Page 3 of How to Kiss a Hawthorne Brother
“Are you going to respond?” Perry asks.
“Sure. Eventually. I just have to figure out how.”
Perry breathes out a heavy sigh. “Brody. How many minutes have you been staring at your phone?”
The number pops into my head as quickly as they always do. “Seventeen and a half.”
“You gotta snap out of it, man. Finish packing. Tyler will be here soon. You can respond in the car.”
I nod, knowing Perry is right. I’ve wasted too much time as it is.
It was a last-minute decision to join Perry on his annual two-week trek on the Appalachian Trail. We’re all big hikers, my entire family, but Perry is the only one into the long-distance stuff. He says he’ll thru-hike it one day—tackle the entire 2,190 miles in one uninterrupted trip—but I’ll believe it when I see it. He likes working too much to take six months off to go hiking. I hesitated to take even two weeks off, but after the volatility thatdominated the last month of the school year, I need the break. Even if it means hanging out with Perry.
I stand and start gathering my gear from various places around the living room.
“Did you read Kate’s last piece inThe Atlantic?” Perry is behind me now, rummaging around in my kitchen. “On the impacts of tourism on the Maasai tribe in Zimbabwe? It’s brilliant.”
I stop and stare at my oldest brother. It does not surprise me that, after all the traveling she’s done, Kate has turned herself into an accomplished travel writer. Itdoessurprise me Perry reads her stuff. “You read Kate’s articles?”
Perry walks back into the living room with a to-go container of leftover chicken fried rice in his hand. “Not as a rule. But I readThe Atlantic.If she’s in it, then I read it.”
I, on the other hand, read everything Kate writes. And buy hard copies, whenever there is one, for safe keeping. “Yeah, I read that one too,” I say noncommittally.
Perry takes a bite of the rice and winces. “How old is this? The rice is crunchy.”
“Old. Why are you eating that for breakfast?”
“Why didn’t you throw it out?” He frowns but doesn’t stop eating. “Does it ever seem weird that you know so much more about Kate’s life and what she’s up to than she does about you?” He nudges the socks I threw earlier with the toe of his shoe. “Don’t forget these.”
I grab the socks and add them to my pile of gear, then move toward the back door to retrieve my tent. “I don’t know. She lives a pretty public life. I only know the stuff everyone else knows too.”
At least that’s how it’s been the past four years. I used to know everything.
I disappear into my backyard long enough to collapse my tent and fold it up. Back inside, I put it, and the rest of my remaining gear, into my bag. “Kate might know some stuff. I don’t post anything, but Olivia does. I’m pretty sure they still follow each other.”
“Olivia’s feed wouldn’t tell Kate anything but how much Olivia loves the farm. And Tyler.”
“True.” I glance at my watch. “Speaking of Tyler, shouldn’t he be here by now?”
“He’s coming,” Perry says. “He had to help Mom with something in the goat barn, but he said he’d be here by nine-thirty.”
“I swear she likes him better than the rest of us.” Olivia’s husband, Tyler, who will drop us off at Springer Mountain, the Southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, made fast work of convincing Mom he was her favorite.
“Only because he loves her goats,” Perry says grouchily.
“And helped make her a grandbaby.” It’s not lost on any of us that the youngest of the five Hawthorne children, and the only girl, managed to find a husbandandget pregnant before any of her older brothers haveeven come close. With the way things are looking, Olivia’s baby, due at the end of the summer, may be the only grandchild Mom and Dad get.
Perry swore off women after his divorce and despite our best efforts to resuscitate whatever part of his brain controls desire, he’s still uninterested. A vegetarian in the meat aisle of the grocery store.
Lennox, the next brother down, has the opposite problem. He desirestoo much.His problem isn’t finding a woman, it’s wanting to settle down with only one.
The brother right under me, Flint, has an acting career that isn’t exactly conducive to normal relationships. Last time I saw his face, it was plastered to the front of one of my AP Chemistrystudent’s notebooks—a cut out of the photo that made the cover of People magazine’s latest “Sexiest Man Alive” edition.
If it isn’t yet obvious, I’m the only Hawthorne brother who’s even remotely normal, at least when it comes to relationship stuff. I’d love to get married. Settle down. Have kids. Be the son who takes the kids over to have dinner with their grandparents every Sunday afternoon. It’s what I want. I just need to meet the right woman.
My eyes dart to where my phone is still sitting in the center of the coffee table.
Step one? Convince myself Kate isnotthe right woman.
