Harper's Rules 1 & 2

Chapter 6: Jake

A smile spread across my face at the message on my phone screen.

Ellie: Hey wonder twin.

That'll definitely cool me off.

If there was one turn-off in my life then any time I'd talked with my younger sister Ellie was definitely it. Despite her message, we were just Irish twins. With my early September birthday and her late August one, us being placed in the same grade and her smarter than me annoyed me growing up.

High school wasn't easy for Ellie, so once my starting quarterback role took over, I spent most of high school days with bloodied knuckles until enough guys at school looked in any direction other than at my sister. With the distance between USC and her school, University of Washington, we'd drifted further apart in college but reconnected our third year after our Dad died.

Ellie and I called each other once a week, every Sunday, so whatever she'd contacted me about before our next scheduled call must have been important.

me: Hey. Get moved in okay?

Ellie: Yup. My roommate is doing most of the heavy lifting though. 😉

I rolled my eyes at my sister's setup. For the second year in a row, she lived with her long-term boyfriend Logan Hightower, my rival in high school and now UW's quarterback. The only difference this year was that their living arrangement was planned.

Hightower was creative swapping roommates with Ellie to get her back, I'll give him that much credit.

UW's football program was still a slight class below USC's, but Hightower made a huge impact. In his first season, he'd taken the Huskies from a rebuilding year into a powerhouse for the bowl games just below the national championship level. Last year, his team lost the PAC-12 Championship game to us but won the Fiesta Bowl for the Huskies. That deserved a lot of respect, which Logan had definitely earned from me, but on a personal level I actually respected the guy more for how he cared about my sister.

Enough that I said he can marry her.

When Hightower asked me, or more like told me, he wanted to marry Ellie during last year's winter break, I'd thought he'd have proposed to her by now. Nine months later, he still hadn't so I assumed he just waited for the right moment.

Whatever the hell that means.

That said, the idea that my sister and her boyfriend lived together with most likely a sex life I sadly envied for the first time in my life was the last thing I wanted to think about.

I paused for a moment on the sidewalk and responded to her message, which hadn't seemed like much of an update.

me: Spare me the details, but sorry I couldn't help you move in.

Ellie: It's okay, you had football... all summer. I just wanted to ask a favor.

me: Anything.

Ellie: Good...

Ellie paused for a moment, then text bubbles appeared on and off for a few minutes.

"Any day now, Ellie." I frowned at the intersection in front of me and waited for whatever she needed. I had a good idea what she attempted and failed to put into written words, so I just hit the call button.

"Hey," she breathed into the phone like she'd heaved a sigh. The uncertainty in her soft voice was obvious, which reinforced my suspicion that I knew what she'd called me about.

Logan approached me at the end of last year, almost nine months ago, for Ellie's hand in marriage. I appreciated the gesture, given our Dad had passed away a month prior.