”
“No, only my dad called me that.” I looked at him over my shoulder. “That’s not a thing, either.”
One raised bushy eyebrow.
“That I let you call me what my dad called me. It’s just he’s the only one who really did. Until you. That’s it. It’s not like when we met I was going to say you have to call me Julia. Like some dork or something.”
He shrugged his shoulder. “No, sure. I get it. No big deal.”
He left to go to his room, and I unpacked what I would need that night. I didn’t spend too much time being nostalgic other than to acknowledge that the room felt small. From my bedroom, to a dorm room at Harvard, to a tiny room in Brooklyn, to a 1200-square-foot apartment in downtown Seattle that Ethan had found for me.
