My Blood Approves by Amanda Hocking Read Free Book Online

thing when I got up, I briefed Milo on
Jack’s arrival, but Mom was still asleep. For some reason, Milo had
been gifted with everything domestic, meaning he was the cook in
the family. I let him make supper, but scurried about trying to
help him and straighten up the apartment.
    We actually had a nice apartment; it was
just very small. It was important to me that we impressed Jack with
where we lived, and I didn’t know why.
    I didn’t know why I felt anything I did
about him, but I pushed that out of my mind. That wasn’t tonight’s
problem.
    Then the unthinkable
happened. Jack arrived early .

    - 5 -
    “ Jack,” I said breathlessly
when I opened the door. He had found my place without me telling
him the apartment number, but I couldn’t mention that in front of
Milo.
    “ Hi,” Jack beamed at me. He
wore a simple tee shirt with Dickies, but it was the first time I’d
seen him in pants. I suspected that this was his attempt at
dressing up, and it made me smile.
    “ You’re early,” I told him.
I held the door open, but I hadn’t let him inside yet, so he stood
in the hallway, giving me an odd look. Milo had been behind me in
the kitchen, noisily preparing something, but he hadn’t made a
sound since we’d heard the knock at the door.
    “ Is that a bad thing?” Jack
asked.
    “ No, not really,” I
admitted, and finally took a step back so he could come inside. He
smiled at my brother and his eyes quickly scanned the apartment.
“My mom’s just not awake yet.”
    “ Oh.” He glanced at the
clock on the wall, noting that it was after seven. “When does she
get up?”
    “ I’ll go get her now,” Milo
offered, wiping his hands on his jeans and stepping away from a
pan.
    “ Oh, sorry,” I fumbled,
realizing that I hadn’t introduced them. “Jack, this is my brother
Milo. Milo, this is Jack.”
    “ Nice to meet you.” Milo
did a little half wave/half nod combo, and then darted off to get
my mom.
    “ I think I make him
nervous,” Jack told me quietly.
    “ Everyone makes him
nervous.”
    We stood rather awkwardly in the kitchen,
although I did feel slightly better now that he was around. He had
a kind of calming effect on me, but I didn’t know if that was good
or bad.
    My mother squawked things rather loudly at
Milo, so I decided to make conversation to drown at the sound of
her.
    “ So, are you hungry?” I
gestured to the pans of some kind of Italian creation Milo had been
making on the stove. “Milo’s making something delicious. He’s a
really good cook.”
    “ Actually, I just ate.”
Jack smiled sheepishly and put his hand on his stomach. “Sorry. I
figured that since we were meeting so late, you’d probably already
have eaten. And Mae insisted on feeding me.”
    “ Oh, that’s okay.” But I
felt more nervous.
    I wasn’t that hungry and I could really care
less if he ate or not. Without the distraction of eating, a
conversation with my mother would be much less pleasant.
    Then a tantalizing idea occurred to me.
Maybe we could just turn this into more of a meet-and-greet kind of
thing, where Jack could say hello to my mother and then just sweep
me away.
    “ So… do you wanna go
someplace or something?” I asked.
    “ I thought I was meeting
your mother.” Jack looked confused and pointed to my mother’s
closed bedroom door, where Milo was trying to convince her to put
on some pants to see Jack.
    “ I mean, after that,” I
clarified. “Since you’re not eating. It would be silly to sit
around here and watch them eat.”
    “ Aren’t you
hungry?”
    “ I’ll live.” There were
like ten million places to eat in the Cities, and this was the only
one that included strained dinner conversation with my mother. I’m
sure that I could find somewhere if I really had to.
    “ Alright,” he shrugged and
leaned back against the kitchen counter. “What did you have in
mind?”
    “ Pretty much anything, as
long as it’s not here.”
    “ I’m up!” Mom shouted, and
a few