Kept Man: Firsts and Forever Stories

I grinned as I handed the phone back to Ash and said, “He’s fine.”

Nana’s husband Ollie, along with Josh and his fiancé Darwin, returned from the hardware store soon after. They joined us in the kitchen, and so did Nana with Micah still on the conference call. Almost immediately, the conversation turned to ways of setting a trap for their annoying, homophobic neighbor. Nana had lots of ideas, most of which would have made Wile E. Coyote proud, but we managed to talk her out of them.

After an hour or so, I mentioned I had lunch plans with a new friend, and Nana insisted I invite him over. We ordered dim sum to make good on my promise to Seth, and he seemed absolutely delighted when he arrived and was immediately treated like one of the family.

Throughout it all, Micah remained on the video call and followed the conversation enthusiastically. I plugged in my phone with one of Josh’s chargers and propped it up on the kitchen island, then watched him as he took it all in. He ended up ordering himself some dim sum as well and ate lunch when the rest of us did. He was clearly enjoying himself, and that made me happy.

Micah was the one who ultimately came up with a plan for booby trapping the front yard. It turned out Darwin and Josh were low-key engineering geniuses and Seth was eager to help, so they easily figured out what to do. As soon as we finished lunch, the three of them hurried to the garage to gather pieces of the trap, including several catapults Darwin had built for a science fair.

Once everything was in place and camouflaged in the front yard, they came back inside and Nana said, “Now all we need is a patsy to see if it works. I have an idea.”

She sent a text message, and we all lined up at the living room windows and waited. I held the phone so Micah could see what was happening, and he chuckled and said, “This is great.”

A minute later, Nana’s grandson Dante arrived to take the baked goods to the shelter. He was a tall, intimidating man who looked elegant and dignified in his dark suit. Rumor had it he and the rest of the family were involved in organized crime, so clearly this wasn’t a man you’d want to fuck with—unless you were his feisty, eighty-year-old grandmother.

Nana grinned and said, “I told Dante I left my glasses in the front yard and asked him to find them for me. Let’s see if he falls for it.”

A few seconds later, Dante hit the trip wire. Two hidden catapults threw buckets of water at him, followed a second later by three more flinging buckets of flour. A white cloud rose into the air, and all of us burst out laughing as Seth exclaimed, “Direct hit!”

When Dante came inside, he was basted like a drumstick ready for the deep fryer. He stood in the living room doorway with his hands on his hips and said, “Really?”

“We had to see if our trap would work, and you were our volunteer,” Nana said. “Overall, I call this a success. You’ve got to imagine it with colored powder though, like Micah suggested. I didn’t have any of that, so we had to go with plain old flour for our test run. Josh is going to install some hidden cameras so we can capture it on film, and we’ll need some kind of bait to lure Humpington into the yard.”

Dante just sighed and tried to brush some of the flour out of his dark hair. He was clearly used to his grandmother’s shenanigans.

“I think we can do better,” Josh said, as he adjusted his glasses. “We should either increase the size of the catapults or refine our delivery system for a more spectacular payoff.” Josh, Seth, and Darwin immediately started talking strategy.

Meanwhile, Nana linked arms with her grandson and flashed him a big smile as she said, “Come on, Dante, let’s go to the kitchen and I’ll give you a cookie.”

He muttered, “It better be chocolate chip and not oatmeal raisin.”

She patted his arm and said, “Of course, sweetie pie. Your favorite.” That made the big, scary man basted in flour grin at his little granny.

I checked the time and said, “This has been great, but Micah and I have to go. Thanks for everything, Nana.”

She waved and called, “Come back soon, cutie,” as they left the room.

Seth gestured toward the front door and said, “I guess I should go, too?”

Darwin asked, “Can you stay? We’re going to keep refining the trap, and after that Josh and I are going to try out a new video game we just got. It has a four-player mode, so maybe Ash wants to stick around, too.”