Read On the Ropes for Free Online

in their orders when the waitress returned, and when she walked away again, Janette caught a brief glimpse of Stephen’s face in the bar mirror before he turned to the television.
    No, not tired. He seemed to be inflicted with something more than just sleep deprivation. He looked tired to his core—as if a lack of rest was only one of many aggregating issues. Exhaustion. Evidently, he wasn’t taking care of himself, and surprisingly, Janette was bothered by the fact that he wasn’t.
    At the sound of an unceasing buzz, he leaned a bit to the side and pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket. The full grin that had been absent for a couple of hours returned as he greeted his sister, and oddly, one of the many knots in Janette’s gut unfurled.
    He used that same grin on her . All this time, she’d been thinking it was just one of the tools in a playboy’s arsenal.
    Huh .
    “Nope. Haven’t been to the house yet,” he said into the phone, and switched it to the other ear so he could reach for the hushpuppy basket the zippy waitress had dropped off. “Got a message from the housekeeping company this afternoon, so I know the place is at least still standing and supposedly clean.”
    Janette laughed softly as she broke a hushpuppy in two. Normally, she’d tune out other people’s conversations because that’s what good manners dictated. Stephen and Megan’s relationship fascinated her, though. Janette had a couple of half siblings from her father, but even living in the same household, they had been sort of kept apart. Sure, they’d eaten at the same table and gone to the same schools, but there was no arguing that she was excess , and not in a good way. It may have been their Christian duty to take her in, but that didn’t mean they had to love her.
    That knot came back. Janette sighed and pulled her beer mug closer. She was under no illusions that alcohol would make anything better, but maybe if she concentrated on the movement, the swallowing, she’d stop fucking thinking.
    “We can get all that in the morning,” Stephen said, still on the phone.
    Janette looked into the mirror and saw him rubbing the bridge of his nose. His mouth opened into a wide yawn.
    Was he even going to be able to finish his meal?
    “Nah. I’m at The Sandbar with Jan getting dinner. Don’t worry about rushing out here. I know how Toby is about getting up early, so just leave whenever you were going to. We can walk down to the donut place for breakfast if we’re even up in time. Yeah. Drive safe. Call when you’re nearby.”
    He ended the call and set the phone on the bar top. “She’s a bit obsessive, my little sister,” he explained. “Apparently, if she’s not here, we’ll waste away and be unable to work out how to tend to ourselves.”
    “I think it’s sweet. She cares about you.”
    “Shit, she needs to worry less about me and more about herself. Did I tell you she’s carrying twins?”
    All Janette could do in response to that was gape. Maybe Janette was short, but Megan was small in the way that gymnasts who never really “grew up” were small.
    He laughed. “I know, right? I haven’t seen her since Easter, and she was barely pregnant then. I imagine that by now, she’s about to tip over. If those kids are going to be big like Seth, I don’t see how she’s going to make it to the end.”
    Janette didn’t particularly wish to imagine the logistics herself. In fact, she’d never thought of having kids. That dream of a doting husband, two-point-five kids, and a house with a picket fence never seemed attainable for her. She wasn’t convinced that sort of idealized happiness truly existed, even though she yearned for it. Her mother told her fairy tales when she was young enough to think they’d come true. Maybe they did for some people.
    The waitress dropped off their food, and they ate in a companionable silence for a while. The fried seafood was hot and the fish was fresh. Whoever was in the kitchen knew