“I’m sure Davis would say I am. I mean, Robert created a job for me and my uncle pays most of my rent, so . . .” I trail off and motion to the room around us, as if to say see? “I’d say that’s a yes.”
“I don’t know,” he says, elbows on his knees while he looks at me. “This feels pretty selfless. Giving up half your space and putting yourself at risk.”
“I think you’re giving me too much credit.” I busy myself straightening a pile of papers. Guilt is like a little stopwatch tick-tick-ticking away in the back of my head. In my heart, I know I did this for Robert. But having Calvin here so close . . . and feeling like I’ve finally done something useful for the production . . . I can’t deny that I also did it at least a little for me.
“Thomas,” Calvin mutters, tapping his list of my siblings’ names with the tip of his pencil. “Bram, Matthew, Olivia, Davis, Holland.”
“That’s right,” I say, and stand to get us each another beer. “Thomas is an ophthalmologist in Des Moines. Bram is a high school math teacher in Fargo. Matthew is in tech support at the University of Iowa . . .”
He cuts in: “Davis lives in Wisconsin, and Olivia is . . . ?” He shuffles through his notes, but I know he won’t find anything.
“Who knows,” I tell him, returning with the bottles. “Last week she wanted to go to massage school. Before that, she decided she was going to turn Mom and Dad’s land into an organic farm.”
“Every family needs one of those.” He points his thumb to his chest.
“Some of these yes-or-no questions are really easy.” I motion for him to hand me his laptop, and he does, almost gladly.
“Cheers.” He leans back again, wiggling his purple socks.
“Never been arrested . . .” I click the box marked NO and move on to the next one. “While in the United States, do you plan to engage in espionage?”
He gives me an evil smirk.
I grin, and then look back to the form. “Plan to engage in any activity a purpose of which is opposition to, or the control or overthrow of, the Government of the United States, by force, violence, or other unlawful means?”
He pretends to think, and I move on. “Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” He shakes his head and I click the correct box. “Do you intend to practice polygamy in the United States?”
“Let’s see how this one goes first.”
Butterflies twist into a tornado inside me. “Within the past ten years, have you been a prostitute or procured anyone for prostitution, or do you intend to engage in such activities in the future?”
“I’m trying to cut back.”
He can’t see over my shoulder, and I know this could be a golden opportunity to get a little Calvin info. “Have you ever conspired to engage in, or do you intend to engage in any form of terrorist activity?”
“No.”
“Counterfeiting?”
“No.”
“When was your last relationship?”
He stops with his beer halfway to his mouth. “It wants to know that?”
I hold my hands up in mock innocence. “I didn’t make up the questions.”
“Erm, a while ago.”
I pause with my fingers hovering over the keys. “It wants a date.”
“About ten months ago, I suppose. Though it wasn’t very serious.”
“Have you ever joined or do you plan to ever join the mile-high club?”
Calvin opens his mouth to answer, but seems to figure out what I’m doing. “You little shite!”
I laugh, ducking the pillow he lobs in my direction.
twelve
More often than not, it’s me pounding at the door of Robert and Jeff’s apartment with arms full of groceries. But Friday night—three days after the wedding—Uncle Jeff shows up loaded down with takeout.
Although he’s silently forwarded communications between us and Sam Dougherty, we haven’t spoken since the morning he left Robert’s office, fuming. Jeff and I have never gone this long in an anger-induced silence, and I’m so grateful to see him that I throw myself into his arms. More accurately, since he’s holding bags from Pure Thai Cookhouse, I hurl myself at him, pinning his free arm at his side with my non-casted one.
“I’m sorry,” I say, taking a step back and swiping at my eyes. Calvin is there to rescue us and slips in, taking the food from him with a smile. Jeff nods in thanks before pulling me into a genuine hug.
“You’re an idiot,” he says into my hair. “But I suppose you’re my idiot, and I’m pretty grateful for that.”
I press my face into his dress shirt, smearing tears and mascara onto the blue-and-white-checkered cotton. “So you’re okay with all this?”
“I’m definitely not okay.” He pulls back enough to swipe at my cheeks with his thumbs. “But I understand it a little better. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him, either. Anyway,” he says, stepping back. “I come with an army.” He gives me a silent look of pleading.
Robert is, of course, at the theater, but it’s true that Jeff isn’t alone. Behind him, Lulu holds up two bottles of tequila, and behind her is Gene, Lulu’s . . . bed-friend, holding a bag of limes and sporting the world’s most enormous mustache.
