There were five Ralston kids. Ryan was right in the middle, surrounded on all sides by sisters. I knew the younger two, Ruthie and Claudia, much better than I did Chloe and Amber.
“Mom’s doing well. She’s cut back on her midwifery patients but still going strong.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “It helps to have Claudia home. Gives her a place to focus her energy since my grandmother doesn’t put up with all the hovering. Gramma CeCe calls me every week to read awful things that people have said about me on the internet, so she’s great.”
“Yes, I would like to be conferenced in for next week’s reading, thank you for asking.”
“She’d love that.” He reached for his menu, cleared his throat. “She asks about you.”
He didn’t add anything about her asking when I might visit next or why I didn’t come home when I only lived about an hour away. He knew the rules the same as I did.
I turned my attention to the menu. It differed slightly from the website, which drove a certain corner of my brain a little bonkers, but there were a few additions that made it worth the inconvenience. “Oh, what do you think about artichoke dip? My friend Grace—you remember Grace—she’s from an artichoke family and she got me hooked?—”
“What the fuck is an artichoke family?” he asked with a laugh, his brows pinched tight like I was really, really testing his patience.
It was so easy to test his patience.
“You know what I mean.” I laced my fingers together on the table and leaned in. “There are certain families that know how to buy and cook and eat artichokes. They do it all the time. It’s part of their lifestyle. I am not from an artichoke family and neither are you. I had to be introduced to artichoke culture.”
He rested back against the booth, crossed his arms over his broad chest. He stared at me for a moment, his scruffy chin tipped up like he was trying to figure something out. He pushed his sleeves up, exposing the tattoos on his forearms. I’d always wanted to get a closer look, to figure out what all those designs came together to mean. A chunky watch sat on his wrist, the gemstones signifying each hour sparkling back at me.
“Are you fucking with me?” he asked.
“Why would I fuck with you about artichokes?”
“You’ve fucked with me over less.”
“Name one thing,” I said.
He held up a fist, unfolded his thumb. “You said you have to pay your rent in cash and deliver it to a bodega in Charlestown.”
“That’s all true,” I said. “And I am ninety-two percent certain the market is the headquarters of the local mob.”
“Mmhm.” His index finger came next. “The last time I saw you, you told me one of your teacher friends moved to Rhode Island to marry a guy so she could inherit a tulip farm.”
“Also true,” I cried.
“Tulips bloom for like three weeks a year. You can’t run a farm on tulips.”
“That’s the part you don’t believe? That it’s atulipfarm?”
“The whole thing is a classic Emme fuck-around but the economics of atulipfarm puts it over the top. Just like the mafia boss who owns your apartment building.”
“You have so little faith in me,” I mused.
His middle finger joined the other two. “What about the time you and Grace got arrested in Montreal but you talked your way out of it by playing an old voicemail from one of your stepdads and telling them you had diplomatic immunity?”
I jabbed a finger at him. “That happened! It was the year Jim’s team won the Stanley Cup and everyone loved him for the first time in his sad little life.”
“But diplomatic immunity?”
“The diplomacy of hockey,” I said, full of feigned reverence. “I was an ambassador.”
“You were a drunk college kid,” he said, laughing.
“And I sorted out the situation. Diplomatically.”
Adding his ring finger to the others, he said, “You told me you were anemic and that was why you couldn’t stay warm and needed to borrow”—he leveled a pointed stare at me—“stealmy sweatshirts.”
“Iwasanemic.” I rubbed my hands together. Ice cold as always. “Probably still am.” When he went on staring, I shrugged. “I promise I’m not fucking with you about the artichokes.”
