After the Shut Up Ring

Chapter 4 – Brandon

When I pullup to Mom’s, it’s five o’clock, and Angie’s car isn’t in the driveway. She should have gotten off at three. She’s been living with Mom for a couple months now, and she’s got a routine.

Maybe she stopped by the store. Or the gym. Shane said he saw her down at Flex Fitness. He said she’s working on a glow up, whatever the fuck that means.

I park behind Mom so Angie has a space close to the door. In case she went to the store.

The lawn could use some attention. The grass isn’t too high—we haven’t been getting much rain—but the edges need trimming. I’ll come by with the weedwhacker this weekend.

I jog down to the mailbox in case Mom hasn’t cleared it out lately. She’ll let mail stack up until the flap won’t hardly shut. She claims she gets everything by email now, and the post office is just leaving trash for her to throw out. The government still sends shit by snail mail, though, and she won’t be too happy when they put a bench warrant out on her for skipping jury duty.

By some miracle, the box is empty. Angie’s probably been getting the mail. Mom says she’s been a real help around the house, making dinner and doing all the laundry since she’s living in the basement.

She even ran Mom’s collection of dead batteries out to the dump on the north side of the county to recycle. I thought Mom was never gonna let them go. Pretty sure the batteries from the light saber I got for Christmas in first grade were in that haul. I loved that thing. It was like a nightlight, but I could hit shit with it.

I trip up the front steps and rap a few times on the screen door frame as I let myself in.

“In the kitchen!” Mom calls from the other end of the house.

I poke my head in the living room before I head back. Tamblyn and Ivy are perched on the edge of the sofa, skinny legs dangling, barefoot, with their mouths hanging open as they watch a cartoon with a lady in a ball gown and a white horse. Ivy has her whole hand shoved in her mouth, and Tamblyn’s worrying the tip of her braid.

“Hi, Brandon,” Tamblyn says without tearing her eyes away from what looks like a big moment for the lady and the horse. Ivy mumbles something, probably hi, but it’s hard to tell around the hand in her mouth.

“Come back when this episode is over, okay?” Tamblyn says, then squeals as the lady leaps from a cliff to escape a stampeding bull, rescued in very good time and with a great deal of style by the horse, which suddenly sprouts glittery wings.

“Yes, ma’am,” I tell her. I know when I’m outshone.

Tamblyn and Ivy are good girls. Tamblyn can smell bullshit from a mile away and has exactly zero patience for it, and Ivy could find a needle in a haystack if you asked her, just a real uncanny ability to remember where shit is and where it goes. My dad would’ve loved her. His biggest gripe in life was people not putting his stuff back in its place.

I get a whiff of Crock-Pot barbeque before I hit the kitchen, and my stomach rumbles. Lunch feels like a long time ago.

Mom is sitting at the table, watching one of her court shows on the little TV on the counter and drinking a beer. Her coupons are spread out in front of her in little stacks like monopoly money.

“No pickleball today?” I ask as I drop a kiss on her upturned cheek.

“Angie picked up a second shift. I told her I’d watch the girls.”

“She let you?” Angie looks visibly sick whenever she thinks she even might possibly be putting someone out.

Mom shrugs. “I told her my wrist hurts, and I was staying home anyway.”

“Does it?” Mom’s got arthritis everywhere. It’s hard to keep up with what’s troubling her on any given day.

“If it doesn’t now, I’m sure it will later.”

“Is it bad?”

“Not as bad as a kick in the head.” She winks at me. “Take care of this, would you, and get me a fresh one?” She hands me her empty bottle.

I help myself to a cold one when I fetch hers. “You’re running low.”

“I’ve got a case out in the garage,” she says. I’ll have to bring it in before I leave.

Mom never used to drink beer. She was more of a Bartles and James kind of girl when we were growing up, but when Dad passed, she finished off his Miller Lites from the fridge, and I guess it gave her a taste for it.

I sit at the table, pop both our caps off, plunk her bottle in a free space between coupon stacks, and push my chair back so I can stretch my legs.

“I’ll keep an eye on the girls if you want to go now,” I offer. It’s Friday night, and Mom’s pickleball gang generally ends up at the Seahorse Inn for karaoke afterwards. It’s good for her to get out.

She purses her lips and gives me a sharp look. I sigh and take a long swig. I guess we’re gonna do this again.

“It’s Friday night,” she says.

“Yeah. Karaoke night down at the Seahorse.” I play dumb.

