Page 41 of Carter's #Undoing

“Fellas, I know Serenity,” Carter stated. “If we don’t start answering one of her questions soon, she’ll keep asking us stuff.”

“You want to hear the story about how GB almost shit his pants when we were in China because he ate some shit that lit his ass on fire?” Hennessey asked me.

“She doesn’t want to hear that,” Carter interrupted.

“Yes, I do,” I told Hennessey. “You tell your story first, and then I’ll tell you about the time GB entered our town’s hot chili pepper contest and realized that him and spicy foods don’t mix.”

“Yo, we told you that shit,” Scotch said, clasping Carter on the shoulder. “You always try to put hot sauce on your shit, then wonder why you can’t sit for a week because you’re running to the bathroom.”

Carter shook his head. “How many times have y’all had to listen to me talk about how much I missed Serenity?” My ears perked up as each of the men—even Jackie D—started to groan. “My point exactly. So how about you tell her stories that make me look like the great muthafucka that I am and not the intimate details of my toilet chronicles?”

Hennessey waved him off. “Fuck that, she needs to know why we almost stopped calling you Golden Boy and almost changed it to Crapper Boy.”

Not going to lie, the story was pretty disturbing, and made me question why they’d all been in living quarters so small, they could hear Carter in the bathroom. But, apparently, it was exactly the kind of story that was needed to break the ice.

After I shared the hot chili pepper story, Scotch started sharing some better ones, conversation flowing around the room. Colt even eventually came to join us, and somehow, it felt like I’d known these men for much longer than a few hours.It’s because they’re an extension of Carter,I thought.

While he’d been estranged from his family, he managed to create one of his own. A close-knit group of friends who obviously trusted one another with their lives and secrets. There was still an evil out there. A reason these men had dropped everything in their lives to come to wherever we were. Yet, if only for a few hours, everything felt normal and exactly how it should be.

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