Sicily’s jaw dropped. “Get the fuck outta here. Your dad is one of them rich, hoity-toity types?”
I looked him straight in the eyes. “My dad is Connor Loche.”
Sicily’s eyes went so wide that it looked like they were going to pop. He sat there staring at me as though I’d just spoken a foreign language to him. “Y-your dad…is Connor Loche. As in Nathan’s dad, Connor Loche?”
“Yep,” I said, nodding. “He hired the cleaning company my mom worked for back in the day and met her. They were”—I winced—“involved until she realized he was both married and having affairs with several women. She called it off, but not before she got pregnant.”
“Holy shit,” Sicily huffed. “So Nathan’s your brother?”
I fake gagged. “It sounds even worse hearing it from someone else.”
“Jesus,” he said. “Is that why you’re so interested in his girlfriend?”
“Actually, that story should be told the other way around. Cherri was mine first,” I said. “We grew up in the same neighborhood, and we were attached at the hip. On our first date, we saw this guy. I don’t really know. He killed himself? His body just dropped on the ground in front of us. The cops thought we had something to do with it, and I got caught. Four years behind bars, and I come out to see the love of my life has moved from the Northside to the Southside and has been dating my brother.”
Sicily held up his hands. “You have officially earned your right to have an attitude problem.”
“Yeah, so they don’t really like me. They just know me. I mean, Cherri and I, I thought that may go somewhere again, but she tried to sleep with me while she was still with Nathan, so…”
“Does she know that you two are brothers?” Sicily asked.
“No, but that doesn’t change the fact that I told her I wouldn’t share with him. I’m not about to be someone’s fucking side-dude, not even for her.”
“No, hey, I get it, man. You’re not wrong.”
“I really only had Cherri as a friend from my old neighborhood, and the friends I made from that year in South Postings stayed back with Nathan when I left, so when I say I don’t have any friends other than you, I mean it,” I finished.
Sicily gasped. “So wait!” He stabbed a finger out at me. “You telling me you’ve never had a sleepover before?”
My jaw dropped. “That’s what you took away from all this shit?”
“It’s a fucking right of passage, buddy!” He slammed his hand down on the table. “Come to my place tonight. My mom thinks I’m a loser, so she’ll be happy when I bring a friend over.” I thought of my own mom and related to the feeling. “I have a lot of siblings, like, a fuck ton, but they’ll leave us alone mostly. Except my immediate younger sister, Annika, but she’s only a couple years younger than me, so we get along all right.”
“I…” I hesitated for a moment, unsure of how I felt about mixing myself into someone’s family, but then I thought about everything I’d just told Sicily and how it didn’t shake for a moment the fact that we were friends. He was someone I wanted to hang on to, for sure. “Yeah, man. That sounds fun.”
“Yes!” Sicily said with a smile. “I’ll call my mom on the way. Let’s go!”
Once we were back in the warmth of our cars, I led Sicily to my house to drop off my mom’s car. I let her know what I was doing and grabbed a few things for the overnight, and then he drove us back to his house, right on the edge of North Postings and Postings Proper. It was a nice-sized house, bigger than mine, but nothing like the houses down in South Postings. It was a two-story, ranch-style home with tan siding and a dark brown roof. The front porch was covered in toys, bikes, balls, and just about anything else a kid would use, and a couple of swinging benches were occupied by two girls that were difficult to distinguish from the distance.
“Now, I told you that I have a fuck ton of siblings,” Sicily said as he parked his car in front of the home. “I didn’t lie. My parents, I don’t know, they were like frickin’ jackrabbits or something.”
“How many?” I asked.
“Eleven.”
I nearly threw up. “Eleven, including you?”
He laughed. “Nah, man. I’m one of twelve.” He slapped my chest. “Get ready for some chaos.”
We climbed out of the car, and my heart started to beat nervously. I’d lived in prison for four years with many more people than twelve, but they generally kept to themselves or their chosen groups of people. The adult system was only adults, and guards were always around to keep things mostly in line. I was an only child coming up, and apart from my year with Nathan, I’d never lived with siblings. This was going to be an interesting night.
“Hey!” Sicily greeted the woman as we walked up the stairs leading up to the front door.
One of the girls in the swinging bench stood up and smiled. She was actually a touch taller than Sicily, but she had his same curly brown hair and welcoming, round eyes. Her hair, however, fell clear down her back well past her waist and stopped just below her hips. “Hey. Who’s this?”
Sicily held out an arm toward me. “This is my friend Deon. Dee.” He pointed at the woman addressing us. “That’s my sister, Annika. The one I was telling you about.”
Her eyes were already dancing up and down my form with a slight blush rising to her cheeks. She walked up and held out a hand. “Nice to meet you, Deon.”
I shook her hand with a smile. “Nice to meet you.” She was very beautiful, an odd sentiment considering she looked an alarming amount like Sicily, but I tried to put that out of my brain.
Sicily pointed past Annika to the other
