Page 5 of The Idiot

“You noticed too?”

“It wasn’t hard to miss.”

Pete and Cameron dart into a local gift shop up ahead of us. Before I can make inquiries about the lunch I was promised, Jesse picks up his pace to catch the door. Fucking hell. Is he ever going to give up tormenting Pete like when we were kids? His need for attention isn’t healthy at this age. Usually,it amuses me, but my foul mood must have followed me into town.

Stepping inside, I find Pete and Cameron perusing ceramic cookie jars… or trying to. Jesse has invaded their personal space, leveraging himself between them. Chatting up Cameron, he looks like an overzealous salesman while Pete gives his profile a death glare.

That guilty juvenile feeling creeps over me again. I can’t keep doing this—spending my limited free time with Jesse like his sidekick. Maybe if my extracurricular activities didn’t all revolve around him and bingeing Breathless with my mother, I’d get out of this rut. I’m thirty, for crying out loud. That’s too old to be climbing water towers and too young to be hooked on soap operas.

My only other option is my trips to Seattle every few months, but the thought of returning has lost its appeal. Physical satisfaction from another human being is nice when I need to be touched, but ever since Dad died, it hasn't felt like enough. Seeing Mom alone has had my stupid heart imagining visions of my own future on the orchard… visions of me alone. I’d like someone other than Auggie in my bed at night, someone to touch me during the daylight hours, and not even sexually.

Fuck. That couple ruined me.

Wandering around the shop, my gaze idly canvasses the merchandise. Mom’s birthday is coming up. I could pick her up one of these fancy pie dishes and some new paring knives. My sister said she’d make the trip down with my nephews and her husband to celebrate. That I’m even considering now taking her up on her offer to introduce me to a gay co-worker of hers tells me just how deep these new hopes have taken root.

Damn it. I’m lovesick, just… without the love part.

I’m grateful my family has always known my truth, but I never considered that at some point I’d start looking like a hopeless bachelor to them. It must be more obvious than I think if Danielle is trying to set me up.

Should I try it?

No.

Fuck that.

If I was to actually consider finding a guy who’s interested in a relationship, I’d like to meet one onmyterms, not through an introduction with a random guy because healsohappens to be into guys. I know Danielle meant well, but we’d need more common interests than that. She works at an insurance agency’s corporate office. How interesting can he be?

Rounding the aisle, I nearly run into Jesse in the next row over. His fingers are gripping the end of the shelf. His head is peeking around it, his gaze fixated on something like he’s on a covert mission.

I follow his line of sight and spot Pete and Cameron by the cashier. Is this what we’re going to do all afternoon?

“Jesse, this is without a doubt the most epic surprise you’ve ever concocted,” I drawl, “but are we about done here? I’ve got shit to do.”

“How is this not fascinating to you?” he whispers.

“It’s Velma’s Gift Shop. I’m not big on knickknacks.”

“No. My brother, in the wild, socializing, being polite to another human being.”

“He’s always polite to me.”

“You don’t count,” he scoffs. “You’re like a stepbrother. He’s polite by association because he probably thinks it bothers me that he’s nice to you, but not me.”

Hearing that I don’t count stings for some reason, even though I understand his petulant ‘baby brother’ logic and know he’s joking. Staring at the back of his head, his close-cut brown hair, I’m suddenly annoyed. Truly annoyed. Maybe I wouldn’t have wasted so much time engaging in meaningless hookups if it wasn’t for him. I never go any farther than a weekend trip to Seattle because… well, damned if I know why. I just feel like I can’t leave him.

He was so sad when I left for the Army, it made me feel guilty, like I was abandoning him. He wrote to me all the time, telling me his asinine stories, and making me miss him and home.

When Dad died, he was there, helping me through it unspoken, with his distracting personality, showing up at random to help me out on the orchard whenever he could. He made getting through having the weight of the world being dumped on my shoulders a hell of a lot more tolerable than it would have been otherwise. It wormed him even deeper into my heart, making me realize he’d always be an important part of my life—something I couldn’t fathom doing without.

He knows me. Maybe not every single detail about me, but he knows me better than anyone else does, and vice versa. I’m not bragging or anything, but sometimes I don’t know what he’d do without me. The thought of what trouble he’d truly get up to if I wasn’t watching over him scares me. Just like that couple at Rouge, my need to have Jesse in my life is as strong as their need to touch each other. He’s as necessary as air.

If only there was a gay version of him in Wenatchee, one I could joke with the way we do. I could keep an eye on dumbass hereandmaybe have a chance at not dying as a bachelor. The best of both worlds.

Taking in the way his jeans hug his perky ass from how he’s leering around the corner, I know that’s a lie.Almostthe best of both worlds. I doubt the world created two Jesse Carvers. It’s not his fault he’s not gay just as much as it isn’t my fault that I am.

‘Stepbrother.’

The fucking idiot. I amnota stepbrother, and apparently, I’m going to need more than a straightstepbrotherif I’m going to spend the rest of my life in Wenatchee without being the most depressing man in the county.

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