My Blood Approves (7 page)

Milo pulled up a chair next to Mom, but he
didn’t look even slightly disturbed by her behavior. He had become
too enamored by Jack and just listened for his answer.

“
Not a lot really,” Jack
admitted.

“
You don’t work?” Mom
pressed.

“
Nope.” He shrugged, and
this time I felt irritated that he didn’t have to work and didn’t
think anything of it. Mom should’ve felt the same way, but she
didn’t. “I mean, I’ve done a lot of odd jobs over the years. Like I
tried some bartending for awhile and once I was tour guide for
Niagara caves out in Harmony, but that was too far away so I quit.
I don’t know. Nothing’s just really stuck, I guess.”

“
How do you support
yourself?” It was a logical question, so it kinda surprised me that
Mom had even bothered asking it.

“
Well…” Jack laughed a
little, and both her and Milo closed their eyes, as if the sound
was just too pleasurable for them to handle. “I guess I don’t
really. I live with my family, and… they kind of take care of me. I
guess.”

“
But you’re twenty-four,” I
interjected.

Really, if his family was loaded and wanted
to take care of him, then I’d say, more power to you. But if Mom
wasn’t going to ask the tough questions, then I was.

“
I know.” Jack didn’t look
ashamed at all, though, like I probably would if somebody called me
out on being in my mid-twenties, unemployed, and living at home.
“It just makes sense for us. I don’t know a better way of
explaining it.”

“
So you live with your
parents?” Mom took a drag on her cigarette, keeping her eyes locked
on him.

“
No, they’re dead.” He said
it with the same flat tone that he had before, and there was
something off with it. “I live with my brothers and, uh, my
sister-in-law.”

“
Oh?” Mom raised an
eyebrow, and she was probably excited of the prospect of their
being even more guys like him. “How old are they?”

“
Ezra’s twenty… six, and
Mae is like twenty-eight or something, and Peter is nineteen,” Jack
answered.

“
Hmm,” Mom purred. This was
so gross and so disturbing, and I was so glad that I had never seen
my mom date anyone ever. “So, um, what about college?”

“
I went for awhile, but I
dropped out.” Jack shrugged again. “It just wasn’t my
thing.”

“
What is your thing
exactly?” I asked.

As far as I could tell, working, school,
having a relationship, doing anything that required any amount of
responsibility just wasn’t his thing. What was my attraction to
him?

Then he laughed, looking over at me with an
expression that was almost proud of me, and I remembered exactly
what it was.

“
I’m still figuring it
out.”

“
You’re still young,” Mom
added quickly, trying to pull his attention back to her. “You have
plenty of time to figure things out.”

“
That’s what I think,” Jack
agreed, and when he looked back at her, she let out a moan of some
kind, and that was it for me. I’d let her stare at him
enough.

“
Well, we really should get
going,” I announced abruptly.

“
What?” Mom looked sharply
at me, her face getting this stricken expression. “Aren’t you
staying for dinner?”

“
I misunderstood what Alice
meant,” Jack explained, his voice getting overly soothing, but I
decided that whatever would get us out of here without a fight was
fine by me. “I already ate, and then I made plans for us. We really
do have to be going.”

My mother tried to think of things to keep
him trapped in the apartment with her, but I stuck to my guns. I
escaped into the hall while they finished saying their good-byes,
but I could still hear the unusually sweet tone to my mother’s
voice as she cooed all sorts of things to him.

Once Jack finally made it out to the hall
and shut the door behind him, I shivered visibly, trying to shake
off what I had just witnessed.

“
What?” Jack laughed,
looking at me as I pushed the button for the elevator.

“
Oh my god, that was so
disgusting!”

“
I thought that went very
well, actually,” Jack smirked. “Your mom seemed to like
me.”

“
Ugh, she wanted to jump
your bones,” I groaned. The elevator doors dinged open and we
stepped in. Leaning back against the wall, I shook my head. “It was
so disturbing.”

