Setting the groceries on our entry table, I shrug out of my coat, hanging it on one of the hooks on the wall before kicking off my boots into the pile of damp, winter shoes. “No, go ahead with the ramen. I’ll blanch some bok choy to put in it, and we can add a quick fried egg for protein. The real main course won’t be ready for at least an hour, and it may suck ass. I’m trying something new.”
“Your food never sucks ass,” Evie says, “but I’m on it.” She points the wooden spoon in her hand at Jess’s back. “I’ll take care of the blanching and the egg. Talk to her, please? Convince her that this chronic neglect of her basic human needs has to stop before she damages her health.”
“I’m not neglecting my—”
“Stop,” Evie and I both say at once, making Jess’s lips press into an irritable squiggle in the center of her paler-than-usual face.
She really has been working too hard. And not just for a little while. Ever since she landed the promotion to team leader at the gaming company last fall, she’s been working seventy hours a week or more—a lot of that time spent cleaning up messes from her less-than-stellar team.
“Come on,” I say, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Let’s get you settled at the table. I have some snow peas you can snack on until the ramen’s done.”
Jess turns in a slow circle, shuffling back inside. “I don’t want snow peas. I’m too hungry for healthy food.”
“Come on, they’re good for you. I have some tzatziki you can dip them in.”
“No,” she grumbles. “No peas.”
“Just eat my peas, Jessica.”
“No, I don’t want to eat your peas, Cameron,” she says, as she collapses into her chair, and I pass the bag of groceries to Evie through the opening above the island. “Stop being a vegetable bully. It’s your least attractive quality.”
Evie holds my gaze as I grab the bag of snow peas from the top, mouthing, “She’s out of control.”
“I’m not out of control,” Jess insists. “And I can read lips just as well as Cam can, Evie Olsen. Think about that the next time you try to talk about me behind my back to my face.”
Evie rolls her eyes. “Fine! But don’t come crying to me when you’re dead at thirty from a heart attack because you let the capitalist system devour your soul and youthful life force.”
“I’m not going to let it devour my life force,” Jess mumbles. “And I never cry. I’m sure that won’t change when I’m dead. I’m not going to be some whiny, sniveling, crybaby ghost.”
“Of course, you won’t,” I say, opening the bag of veggies and setting them in front of her. “And you don’t have to eat those. The ramen will be ready in ten minutes if you want to wait for that.”
She reaches out, snatching a snow pea and shoving it into her mouth, crunching as she says, “I just don’t know how to stop. How do I say ‘no, you can’t make me work like this,’ when I know there are a hundred other people waiting in the wings, ready to work just as hard as I am, if not harder? If I push back, they’ll fire me. That’s how the gaming industry works, and I’m already one of the only women managing a team. If I bail, it will be all dicks in charge.”
“It’s already all dicks in charge,” Evie says. “You’re being a dick, too, Jessica. To yourself. And that counts, so don’t say it doesn’t.”
“I’m not being a dick,” Jess says, snatching another pea and shoving it into her mouth with a scowl.
“You are,” Evie insists, chopping the bok choy with a ferocity that makes me fear for her fingers. She’s an incredible art therapist and painter, but her coordination goes out the window when she’s in the kitchen. I’ve already had to patch her fingers up twice this year and we’re only two weeks in. “And it makes me so mad. Because I love you, and I’m sincerely worried about your physical and mental health. You are so, so talented, and you deserve to work for people who respect that talent and your body’s need for rest. And, oh, I don’t know, maybe give you an entire weekend off every once in a while.”
I glance back to Jess to see her face turning red, but Evie’s on a roll.
“Furthermore,” she adds, lifting her knife into the air beside her face in a way that makes me even more nervous, “your friends deserve to spend some time with you when you aren’t neck-deep in a laptop. I can’t remember the last time we talked when you weren’t coding at the same time. I miss seeing your face and your eyeballs and—”