“Now, I just want you boys to know that while I don’t really understand what you're doing…” She shook her head back and forth in little jerky motions, making it clear I wasn’t supposed to explain anything.
Damn Simon for putting that shit in her head.
She gave me a smile when I didn’t explain. “I want you all to be happy and to make good decisions in your relationship so everyone is equal. I’m going to worry, but Jonah is happy and it’s clear this is what he wants.”
I wasn’t up to explaining why we were all equal, but it wouldn’t really look that way sometimes. I just didn’t have the vocabulary or maybe just the nerve to explain to her why Jonah would voluntarily give up control to us. Yeah, I wasn’t going to touch that with the crazy equality woman with a ten-foot pole.
Probably not a twenty-foot pole either.
“We want Jonah to be happy as well.” I tried to think of something positive to say. “The move went well and he now has more time to work on his art. He’s very excited about that.”
“Art?” She glanced around the yard, probably trying to find Jonah, but I’d been ditched again.
But as long as he didn’t end up naked in a pool again, it would be fine.
“Yes, he’s an artist.”
“I thought Graham said he was that writer friend’s assistant? Something about keeping him on track?” She kept looking around, but now I was pretty sure she was looking for Graham. Clearly, he’d been too vague during his interrogation.
“Jonah does help out his friend Dakota who’s a mystery writer. Jonah knows firsthand how distracted artists can be, so he keeps Dakota focused and helps work on the research portion of the books. I never realized how much time it took to look into poisons and the things that go into a mystery.” I thought it was an easy conversation, but her eyes started to widen.
“Jonah is the Jonah that did the series of paintings based on Dakota Young’s book?” She was looking at me so intently it was making it hard to think. She had that mom look down pat and I instinctively started to step away without having done anything.
I thought back to the things Jonah had talked about doing. “Yes, he said those started out as a way to visualize the plot of the book but turned out better than he expected.”
Jonah said he constantly doodled ideas for Dakota but hadn’t thought about actually painting one until there’d been a big problem with one of the books in the series last year. I’d only been half-listening at the time because he’d been naked and digging through the sex toy closet while we talked.
I was actually amazed I remembered that much.
“Oh, really, he’s…” She started to look around the yard almost frantically. “I wanted the third one, but when the bidding got over ten thousand, I just couldn’t do it.”
Ten thousand for a picture of a murder plot?
I had a feeling Jonah had been downplaying his artistic success—we were going to have a talk about that.
“Has he talked about doing any more? I haven’t seen anything mentioned about him in almost a year. There was a rumor he was dead.” She stepped even closer. “There were going to be more of those, right?”
How the fuck was I supposed to know?
“Jonah was talking the other day about a special project he was working on. But I don’t think I’m supposed to tell.” Teasing vaguely was probably better than saying he didn’t like talking about his art.
He was going to have to start talking about his art if people knew him and I was going to be interrogated.
“Oh, I just have to…” She looked around again. “Excuse me.”
Relief coursed through me as she started darting around the yard searching for Jonah. Yeah, I was a wimp, but Graham could rescue him. They were his relatives. Mine were funny but not to this level of unhinged.
I guess sometimes it took other people’s crazy families to put our own into perspective.
I had a feeling we were going to be known as the boring branch of the family one day. Sure, there might be three of us, but the more I got to know Graham’s family, the less sane they seemed.
I probably hadn’t given him enough credit for how difficult it must have been to start dating me to begin with. Yeah, one day I’d have to apologize for that, but not until I’d fucked up and needed a really good way to distract him.
Hadto plan ahead for those kinds of things.
As Graham’s aunt headed inside, Shane came over. “I wasn’t sure if you needed rescuing or not.”
“Me neither.” I shrugged. “She’s been nice about the relationship, though. I appreciate that. She’s just a little…but yeah, she doesn’t think we’re torturing Jonah, so there’s that.”
