Rafe laughed out loud, and it made him look years younger. He’d been doing that more and more often over the past few weeks since we’d found the Whispering Key treasure—laughing, flirting, showing off his dimpled smile, acting carefree—and I hadn’t truly understood how much responsibility and resentment he’d been carrying, trying to keep our family afloat, until I saw him smile again. “But we’re brothers, Beale. Aren’t we supposed to tell each other everything?”
“Nope.” I lowered my voice. “Especially not when Dale Jennings is two stools down from you, ready to overshare about his favorite sex positions and offer us some of his ferrymone supplements—” I tilted my chin toward the beer-bellied older man currently cussing out Pat Sajak and the contestants on Wheel of Fortune. “—and Mrs. McKetcham’s at the table behind us, ready to offer me a condom-rolling demonstration and a lecture on safe sex.” I flicked my head behind me, at Whispering Key’s favorite sex-positive octogenarian, Lorenna McKetcham, who sat with my old kindergarten teacher, Ms. Pepper, and the rest of the Whispering Key Mahjong Society, enjoying their monthly Mahjong and Margaritas Night.
I hadn’t looked at Ms. McKetcham the same since Doc Mason told me how she’d decimated the condom stash at his medical clinic and invited him to her swingers group.
“Besides,” I continued, “would you really wanna hear about my sexual experiences?”
Rafe narrowed his eyes for 0.5 seconds like he was thinking about it, then shook his head vehemently. “Shit, no. You’re absolutely right. I don’t need to stroll down Gay Boy Alley.”
I nodded firmly.
And it was just as well since my end of Gay Boy Alley looked like one of those towns in the old westerns Grandma Goodman used to watch—nothing around but ghosts and tumbleweeds, especially for the last few years—not that I was going to tell my brother that. In fact, I occasionally pretended I’d gone on a date or two, just to throw him off.
Rafe already thought I was ridiculous for being too picky; if he knew the truth—that I was a virgin—he’d probably have me committed.
“But just to say,” Rafe went on, like the Taurus he was, “if you were gonna cut yourself a break and have some no-holds-barred monkey sex, now would be the time to do it.”
“Why? Is the world ending and I wasn’t told?”
“No, dumbass. Because you’ve finally moved out of Dad’s place.”
Oh, that.
“Temporarily,” I reminded him. “Crashing in someone’s guest bed for a few weeks while Dad’s tearing down walls and redoing the house isn’t like actually moving out. Oh, but speaking of—” I dug his keys out of my pocket and slapped them on the counter. “Thanks for loaning me your shiny new truck so I could haul my shit. I promise, I didn’t stop for a single injured possum, though I was sorely tempted.”
“I appreciate your restraint.” He got out my car keys—the keys to the old, beaten-up Jeep he’d passed down to me when he upgraded—and exchanged them. “Did you get all moved in?”
“Sort of? My boxes are stacked in the closet. Couple things in the kitchen cabinets. Haven’t gotten the crystals out yet, ’cause I didn’t want Marjorie breaking them in a fit of anger.”
“Satan’s feline hell muppet,” Rafe said with a little shudder. “I hope your cat behaves herself while you’re staying there.”
“Of course she will,” I said loyally. “She’s perfectly behaved. She just takes a minute to adjust to new situations. And settings. And… people.”
“Can’t think who she reminds me of,” Rafe said blandly.
I rolled my eyes. He wasn’t wrong, though.
“Seriously, though, this move will be the best thing for you,” Rafe predicted. “I know it’s temporary, but it’s not like there’s any hurry for you to move back when Dad’s house is redone. You’re twenty-eight, Beale. I know you’re a creature of habit, but you’re gonna enjoy having some privacy. Dad and Gloria have only been with me for six hours so far, and I already called you to meet me here just so I could get out of the house. They’re very… loved up, aren’t they?”
I snorted. “That’s one way of putting it.” For Rafe’s sake, I was hoping our dad and his fiancée would remember to be a little more chill about their sexual exploits while they were staying with Rafe. Or at least a little quieter.
“It is weird, though, I’ll grant you.” Rafe twirled his beer bottle on the bar top.
“What, Dad having a fiancée?”
It had been three years since our mom died, and in some ways it felt like three very long years—three whole lifetimes—but other times I picked up my phone to text her and remembered I couldn’t.
Rafe pursed his lips and shook his head. “Nah, not that. Or not only that. I meant the way everything is changing all at once. Us finding the Whispering Key treasure and finally having money for a change. Dad getting remarried and renovating the whole house so he can give Gloria the craft palace of her dreams. Fenn and Mason falling in love and moving in together, then tearing up their house. Which begs the question, what is it about love that makes some people wanna do home renovations?”
I laughed. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Yeah. Well. Me neither, apparently.” He smiled, but the smile looked forced, and I winced.
“Do you wanna talk about—?”
“Aimee leaving me?” He shook his head again as the Jeopardy! theme song began to play from the television over the bar. “Oooh, I’ll take ‘Not just no, but hell no’ for a thousand, Alex. Besides, that’s old news.”
“But I thought we were brothers,” I teased. “I thought we were supposed to tell each other everything.”
“Your everything,” Rafe clarified. “Not my everything. Older brother’s privilege.”
“Hmm. That sounds suspiciously like bullshit.”
“I don’t make the rules, Beale,” he said mock-seriously. “The Universe does, and I am merely a pawn at her mercy. Isn’t that what Mom used to say?”
“I’m sure that’s what you heard.” I rolled my eyes again, because I knew he was teasing… mostly. But beneath the bar, I ran my hand over the bracelet of protective stones I’d worn every day since my mom had given it to me four years ago. As always, feeling the cool lapis lazuli, moonstone, and sapphire beads under my fingers centered me.
Despite the fact that we’d all grown up side by side, I was the only one of Mary Goodman’s three sons to understand her view of the Universe—to understand how energy flowed around us and connected all living and nonliving things, to believe that energy could be seen, and felt, and changed, and predicted, to know we were all intended for a higher purpose.
I believed we had to visualize the future we wanted, and trust that the Universe would manifest it for us. My younger brother, Gage, meanwhile, tended to be pretty skeptical of anything he couldn’t logic his way around, and Rafe… well, Rafe thought if you didn’t Hulk-smash your way to happiness, you were cheating somehow.
“You’ll know the right paths when they’re revealed, honey,” Mom had said the day she put the bracelet on my wrist. “The Universe will guide you to the things that are meant for you. You’ll see the signs. Don’t settle for less.” I’d promised her I wouldn’t. And every time I looked down at the bracelet, I reminded myself of that promise.