Hot Summer Nights (Lucas Brothers)

I shake off thoughts of Bryant’s parents. I can’t change things and there’s no point to wishing I could. If wishes came true, I’d have my little girl still here with me. I wouldn’t have turned into my mother, afraid to accept one of Bryant’s marriage proposals. The thing is, once life kicks you and beats you down, you don’t want to tempt fate. See? I understand my mother perfectly. I turn to look at Black and shrug.

“Seems so. I don’t get it. I haven’t seen a flitter worth that,” I mutter without thinking.

“Magnolia Marie! You did not just say that!” Mama yells.

I wince. Shit. I know she’s pissed when she pulls out the full name. Actually, I’m just lucky she calls me Marie. She originally named me Magnolia Tree. The hospital nurse either heard Mom wrong while she was reading the paperwork or took pity on me and sent the papers off so that my birth certificate said Magnolia Marie. I’m grateful. My mother was livid. She has just recently began acknowledging it, so maybe it’s grown on her. I’m not sure.

“Sorry, Mama. Terry has taken to using the word, and it just slipped out,” I explain.

I’m not lying either. Bryant made the mistake of laughing about these pancakes I forgot to use self-rising flour in. He said they were flatter than a flitter—which is apparently a saying in Tennessee, where Bryant is originally from. I also burned them and what were supposed to be fragrant, sweet, banana pancakes had a flat appearance and stunk. Bryant took great joy in pointing that out, too. I got pissed at him. Which, to be honest, I do quite often. That seems to be a running theme in our relationship, but it works for us. I huffed in response and told Bryant that I wouldn’t cook for him any longer. Then Bryant, being Bryant, and knowing exactly how to get me to stop being a bitch, while making me laugh, took me in his arms and spun me around.

“That’s okay, Maggie May, it’s you I love not your flat, smelly, flitter pancakes.”

Our son—who might be three but acts like he’s seven—heard him. Not many people understand that slang. Unfortunately for me, most around here do, and that’s led to some really embarrassing situations.

You haven’t lived until your three-year-old cries out, “You’re a fat flitter!” Especially when he does it at an Easter Sunday service while Pastor Newburn’s wife, Maude, is ruffling his hair. Bryant thought it was hilarious. I was mortified. My mother laughed her ass off. She told me that I should just be glad he mispronounced the word flat and didn’t tell Maude her flitter was smelly.

My mother is really good at looking at the bright side.

“You ruined that boy naming him Terry. You should have kept the family tradition,” she chastises for like the millionth time. I roll my eyes and ignore my moron brothers laughing in the background.

“You mean naming him after where he was created? No, thank you. I don’t need a son named Subaru,” I mutter. My mother decided it would be fun to name all of her sons after the colors in a box of crayons and her daughters after flowers and link those back to things she noticed when each of us was conceived. My mother can be… special. I’m just happy that I was apparently created under a Magnolia tree. It could have been much worse. Don’t believe me? My youngest brother’s name is Cyan Bird Lucas. Cyan has gotten in numerous fights over that name, but just with the family. None of us would breathe the name around others when we were in school. He asked Mom once why she would name him that and she told him it was because, one night while she was nude moon bathing, a small swallow the color of Cyan flew down on her boob. He didn’t ask anything else after that. I think he was afraid to—I know I would have been.

“Yeah, cause we all know the story of how Maggie whoop-de-dooed in her Subaru and nine months later…”

I hadn’t heard Cyan come up behind me, but once he gets in range, I elbow him hard in the side, rewarded with his groan of pain as he grabs his side. “That wasn’t funny the first five-thousand times and it’s even less funny now that Terry is three years old, dumbass.”

“Ouch! Stop, that hurts! Mama, Maggie called me a name.”

“That’s because you are being a dumbass. I don’t need no grandchild named Subaru. Though, you could have named him Cross, dear.”

I grunt, not really replying, but letting it be known, yet again, that I don’t like the idea at all.

“Poor Bryant,” Mom says under her breath. I’m not sure anyone can hear her but me since she’s right in front of me. When I hear her, however, guilt begins to bubble inside of me. “You really need to make an honest man of that boy, and actually make it work this time,” she mutters.