I look at the television. The Koreatown footage has given way to the weather.
"Yeah, I hear you."
I can't even fault her for it. Taking a firm hand is what Rosalie does. What she's always done. She stepped into the role nobody asked her to fill when our parents died — a plane crash, nearly fifteen years ago. That kind of loss doesn't leave room for adjustment periods or soft landings. She was twenty-four in her first year of law school. She had her whole life arranged in front of her, and she folded it up without a word and came home to me.
I've never stopped being aware of that.
She watched me reinvent myself over the years. Helped me shed a life that no longer fit, a name that felt like a wound every time someone said it out loud. She didn't ask questions I wasn'tready to answer. She just helped me become someone new and trusted that I'd tell her the rest, eventually. Some of it I did. Some of it I carried alone because that felt like the only way to carry it.
I had to fight like hell to get here. She knows that better than anyone.
And she's right. I know she's right. The Meridian deal is not something I can afford to lose over a few bad news cycles. I need to get my ass in gear.
"I hear you," I say again. Quieter this time. For both of us.
"Good." She stands, smoothing her blazer like she has made her point and considers the matter resolved. She starts toward the kitchen, where our brunch has been waiting. "Now feed me, Seymour."
I let out a breath that's almost a laugh. "You've been waiting to use that."
"Since the segment started." She doesn't look back. "Move your ass."
I get up and follow my sister to the kitchen, and for a few minutes the board and the firm and the Meridian deal and all of it recedes to a manageable distance.
She's already plating when I sit down at the island. I made way too much food. I cook when I’m stressed.
"Have you given any more thought to Jade?" she says, her back still to me. Casual. Conversational. Like she isn't lobbing a grenade over her shoulder. "She's really sweet, Mike."
I let out an exaggerated groan and finished chewing. Mostly to give my brain time to stop my mouth from saying the wrong thing.
"I'm not interested in dating." I pick up my coffee. "We've talked about this, Rose."
"You're almost thirty."
"Oh, we're not pulling punches today, are we?"
"I never pull punches." She turns and leans against the counter with her own plate. "You're almost thirty, you're brilliant, you're — when you're not in a fountain — reasonably presentable, and you have been on exactly zero real dates in the entire time I've known you. Which is your whole life."
"I date."
"You arephotographedon dates." She points her fork at me. "That's different, and you know it."
I know it. I say nothing.
"Jade is a criminal defense attorney," she continues. "She reads actual books. She laughed at my jokes at Sarah's dinner party, which is not nothing because I was on fire that night and most people just stared."
"Youwereon fire," I confirm. “That bumblebee joke, chef’s kiss.”
"So, you'll meet her."
"I didn't say that."
"Michael." She whines. Literally whines.
"Rose." I set my fork down and look at her directly, because she deserves that much. "I appreciate it. I do. But I'm in the middle of a PR crisis, a nine-figure acquisition, and apparently a board intervention. I don't have the bandwidth for a dating life right now."
She studies me for a long moment. The attorney look, not the sister one. The one that means she's deciding how hard to push and in which direction.
She lets it go.
