My sister the optimist.
“I do have a potential client lined up,” I said. Dana nodded eagerly for me to continue. “It’s similar to Perfect Pairings in a way.”
“It’s a matchmaking platform?”
“Well no, I guess not. But it deals with love.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s for long-term relationships as far as I can tell. The client has most of the business mapped out and it’s designed as a relationship coach in a way. It’s a phone application that is supposed to focus on the intimacy between two people in a relationship. The goal is to keep the romance alive with the help of professionals at your fingertips. The app is loaded with information and webinars from sex therapists, relationship counselors, doctors, and lifestyle coaches. It considers all kinds of things like hormones, conflicts, intimacy difficulties due to stages of life—”
“This sounds pretty cool, Ethan,” Dana said, sitting up a little straighter. “I know people who would want to use this.”
“I think we all do. The client isn’t completely sure they want to hire a marketing agent, so I’m still in the preliminary stages of discussion, but I think they have a really promising tool on their hands. If they let me take it on, I know I can get it the attention it deserves.”
“Fingers crossed Kathryn doesn’t steal it out from under you.”
“Over my dead body.”
“Careful, she sounds like the sort of woman who would kill over a contract.”
I laughed. “You have no idea. I should probably start paying attention to what I eat and drink around her.”
“Maybe start wearing a bulletproof vest to work?”
I laughed, but there was a part of me that still worried. Not that she was going to kill me but that she was going to surpass me. “As long as she doesn’t make partner, everything will be fine. I can deal with one person in the office hating my guts. But if I had to work under her?” I shook my head. “I’d have to look for new work.”
“But you love Jon’s agency.”
“I do, but he wants to retire eventually. And working under Kathryn would be like working under the reign of a movie villain. I wouldn’t be surprised if she let all his plants die and put up cubicles in the office so nobody could talk unless they were on lunch breaks.”
Dana shook her head. “How can someone with so much be so unhappy?”
“Beats the hell out of me.”
Movement at the front doors of the restaurant caught my eye and I saw my brother and his wife, Casey, step inside. Or rather, I saw her ridiculously large pregnant belly step in, followed by the rest of her body and her doting husband, who spotted me over the top of his short wife’s head and waved.
I waved and watched as they made their way over. Casey was so rotund she had to choose her course between tables strategically in order to make her way to our table. They were both bundled up in layers of winter clothing to ward off the chilly Vancouver weather. We hadn’t yet seen a day of snow, but the temperatures had been low enough that it would snow if the stars aligned. For now, we were stuck with afternoon rain and freezing-cold nights. That meant there was no snow but plenty of ice on windshields in the mornings.
Casey drew up to the table first and rested both hands on her belly. I noticed but did not mention that she wasn’t wearing her wedding rings. I assumed they no longer fit because her poor hands were pink and swollen.
“Before either of you ask me how I’m doing,” Casey said with her chin lifted, “let me answer you. I’m fat, I’m swollen, I’m starving, I’m nauseous, and these monstrosities are the only shoes I own that fit my stupid feet.” Casey lifted one foot to show off her black Crocs with holes on top.
Gardening shoes.
I swallowed my chortle along with a sip of wine. Underneath the Crocs were candy-cane-striped socks. She wore leggings that seemed a little too big for her and a long sweater that went almost to the middle of her thighs and was pulled tight over her stomach.
Eli waved his hands to get my attention and shot me a warning look not to crack any jokes at Casey’s expense. She still had about a month of pregnancy left ahead of her and she’d been done with the whole brewing-a-baby game long before now. Unfortunately, she wasn’t one of those women who seemed to like being pregnant. She struggled with morning sickness a lot as well as other more personal issues that neither of them had divulged to me or Dana.
I nodded at Eli’s weather-worn sneakers before smiling up at my sister-in-law as she unwrapped a scarf from her neck. “Don’t worry about the Crocs, Casey. They’re nicer than Eli’s sneakers. Look at those things. Dude, you need to throw those out.”
Casey laughed.
Eli deflated with relief. He’d probably been having a rough day with his suffering wife.
My sister-in-law took the seat beside me and smiled. “You always know what to say, don’t you?”
“I try,” I said.
Eli ordered iced water and a Shirley Temple for Casey and a pale ale for himself. By the time their drinks arrived, Dana had already launched back into her story about her patient with the perfect mouth.
Eli shared a look with me. “At least we don’t have to wonder which one of the three of us came out the weirdest.”
“Hey,” Dana said. “That’s not nice. I’m not weird.”
“You willingly put your hands in strangers’ mouths,” Eli said.
“And you enjoy it,” I added.
“Weird,” my brother and I said in unison.
Dana rolled her eyes. “I help people for a living.”
“I help trucks for a living.” Eli chuckled. He’d followed in our father’s footsteps and gone into heavy-duty mechanics right after high school. He had a natural inclination toward mechanics ever since he was a young boy. I’d always been the kid sitting in the garage with our father solving math equations and studying eight or so chapters ahead of my class, while Eli had his head under the hood with our father, who desperately wanted me to pay attention as well but couldn’t hold my attention long enough to teach me what a spark plug was.
We all had our strengths. Mechanics and cars were not mine. They were Dad’s. And now they were Eli’s, which was nice because there was something that felt special about still having a mechanic in the family after our father passed away three years ago.
Eli and Dana continued to bicker as they always did, and I leaned in closer to Casey, who was slurping back her Shirley Temple and not coming up for air. “I know you might not want to hear this,” I said, “but I think you look great. And I know the nausea and all the other pregnancy stuff might suck, but I’m kind of glad you’re suffering.”
Casey’s eyebrows lifted and she unpursed her lips from her straw. “I beg your pardon?”
I spoke quickly to get in the last word before she poked my eye out with her straw. “I’m glad because it means I’m getting close to meeting my nephew.”
Casey melted like an ice-cream cake left out in the sun. Her eyes turned glassy and she smiled as she put a hand on my shoulder. “You’re going soft, Ethan.”
Chapter 5