The Sunshine Court by Nora Sakavic

Author:Nora Sakavic [Sakavic, Nora]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Jean

It turned out life was excessively complicated when there wasn’t a staff to handle the minutiae of day-to-day existence.

Jean’s first week in California fell into a loose pattern. Monday afternoons Laila and Cat gave the apartment a deep clean, prefaced by a lecture to Jean about which chemicals he was not to mix under any circumstance.

Thursdays were meal prep days, supposedly to better accommodate game nights and weekend trips during the school year. Jean learned how to sort and wash laundry from Laila and got to know the local grocery store forwards and backwards from going with Cat.

Every morning they walked to the fitness center on campus. Jean couldn’t be trusted to catch the weights should the need arise, so Laila and Cat spotted each other while he did stretches and walked on one of the treadmills.

Afternoons were filled with whatever the women were in the mood for that day, be it wandering downtown, shopping, or combing through estate sales.

Laila dragged them to the library once, where Jean was fairly sure she scanned every single title on the shelf, and Cat took them sightseeing around the city and neighboring areas. On one sunny day Cat went out for a long ride on her motorcycle, leaving Laila and Jean behind for a blessedly quiet afternoon at the house.

Jean went where they took him because it was better than being left in the house alone, answered their least intrusive questions, and tried—failed—to not be completely overwhelmed by just how big Los Angeles was. It was as fascinating as it was horrible, and by the time they finally made it back to the safety of the house each evening his nerves felt worn raw. Helping Cat cook started to become a quiet source of comfort, a way of slowing down and letting the day’s stresses slip away.

Jeremy made it over for dinner every night that week, apparently uninvited from the family table over the state of his hair. He laughed it off when he explained it, but Jean saw the shadows in his eyes and the dark look Cat and Laila exchanged as soon as Jeremy turned his back. It wasn’t Jean’s place to ask, at least until it interfered with their performance on the court, so he quietly tucked the knowledge aside for later.

On Friday, Jeremy made it to the house right as they were starting dinner.

Laila and Jeremy made themselves comfortable on two of the three stools to chat while the other two set to work, Jean clumsily dicing peppers and Cat searing meat at the stove. Jean was halfway through his pile when Jeremy’s phone quacked.

Jean had heard his phone go off enough times to know it was a backliner messaging him. Jeremy, for reasons he could not sufficiently explain, had assigned each line-up a different animal as an alert noise. His group chats had chimes in varying pitches, and his family always stood out as a jarring chord. It was a regular cacophony whenever Jeremy was over,

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