Page 79 of Afterglow
“I feel like I’m in Green Gables!” Her arms stretch over her head before she bunches one sleeve of her sweater to her elbow, then lowers the window to stick a hand out, moving her palm like a wave through the cool airstream. Dark strands whip across her cheeks, getting tangled in her eyelashes. “You’re totally Gilbert Blythe.” When the waves ebb into the ocean, the wind rustles the leaves.
“Oh, yeah?” Wait until she hears my family’s favorite nickname for me.
She returns a single enthusiastic nod. “He was my very first book boyfriend.”
“Typically, I’d be very jealous of that esteemed position,” I tease, my hand squeezing the soft flesh of her upper thigh. “But he’s fictional, and I’m not.”
“I like when you’re like this,” she snaps back. “Makes it more fun to fuck the sass right out of your pretty mouth.”
I choke on my own spit, the heated blood from a fiery blush searing the surfaces of my neck and face. And much lower. “Please, gorgeous.” The side of my fist knocks some clarity into my throat. “If I show up at home as hard as I am now, I’ll never be able to live it down.”
Almost an hour later, we pass Chelton Beach. “It’s a red sand beach!” Beaoohs andaahs. “And the blue picnic benches?” She swoons against the truck door. “You literally grew up in the cutest place ever.”
I point ahead, through the windshield, at a cluster of tall trees beyond the grass edging the sandbars. “That’s where I’d end up after about twenty minutes. In the shade. Sunscreen and a rash guard weren’t enough.” I shake my head through a half-smile at the countless visits spent sunburnt—or trying not to be—at the beach. “My sisters would run around the shoreline, alternating between sunbathing, hitting a volleyball back and forth, and going for a swim. Parker would pop open a couple of nets and shake a couple sticks overhead, yelling at me to play him in beach hockey.” A chuckle vibrates at the base of my throat. “I’d pretend not to hear him and hide behindA Wrinkle in TimeorThe Giveror whatever I had picked up from the library that week. Or I’d lie and say Piper told me to watch Harper and Hunter make sandcastles.” My smile widens at the memories. Life here wasn’t all bad. “Then Mom would show up after her shift with juice boxes and start an assembly line to have us make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner.”
She sucks in a whistled breath through pursed lips. “Sounds better than summers with my granny quizzing me on multiplication tables or listening to her make politically incorrect and borderline racist comments about our neighbors.” Behraz shoots me a mischievous smile. “When she dozed off on the couch, I’d steal strawberry hard candies from her purse. I thought I was so sly, but she always knew.”
I slow the engine when turning onto the street where my parents live.
Bea gasps. “This is beautiful, Fletch. This is your childhood home?”
“Nah, I bought it for them as a rookie.” I was worth more than I am now, fresh out of the juniors. The team had high hopes, I guess.
The historic, Craftsman-style house sits in the heart of Summerside, slate grey paint keeping up from last year when I got the exterior done. “It’s walkable to the pier and to Mom’s store, plus it’s got six bedrooms, which is hard to come by unless you do a custom build.”
We pull into the long driveway that ends in a detached two-car garage. There are already three vans and two cars parked, which means I’m the last of my siblings to arrive.
“This is all you, huh?” Bea’s mouth wrinkles in one corner. “You’re a really good son, you know that?”
I turn to squint at the wraparound porch, stalling. “Not sure they’d agree.”
“Well, they’re not the boss of you.” Her pointer finger wags in the direction of the house, then jabs into her sternum. “Iam.” There’s not a trace of joking in her tone, but I can’t help but smile. She harrumphs. “AndIsay let’s go inside and set them straight.”
Bea mutters to herself as we walk up. “Piper, Parker, Greer, Miller…” She clicks her tongue after a pause, then repeats it. “Piper, Parker, Greer, Miller…?”
“Harper and Hunter. But they aren’t here anyway. I don’t expect you to?—”
I’ve lost her. Her ranty train of thought cannot be stopped.
“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” she adds with a mumbled curse. “Fall in love with a Peter and his giant pecker and face the whole peck of Peters, eldest sister Piper.”
I snort. “Bea, what are you doing?”
“Trying to keep track of all your siblings’ names without getting tongue twisted. It’s nerve-wracking.”
“My older sisters are…something.” Hell, I’m nervous, too. “And everyone gets them mixed up. It’s fine. But you gotta stop talking about my” —I motion to my groin with my eyes— “pecker.”
“Right.” She closes her eyes and shakes the idea away. “If I talk about it, it’ll wake up and want to play.”
My cock twitches. God damn it.
“Bea, please.” We’re having a hard time staying serious, both tearing into goofy smiles like a couple of idiots in love. “I’m begging you.”
“You know how that’s my favorite.”
The playful mood drops when I push open the front door, giving way to a violent pile of footwear in the entryway: all various shapes, sizes, and colors. And it’s not only the kids who are to blame. Half a dozen adult pairs are strewn amongst them. Only a couple of pairs line up with their twin on the opposite side. Probably an effort by Piper and Miller, the only organized women to ever come through this house.
If someone walked in without looking, they’d trip over the ludicrous number of shoes, fall headfirst onto the floor, and die on the spot. I make sure that isn’t Behraz’s fate, guiding her by the hand as we traverse the uneven terrain and leave our shoes next to my sisters’ neatened sets.
