Fools (Licking Thicket 3)

Brooks appealed to the clouds again before suddenly standing up and reeling in his line. “That’s it. Let’s go. I can’t take any more of this. It’s time we bring in the big guns.”

“Mama?”

“No,” he said, pointing his laser eyeballs right on me. “Malachi. If anyone can find the best available gay man in a hundred-mile radius, it’s Mal. Clearly.”

He wasn’t wrong. Cocky maybe, but not wrong. Mal had a good eye for horseflesh, manflesh, and rusty old junk. Maybe he could help us.

“He’s kidding, right?” Mal murmured to Brooks under his breath when we got to my parents’ house for Sunday lunch.

“Just go with it, m’kay?” Brooks leaned in and kissed his fiancé before pulling him into a full-body hug. I envied what they had. No matter what happened or what kind of bickering fight they ever got into, my brother and his man always seemed to find comfort and happiness in each other’s arms.

I didn’t feel like that with Jenn. I wondered sometimes if it was a gay thing, but then I’d catch my sister, Gracie, and her husband sharing an inside joke or a simple foot rub after a long day and realize, no, it wasn’t a gay thing. Just a “right person” thing. And I had the right person already. He just happened to be my best friend instead of my… whatever the word was.

“Hey, boys,” Mama said, stepping away from the kitchen sink long enough to press a kiss to my cheek and take the coffee thermos out of my hands. “Catch anything good?”

“Attitude,” I muttered.

“A gorgeous sunrise,” Brooks added a little too happily.

Mama craned her neck to see behind me. I turned to look but only saw the same old photo of a cow dressed as Carol Burnett. One of the ladies in the Beautification Corps had given it to Mama years ago as a joke, and it had hung in our kitchen for as long as I could remember.

“Where’s Tucker?” she asked with a frown.

“Um… I don’t know?” I said, feeling wrong-footed since Tucker normally joined us for Sunday lunch. “Maybe… at home doing his crosswords? How’m I supposed to know?”

She put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at me. “What’d you do?”

My sister, Gracie, looked up from wiping my niece’s sticky hands and snickered. I narrowed my eyes at her.

“Nothing, gah. Why you asking me that?”

Just then, Tucker sauntered in like it was a regular Sunday and he hadn’t been giving me the silent treatment for three whole months. Okay, fine. Three whole days, but still. It felt like three months because he’d skipped out on our Thursday night trivia at the Tavern, and one of the questions was about bile ducts or some such. When our team had no clue, they all stared holes in me like it was my fault our resident brainiac hadn’t shown.

“There he is!” My mom made a fool out of herself by shimmying over to Tuck and smacking a great big kiss on his cheek. “Can’t have lunch without all my boys.”

Once he’d finished loving on Mama, Tuck made his way over to Gracie and took the baby from her to coo all over. He was good with kids, but it would have been nice if he’d given me the time of day at all.

I sighed and moved away from them. I had better things to do anyway. “Hey, Dad, you said you had a loose shutter that needed fixing?”

Dad looked up from setting the table in the dining room. “What? Oh, no. Tucker swung by yesterday and knocked it out. At least somebody cares about not abandoning me and my stents.”

“Your stents?” I looked to my mother for an explanation. “What’s the matter with your stents?”

Since my dad had had some heart troubles a year or so before, we’d all taken his health a lot more seriously.

“Not a thing,” Mama soothed. “But your daddy’s cardiologist is taking a sabbatical—”

“Don’t know what anyone needs to see the pyramids of Giza for when we’ve got plenty of wonders right here in the Thicket,” Dad grumbled.

“—and a new cardiologist came in to take his place temporarily all the way from Nashville.”

“A doctor with a big ol’ toothpaste smile, who looks like a model. A teenaged model. If Dr. Rogers spends that much time in the gym, how much could he know about hearts?”

“Rogers?” Tucker narrowed his eyes. “Carter Rogers?”

“That’s him,” Mama agreed. “You know him?”

Tucker nodded. “We haven’t spoken in a while, but I went to med school with him. He… I…” He cleared his throat. “Anyway. I knew him and his family real well. His dad was a respected cardiologist up in Nashville, and Carter followed in his footsteps. He was whip-smart and dedicated. Even spent some time each year working for Doctors Without Borders.” He clapped my dad on the shoulder. “I promise, sir, I wouldn’t leave you in his hands if I didn’t think he was highly qualified.”