She narrows her eyes. She knows that I’m well aware of what she’s getting at. “You’re twenty-five years old,” she says.

“Last I checked.”

“You don’t need to be sitting around here.”

“Got nowhere else to be.” I settle back in my chair.

“You could be down at the Seahorse.”

“Crowd’s kind of old for me. Besides, you know I can’t sing.”

“You know what I mean.”

I shrug. I understand her position. She’s made herself clear enough times.

She lets out a long sigh and glances toward the doorway. Faint cartoon voices filter down the hall. She leans forward and plants her elbows on the table without regard to the structural integrity of her coupon stacks.

“How long are you planning to wait?” she asks.

I misunderstand her on purpose. “I figure if Angie gets off at eleven, she’ll be here by half past.”

Mom’s face hardens. She means business. “You know damn well what I mean. I love Angie. You know that. She hasn’t had an easy time of it. That mother of hers…” Mom could never bring herself to finish her opinion of Lisa Miller, not even when the woman was alive.

There is no one lower in Mom’s eyes than a bad mother. Lisa Miller was a drunk, and towards the end, an addict, so to Mom, everything about her is just unspeakable. Still, the woman was Angie’s mother, and Angie loved her. I keep my opinions off my face when her name comes up. Mom can’t.

“That girl never had a fair chance, what with that loser of a father bailing before she was even in school.” Mom shakes her head. “I always said there should have been some kind of program at that school for at-risk girls like her. Someone should have done something.”

I should have beat the shit out of Tyler Reynolds the first time he looked at her.

“Well, that’s all water under the bridge now, and I’m so proud of her for making a fresh start, but baby, she’s got a long road ahead of her. She stuck with Tyler for years. She worked to keep that piece of shit. She is not a good bet. If you keep waiting on her, you could very well be waiting forever.”

I shrug. “I’m only twenty-five. I got time.” I give her a wink, willing her to drop it, but she’s just tipsy enough that she’s like a dog with a bone.

“Yeah, twenty-five.” She lowers her voice. “You know I love those girls like my own, but are you sure that you want a ready-made family? Are you one hundred percent sure that you want to raise some other man’s kids? Are you ready to deal with that drama for the rest of your life? Because it isn’t fair to Angie or those girls if you realize after the fact that that’s not what you want.”

I know. Not like I haven’t had the thought a few dozen times. Still, I’m here.

She reaches over and grabs my hand. “Baby, I just want the best for you and Angie, and I want you to really think about what you’d be giving up. Nothing is going to be new. You won’t be the first walk down the aisle, the first baby daddy.” She pauses a moment and smiles like she’s distracted herself. “I’ll never forget your father’s face when the doctor held you up for him to cut the cord.”

“Yeah?”

“He looked like ‘What the hell do I do with this thing?’ I was sure he was gonna puke.” Mom grins, her eyes far away. “I want that for you.”

“You want me to puke?”

“You know what I mean, smartass.”

I do, but she’s seeing it her way, not mine. If it were anyone else, I’d leave it be. In general, I’m not pressed about whether or not folks agree with me. But Mom’s got to drop this. I don’t change my mind on other people’s say-so.

“Remember the Charger?” I ask her.

She snorts. “How could I forget?”

“Remember how it cost twice as much as a brand-new Challenger, and it needed a new transmission besides?”

“Yeah, and new chassis and brakes. I remember.” Mom is still salty that Dad’s good friend Bob Bantock sold me a piece of shit. I was never able to convince her that the car was a deal despite the work it needed. It was an ’87 Shelby.

“I wanted the Charger.” I give her a small smile. “I got the Charger.”

She bristles in her seat, uncharmed. “Well, you might’ve loved that car, but you ended up selling it to buy the Ram.”

“Yeah,” I say softly ’cause that’s my point. “Because I figure I might need a vehicle with a second row.”

If I thought Mom would roll over and take the point, I wouldn’t know her like I do. She crosses her arms, her thin lips spearing down. “You know that your stubbornness is no guarantee things are gonna work out with her, and another thing, you both need to be clear that she wants you, not a daddy for those girls or a way out of my basement.”

I don’t reply. I just look at her and wait. Soon enough, her better nature wins out, and she blows out a sigh, her shoulders lowering. “You know I don’t say that because I don’t love her. But she’s struggling, and she’d be stupid not to go for a good man if he was going to rescue her with his big ol’ truck and its second-row seat. If you weren’t the man, I wouldn’t have anything to say about it.”

