When I come through the door, it’s an instant splash of ice cold air over my body—a reprieve from the Texan Hell outside.
And that’s a lovely reprieve I can’t yet enjoy with my mama’s fury setting her own hair on fire in front of me. “Hey, if it was the other way around, you’d want me to stay here instead of goin’ over to Bobby’s, no matter how big or fancy his supper is.”
She drops my bag on the floor and spins on me. “That Patricia has had it out for me since Junior Prom. I swear I didn’t know Greg was datin’ her, and if I had known, I’d have not let him kiss me by that punch bowl. I’m a dignified lady.”
I frown. “I’m … not even gonna touch that.”
“And besides,” she goes on, “Patricia knew I’d just gotten out of a long string of bad boyfriends, cheaters, and do-no-gooders. I deserved a little lovin’! And Greg wasn’t anywhere near her all night. And …” She huffs again. “I need all the joy I can get lately because I’m a dang wreck. What’s wrong with wantin’ a little more joy? Jacky-Ann made you your lemonade.” She marches off to the stairs, leaving me and my bag at the foot of the kitchen.
Why is she a wreck? “Did I miss somethin’? What’s goin on? … Mama!” I call out after her, but she’s gone.
I throw a sigh out at the kitchen, then bring myself up to the fridge. The door swings open, and a glorious pitcher of golden-yellow lemonade awaits me—Jacky-Ann’s creation I’ve happily enjoyed since I was a kid. I fetch a glass and serve myself twice in a row, gulping down the first glass faster than I can pour it.
The Texan heat is no joke this time of year. It’s a wonder our swimming pool isn’t boiling under the summer sunshine.
The sound of nearby laughter outside catches my ear. I turn, cross the kitchen, and peer out the glass doors to the side patio. In a few wicker chairs by the swimming pool, I see my big brother Tanner kicking back with some friends of his: Robby, Kirk, and Joel, from the look of it. Out in the pool, I see Joel’s wife Mindy floating on a hot pink inflatable tube. She looks to be sipping a fancy drink through a straw.
My third glass of lemonade in hand, I push open the door and come down the walkway to the pool, the scent of chlorine, beer, and lotion filling my nostrils. Robby spots me first—a wrestler-turned-choirboy with a lady-killer smirk. “Well, here’s the man of the hour!” Then everyone else glances my way. “Jim!” shouts Kirk through his lumberjack beard. “Jimmy-boy!” chimes in Joel.
My brother hops out of his seat. “Bro!” he cries out boastfully, spreading his arms while still fisting his beer. “You’re back!”
My brother is a total muscular enigma. One summer, he’s got the bod of a football god (rhyme intended), then by winter adopts half a dad-bod belly, then tightens right back up the next summer, over and over. No matter where his weight’s sitting, however, the bastard is always annoyingly handsome in that women-swooning-everywhere-he-goes-even-though-he’s-gay-and-married way.
Right now, his arms are looking big as bowling balls and his shoulders rise like a mountain to the thick cords of his neck when he pulls me in for a big hug.
“What?” I toss over his shoulder as he squeezes my bones to their breaking point. “You didn’t hear Old Inferno coughin’ up the driveway a minute ago?”
Tanner slaps my back, then wraps his arm around my neck in half a headlock. “Don’t call your truck ‘Old Inferno’. Sounds like a medical condition you get up your ass after eatin’ too much of Billy Senior’s level-ten jalapeño dip.”
Joel snorts, overhearing that. “Tell that to the wifey! She tried his Tackler the other day and damn near cried herself to death chugging glass after glass of milk! Then needed some ‘alone time’ in the bathroom a minute later. She’d kill me if she heard me say—”
Mindy, still floating on a hot pink tube in the pool, lifts her head up. “You talkin’ about me? What was that?”
“Nothin’, babe!” Joel calls over his shoulder innocently.
The boys start gabbing about something else, Robby letting out a drunken, watery-eyed laugh every five minutes, while my brother sets down his beer and leads me off to the side near a hedge lining the porch. “Bro, I got some news that you may—”
“Me too,” I cut him off. “Bobby isn’t comin’ for supper.”
Tanner’s eyes go wide. “You told Mama yet?”
“Is her ice-cold absence right now not makin’ it obvious?”
My brother sighs and shakes his head, glancing off at the pool where Mindy just burst into laughter over something Robby said. “Damn, I really needed Mama in a good mood today.”