Herc is still about ten yards away, but his mighty legs eat up the distance between him and the pair of us. Me and my boyfriend. Yikes. Here we go.
I exhale heavily. “Guess we’re doing this in public,” I say out of the side of my mouth. I try to let go of his hand out of respect for my brother, but Titus doesn’t let me go.
Titus clears his throat out of nervous habit, then drawls under his breath, “Jesus be a fence.”
FOURTEEN
Titus
Cass’s voice rises an octave.“Herc. Hi.”
Already I sound so dumb. “Oh, hello!”
Herc isn’t wasting any time. “Hi, yourself. How long has this been going on?”
I feel Cass looking up at me. I turn to her and nod, telling her with my eyes that I got this.
“About two weeks.”
Herc points one finger and shakes it, biting down on his lip like he’s trying not to blurt out something harsh. He’d be right to.
Then he looks at Cass and does the same thing. Just wagging his finger, waiting for the polite words to show up.
“Herc,” Cass says in a hushed tone. “Let’s go somewhere and sit down and talk about this over coffee or something.”
“It’s eight p.m. and I have a game tomorrow. I can’t have coffee, it’ll keep me awake.”
I snort. “The game is at one tomorrow, Grandpa. You have time to catch up on sleep. Talking with your sister is important.”
That was the wrong thing to say. Herc glowers at me. “You got jokes? How long were you gonna be…doing things…with my sister before you told me?”
Cass sucks in a breath. “Doing things? Real mature, brother. Let’s go somewhere and talk, please.”
Herc tears his eyes from me and glares at his sister. “You’re my twin. You had to know I was going to sense something was weird. I thought things were strange when I brought you Chinese food. And you’ve been avoiding me all week. I should have trusted my gut.”
“Trusted your gut about what? Your sister was just babysitting me. Nothing happened that day.”
“Oh,” Herc says, a sarcastic grin spreading over his face. “I’m so glad you waited to maul my sister until she wasn’t feeling obligated to play prison guard to you.”
“Herc, why are you making this so gross?” Cass begs.
Herc scrubs his face and grunts. “Because I’m freaking out!”
He’s so loud that a dog barks at us from across the street.
“Try to calm down and we can talk about this like sane people,” Cass says calmly.
Herc backs away and presses his palms together, bringing his hands to his lips and closing his eyes. He looks like he’s praying for strength. I’ve never seen the big guy like this. I don’t know if he’s about to punch me or start speaking in tongues.
He takes a few breaths to settle himself. “I would have preferred to know about this before someone said something to me.”
I exchange looks with Cass. “Who said what to you?”
“The quarterback’s girlfriend lives down the hall from you. She’s met Cass before, she knows me. She saw you guys kissing. This is not that big of a school, did you think this would not get back to me?”
Cass takes a step closer to her brother. “Listen. I’m sorry you found out this way. But it happened pretty fast. We were…taking some time to figure out what to tell you and when, and—”
“And you made me look like an idiot because everyone on the team but me knew my best friend was sleeping with my sister.”