I’m not stupid. I know it could play out that way. It’s not a good bet. There are a dozen ways it could end bad.

She frowns deeper and focuses on straightening her coupon stacks. “Tyler hasn’t been over to see those girls but twice in the two months they’ve been here, and the second time, he brought some girl with him, and she stood there in my foyer with a sour look on her face the whole time.”

I’d heard that he’d been taking Emily Mather out in public now that he and Angie are split. “Have the girls been asking after him?”

She shakes her head. “Not once.”

We’re both quiet for a minute. The sweet chatter from the TV in the front room mixes with the drama from Mom’s court show.

Mom sighs again. “Well, I guess you think you know what you’re doing.”

I give her a grin. “Not really.”

Before I forget, I hike up my hips, dig out my wallet, and take out some twenties. It’s payday.

I lay the cash on the table and push back my chair. “Toward the groceries,” I say before she can argue.

“You don’t eat that much,” she grumbles as she tucks the bills into her coupon pouch.

“I’ll try harder. When’s the barbecue gonna be ready?”

“It’s ready now. I was going to hold off until Judge Judy’s done to feed the girls if you can wait.”

“I can wait.” I drop a kiss on her fluffed and feathered hair-sprayed hair. “I’m going to say hi to the girls.”

I take my beer and wander back down the narrow hall. As a kid, I used to race from the living room to the kitchen when Mom called us for dinner. Now I’ve got to be careful that my shoulders don’t knock into the walls.

Without peeling their eyes away from the TV, the girls make room for me, scooting to either side of the couch to clear my usual seat in the middle. I sit and sink at least a half foot down. The couch is older than me and going bald in patches, but it’s comfortable as hell.

“No Orioles, Brandon,” Tamblyn warns me. “Not until after our show.”

“Okay. No worries. Season’s over.” I guess they’ve got my number. They relax a little, assured that I don’t have designs on the remote control.

“What happened to the horse with wings?” I ask. The lady on screen is singing and dancing through some kind of ice cave now.

“Gone,” Ivy answers, resettling herself with her back to the arm of the couch so that she can stick her cold feet under my legs.

Tamblyn sidles closer until she’s smooshed against my side. They both smell like cereal milk and rubber tires. Mom must’ve taken them to the Lion’s Club playground today.

I rest my head on the back cushion.

“The horse with wings is called a pegasus,” Tamblyn tells me.

“Cool.” I sip my beer and let the stress of the day go.

“He left Sarabelle in the crystal cavern because she’s got to find the wand alone,” Tamblyn explains.

“Got it.” Doesn’t seem like Sarabelle is looking too hard, but I guess she’s got to sing about it first.

“Sarabelle is a princess,” Ivy adds her two cents. “She’s my favorite.”

“Right.”

“She lives in Aventuria, her sister is Imogen, and her mortal enemy is the Bane of Doom. The Bane is my favorite. I like bad guys,” Tamblyn informs me, reaching into the crack between the couch cushions and takes out a rumpled baggie of miniature muffins. Mom doesn’t allow food in the living room. That’s exactly where I used to hide the wrappers from the Slim Jims I lifted from my dad’s stash.

Tamblyn holds out the bag to me. It’s nothing but crumbs. The couch crack is probably not the best place to hide muffins. “No thanks.”

Tamblyn shrugs, sticks her finger in her mouth, and uses it to Swiffer up the muffin bits. When she’s cleaned the bag, she goes on. “Her best friend is Cara Anne, and she has brown hair, and her other best friend is Farah Lee, and she has red hair.”

“Nice.” I hold out my hand. “I’ll take that.” Tamblyn passes me the bag. I fold it so the spit side is covered and tuck it in my pocket to trash it later.

“The pegasus is called Swift, and his mortal enemy is Fireball.”

“Oh yeah?” As I vaguely recall, there was a night my senior year of high school when Fireball was my mortal enemy, too.

“Yeah.” On screen, the rampaging bull has shown up again, and this time, he’s brought friends. Unfortunately, the ice floors of the crystal cavern are slippery, and apparently, Fireball does not have all-wheel drive.

The girls fall silent. The tension in the room is so thick you could cut it with a knife. Ivy clutches my forearm, digging her grubby little fingers into my shirt. Christopher Nolan has got nothing on whoever wrote this shit.

At the very last moment, Princess Sarabelle believes in herself enough to melt the ice cave with the wand she found—also by believing in herself—and she stands on a stalagmite while the evil, red bulls are swept away on a wave of sparkling ice water.

