Giving her another stern look, I say, “I don’t melt. Especially not over someone like Nora.”
“Someone like Nora,” Junie repeats, her eyes twinkling. “So you have thought about her then?”
I set my coffee down a little harder than I intended to this time. “Junie, you are twelve, shouldn’t you be thinking about, I don’t know, a math class or something?”
“Math class,” she snorts. “Nice deflection, Uncle Jericho. Look, you don’t have to pretend with me. I’ve seen movies. I know what it looks like when a guy is into someone. I might even have a boyfriend of my own.”
This is where I snort coffee all over the table. “What?” I nearly yell, making Junie rear back with concern in her eyes this time.
“What?” she fires back. “I can’t have a boyfriend?”
“No, you can’t have a boyfriend,” I thunder in outrage. “You are twelve! Does your father know about that?”
“Oh, please,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Of course he doesn’t. He’s too busy flying around the country to pay attention to me.”
This, right here. This is the core of all the issues. The talk with Jethro is long overdue. I just wasn’t prepared for my little niece to have aboyfriend, so I’m unsure how to go about that part of the conversation.
“And he won’t, right? Won’t know, I mean,” she asks, looking at me with puppy eyes. “Because I need to come to someone with all these things since I don’t have a mom, you know, and Dad is not really interested in anything,” she adds with a shrug.
Oh, hell no. She did not just play that card on me. I rub my hand over my face, suddenly feeling like a conspirator to a crime. I wasn’t signing up for this when I agreed for Junie to come over here.
Rolling her eyes for the tenth time in the past five minutes, she waves the microwaved pancake in her hand at me. “Oh, c’mon. I’m joking. He’s not my boyfriend, but I’m like, ninety percent sure he’ll ask me to the Halloween dance.”
He’d better not.
“So,” she says, picking up a piece of sausage. “I’m a woman.”
That’s a stretch, but I keep my mouth shut because this is not the talk I’m willing to have now. Or ever. That boyfriend is going to disappear.
“Aha,” I mumble, shoving a suddenly tasteless pancake into my mouth.
“And as a woman,” she keeps talking, “I can tell you that Nora likes you. You know,” she waves her hand, “like an enemies to lovers thing.”
“Junie,” I choke. “Where the hell do you know about that from? You are twelve.”
“Twelve. Not two.” She levels me with a stare. “Anyway, she’s really into you. Otherwise she wouldn’t be bending backward to get under your skin.”
I pick the coffee mug up. Put it down. And pick it up again, not knowing how to respond to a twelve-year-old schooling me on matters of someone either liking me or not.
“Which means,” she keeps going, not noticing my turmoil, “you need to woo her.”
“To what her?” I ask.
“Woo. You know, like impress her.”
I don’t know why I decide to ask her the next question. Maybe because it’s getting funny. “Like what?”
She stops chewing and looks at me with a different eye. It’s like she’s ten years older now, and I instantly feel exposed.
“Maybe try smiling from time to time,” she says with a wince. “I mean you’re old, but not that old. Maybe a smile will make you look younger.”
I’m old, she said.
“I smile.”
“Yes, to me. But I don’t think you smile to other people.” Her head tilts to the side. “Your smile is all right for an old dude, I guess.” She shrugs and goes back to chewing, leavingme undecisive about if I should cry or laugh. “Oh!” she exclaims, clearly remembering something I won’t like either. “And do something cool for her. Like something she can’t do herself.”
Maybe because I really need relationship advice from a twelve-year-old, I bite.
