My Blood Approves (My Blood Approves #1)(10)

“It must be nice,” I muttered.

We were pretty poor, but not quite so poor that I felt like I had to get a job and bring in my own money. Just enough where I felt it.

“There are plenty of other things to worry about,” Jack replied seriously. “Believe me.”

“Like what?” I looked over at him, instead of the blur of the scenery flying past us. He smirked at me and shook his head. So that was another thing he wouldn’t talk to me about. “So you have a brother?”

“Two, actually,” Jack said. “And a sister. Well, she’s actually my sister-in-law, but she feels like a sister.”

“So is she married to your brother, or are you married?” I asked tentatively.

“No, I’m not married,” Jack laughed. “She’s my brother’s wife.”

“What are their names?” With the endless amount of things I wanted to know about him, I was stuck asking safe questions.

“Peter, and then Ezra is married to Mae. Ezra is the oldest.”

“What about your parents?” I turned towards him and rested my head against the seat. The rush of the world around us had made me a little dizzy.

“Dead.” His voice was emotionless, but his eyes got hard, which didn’t look right at all.

“Sorry,” I offered lamely.

“Nah, it was like fifteen years ago.” He shook his head, trying to brush me off, and then he turned to me, his face brightening again. “What about you? You have family?”

“My mom, and a younger brother,” I answered. “But he’s more like an older brother sometimes.” Jack laughed loudly at that, his wonderful laughter echoing throughout the car and sending waves of warmth over me.

“Yeah, I can completely relate,” he grinned.

“Really?” I had always thought of Milo as an oddity, but it was nice to know that there was someone out there like him.

“Yeah, but Peter’s something else,” Jack said. “Really. I doubt you’ll ever meet anyone like him.”

“Well, I’d have to meet him first,” I pointed out.

“Maybe someday.” He sounded weirdly far off, almost apprehensive.

“You’re not married, but does that mean you’re single?” I asked.

“Uh, yeah.” Then, before I could ask him more about that, he turned the tables on me. “What about you? Are you seeing anyone?”

“Hardly,” I snorted. Other than a few drunken make out sessions at a couple parties, I had nothing to show for a love life.

“Why not?” Jack pressed.

“You saw my friend Jane,” I said dully. “She has this way of completely stealing all the light in the room.”

“Oh, she does not.”

“Why don’t you have a girlfriend? The ladies obviously like you.” I changed the subject back to him.

“That’s actually part of the reason why. Everyone likes me without ever knowing me. It makes it hard to have a real relationship with somebody.”

“So… what’s the other part?” I asked, and he didn’t answer. “You’re not going to tell me.”

“I think there’s a midnight show of Rocky Horror Picture Show in Lakeville,” Jack announced randomly. “Are you up for it?”

“Sure.” I glanced out the window, watching the car glide through traffic. “So, why didn’t you drive your car tonight?”

“That’s not really my car, either.” He didn’t really answer my question, but I was starting to get used to that. “It’s my sister Mae’s.”

I noticed that he called her his sister, not his sister-in-law, and I wondered if that was simply an oversight. His insistence on being so mysterious was making me overanalyze everything.

“Do you even own a car?”

“Yeah, a jeep. I just haven’t felt like driving it lately.” Then he flashed a sly smile and looked over at me. “Besides, this is so much faster.”

“That doesn’t seem fair at all,” I said tiredly after riding in silence for a minute. My mind had been to trying to figure out all the things he wouldn’t tell me. “You won’t tell me anything about yourself.”

“Hey, I’ll tell you almost anything about me.” He kept his tone light, but he looked a little wounded. For the first time, I realized that he not telling me bothered him just as much as it did me.

“My favorite color is chartreuse. I love the Ramones and the Cure. My bedroom walls are painted dark blue. I had my first kiss when I was fourteen while listening to ‘Rock Lobster’ cause she really, really liked B-52’s. I should’ve taken that as warning sign that it would never work, but I was awfully young and stupid.”

“Chartreuse?” I questioned, skipping over the remainder of his confession. “I don’t even know what that is.”

“It’s sorta like a bright olive,” Jack explained. “It’s the color most visible to the human eye because of where it sits in the light spectrum.”

“You’re incredibly random.” We turned into the parking lot of the multiplex, and I realized he had managed to avoid really telling me anything. When he pulled into park, I looked at him seriously. “So why can’t you tell me things?”