“You’re sad you didn’t go ridin’ now, aren’t ya?”
He nodded.
“Next time tell me the truth if you’re stuck. You got no call to be lyin’ to me.”
He lunged at me, arms tight around my neck, and I lifted him up, holding him tight as I walked around the others and started for the house.
“Who is that, exactly?” Either Rachel or Cy’s mother asked.
“Weber!” the girls shrieked, chasing after me with Pip and Tristan bringing up the rear.
In the house, I put him in a chair at the kitchen table, quickly washed my hands, and then took the seat beside him as the rest of the kids sat around us. The moment Cyrus’s mother walked in, I asked her if we could all have something to drink.
“Of course.” She smiled at me, her big powder blue eyes glinting, crossing the room to offer me her hand and introduce herself. “Please call me Angie.”
I stood up and squeezed her hand. “Then call me Web, and it’s a pleasure, ma’am.”
“For me as well.” She smiled at me, studying my face. “That was wonderful outside.”
What was? “Ma’am?”
She sighed. “And you have no idea what you…. Oh boy.”
I waited for her to stop talking to herself.
“My grandchildren are all in love with you, as well as my dogs.”
“I do well with kids and animals.” I chuckled. “They don’t care ’bout the same things adults do.”
“But they should,” she said in a way that left no room for argument.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Sit down,” she told me. “What would you like to drink?”
I ended up with ice tea and afterward was dragged to the living room where Tristan pushed a controller into my hand and I was supposed to drive.
“You gotta hit the boxes ’cause there’s stuff in ’em.”
What?
“Weber, you hafta steer with your left hand and push the A button with your right to make the car go,” Victoria instructed me.
“Why are you driving into the wall?” Vanessa wanted to know.
Pip flopped down into my lap and tried to explain it to me again. At four he knew what he was doing better than I did.
Tristan was cackling, Micah was giggling beside him, and Victoria, who was logical and thoughtful, figured that she would show me how to work my car, demonstrating with her controller. Tristan kept making suggestions, interrupting her tutorial as I started to laugh. I gave up, told them all that Pip was driving for me, and told Vanessa, who was draped over my back, that she was strangling me. Once I stretched out, she lay down beside me.
“Hey, you guys, why don’t you let Weber come talk to the grown-ups?” Carolyn asked them.
I excused myself instead, because watching Cyrus talk to the set-up guy was bothering me more than I thought it would. It was why I had not been able to give Mario Kart my full attention. I kept glancing over at him out of the corner of my eye.
It was one thing to hook up and fuck each other’s brains out, but it was another to be at his parents’ house and pretend that I could compete in any way. In the bathroom, splashing cold water on my face, I stood staring at my face in the mirror and wondering why the man had ever even looked at me in the first place.
My eyes were plain faded denim blue; my hair that looked ginger when it was long was now a darker red cut short, with eyebrows, lashes, sideburns, and stubble all the same rusty color. I had a square jaw, a nose that had been broken many times and thin lips. Why did the man want me?
Sticking around was a mistake, but bigger than that was coming along on the weekend. Heading for the door, I heard voices in the hall.
“Jesus, Ross, I’m sorry.”
“Forget it,” a man said, chuckling. “You had no idea your brother was into guys like that.”
“Shit.”
He laughed. “It’s fine. We’ll try again when the cowboy leaves.”
“Really? You’d give this another shot?”
“Brett, are you kidding? I know you don’t get it, but unlike you, your brother is really hot, and on top of that, he’s a neurosurgeon.”
He laughed. “You’re a stockbroker. You make a fucking mint. What do you care?”
“Because dating someone who has their own money and isn’t looking for me to take care of them would be a really nice change, let me tell you.”
“But Cy was such a dick to you.”
He scoffed. “The man is a world class surgeon. I think the ice queen thing is part of it. You don’t see it because you’re family, but I bet that’s how he is with everyone he doesn’t know well.”
“I just thought, ever since I met you, that you guys would make sense together, you know? I mean you guys both live in the city, you both—”
“Give it a rest.” Ross sounded so amused. “I’m gay and your brother’s gay—that’s all you thought.”
“Well, yeah,” he admitted with a laugh.
“Listen, I’m really glad to be one of you and Rachel’s only single gay friends so I could have the chance to be invited up here to meet your brother.”
There was snickering. “I just—I didn’t even know he knew someone like Weber whoever.”
“See, it just goes to show, you never really know your own family.”
“I guess not. God. I’m surprised my folks even let him bring him in the house.”
I leaned my head against the door and listened to the two men laugh over me some more before they walked away and their voices trailed down the hall.
Waiting, I finally came out and walked back out into the living room. I took a seat down on the floor between Micah and Tristan. In seconds, Pip was in my lap.
Angie called us to dinner, and I sat on the end with the kids even though Cyrus looked over at me before Ross took the seat beside him. I talked to
