ex bff older bro, installment 148787: john tells joni
KCSB schedules a potluck dinner on Thursday of finals week and even though there's about a million other things to do before end of term, Joni agrees to participate because the station is one of the few places that'll be worth missing. She's basically lived there since freshman year, starting out DJ-ing an 11pm power pop hour followed by jock jams at midnight, during which her only call-ins were drunk frats or John, if he was up late. A year later she'd moved to a daytime slot, and a year after that, to sports coverage, where having a sports nut older brother came in handy for both knowledge and crafting prying questions to ask in half-time stand ups.
All that is coming to an end with the potluck. Her last final is on Friday, and then she'll be done with college, one quarter early and no idea what to do next. The thought would be terrifying but she's been doing a pretty good job of steadfastly ignoring it.
John calls just as she's grabbing a cart. Joni stuffs an earbud in and says, "Hi."
"I'm at the store. KCSB is having a potluck this week," she tells him, navigating to the kitchenware aisle.
"You're gonna cook?" John asks skeptically.
"I said I'd bring garlic bread," Joni says, "and utensils."
"Oh. Well, that makes more sense," John says, as if he would've had to suffer through her cooking attempts from a couple thousand miles away. He falls silent for a moment before asking, "Can you Facetime?"
"Now? I'll be home in like half an hour."
"I just want to—there's, uh—" John clears his throat. "C'mon, just Facetime me. It'll be fast."
Joni hums vaguely. That's John sometimes. Needy in a way he's unaware of, covered up as ordering her around. She knows what it is now, at least, and has the sense not to call him on it. For all that they point out each other's annoying traits, it's been an unspoken truce not to dig into the truly gnarly stuff.
"Fine," she relents, "but I have a huge pimple by my mouth so don't bring it up."
She props the phone on the child seat in between boxes of forks and presses the video button, rolling her eyes as John says, "Okay, as long as you're sure it's not an STI or anything," and the audio cuts out while his face fills the screen, attention locking to the camera once he realizes they're connected.
"Hey," he says. Then, after a minute shift of his gaze: "Yowza."
"I'm hanging up," Joni declares.
"I'm just kidding! I'm kidding, I can barely see it. You're glowing, you're the picture of elegance, you're burning my corneas out with your beauty," John backtracks, grinning wide.
She gives him a stink face in return, cutting through the soda aisle and slinging a box of Coke Zero into the cart. John's skin has always been infuriatingly clear minus maybe like, three pimples as a teenager that he'd dotted toothpaste onto, working off some horrible outdated advice from their mom's generation. The worst part was that it had worked.
"Don't they have pimple patches now?" he asks.
"They don't work until it pops," she grumbles. "What do you want?"
He doesn't answer right away, so she glances down at him. Even though he's just sitting—on the patio, it looks like, with a backdrop of slatted vertical blinds—there's a nervous kind of energy exuding through the screen. His smile is gone, replaced by a vacant look that pings into her brain as a danger signal.
"Listen," he starts, and goes no further.
"S'why I'm on the phone with you," she confirms. When he still refuses to speak, she asks, "Are you in trouble? Should I be calling legal aid?"
"It kinda does feel like I should report myself sometimes," John mumbles, squinting into the distance. He blinks and refocuses on her. "Alright, fuck. So."
"I want to tell you something."
He sucks his lips inward. "You know that Gale's been staying with me."
Suddenly her stomach goes nervy, a strange tingling sensation in her hands and feet as John hunches forward and presses a loose fist up against his mouth. It's difficult to tell if she's somehow reading his mind, or picking up on imperceptible cues, or if she's just been anticipating this moment for twenty years and therefore able to recognize it for what it is. For a second, she considers disconnecting her earbud because knowing is one thing and hearing it out loud is something else, and maybe it won't hurt as much if there's more space between the two.
"And we're—well. There's a 'we'. There's a we because we're—involved," John finishes. He shakes his head, possibly at the word choice. "We're seeing each other," he amends.
"You're..." Joni trails off.
"Yeah," he says, drawing it long to merge into an exhale. "I just. Wanted to tell you. He did too, but I figured it'd be better like this, you know. You and me."
A beat. "Joni," he says, and she manages another, "Uh huh."
He doesn't say anything else. Doesn't ask any leading closed-ended questions, like are you okay; and for her part, she doesn't tell him about her hands, or her feet, or how the last time she felt like this physically was when she had found evidence of Graham cheating on her, because it's so dumb for her body to be connecting the two like that. Nobody did anything wrong here and nobody's cheating, except her inner child is stamping her foot and insisting that they are.
Nobody's cheating. Stop, Joni tells it, willing herself to calm down.
Dimly, she processes that she's still on the move, passing by the meat coolers where an elderly couple is peering over their glasses at racks of ribs, and rolling into the dairy section, almost clipping a toddler who's punching his mom's calves as she fishes out a milk carton.
