“Not anymore, but she hasn’t seen her in what, six years?”
“Not since college, but that doesn’t mean anything and what’s your hesitation on going on a date with a hot chick? I’m not asking you to marry her. I’m suggesting you take her out for drinks, maybe a little something after.”
I went out with my friend and his fiancée occasionally. With her storytelling abilities, one-hour dinners could easily turn into three, along with several bottles of wine. She was a riot, but getting stuck with a woman I already knew I wouldn’t be interested in for that long sounded painful.
“You haven’t dated much lately, not since—”
“Enough.” I knew exactly why I hadn’t dated. Brandon only knew the half of it but the best way to ruin my mood was Brandon bringing it up.
The group in front of us moved toward the green, finally far enough away where we could hit. Brandon pushed the ball and tee into the ground and pointed his driver at me. “Just think you need to get out there so you don’t end up a grumpy old man.”
“I’ve always been grumpy.”
“No. You’ve always been serious, maybe stoic. It’s only the last year you’ve become increasingly grumpy. And spending too much damn time alone.”
He dropped the club, turned to the fairway. After a practice swing, he let it rip and his ball sailed two hundred and fifty yards straight down the middle.
“Nice hit.”
“So, drinks?”
“Fine. Drinks, and I’ll contact her myself. And I’m only doing it because I love Jenna.” He was right. I was under no illusions of why the last year made me grumpy. Since I was determined to kick her out of my head for good, I didn’t think of her.
“Not me?”
“No. You’re a pain in my ass.”
“But still your best friend.”
“Always, dickface.”
I swung, almost matched his shot perfectly. We hopped back into the cart where we opened a beer from the cooler we’d purchased before hitting the course and finished the round.
An hour later because of the group in front of us moving like molasses, we smelled like grass and sweat and dirt, he’d given me Harper’s phone number, and we were pulling up to my dad’s house.
Dad was grilling when we walked into my childhood home. Photos placed on every surface always made my heart hurt. Our family hadn’t been traditional by any means and Mom and Dad never wasted an opportunity to snap a memory. Now when I walked in, every picture that held my mom or Melissa’s smiling faces brought back all the bad memories.
The accident. The diagnosis. The months of someone I loved smelling like medicine while they lost their hair.
The burials.
The grief.
The mess I was left to fix.
As I always did when I walked in, I kicked off my shoes, dropped my keys onto the table, and pressed two fingers to my lips before touching the glass covering my mom’s beautiful face.
Brandon headed straight for the fridge and another beer, grabbing one for me before we met Dad outside on the deck.
“Great day, boys,” he said, not bothering to turn toward us at the sound of the glass door opening. “How’d you shoot?”
“Decent,” I said, and brought the beer to my mouth.
Brandon, the cocky jerk he always was, laughed. “I outshot him by four.”
Dad turned and smiled at us over his shoulder. “Good job, son.”
Every time Dad called him that, Brandon turned sheepish. It amazed me, still, how that could be and yet, I hadn’t had the start in life Brandon did.
“Please. I let him win because he still cries and needs his blankie when he loses.”
“You dick.” Brandon shoved me, laughing harder. “That was years ago.”
“Like four.”
“Fourteen.”
“Same difference. You still act like a little kid.”
“Can someone grab me the steaks from inside?” Dad totally ignored our antics and name calling as always.
I didn’t grow up with a lot of rules. Mostly because there were always too many kids coming and going from so many variety of situations it was hard to tailor them. Instead, my parents taught us respect. To take care of what was ours so we had pride in what we had and to always… always try to be kind. Swearing, curfews, things like that were always overlooked.
Brandon and I had been giving each other shit since I was thirteen and he was twelve. For sixteen years he’d been my best friend.
“I’ll get it,” I told Dad.
“Grab me some more drinks!” Brandon shouted, high on his rare golfing win against me and probably life.
I threw up my middle finger as I walked away. “Say please!”
All I heard was his laughter.
We hung on the deck while Dad grilled. Occasionally, he looked like he had something to say but didn’t. Brandon drank his weight in beer and whiskey while I stopped after a few.
Later, after we cleaned up and Brandon called Jenna to come get his sorry drunk ass, Dad set down his glass and rolled his lips together.
I knew Dad’s looks. Hell, I’d stolen some of his own myself, so I knew when he studied his glass of whiskey like it held all of the answers to life’s problems, I was in for it.
“You saw her again.”
“She has a way of getting under your skin,” I admitted. “How’d you know?”
“Went to Judith’s last night. She said if I brought up working for us she’d kick me out.”
I laughed. She was feisty. I admired her strength. Everything she’d survived would crush most people. I also knew because I grew up seeing it so often in others, her hardness was a shield.
It didn’t explain why I was so damn intent on trying to strip it off her though, figure out who she was beneath the armor.
“I went to her campus yesterday. Told her we knew where she’d been.”
His eyes flashed with worry. “Hud—”
“Not that. I didn’t tell her more, just that you had connections. But I thought it might help if she knew what kind of guy you were. I told her about all your other kids. I figured the rest is your story.”
He laughed at my all your other kids comment. Some we still kept in contact with. Some were emergency placements for a night or two before relatives could be contacted. Some aged out and left, turned their back on the fact Mom and Dad would always be there to help. Some, like Brandon, never left, although he was the only one my parent’s officially adopted.
“What’d she say?”
“She didn’t rip the card up or throw it at me and said she’d consider it.”
“So I should back off?”
“When have you ever done that?” I teased, but he didn’t so much as chuckle.
His attention was gone, turned to the picture I knew he was staring at without checking. It sat on the kitchen island for him to see every day. “What do you think Melissa would want me to do?”
Goddamn him. I took a large swig of my drink, burning my throat to wash away the emotion. “I don’t know about what she’d want you to do, but I think she’d want to give Lilly a hug.”
“She was a hugger.”
“Annoyingly so.” I missed them so much.