Page 4 of Falling For My Ex's Older Brother

He stops at the refrigerator.

"Seriously?"

"Effective immediately. They kept the announcement until mid-morning. We spent the rest of the day in a holding pattern while they processed everyone out."

Caleb pulls out a beer, considers this for a moment, and then leans against the counter with the expression of someone who is listening while also thinking about something else.

"That's rough. Did they give you any kind of package?"

"Standard. Nothing exceptional,” I say.

I turn the laptop slightly toward him, more out of habit than expectation that he'll engage with what's on the screen.

"I've been thinking I should use this as anopportunity to pivot. I've been looking at tech. Business development, operations — my background translates, but I need a way into the industry that doesn't require starting from the ground floor."

He nods. He is looking at my laptop screen but his eyes have the quality of someone reading something they are not actually reading.

"Tech is competitive," he says.

"Especially in LA."

"Which is part of why I've been thinking about San Francisco."

That gets his attention, or a version of it. He looks at me directly for the first time since he walked in.

"San Francisco. That's a whole move…and just as competitive."

"I know, but it's also more opportunities. I'm not saying I've decided anything. I'm saying I'm thinking about it."

He takes a drink of his beer, sets it on the counter, and then something shifts in his expression — the kind of shift that means he has thought of something, not something about me, but something that might tangentially involve me.

"You know," he says, "my brother's company is up there."

I close the laptop halfway.

"Your brother."

"Logan. Drake Industries. He runs the whole operation — tech infrastructure, some AIdevelopment division. Big firm."

Caleb says this with the practiced ease of someone reciting information they did not gather personally.

"I never really got into the details. We're not exactly close."

This is the most Caleb has mentioned his older brother in the fourteen months we have been together, which is itself a kind of information. I know the broad strokes — older brother, successful, runs the family company that Caleb deliberately walked away from to build his own path in film. Beyond that, Logan Drake has existed in my understanding of Caleb's life as little more than a name attached to a professional distance.

"You think he'd have something?" I ask.

Caleb shrugs, and even the shrug is casual in a way that tells me he has already mentally moved on from this thread.

"I can't call Logan directly — he never picks up, we'd just be going in circles. But I know his hiring manager. I can reach out, have her take a look at your resume. Get you in the pipeline at least." He picks up his beer again.

"No promises. But it's a contact."

"I'd appreciate that,” I say.

I mean it, but I keep the appreciation proportionate, because Caleb offering to make a call is a small thing and I have learned not to assign it more weight than it carries.

"What do you know about him? Logan."