I take the bag of limes from him. “Are you guessing my weight tonight?”
Jeff laughs in a loud bark before heading into the kitchen, but Gene does a bewildered double take. “What?”
“Do I get to shoot a water gun to knock down the ducks?”
I see the moment he gets it because his giant mustache twitches under his suppressed grin. “I’ll take my limes home if you’re going to be sassy, miss.”
“You look like an old-timey auction barker,” I say. “Or Yosemite Sam. I have this sudden urge to buy a few head of cattle.” Behind me, Calvin snickers.
“You wish you could grow a ’stache like this.”
I burst out laughing. “I’m sorry, I can’t even hear what you’re saying through that thing.”
“I told him it’s awful.” Lulu tugs at it and Gene leans away.
He smoothes it down proudly. “I’m so lazy, and this is much more low maintenance than shaving.”
I don’t need to look that closely to see he’s clearly waxed and styled it with a comb. It’s really not an afterthought mustache; it’s the kind that a person chooses from a book on various mustache styles—the perfect accessory for his very carefully crafted I don’t care enough to even glance in the mirror look (which Lulu tells me takes him a long time in front of the mirror).
Gene steps inside and Lulu stops in the open doorway. I don’t think I have to ask how she ended up coming along with Jeff tonight. “He called and yelled at you, didn’t he?”
She leans in, pressing a kiss to my cheek. “He sure did. But I appeased him by sending him all the photos. He said I did a great job with your hair.”
I laugh as she makes her way into the kitchen, and I close the door in time to see Jeff step up to Calvin.
“I don’t believe we were properly introduced.” My uncle extends his hand. “And I want to apologize for being rude. Holland is my youngest niece, and more like a daughter to me, so I’m very protective of her.”
“No, no.” Calvin balks at this, returning the handshake. “I completely understand.”
“And, congratulations.” Jeff smiles with a twinkle in his eye. “You’ve passed a three-step criminal background check.” He looks over at me. “Holland, I emailed you a copy.”
Calvin’s eyes go wide. “Honestly?”
With a laugh, Jeff walks into the kitchen to unpack all the food.
“Oh!” I pull Gene forward. “I’m so sorry, Calvin. This is Gene, he’s Lulu’s, um . . . friend?”
“Boyfriend,” Gene corrects.
“Fucktoy,” Lulu says with a smile, smooshing his face in her hand before walking away to help Jeff or—more likely—pour some alcohol.
Calvin and I exchange a look, and something giddy is born inside me at the way it feels like we have an unspoken language of snark.
Calvin extends his hand. “I’m the husband.”
“Not the fucktoy?” Gene says, throwing a bucket of ice-cold awkward over the conversation.
“Erm, no,” Calvin says, giving me a comical Eep face.
“Not yet!” Lulu calls from the kitchen.
“Lulu,” I call back, “you and Gene will be banned from this apartment if you continue to make tonight weird.”
“It’s already weird enough,” Jeff says.
Leaning in close enough that only I can hear, Calvin says, “I did find a sex toy in the couch.”
I smack his arm.
Lulu returns with four tequila gimlets and Gene asks us how our first week of marriage is going. Despite the mustache and obsession with looking like he doesn’t care about appearances, Gene is twenty-nine and, admittedly, pretty hot. But standing next to the God that is Calvin in his dark jeans and faded T-shirt, the boy doesn’t compare. For a couple of seconds, I catch Lulu looking at Calvin the way my old retriever used to eye my dinner plate, and I move a little closer to him.
I cup my hand around my mouth, calling out, “Jeff, there’s wine above the fridge!”
“Already got it,” he answers. “I’m just putting out the food.”
“A warning,” I stage-whisper to Calvin. “The drunker Jeff gets, the more honest he’ll be about how horrifying he finds this whole thing.”
Calvin glances across the room toward Jeff. “He’ll be more honest?”
“I can hear you, Holland,” Jeff says, choosing that exact moment to join us in the living room. “I just worry that this won’t end well. Not to mention I hate lying to my sister.”
“I guess we could tell Mom and Dad,” I say, and motion for everyone to head to grab some dinner. I’m totally lying, and have my fingers crossed in my pockets hoping that I’m calling Jeff’s bluff. “Mom’s pretty chill—she’s not going to disown me . . . It just . . . it didn’t feel official yet, maybe because we haven’t had the immigration interview. Why worry them?”