“
It’s not my fault
everybody wants me.” Jack laughed again and pushed the button for
the lobby, and I knew he was only half-teasing.

“
I don’t want you,” I
crossed my arms over my chest.

“
Yeah, I know.” Jack got
quiet and thoughtful for the rest of the elevator ride, but I
wasn’t sure if was because he was disappointed that I didn’t want
him or he just didn’t understand it. He tried to change the subject
as the elevator doors opened into the lobby. “So, your brother’s
gay?”

“
He is not gay.” I bristled
and stepped out of the elevator.

It wouldn’t really bother me if Milo was
gay, but he wasn’t. I mean, I would know if he was.

“
Oh, so he hasn’t told you
yet.” Jack shoved his hands in his pockets, following me as I
hurried out into the cold night air.

Once we got outside, I realized that I
didn’t know where he’d parked or even what car he’d driven, so I
stopped and waited for him.

“
There’s nothing to tell,”
I insisted. He turned to the left, walking a little ways down the
block, when I saw his Jetta.

“
Oh, come on,” Jack
scoffed. “You had to have noticed the way he looked at
me.”

“
Everyone looks at you that
way.” I tried to think back and I couldn’t remember if the guys had
been doing it too.

Everyone reacted to him in a very friendly
fashion, but I was pretty sure that guys hadn’t given him that
particular look, not the ones like my mom or Jane.

“
No, everyone does not.”
Jack played with the keyless entry, and the Jetta beeped loudly,
announcing that it was unlocked.

“
So how does that work?” I
asked, opening the car door. “Your pheromones only react to people
that would be sexually attracted to you anyway? How can they
possibly know that?”

Jack stood outside until I could finish my
question, then he just got in the car, and I knew that was his
official answer to that.

“
You probably shouldn’t say
anything to you brother,” Jack said once I’d gotten in the car. He
started it, revving the engine for a second, and then pulled away
from the curb. “If he hasn’t told you yet, then he’s probably not
ready for you to know.”

“
He isn’t gay,” I repeated
firmly. “He’s only fifteen.”

“
Oh, right, cause when you
were fifteen you didn’t know you were straight.” Jack rolled his
eyes.

“
How do you know I’m
straight?” I countered. I mean, I am straight, but he didn’t know
that. “That would explain why I’m not attracted to you.”

“
You are attracted to me.”
He kept his eyes straight ahead, and adjusted the stereo, so Joy
Division played softly out of the speakers. “Otherwise you wouldn’t
be in the car with me. It’s just not the same as it is with
them.”

“
Whatever.” I crossed my
arms again. Then I softened a little as I thought about Milo, and
all the weird little things he did that I had always just chocked
up to him being younger than me and more responsible. “So… you
really think Milo’s gay?”

“
Yeah, he’s gay,” Jack
replied definitively. “And before you ask, yeah, it’s something I
know. I can’t explain it, but I just know. Like the way a lion
always knows the weakest zebra in the pack.”

“
Are you comparing being
gay to being weak?”

So, I was just coming to terms with the
probability of my brother’s homosexuality, but already I felt
defensive about it. Milo was my little brother and probably the
only person in the whole world that really cared about me.

“
No, I’m comparing my
uncanny ability to detect things to that of a lion,” Jack
clarified.

I was still kind of sulking, reeling from
the fact that both my mother and my newly discovered gay brother
wanted to do bad, bad things to Jack, but he wouldn’t hear of
it.

“
Hey, you know what would
cheer you up?”

“
I can only imagine,” I
said dryly.

“
Playing
Dance Dance
Revolution
at the arcade.” Without
warning, he flipped the car into a u-turn across three lanes of
traffic.

“
That doesn’t sound that
great.” It didn’t really, but Jack thought it was the greatest idea
ever, and that managed to convince me somehow.

I was starting to realize that my feelings
seemed to be mimicking his, and that should alarm me, but he wasn’t
alarmed, so I was incapable of it.

