Zygote

As in:

For most of two hours, Shelby absorbed the relentless soul-searching from her slightly older brother. It tested her patience as well as her quiet assurance to herself that as soon as they reached San Jacinto she could stop the car, walk away from him, and have her lunch in peace.

It would be one thing if he were a truly anguished man with a tortured soul worth searching. But this was different. Jackson had never proactively made a hard decision in his life. The only way he could be moved to help, or hurt, or just change position, was if the lounge chair in which he was resting his ass caught fire. It still sort of amazed her that he’d been born a few minutes before she was, but then she reminded herself that there was no remote for the television inside the womb.

As soon as they passed the turn off to Coachella, the traffic on Interstate 10 slowed, and then within the space of a minute they were forced to come to a dead stop in the road. A fire truck passed them on the shoulder, siren blaring.

Jackson never paused and began to deconstruct and re-evaluate the conversation he claims to have had with his high school guidance counselor, who encouraged him toward a career in aviation.

“Maybe if I’d taken his advice I’d be flying 737s by now, or C-5s even, instead of working swing shift in a bakery.”

She couldn’t bear it anymore.

“Jackson, for chrissakes, I’ve known you since you were a zygote. The idea of you taking the controls of an airplane, let alone showing up on time with a uniform on, doesn’t quite square with anything I know about you.”

“Well, you’re wrong,” he replied. “I’ve changed.”