The girls go nuts. They leap up and zip around the living room in figure eights like unknotted balloons, buzzing past the sharp corner of every piece of furniture and every breakable tchotchke like a pair of sugared-up Blue Angels.

“What’s going on in there?” Mom hollers down the hall.

“Princess Sarabelle defeated the evil forces of Fireball to save all of Aventuria,” I holler back. Tamblyn grins at me like I’m a genius.

“Well, then wash up for dinner,” Mom calls.

The girls race for the half bath. I scan the room for the remote, but I don’t see it. I consider the crack in the couch cushions for a second—it’s most certainly stuck down there—but I’m not that reckless. I go ahead and push the button on the TV to turn it off.

I take a second to drain the rest of my beer before I follow the girls to the kitchen. By the time I get to the table, they’re scrambling into their seats, interrupting each other in a rush to tell Mom about a cricket they saw behind the toilet. Princess Sarabelle’s narrow escape is yesterday’s news.

Mom listens as she brings the dishes to the table and serves up the barbecue and cuts up Ivy’s sandwich so she can eat it with a fork. When I try to help, she slaps my hand and tells me, “Eat.”

Each time the girls pause for a breath, Mom interjects to remind them to put their napkins on their laps and chew with their mouths closed. They take her nagging with good humor.

When Tamblyn’s napkin falls to the floor, she immediately dives under the table to get it back, and when Ivy accidentally takes a bite mid-sentence, she immediately stops what she was saying to chew her food with her lips mashed together, and as soon as she swallows, she starts all the way back at the beginning of her thought.

Mom doesn’t understand how I see the girls. They’re not “some other man’s kids.” They’re not baggage.

They’re Angie’s kids. She grew ’em. I like ’em the way I like everything she makes. They remind me of her. Of how it used to be.

When Tamblyn rambles about Princess Sarabelle and Aventuria, I remember Angie and Madison lying on their stomachs on the living room floor, feet kicked up and swinging, reciting facts about Harry and Niall and Zayn to each other in excruciating detail. I thought the two of them were such dorks, such pains in the ass. I didn’t realize then that we were happy.

When Ivy burbles as she laughs, I remember how Angie used to sound exactly like that before she started to laugh behind her hand—before she stopped laughing out loud altogether and wouldn’t even show her teeth when she smiled.

I remember when she stopped coming around so much. Then, before my dumb sixteen-year-old ass could figure out what to do about it, she hooked up with Tyler and never went anywhere without him.

I remember when her mom passed, and she was bent over and sobbing into her hands on the couch where I sit now to watch cartoons with her girls, and how I didn’t know what to do or say. Dad sent me to go find Lisa’s car since it wasn’t out front of the motel room where they found her body. I found it in the back of the Family Discount parking lot on Holabird.

I remember the sneaky conversations when Angie came up pregnant and how Madison was so quick to shut her bedroom door if I happened to pass. One night, when Angie was almost due, she had stayed for dinner and was doing the dishes while Mom coaxed Dad to eat something. He was stuck in the hospital bed that hospice loaned us at that point.

The kitchen was dark except for the light over the stove. The front of Angie’s shirt was soaked with sudsy water. She caught me looking at her bump, and she asked if I wanted to touch it. I remember how it felt—like a fucking miracle and a punch to the gut at the same time.

Tamblyn sneezes just like Angie. Ivy has her chin. Ivy’s chin dimples just like Angie’s when she cries.

How could I not be crazy about them, too?

But Mom isn’t wrong. There’s no guarantee that Angie is ever going to feel the way I do, and if I shoot my shot, and she says yes, it may very well be because she’s in a bad place, and I look like a way out. Part of me says fuck it. A lot of women are with a lot of men because they can provide. How wrong is it? It makes me want to puke, though, thinking about being with her if that’s what’s in her head.

She almost married that asshole, and from my perspective, he had nothing going for him but gainful employment. And she got all the way down the aisle for him. If he hadn’t fumbled the bag at the last minute, she’d be Mrs. Asshole.

If any of my buddies went after a girl in her situation, I’d tell them it was a bad bet. Just like everyone said to me when I was looking at that Charger.

It’s a depressing thought, so I drop it.

After dinner, Tamblyn wants me to check the air in her bicycle tires—it’s an excuse to run wild outside for a little longer—so I oblige her. Of course, then Ivy needs me to check a squeak on her tricycle. I give the axle and the pedal crank bearings a squirt of WD40 to make her happy. Mom sees what I’m up to and asks me to check her tires and oil, too, since I’m here.

