My Brother’s Best Friends

Theo spit out the coffee he’d just drank. I felt my face burn an unflattering shade of red. The busy patio around us fell quiet.

“Jonah’s nephew is a police sketch artist. I’m going to meet with him and see if he’s any good later.” Pearl giggled even more and then slapped her knee and slowly backed away. “Tell Reagan to come see me if she wants to know about the chip. And if she wants a copy of the sketch. He also does those vacation town drawings where they make your head really big and your body all little. Only, I’m going to tell him to do it a little differently. Snake forward, if you know what I mean.”

Theo bit his fist and nodded like he was listening to the most normal thing in the world. I noticed that he was also blushing.

Pearl practically skipped away, clearly having a wonderful day.

Reagan and Charlie showed up a few minutes later and Reagan instantly saw our faces and laughed. “What happened? You two look like you just got caught with your pants down.”

Theo groaned and I bit down roughly into a biscuit, talking around it. “This is all your fault!”

“What did I do?”

“You had us running around outside naked like a bunch of lunatics!” Theo’s raised voice filled in any Landings customers who’d missed Pearl’s announcement. “Pearl saw us! She’s on her way to a sketch artist as we speak!”

Reagan kept a straight face for all of ten seconds before she threw her head back and laughed so hard she was crying and then had to run inside to pee. While she was gone, Charlie shuddered and stared down at his lap. I nodded, feeling his pain.

The joke wasn’t complete until the chef, a friend from school, sent our pancakes out with penis-shaped whipped cream drawings, which set Reagan off again. Seeing her laugh like that, so happy and carefree, I knew that having my swinging penis immortalized by Pearl Beerman and a police sketch artist was worth it. There would never be anything that wouldn’t be worth the cost for Reagan to be happy.

She spotted me smiling at her after a while and smiled back at me, biting her lip. “What?”

“I fucking love you.”

She blinked away sudden tears. “I fucking love you, too.”

***