“Jurnie,” Mack answered without giving me a chance.
“I told the kid it was a bad idea to get involved while we were going to be away so long.”
“Kid?” I snorted. “You’re only two years older than me.”
“It’s like a lifetime in experience.”
I shook my head at them both, but these were my brothers. We’d give each other shit, had punched each other in the nuts more times than I could count when we’d been kids, but we had each other’s backs and we were there for each other. And we were all there for Daisy. Whatever she needed.
“Yeah.” I sighed. “Jurnie. We haven’t talked in a few days and I don’t like it.”
“She pissed?” Mack asked.
I shook my head again. “Not that I know of. Nothing happened. We’re still calling and messaging, but I think our schedules just aren’t lining up. She’s got a lot going on.”
“And you don’t?”
“I do too. That’s the problem. We both do, but she’s the one changing her life right now.”
“Fuck that,” Daltrey spat. “You’re changing your life right now too. We all are because this tour is life-changing.”
“Yeah, it is.” Mack and Daltrey agreeing wasn’t something new. We all loved each other, but Mack and Daltrey had been the non-twin version of Van and me. There was an extra unspoken understanding there that didn’t extend to the rest of us, even though we were all unusually close. Only poor Daisy didn’t have that. She got four older, overprotective assholes who always thought they knew what was best for her when really we were just trying to make sure she didn’t get hurt.
“I know that and it’s not what I meant. Obviously.” I scrubbed a hand through my hair. They’d only met her a couple of times. The time when we’d all gotten together at Mom and Dad’s, then the day we left. “She’s changing her major and shit like that. So her life is changing as much or more than mine. Her changes are new. It’s different.”
“And?”
“So we’re busy. We haven’t talked and I fucking miss talking to her, is that what you want to hear? Want to call me a pussy now?”
They both chuckled because they knew that was where this was headed, but I didn’t give a shit. I missed Jurnie.
“Are you in love with her?” Mack asked more seriously. “I know you said you love her but in love? Come on.”
I shrugged. “Too soon to know that, right? Isn’t that what you said?”
“No.” He’d answered so immediately that it took me by surprise. Daltrey too. “I fell in love with a girl with a single kiss,” he admitted. Daltrey turned to me with a raised eyebrow. Clearly, this was new information to him as well. “That was all it took. I’d kissed her once and knew I was done for. Now, unfortunately, we couldn’t be together and the kiss was a mistake, but I hadn’t even fucked her, and I knew I loved her.”
“Are you serious right now?” Daltrey asked. “Who?”
Mack ran his tongue over his bottom lip like he was thinking. “I’m not ever going to tell you that because it doesn’t fucking matter. But there’s no time requirement on caring for someone. Ask Mom and Dad. Dad says he knew he was going to marry Mom on their first date.”
“That sounds made up.”
“Doubt it. Have you seen them together?”
He wasn’t wrong. Our parents were disgustingly in love and while the five of us gagged any time we saw them show affection, secretly every last one of us loved it. In a time when most of our friends’ parents had gotten divorced, we’d never had to deal with any of that shit.
“True,” I finally admitted. “Then, yeah, I love her. Probably fell in love with her before I even realized it.”
Admitting that to my brothers was easier than I thought It’d be. In the past, it’d be months before I’d tell a woman I loved her, assuming I’d loved her—I never lied about that—but it had never felt like this.
The fucking longing that came from being away from Jurnie was bullshit. The fact that I’d thought the word longing was bullshit.
“Try to get her to come on tour,” Daltrey recommended. “Fuck her out of your system.”
I snorted. He had no idea. “That’s not possible,” I told him honestly. “Just makes me want more.”
“Fucking hell,” he muttered, but if I wasn’t mistaken, Mack cracked a smile, like he could relate, but the woman he’d talked about, he’d said he’d never been with her that way, so I didn’t know which way was up with that. “You’re starting to sound like Van.”
“I think I’ve always sounded like Van. We have the same voice.” Identical meant identical. The only differences between Van and me were the things you could learn. Anything you’re born with matched.
Only three more days, but fuck, I needed to at least hear her voice on something other than voicemail.
21
Jurnie
Distance sucked. They say it makes the heart grow fonder, but I think that was made up by people who didn’t actually have to do a long-distance relationship.
Van had called me last night, but I’d been so busy these last few days that I’d fallen asleep on top of my blanket on my bed. Hadn’t even changed into pajamas or washed my makeup off. I was trying to catch up with what I was going to need to learn for broadcast journalism, was still working the internship at the radio station, plus picking the DJs’ brains every chance I got.
But I’d just gotten the best news. My mom had talked the university into making an exception that would allow me to drop the class and they’d prorate my tuition to apply the portion left over to the fall semester. She said she’d found some precedent that would allow them to do it.
My mom was a badass.
That meant as of today, my plate had gotten lighter, and at the urging of Delaney, not to mention Ned and
