Hate You Not

“No more laughing,” I pledge.

“Should be easy for you.”

“So easy.” She blinks again, and I can’t help grinning. “Okay, so where was I? I was going to say…I’m sorry.”

She nods, urging me on.

“I’m sorry I came to your house and was presumptive.” That make her lips twitch. “I was condescending and dickish. I had a goal in mind, and I was going after it. But I was still a shit about it, and I’m sorry.”

She moves her hand in a circle, urging me to continue.

“And now, I want to start things over. You’re their aunt. You’re keeping them here. I’m the uncle with the asshole tendencies and the fat wallet. You keep me updated on them, tell me what you need, and I can help—if that works.” I rub my forehead, looking at the patterns on the porch rug as I confess, “That’s really all I want.” I bite down on the inside of my cheek and force myself to lift my gaze to hers. “I want to make my brother happy.”

The confession makes my throat tight, so I shift my eyes toward the dark night framed by the screen porch’s wood beam scaffolding.

“I know,” she whispers. “Because that’s what I want, too. To make both of them proud.”

I don’t know if I can talk about this—not even with her. I run my fingertip along the outside of her plastic boot and blink out at the field that spreads out on the right side of her house until I feel more steady.

“How are you feeling?” I ask after a minute of silence.

She sighs. “Tired and grumpy. It’s annoying, breaking an ankle. And I’m pissy about Hot Rocket.”

“I really think he’ll be okay.”

“You’re really a horse guy?”

“You might say that.”

“You been riding since the preschool age bracket?”

I grin. “Have you?”

“Since I was two.”

“Wow, really? Three in my case.”

“I was a little green bean. Tall,” she clarifies.

“Were you really?”

“No, I’m just making shit up.” She smiles, and I squint as I try to picture her standing upright. Is she taller than I recall?

“I only grew to be five-foot-four,” she clarifies. “I think that thing about the correlation between two year old height and adult height is baloney.”

“Oh, you mean bologna.”

She snorts. “You are something else.”

“Do you drop all your ‘g’s?”

She shoots me a warning look, like she thinks I might really start to make fun of her.

“You know we do. They’re not really needed.”

“I think I’ve come to agree with you. I think maybe they’re better dropped.” She’s still giving me a skeptical look when I give her another I’m-your-friend smile. “I like your accent.”

“If I hear it’s cute or sweet or funny from another stranger, it’ll make me puke.”

“You get a lot of that?”

“Oh yeah. Mostly it’s so sweet. That’s not real aspirational for when you’re in your later twenties.” She shakes her head. “Margot and Oliver have got that Yankee accent.”

I guffaw at that before I can stop myself. “Did you just say Yankee?”

She’s glaring at me again. “What do you want me to say? Northern? It’s the same thing.”

“No it isn’t. For one, California isn’t really northern.”

“Beg to differ. North of here.”

“It’s West Coast.”

“Like Tupac?”

I grin, imaging her listening to Tupac. “It’s more west than north.”

She rolls her eyes. “Semantics. I’m not wrong, either. They were on the Union side in the War of Northern Aggression.”

I think she’s being serious until she throws her head back laughing.

“Oh, c’mon,” she laughs. “Nobody’s really calling it that with a straight face.”

“I’ve seen no less than two Confederate flags since I got to Heat Springs.”

“Some people are dumbasses.”

“So you’re going to call our niece and nephew little Yankees, and you’re still pissed off that California helped the Union cause, but you think it’s dumbass to fly the Confederate flag?”

She shakes her head. “It’s complicated. But here’s what it boils down to. I don’t like the flag or what it means these days, and we can do without those statues. I’m siding with living, hurting humans over and above the legacy of some dead soldiers. We all know what went down. Nobody needs a statue to remind us. So no, I don’t fly that flag because it’s hurtful. And I only called them Yankees because that’s what my mama used to say, and you say what you hear. And anyway, you’re not getting upset.”

“Oh, I’m totally offended. Is my accent the Yankee kind?”

“Well, yeah.” She blinks at me a few times.

“You think it sounds bad?”

“Nah. I like it just fine. I’m not making you my boyfriend. I can handle hard Gs sometimes. They ain’t gon kill me.”

I lean toward her, stretch my arm along the swing’s back. “Is that how you really talk? Like if you’re drunk, do you slip into Southern dialect?”

“You were in the ER with me, what do you think?”

“I think you do a little bit.”