Finally, Joni stops in the middle of produce and mutters, "Sorry."
"Don't be sorry. Why are you sorry?" John asks softly, talking past his knuckles.
"I'm all like—" she waves a hand around, trying for a smile, and of course that's when she feels the hot prick of tears instead "—you know. This is a good thing! I'm just—I'm not even surprised, actually."
She leans out of frame to grab avocados she doesn't need and uses the time to quickly touch the corners of her eyes. As the most therapized Egan by far, she's logged enough hours to repeatedly have heard that feeling your feelings is healthy, and how it's normal to have grief associated with things you never had.
Even so. She'd prefer not to be sorting through all that in the middle of the fucking grocery store.
"You're not surprised," John echoes.
"Are you serious? Of course not. You should've seen you guys. You should've seen Gale, I mean. Literal stars in his eyes around you," she rambles, picking up other random things. Bell peppers, onions. Raisin bread. She doesn't even eat raisin bread. "I said he had a huge crush, didn't I? I don't think that just goes away."
John scrunches his mouth to the side. She can tell what he's thinking. You had a huge crush, too. But he refrains from saying it because—just because. Because they don't dig into the gnarly stuff. "I guess my first reaction was on point. When you told me he was staying with you," she says, meaning it less like a barb and more like an I told you so but John ducks his head anyway, probably cooking himself well-done in guilt.
She goes for a reattempt. "I'm happy for you guys. Really."
John shrugs. He flicks his eyes up, forehead wrinkling in question. "Is there anything you want to ask me about it?"
Joni busies herself with rearranging the cart. There must be. There has to be, but she can't think of any of them right now save for one.
"Do you trust him?" she asks.
The way his expression softens through their shitty cell connection is answer enough. He nods slowly. So does she.
"He makes it easy to do that," she offers.
"He does kinda get under your skin," John agrees. "Must be those bird claws."
Joni laughs. Pretends to scan around the store. "I can see you being his butler dog."
"Jesus, I'm not—okay, so you're finally admitting you said that, I knew you remembered—"
"I maintain my innocence," she cuts in. "And it works with him, in a weird way. If you think about it."
John nods again, this time unable to hide his beam as he looks at her fondly. She recalls that look on a much younger, rounder face, ears sticking out on either side, right after she'd stopped sobbing from a skinned knee and right before John had told her she was brave. It's the first memory she has.
"Thanks for letting me tell you," he says.
She pulls herself together. "Hey, I gotta check out. I'll call you later?"
"Alright," John says. "Wait."
He smiles. "Love you the most, worm. Bye."
As soon as Joni ends the call, she lets her face crumple and stands there crying freely, dabbing away tears with her sweater sleeve. She's not actually that sad. She is happy. For John, and for Gale. It's just that their friendship is a wound she'd chosen to bury instead of healing over and now she's fished it out only to find it still bleeding. She stokes the misery, picturing them talking about her—or worse, not talking about her at all; picturing them sharing a life and going as far as picturing herself giving John away at their wedding, because sometimes it just feels good to cry.
Everyone is politely ignoring her, though one older lady rubs her arm as she passes. Joni shakes out of her fantasy. Piles the items onto the belt and says hello to the cashier, a guy around her age who glances at her swollen eyes and also her pimple before looking back down and concentrating on scanning her through.
"There's a good sale going on with the garlic bread," she tells him thickly, just to humor herself, and does a kind of blubbering laugh.
"Are you okay?" he asks, and Joni says, "Yes," because what can this cashier guy do about it? "I'm fine," she adds, sucking snot back into her nose. "I'm just going through it. Having a public meltdown."
"You're the second crying person to come through this line today so it's cool," he dismisses. "I got time for a one-liner if you want."
She changes her mind. "I'm graduating and I don't know what comes next."
He considers this. "Tomorrow. That's what's next."
"Thanks," she snorts, then startles as he moves the belt. "Oh, shit, hang on. I went insane, I don't need this—or this—or any of this stuff—" directing him into putting aside her fugue items until all that's left is what she came here for in the first place. "God. Sorry."
"Nah, you're good. That'll be thirty dollars and twenty-two cents."
Joni pays, aims her best too-big smile at him, and wheels outside where the fresh ocean air immediately perks her up and makes the crying jag feel far away, like she's left it behind in the store. That's good, she decides. Done and over with. For now, at least. She takes a few deep breaths and pushes the cart with her forearms, texting as she goes.
Changing your contact name to Dog rn, she sends, and squeezes out a few more tears while loading the car.
It'll be okay. She knows that, having come out the other side of similar emotional spirals. It might be different—in fact it's sure to be different—and it might not seem like it'll be okay, but it will be, because bit by bit she's been getting a little better at leaving the past alone rather than trying to wrench it into a new shape. Because there's definitely going to be more meltdowns in the future but the philosophical cashier was right: tomorrow is what's next, and the day after that, and on and on. Because John is unconditional.
