This one time, when Garrett was fifteen, my parents went out to dinner and me and Ryan were somewhere and Garrett was supposed stay at home to babysit Tim all night. But Garrett’s high-school-girlfriend-now-wife, Callie, came over to watch a movie and afterward Garrett wanted to walk her home. He told Timmy to lock the door behind him and stay in the house until he got back.
Timmy—being the annoying eight-year-old baby brother he was—threatened to tell Mom and Dad, and whined about how much trouble Garrett was gonna be in if he got kidnapped.
Garrett told Tim that if he let himself get kidnapped, he was going to beat the shit out of him when we eventually got him back. Timmy flipped Garrett the bird with both hands and slammed the door in his face.
And that pretty much set the tone of their relationship for the rest of their lives.
“You’re such a dick sometimes,” Garrett grumbles.
Timmy is unrepentant.
“That’s why you love me, bro.”
Once the final piece of furniture has been moved, Joyce pours each of us a glass of ice water with lemon in the living room.
“Since you boys weren’t interested in the martinis, I’ve brought some alternate refreshments.”
I feel her eyes on my throat when I take a drink from the glass. And I feel her gaze intensify when I wipe my forehead with the bottom of my T-shirt, because I’m sweating. We’re all sweating. Except Joyce.
She walks to the thermostat and says in a breathy voice, “Oh, silly me! I had the heat on instead of the air.”
Then she weaves through my brothers and stands in front of me—close to me—and leans forward to get even closer.
“Thank you for your help today, Connor. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”
I lean back.
“It was no trouble.”
Joyce stares at me a moment, licking at her full bottom lip.
“You know, I’m just going to say it out loud.”
“Yeah—maybe don’t,” I try.
“Stacey never appreciated a good thing when she had it in her hands. A good man. She didn’t know how.” Her voice goes low and lush—seductive and suggestive. “But I do. So you drop by here anytime, Connor, and I mean that. To talk or . . . so I can show you how much I appreciate you.” Then she winks. “Think about it.”
Wow.
I’ve gone out with women since the divorce. I’ve had sex with women. Good sex. Repeat sex. Seconds and thirds.
And while Joyce and Stacey always had that messed up, competitive mother-daughter relationship—she’s still her daughter. Who I was married to. For years.
Doesn’t that make me son-adjacent or something?
All I can manage is, “Sure thing. Bye, Joyce.”
Then I grab my keys and the four of us head out the door and into my truck.
* * *
My brothers and I are grown men with successful careers. Timmy’s a firefighter who runs into burning buildings, Garrett is a teacher and football coach shaping young minds, Ryan’s a fucking cop.
But when we’re all together and something bizarre happens that’s in any way related to sex? We turn into twelve-year-olds.
“That. Was. Awesome!” Timmy cackles from the rear passenger seat.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I shake my head.
“Dude, your mother-in-law wants your dick. Badly. And she’s hot.”
“Ex-mother-in-law,” I croak. Because I feel so dirty.
“Still—I say you get on that immediately.” Timmy advises. “Sex with older women kicks ass, and sex with Joyce?” He groans and bites his fist for emphasis. “Are you kidding me? She definitely knows her way around the tantric.”
“I’m with Tim,” Ryan says oh-so-helpfully. “You’re both consenting adults and Joyce is a good-looking woman.”
“Wait a second.” Garrett—my apparently only non-deviant brother—pins Ryan with his gaze. “So are you saying you’d bang Angela’s mother?”
Ryan met my sister-in-law Angela when he was sixteen. At this point, her mother practically is his mother.
Which brings this conversation to a whole other level of freakish.
“Angela’s mom doesn’t look like Joyce,” Ryan replies. “Angela’s mom looks like . . . the Italian grandma on a jar of spaghetti sauce.”
Garrett’s brows rise. “But if she looked like Joyce, you’d do it?”
Ryan thinks it over.
Then he shrugs.
“Probably.”
Timmy cracks up.
Garrett grunts. “Dude, you are a twisted bastard.”
Timmy turns to Garrett. “So I guess that means you wouldn’t nail Mrs.—”
“Don’t! Don’t fucking say it!” Garrett barks.
Because Tim was about to ask if he’d sleep with his mother-in-law—Mrs. former hippie, chain smoking at seventy, and still going strong Carpenter.
“That’s not an image I want in my head.”
Garrett squeezes his eyes closed and groans.
“Goddamn it—now it’s in my head.”
“Look.” Ryan brings it back full circle. “I say go for it. It’s not like you owe Stacey anything—that ship has sailed and it turns out it was the Titanic.”
Tim waggles his tongue like an immature dog.
“And then you can answer the burning question on everyone’s mind: Who’s better in bed? The mom or the daughter? That’s right up there with the chicken and the egg, my man.”
“Holy shit,” I snap. “I am not banging my kids’ grandmother! Now for fuck’s sake stop talking about it—it’s weird.”
They stop talking.
For about three minutes.
Because this story is epic and it makes me uncomfortable. Which means my brothers will bring it up again and again—at Thanksgiving, birthday parties, Easter.
That’s how family works.
As we pull out of the development, Timmy starts to sing “Stacey’s Mom Has Got It Going On.”
And it’s just too much to hope that Garrett and Ryan don’t know the words. So the three of them spend the ride home serenading me.
And I spend it thinking about how cool it would’ve been to be an only child.
CHAPTER TWO
Connor
Before we head back to my house, we make a pit stop at ShopRite so Garrett can pick up diapers for his and Callie’s one-year-old daughter, Charlotte. Their three-year-old, Will, kissed the pull-ups goodbye last month.
In a small town like Lakeside, the ShopRite parking lot is kind of like the town square—you’re almost guaranteed to run into someone you know. The four of us are just about to enter the store when Michelle McCarthy and her foster son David Burke come walking out, pushing a cart full of groceries.
Miss McCarthy is the principal of Lakeside High School. She was the principal when I went there—she’ll probably be the principal when my grandkids go there—zipping around the halls on a mobility scooter, beeping and scowling at the teachers and telling the sagging-jeans-wearing kids to put on a goddamn belt.
“Hey, Miss McCarthy; hey, David,” my brother greats them. David was a student of Garrett’s. “How’s Rutgers going?”