Just Pretend (Love Comes To Town)

Landon’s just standing there, probably waiting for me to tell him to fuck off, so he can be done with twin duty.

I glare at the sidewalk, the squiggly crack that has a brave little dandelion poking out of it. “You think I should do it. Go for it. You had some idea he was going to pull this. That’s why you’ve been on my case about this goddamn marriage nonsense. That’s why.”

It’s all making sense now. Hindsight is 20/20. So is my vision, come to think of it. Fuck, I never saw this coming.

Sometimes, when my brother makes an expression I don’t recognize and I can’t ever remember making myself, it galls me. I have no idea what he’s thinking. Like now.

“I didn’t know for sure,” he confesses. Ah, so that’s what it is: guilt. “He made some cryptic comments, but you know Dad. He could swear up and down about something and then never follow through.”

Could and did. There’s a whole bucket list of shit Dad and I never got to—and never will, now. Maybe there’d be room for me to be sad about that if I wasn’t so goddamn angry right now.

Anyway, what’s there to be sad about? Dad lived it up to the very end. Sure, he probably would’ve liked to keep on living it up a little longer, but the man lived to be 72. Not a bad age to go.

And he lived life to the fullest, unencumbered by, say, a goddamn forced marriage stipulation in a will.

Yeah, I’m not the least bit bitter about this. Not one bit.

“Anyway, after Kyra and I got back together,” Landon’s saying now, “I realized that finding someone wasn’t the worst thing.”

I eye him incredulously. Would you look at that half-smile! The fool actually means it. He’s drinking his own Kool-Aid.

“Talk to me when you’ve been together a year, five years, a decade,” I grumble, shaking my head. Whenever reality does finally hit, it’s not going to be pretty. “I’m sure it was all kisses and rainbows the first few months for Mom and Dad too.”

And we know all too well that at the end it was as far from that as you can get without outright beheading the other person.

Landon takes so long to respond that for a minute I don’t think he’s going to at all.

“It wasn’t, actually,” he finally says, a frown forming around the words. “Mom told me one time, before she left. That she always knew. Dad could never seem to keep his eyes or his hands to himself. Yeah, he’d make promises and change for a few months… but it never stuck. Always felt like they were treading water, she said. Avoiding the inevitable.”

I glance at him sharply. “She said that to you?”

He looks away. From just the profile view, he looks more like my brother, more like me. I don’t have to see the latent happiness and ease that’s contoured his face different from mine these past few months.

“She appreciated what you did for her,” he says carefully.

“I don’t give a shit about that!” I find myself yelling. A middle-aged woman with a big straw hat lowers her massive aviators to give me the full burn of her scandalized gawk.

I glare right back at her. Hello lady? It’s fucking nighttime.

Although I do lower my voice as I direct my glare back at my brother. “Just don’t try and talk me into the same ploy you and everyone else has fallen for.”

“It’s not a ploy,” Landon says simply.

He’s looking at me all sad, the way he looked when he got better shit in his stocking since he had been a good boy and Santa had rewarded him accordingly. Like I was missing out.

When really, he’s the one who is. The world’s full of women: tall, short, skinny, curvy, busty, bubble-butted, wild, crazy, whatever—and he’s shacked up with one for eternity. For the entire one life he has, ‘til death do us…

“Whatever can be said for… that.” I’m kicking at the sidewalk, even though there’s nothing to kick, not even a cigarette butt or stray leaf. “Three months isn’t enough time to do it. Dad’s rushing me into the same mistake he made: a whirlwind romance ending in utter shit.”

Landon says nothing, hands slung in his pockets, face thoughtful. For all the ‘utter shit’, I guess the case could be made for us making Mom and Dad’s relationship somewhat worthwhile. So maybe their relationship wasn’t a complete waste, but still.

Or maybe Landon’s thinking of a way to get me out of this. Or wondering whether he’s stood here and argued with me long enough and can finally go back to his dear Kyra.

I’ll do him a solid and be the one to end this.

I grab the car door and pull. “I should go.”

Again, that hand on my shoulder. He always did like going into big brother mode, Landon. Even though his big brother status was earned with seconds to spare. “If you need anything…”