I can’t help being amused by it every time.
Gareth goes rigid, completely blindsided, but by the time he opens his mouth, I’m already grinning. “Unless making out is a fight, I don’t think so?”
Her lips fall open. “Didn’t need that image.”
“You’re the one who asked, Mom. Besides, I’m at my prime. You didn’t think I’d just be studying, right?”
“Tone it down,” Dad warns. He has a sixth sense of figuring out when it’ll become too much for my mom and cuts it off. Over time, I’ve started to develop that sense, too.
Only, I use it to push people to their limits. Not my mom.
Others.
That’s the only thing Dad and I agree on.
“Well, I guess that’s fine as long as you’re not getting into trouble.” Her voice softens. “Take care of each other, boys, okay? I love you.”
“Love you, too, Mom,” Gareth says.
“Love you, Mom,” I speak with the same level of sincerity as my brother.
She hangs up with a huge smile on her face.
As soon as they’re gone, Gareth pushes away from me as if I were the plague.
“Go easy on the disgust level, big bro. It makes you look weak.”
He flips me off and stalks back to his room.
I head to mine and check my phone. Countless unread texts and booty calls sit in my notifications. A few from annoying clingy pests who don’t know how to simply pick up their dignity and back off.
My feet come to a halt in the middle of the room as I scroll to the photos from tonight.
Plural.
The first was from afar when I first saw Glyndon with Annika and her friends. I watched her for exactly fifteen minutes before I told Jeremy about his sister’s presence and got my opening to approach her.
In the pictures I’ve taken, Glyndon is either listening or laughing about something they said. She’s not the talker in that group—or in her family—and it shows.
The other pictures were with the fireflies. I zoom in on her face, then trail my finger down to where her hand is clenched on her shorts.
I can almost smell raspberries and paint as I trace the contours of her cheeks, neck, lips.
My thumb taps on her face and I can finally see what Devlin loved about her, what he struggled with for her.
How he floundered and cried and begged on his fucking knees for her.
Still, he didn’t fuck her.
She didn’t want to, is what she said.
Motherfucker got friend-zoned to death. Literally.
I’d feel sorry for him if I knew how. But since I don’t, I’m completely fine with finishing what he couldn’t.
12
GLYNDON