“That was intense,” I mumbled as I packed.
“Yeah, well . . .” He trailed off and looked around my room. “Promise you’re not already married or pregnant and just don’t want to say anything?”
“Graham. I promise. I just want to be with him, that’s all. This wouldn’t be a huge to-do if you were moving in with some girl, but because I’m the youngest and the girl, it’s like all hell breaks loose.”
“Exactly.”
I stopped on my way back to one of my drawers and turned to look at him. “What do you mean ‘exactly’? That’s not fair to me. Why do the rules have to be different because I’m younger and female?”
“Because you’re still their baby or whatever.” Graham snorted as he lay back on my bed. “They want to keep you as long as they can. And girls are expected to be the ones who don’t do the stupid shit.”
“And moving out is considered stupid shit?” I asked in a monotone voice with one eyebrow raised.
“With a guy you’ve only been dating for a couple months? Yeah.”
“I’ve known him since I was six! We’ve been best friends since we were nine. Mom, Dad, and you all know him as well as you knew Ben—hell, you know him as well as you know me.”
Graham turned his head so he could give me a dry look. “Yeah, that’s not the point, though. Think about it this way: I move in with some girl I started seeing a month or two ago. Sound stupid?”
“Of course it does, because you’re with different girls all the time, and no one would expect you to actually want to stay with just her for any amount of time! And like I just said . . . I’ve known Jagger for sixteen years! You can’t compare that with you meeting some chick and deciding you wanted to see her for more than a week.”
“But what if I didn’t just meet her? What if I grew up with her too?”
I laughed and dropped my head back to stare at the ceiling for a moment. “Still can’t compare it. You haven’t touched Thatch girls in who knows how long because you, Deacon, and Knox went through all of them long ago. So to go through your whore-ish ways for all these years, and then decide you want to do what Mom’s been suggesting and actually settle down, and even more, if you decided to do it with a girl you hardly knew . . . well, it would seem stupid on both your parts. Even though I was with Ben all that time, I was never apart from Jagger. He’s been a constant most of my life.”
Graham’s eyes narrowed for a few seconds, but his mouth never opened.
“Come on,” I challenged. “Give me something else so I can shut you down again.”
With a heavy sigh, Graham lay back down. “That was all I had.”
“It was weak.”
“Hey, I had to try and I didn’t have a whole hell of a lot I could go off of. It’s not like any of us have anything bad to say about Jagger that I could’ve used. But I still say you shouldn’t move in with him.”
“Fine, I’ll move in with you. I’m sure Deacon and Knox will be happy,” I offered, and Graham gave me a look like I’d just suggested the most disturbing thing imaginable.
“Fuck. No. Move in with Jagger!”
“If you insist,” I said in a singsong voice, and went back to packing.
“That was evil.”
“If you say so.”
Graham and I were silent for the next twenty minutes as I continued to pack, and he lay there still as stone. When I was done, I sat down on the bed next to him with an exhausted sigh and eyed all my packed things warily. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to moving all of it by myself, and I didn’t think it would be a good idea to ask Jagger to come help me when everyone was still in a mood over the fact that I was leaving.
“There has to be something wrong with him,” Graham mumbled, and I looked over my shoulder to give him a questioning look. “Jagger. There has to be something that isn’t perfect about him.”
I laughed awkwardly. “Uh . . .”
“He took care of you after Ben with no questions asked. He never said anything to you about the way he felt until you accidentally found out. He brought you back here. He’s there in a second when anything bad happens. He just seems too perfect. There has to be something.”
“You left out that he pretty much raised his sister.” Graham shot me a glare and I smiled back. “Jagger’s still Jagger,” I began, and turned so I could see Graham while I talked to him. “He’s not perfect; granted, he’s changed a lot in the last few years because of what happened to Ben, but he’s still the guy who always got us in trouble when we were growing up. He’s the reckless one, and the one who wants to have fun; but Ben changed all of us. And what happened made Jagger push the crazy side of himself back, and the protective side to the forefront. You can’t really use that against him, though.”
“No, I can’t,” Graham agreed. “I still say there has to be something.”
I groaned in annoyance and hit his arm. “If you want something on him, then you already know what it is. The best thing about him is also his biggest flaw. His need to protect everyone from everything is one of the things I love most, but also something that can drive me crazy because there are some things that are out of everyone’s control, and he’ll still try to take it all on himself.”
“Wonderful. Way to confirm his sainthood.”