I got home very late from hanging out with
Jack, as per usual. After the arcade had closed, we had loitered at
a Blockbuster, before deciding that neither of us wanted to rent
anything, and then drove around for awhile before finally dropping
me at home.

Mom was gone at work, and Milo had gone to
bed, so there was nothing said about Jack’s visit.

When I finally roused the next day, I
immediately went to talk to Milo about Jack. I hadn’t expected him
to expound very much, but his very clipped, “He seems nice” did not
do the night justice.

The fact that Milo was apparently hiding
something so important from me made me feel uncomfortable. A part
of me wanted to just bring it out in the open and demand that he
tell me, but it was his thing and he had to come to terms with it
on his own time.

Because of my unease, I decided to camp out
in bed all day, reading and listening to Death Cab for Cutie. When
Mom got up, I went out to get a soda and find out her thoughts on
Jack, but disappointingly, they just mirrored Milo’s
sentiments.

It wasn’t that I wanted her to gush about
Jack until I threw up, but their hesitance to say anything real
about him disturbed me. I knew that they’d probably been
embarrassed about the way they had acted but still.

Once Mom confirmed that it was acceptable
for me to continue seeing Jack, I gave up on it. At least she liked
him, and I could do what I wanted.

I went back into my room to figure out why
it was so important to me that I kept seeing him. I hadn’t fallen
under his spell the same way most people did, but that didn’t mean
I wasn’t under one. As he had pointed out, I was attracted to him,
otherwise I wouldn’t be there.

I sprawled out in bed and
wondered if it was something like that bad
Love Potion No. 9
movie with Sandra
Bullock. They drank this potion, and suddenly, everybody wanted
them. Maybe Jack had done that too. In some kind of weird
government experiment.

But we lived in Minnesota. Why would the
government experiment here? Were there even like CIA or FBI
headquarters here?

That would be a really stupid test anyway.
What would the practical applications of such a potion be? And does
anyone really make potions anymore?

Milo sat on the computer the entire day and
barely said a word to me. I couldn’t tell if he was mad at me for
ditching him last night, or just going through his own conflicted
deal about his sexuality.

Either way, I didn’t push him on it, so I
ate quickly, and then spent the rest of the night in my room. I
went to bed that night, feeling a little surprised that Jack hadn’t
talked to me at all.

Since it was my last day of Spring Break, I
decided to make the most of it by sleeping the entire day away. I
knew that it would only make it harder when I tried to go to bed at
a decent time or get up for school the next morning, but I didn’t
care.

When I finally rolled out of bed, I showered
and got ready for the day. I still felt like avoiding Milo, so I
text messaged Jack.

What are you up to
today?
I sat on my bedroom floor, painting
my toenails dark blue.

Just woke up.
He texted me back promptly.

Sorry. Did I wake
you?
It was after six o’clock, but from
what little time I’d spent with Jack, I had a feeling he never went
to bed before dawn.

Kinda. But it’s ok. I needed to get up
anyway.

So, did you want to do
something today?
Fanning my freshly
painted nails so they’d dry, I stared at my phone
expectantly.

Yeah. When?

Probably sooner rather than later. I have
school tomorrow.

Ridiculous! :( Ok. Let me
shower and I’ll pick you up in an hour. Cool?
Jack responded, making me laugh. The fact that I was going to
school would impede his life in some way, and it made me feel a
little special.

Cool. See you soon.

Once my toenails dried, I finished getting
ready. I slipped on a pair of skimmer shoes, which completely
covered up the polishing I had just done, but it was still too cold
for anything open-toed.

Milo was staked out on the computer when I
went out into the living room. I’d just put on a tee shirt and
jeans, so I slipped on my white zippered Famous Stars and Straps
hoodie over it. Even with that, I’d still probably freeze my butt
off outside, but I thought my jackets were gross, so this was the
better option.