For my efforts, Mom takes out an Entenmann’s that she’s been hiding in the good china hutch for dessert. By the time I have seconds, it’s half past nine. I could head down to the bar, but the beer here is free, and the couch is a hell of a lot more comfortable than the stools down at Donovan’s.

Mom tries to put the girls to bed, but they keep sneaking back up the stairs, and finally, Mom tells them they can bring their blankets up and camp in the living room until Angie gets home. I’d be creeped out sleeping alone in a basement at their age, even if it is finished. Basements are creepy.

I settle in to play on my phone while Mom watches one of her hot firemen shows. The girls giggle for a while, but soon enough, they’re sprawled on a pile of comforters on the carpet, passed out like little drunks. Mom drifts off during the local news, and I swipe the remote, switch to ESPN, and lower the volume.

I put my phone face down on the end table so I can’t keep checking the time. Sometimes, I make myself nuts.

Angie’s not late. Even this time of night, it takes a good thirty minutes to drive here from the hospital, and she changes out of her scrubs before she leaves. Besides not wanting to bring anything home on her clothes, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want to remind Mom of Dad’s last few months. She’s considerate like that.

I don’t get how a woman can be so thoughtful of others and so careless with herself. It pisses me off. It makes me want to boss her around and do for her and fuck up anyone who takes advantage of her.

I’ve dreamed of beating the shit out of Tyler Reynolds way more than a sane man should.

My gut unknots when I hear her car pull into the drive, and my pulse picks up. She turns her key in the lock, drops her purse on the hall tree bench, and appears in the doorway. My lungs catch.

Even after working two shifts, back-to-back, she’s pretty as hell.

Her hair is in a messy bun. The streaks she put in for her wedding have almost grown out, so the top knot is blonde, but the roots are her natural brown. She’d hide behind that hair if it was down, but since it’s up, the faint, yellow glow from the lamp on the end table lights her face. She’s beautiful.

She’s made on generous lines. Her mouth is wide, her lips pink and plump. Her hips are broad, and her brown eyes are wide set and warm.

She pauses on the threshold a moment, taking in her girls conked out on the floor and Mom snoring in her recliner with her Sudoku book open on her lap. She flashes me a small smile, and my heart stutters. I nod to the seat next to me and hold my breath.

She kicks her clogs off, pads over, and sinks down beside me. I’m sitting in the middle, so she doesn’t have a choice. She smells like the vanilla body spray she’s been wearing for as long as I can remember.

My dick doesn’t get hard—that’d be freaking weird in a room with my mom and Angie’s kids—but let’s say I’m aware of it.

She squints at the TV. “Watching cricket?”

She’s teasing me. My stomach tightens, but in a different way from when I was waiting for her.

She sighs, stretching her legs and wiggling her toes. She does patient transport at Bayview. Her feet have got to be killing her after sixteen hours.

If she were mine, she wouldn’t be pulling doubles. She wouldn’t work unless she wanted to. I see all the things my mom does with the girls. Frankly, that’s more than enough work for one person.

“Who’s winning?” She glances up at me, shy but with a sweet, sneaky smile teasing the corners of her shiny lips. She’s wearing gloss. Looks fresh.

Did she put that on because she saw my truck out front?

“I have no idea.” I smile back. Her eyes dip down to my mouth, her thick lashes brushing her cheeks.

I want to carry her down to my old bedroom, lock the door, and lay her out on the bed. I want to make her blush way worse than she is now. I want to make her struggle to catch her breath. I want her to hurt for me, like she makes me hurt for her.

Instead, I grab the remote and switch to the home improvement channel. I have no idea what she likes to watch—whenever I’m here with her, so are Mom and the kids, and apparently, they get first choice—but Madison is crazy about the house-flipping shows.

I must make the right choice. She sees a guy spreading mortar for a backsplash and settles back in her seat with a happy sigh. Her bare thigh presses against my jeans. It’s the first time I’ve ever wished I was wearing shorts. Hers have ridden up, bunching at her hips. I pass my beer bottle to the hand closest to her leg so I don’t lose my mind and touch her to see if her skin is as silky as it looks in the low light.

She blinks, surprised, as I move the bottle, and she must think I’m passing it to her. She takes it from me and sips, I think to be polite.

“Were the girls good for your mom?” she asks.

