The Stepbrother (Red's Tavern 5)

“I say we all get a round of ice cream before we head back out,” Jim said, standing to clean up all of our napkins and bags.

“I like the way you think,” Laura said.

“Let’s go grab it. Fox, Sam, you two hold the table for us,” my dad said. “What flavors do you two want?”

“Strawberry,” Sam said.

“I’ll take chocolate. Thanks, Dad.”

I was pretty sure Dad was getting a kick out of seeing Sam and I spend more time together in one day than we ever had before.

In another minute, we were alone together on the bench. Sam’s phone buzzed.

“Hey, Red,” Sam said. “Yeah, it’s going pretty well, other than an incident with a cicada we’ll never speak of again.”

As Sam talked, he got up and paced around under the awning, stretching his calves and hamstrings. He was in workout shorts again, the Spandex tight and molded to his body. A middle-aged couple of men walked out of the sandwich shop holding hands, and as they walked to their car, they gave Sam’s body a long stare.

Sam could really find good gay attention anywhere he went. I smiled, shaking my head.

As the couple passed by me, they gave me a wink. “You’re a lucky guy,” they told me.

“What?”

They nodded to Sam.

“Oh. God. No,” I said. “We are not together. I mean, we’re here together, but he’s my stepbrother.”

“Goodness. My mistake,” the other man said in a lilting Southern accent. “I thought for sure you two must be a pair. Well, have a good afternoon.”

“You too,” I managed to say.

Sam wandered back over a minute later. “Sounds good. I’ll keep you updated,” he said into his phone. “Bye, Red.”

“Hey,” I told him.

“What were those cute older bears saying?” he asked as he perched at the picnic table again. “Everything alright?”

“They, uh, just thought I was someone else,” I said. “Is everything okay with your boss? Was he calling about work stuff?”

“Red? Oh, no,” Sam said, waving a hand. “He’s just checking in on me.”

“You guys seem like good friends,” I offered.

He nodded. “Yeah. I guess he’s sort of like an older brother to me, especially lately. We’ve gotten a little closer recently. Everyone at the bar has kind of been trying to help me out.”

Like an older brother to me. It was some sort of bitter irony that I was the person who really should have filled that role for Sam, but I never had. I barely even felt like the term “stepbrother” was right, because we’d never had any relationship at all.

“Red seemed to know who I was when I came into the tavern,” I said. “You told them about me, huh?”

Sam hesitated for a moment, looking at me from under his lashes. “That night was the first they’d heard about you.”

“And it wasn’t anything good,” I said.

“I was being dramatic.”

“It’s fine, Sam, I promise.”

“Are you sure, though?”

I shrugged. “If I were you, I’d hate me, too.”

“I don’t hate you,” he said, waving a hand.

“You’d just rather have major dental work than ever go on a trip with me. I get it.”

He laughed, looking down at the bench and tracing a fingertip over the knotted wood.

“So what is it that Red and the others have been trying to help you with?”

He let out a little sigh, looking out at the puffy white clouds in the sky. “Trying to find a guy who isn’t a piece of shit, mostly.”

“One strawberry scoop in waffle cone and one chocolate,” I heard from behind me. Dad came up, handing each of us our big ice cream cones.

“This is amazing,” Sam said, immediately pulling out his phone to take a photo of himself licking the pink ice cream.

I was surprised by what Sam had said. His coworkers were trying to help him find a guy? I had gathered that Sam was single, but before I’d come back to Amberfield, I had always assumed that Sam would be on his way to marriage by now. Sam lived for love, it seemed, and even when he and I were like oil and water in high school, it was always clear that love had been his number one priority. When I was thinking about moving to New York and becoming wealthy, Sam had done things like decorating his crush’s locker on Valentine’s Day and going out to school dances with whoever would go with him.

Sam would clearly make a great boyfriend, too. Anybody would be lucky to have him.

How could someone so charming be struggling to find a man? Maybe dating as a gay person in Amberfield really was slim pickings.

As we walked back to the RV, Sam turned to me. “You sure it’s cool if I tag along?” he asked. “I think I’m just going to nap anyway, and frankly, it’s going to be ten times more comfortable in your RV, cicada or no cicada.”