More Than Everything (Family 3)

“Where’re we going?” he said, but he followed me without hesitation. “I’m not dressed.”

“You don’t need to be dressed for this.”

“Oh.” He pressed his chest up against my back and rubbed on me. “Well, in that case, I’m too dressed. Let me take my underwear off.”

“I’m giving you an airplane.” I lay down on the bed and held my hands out to him. “You can take them off or keep them on. Your call.”

“What?” He stood at the end of the bed with his hands on the waistband of one of his many sexy-as-hell briefs.

“An airplane, like you said. I can’t do it while we’re standing, but you’re small enough that I can hold you above me.” I scooted until my entire body was on the bed. “C’mere.”

“You’re serious?” Chase asked, looking equal parts surprised and thrilled.

“Yup.” I was proud of myself for having come up with a way to cheer him up.

“Hold on. I gotta get a picture.” He rushed over to retrieve his camera and set it up on the dresser. “Okay. Timer’s set.” He hopped on the bed, smiling like a little kid. “Where do you want me?”

It was hard not to answer with my usual thinly veiled innuendos like, “I want you on your hands and knees with your ass in the air.” Okay, maybe that wasn’t so much an innuendo or thinly veiled. Anyway, I kept it PG and said, “Right over here.”

He climbed over me. I tucked the bottoms of my feet under his hips and wove my fingers with his; then I stretched my legs and arms up so he was hovering above me, his body flat as a board. He looked like he was flying.

“Whoosh!” I shouted while I moved my legs from side to side and back and forth, giving him as much motion as possible.

“You’re nuts!” he said through joy-filled laughter.

“All you need is the cape and you’d look like Superman.”

He gazed at me and beamed, looking so damn happy. “Thanks, Adan.”

My chest constricted and an unfamiliar feeling washed over me, leaving me petrified. “You can thank me later by getting on your hands and knees and sticking your ass in the air.” There. I hadn’t changed. I was still me. My fear ebbed leaving me with warmth in my belly.

“You can count on it. But can we do this for a little longer?”

“Sure thing, baby. Anything you want.” I clasped his hands tightly and shifted my legs down. “Whoosh!”

Well, maybe I’d changed a little.

THANKSGIVING sucks. There, I said it. The whole day is spent rushing from one relative’s house to the next—my grandparents on my father’s side, my aunt on my mother’s side, my mother’s best friend’s parents—eating more than any person should and then chewing Tums in the car while my parents talk about who was rude and who dressed slutty and who looked like maybe she was pregnant again.

My sister was usually good for a laugh or at least moral support, but that year she left after round one because, and I quote from my mother’s oft-repeated explanation, “Lucia is spending the rest of the holiday with her future in-laws.” Seems reasonable until you realize Lucia wasn’t engaged, as of Halloween she hadn’t had a boyfriend, and whatever boyfriend she had drummed up in the interim hadn’t joined her for the first Thanksgiving meal of the day with our family. It sucked being left to deal with the parental units solo, but I couldn’t blame her for escaping if she could get away with it. No reason for all of us to go down on the sinking ship of boredom and annoyance; it was every man for himself, real or imaginary.

By Friday afternoon, I was ready to jump off the roof to get away from family time, but my parents lived in a ranch house, so the most I could hope for was a sprained ankle, which wouldn’t have saved me from the mental torture and boredom.

“Are you going to spend time with your friends tonight?” my mother asked excitedly.

“My friends?”

“Loretta said Cynthia gets together with a bunch of kids from your school each year on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I know she’d be very happy if you went with them.”

Loretta was my mother’s best friend, Cynthia was her daughter, and nobody would be happy if she was forced to drag me around with her friends. What both of our mothers failed to realize was that: (A) none of us was a child any longer; (B) my high school stopped being my school when I went to college and then law school; (C) Cynthia and I hadn’t run in the same high school social circle, mostly because she was this überoutgoing cheerleader type and I could barely tolerate my classmates over the lunch hour, let alone in my free time; and (D) despite their dreams of uniting our families by marriage, I wasn’t interested in Cynthia for a lot of reasons, one of which was that she wasn’t a guy, and Cynthia wasn’t interested in me for a lot of reasons, one of which was that I was interested in guys.