“They always are.”

She snorts softly and hands the beer back. I take a swig. The mouth of the bottle tastes like petroleum jelly.

“You didn’t feel like going down to Donovan’s?” she asks.

“I don’t always go down to Donovan’s.” I mean, nine times out of ten, if it’s a Friday or Saturday night, I do, but not always.

“I guess not if there’s a big cricket match on,” she says. She’s teasing again. My whole chest fills with…something.

“You know how it is.” We’re not quite whispering, but our voices are pitched low, and the room is dim and shadowy. Excitement swims in my belly, heightened by my frustration. I want to be alone with her. I want her naked and bucking underneath me. I want to figure out how to make her scream.

She holds out her hand for the bottle. I pass it. She sips.

“How was work?” I ask, cool and easy, like my brain isn’t tossing up perverted thought after perverted thought.

“Good,” she says. “No trips to the morgue.”

“That’s a good day, then.”

She lets out a little sigh and slumps deeper against the back of the couch. “I’ve been thinking about this CNA program down at the community college. The hospital will reimburse you for the tuition if you go to work for them afterwards.”

“Yeah?” I refocus. This sounds serious.

“I didn’t think I’d have time to do school on top of the girls, but if I’m already pulling doubles, I might as well, you know? Once I’ve got enough saved for first and last month’s rent on an apartment, and we’re out of your mom’s basement, I could do it—if I wasn’t pulling doubles.”

I grunt so she knows I’m listening. Every cell in my body wants to solve her problem. It’d be easy. All it would take is money, and I’ve got that, what with double time and sometimes triple time when operations go long.

I don’t want to be that guy, though. I don’t want to buy her. But I do want to take care of her. It was easier in my grandparents’ day. Men paid for shit, and they just never wondered whether that was the only reason their women stayed around.

“I think I can do it this year if I don’t get any surprises.” She grimaces. “The hospital will pay for you to get your RN, too. I could do that once both the girls are in school all day.” She drains the rest of the beer, a look of cautious determination in her eye.

She’s different than she’s been for the past few years. More tired, but also calmer, somehow. Less jumpy. I’m glad for that.

I want to see her really happy. Relaxed. Naked and spread-eagled on my bed, smiling, with cum leaking from her pussy and legs that don’t work.

“You’re a good listener,” she says to me, handing me the empty bottle. I set it on the end table.

“You think?”

“Yeah.” She gives me another soft smile and fiddles with her fingers. She’s nervous.

I make her nervous.

I take a breath and chew my lower lip a second before I collect myself. I’m nervous, too. If I make a move, and she’s not totally cool with it, that’s it. She’s crashing in my mom’s basement. I can’t push it. It’d be, like, harassment.

But I’m not about to wait for however many more months it’ll take before she ends up next to me alone on a couch again. I don’t lack balls. If I’ve got a shot, I’m gonna take it.

I’m shaking on the inside though as I raise my arm and rest it gently around her shoulders. For a second, she tenses. My chest seizes. Then she exhales and kind of melts against my side. She rests her cheek on my chest. Her bun tickles my face.

I inhale. Her hair smells amazing.

“Is this okay?” I whisper in her ear. She shivers.

“Yeah,” she whispers back.

I stroke her upper arm with my thumb and listen as her breathing gets quicker. Both of us are holding the rest of our bodies motionless like this is a game of freeze tag, and we got caught.

I want to drag her onto my lap, drive my hands into that bun, and taste her mouth. I really want my mom and the girls to be somewhere, anywhere, else.

Mom is still snoring away, though, and the girls are sprawled on their stomachs in their footie pajamas. All I can do is tug Angie a little firmer against my side.

“You feel good,” I say to her.

“You do too,” she says and then winces, like she’s embarrassed. I chuckle and squeeze her closer. She shivers under my fingers.

“Are you warm enough?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

I stroke the goosebumps appearing on her skin. I was right. She’s soft as silk, even with the bumps.

We fall silent and pretend to watch TV—at least I’m pretending—and we sit there, my arm around her shoulder, the rest of our bodies stiff as sticks, as the house settles around us for the night. Eventually, her breath evens and the weight of her head on my chest increases as she falls asleep.

I flip back to cricket and watch the end of what is apparently one hell of a nail-biter between India and Australia.

I’ve never been higher—or more terrified of fucking up—than I am in this moment, surrounded by sleeping, snoring ladies, in my mom’s living room, at closing time on a Friday night.