“No, Jonas.”
He grips the steering wheel again. “Or send flowers with a note?”
“Flowers? Jesus, Jonas.No. Just leave her alone.”
“Maybe I should, I don’t know, go park my car across the street from her mom’s house and sit there for a while?”
I laugh. “What the fuck? You mean like a stalker?”
“No, not like astalker. Like aboyfriend.”
“Like a... Ha!” I can’t control my laughter. “That’s your idea of what a boyfriend does? You’re gonna go be John Cusack inSay Anythingwith the beat box over your head, standing in the rain?”
“John Cusack didn’t stand in the rain.”
“Sure he did.”
“No.”
“Well, either way,” I say. “That’d be totally stalker-ish. It was stalker-ish when John Cusack did it in the first place. I don’t know why everyone thinks that was so fucking romantic. It was justweird. Fucking desperate. Women hate desperate.”
Someone cuts Jonas off and he honks his horn. “Motherfucker.” There’s a long pause. “Well, I can relate,” he says.
“To what?”
“To John Cusack.” He exhales. “I’m desperate.”
I shake my head. What the fuck am I gonna do about my fucking brother? He doesn’t say a word about any particular woman since Amanda, not a fucking word, and now he won’t shut the fuck up about this one? I can’t decide whether I like hermit-Jonas or desperately-in-love Jonas better. “You sent a couple bodyguards over to her mom’s house, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, then. She’s safe. That’s all that matters. Leave her alone.”
Jonas sighs audibly. “But if I drive over there, she might at least notice me sitting out there. And then she’d know I’m thinking about her.”
I can’t help but chuckle. I’ve never in my life met someone like my brother. Probably a genius IQ, no exaggeration. He’s easily twice as smart as I am. Triple as smart. And yet he’s so fucking stupid he makes me want to wring his neck at least a hundred times a day. “What would be the point of you sitting there in your car, watching the house, Jonas? Explain this to me.”
Now it’s Jonas rolling his eyes at me like I’m a complete moron. “Because then maybe she’d come out.”
I laugh. “And then what?”
He shakes his head but doesn’t answer me.
“Dude, Sarah’s healing from being stabbed multiple times and having her head busted wide open like a walnut. And you want the poor girl to hobble outside in her little nightgown and fuzzy socks and pat you on the head and say ‘Good, doggie’?”
“I didn’t... No. I just . . .” His anguish is palpable.
“You know what she’dreallysay? She’d say, ‘Gosh, Jonas. Ever thought of sending atext?’”
He grumbles. “Okay, so what if I—”
“Jonas,no.Stop. No stalking. No calling. No flowers. No boom box. No luring the poor girl across the street in her nightgown and slippers. Do you want to push this girl away forever?”
His face flashes with earnest concern. “No. Of course not. Quite the opposite.”
“Do you want her to think you’re a total pussy?”
He clenches his jaw. “No.”
