“Like Lance?” throws in Tanner, smirking. “Remember Lance? He was full of attitude. Never took shit from anyone. Long hair that curled at his shoulders. Hah, I always liked that sassy dude.”
Billy shoots him a look. “That makes one of us. He gave me the cold shoulder for four years and I still don’t know why.” Billy faces me again. “Anyway, that poor kid at Biggie’s is Toby, and he has this tragic baby face—I swear, he’ll look thirty when he’s fifty. Anyway, I thought Nadine would have an idea how to help out the kid somehow, but … well, again, you gotta catch her in the right mood.” His feet swing around, dangling over the edge of the dock. “Maybe there won’t be a good time to tell her my thing at all. My … other thing, I mean. Not the thing about the Toby kid.” Billy starts massaging the bridge of his nose, frustrated.
“What is your thing, anyway?” I ask.
“Oh, nothin’. Just that the whole Second Annual Spruce Ball thing-a-ding might have to be held at the McPherson’s—Nadine’s arch nemesis—instead of here at the ranch.”
I roll my eyes. “She’s got, like, six arch nemeses.”
“‘Thing-a-ding’,” snorts Tanner. “You even sound like her.”
“I do love your mama,” sings Billy in a sweet voice. Then his face collapses. “But she’s gonna hate me after this.”
I lie back on the dock while Billy and Tanner go on talking about it. Then I pull out my phone and stare at the screen blankly, wondering if Bobby’s enjoying his evening with his parents. I can only imagine the stories of this past semester that are being pulled out of him right at this moment over mashed potatoes and spicy brisket. Except for the one about me walking in on him jerking off.
I wish I could say I enjoyed my time tonight with my own parents, but my mama’s always got her head so deep into her image, her businesses, her gossip, and her own worries that I feel invisible half the time I’m here. Not to mention my papa, who is almost always away in a neighboring town on important business. The only people on this ranch who make me feel worth the shoes on my feet are the two I’m hanging with on the end of this dock.
“It’s gettin’ kinda late,” my brother points out. “Might want to head back to the house, champ, before the evil night opossums come out of the trees to reclaim their territory.”
I sit up. “Actually, can I stay here with you guys? Maybe crash on your couch or somethin’?”
Billy and Tanner share a look. It’s a look that lasts too long.
“Just for tonight,” I quickly throw in. “Mama’s in a mood. I don’t want to be around that in the mornin’, if you get me.”
After a complete and entirely wordless conversation goes on between Tanner and Billy’s eyes, my brother finally gives me a short nod. “Sure, bud. I’ll pull out a blanket and pillow for ya.”
I smile, relieved.
An hour later, Tanner and Billy are cooped up in their room with the door closed doing God knows. If it’s anything dirty, they are being awful quiet about it, for which I’m thankful.
With their living room all to myself, I pour myself into what I know and do best.
Dancing.
Eyes trained on a mirror hanging in the dining room, I spend an hour or so practicing all my moves while my phone blasts whatever beats I dumped onto it before leaving campus. I definitely have room to improve in my muscle isolations, which my hip-hop dance instructor was all-too-quick to point out to me every damned class in front of everyone. I keep doing the same elbow-popping move over and over, working on getting the timing perfect.
I’m not going to be my brother and give up being the football star. Don’t get me wrong; he coaches and he’s mighty happy with it, and I’m proud of him. But he got a look at the competition in college and let it psyche him out.
I won’t let the other dancers intimidate me.
At least tonight, in my safe space of Spruce, I won’t.
After dancing until I’m sweaty, tired, and my legs feel tight enough to snap off of my body like a wishbone, I drop onto the couch on my side with the TV’s glow pouring over me. The volume turned down low, which is alright with me since I’m not paying a damned bit of attention to it anyway.
That’s on account of me and Bobby throwing funny texts at each other, since apparently his ass can’t sleep either. His mama was super giddy and gushy all night and wanted to watch two movies back-to-back. His papa went to bed after just five minutes of hanging out with his son, thoroughly exhausted from some roofing job he had in Fairview. Bobby wants to go for a jog in the morning and invites me to join, but when he mentions how early he’s getting up, I decline, insisting that my summers are for sleeping way-the-fuck in every damned day. He sends back a teary-eyed emoji, then says goodnight, since it’s getting late.