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Eight
The day before we were all due to head home—Caleb, Syd, and Jonny for the airport—Dad handed Caleb a slip of paper before looking over at me.
“Don’t make me regret this, Porter.”
I frowned. Regret what?
Caleb grinned crookedly before pointing at me. “What did we talk about a few years ago?”
I was still frowning. “Dude, we’ve talked about a lot over the last few years.”
My brother walked over, showing me what Dad handed him. It was a permission slip of sorts. I reached for it to read over the print, ignoring Dad’s signature while trying to figure out what it meant.
“Oh, shit,” I finally said, it dawning on me. “Seriously? We’re doing this right now?”
“Happy early birthday, bud.” Then, addressing the room of my siblings and taking the slip back from me, “We’ve talked about it through the years, but now that Porter here is seventeen—”
“Almost! He has five weeks.” Jonny cut in, walking over to Caleb and looking over his shoulder to read the paper. “Whoop, whoop, Caleb here is inking his virgin skin.”
This caused Caleb to frown. “When the hell did you get a tattoo?”
Jonny chuckled. Just a few days with the family and he was a changed person. He was laughing again and didn’t look as tired.
“I haven’t,” Jonny answered Cael, pulling me back to present. “You, my brother, are just afraid of needles.”
“I am not afraid of needles.”
“Are fucking too!”
I knew Jonny had changed over the years, but I hadn’t been aware just how much until I saw him arguing with Caleb. This was Jon Jon.
Level-headed, good natured, and the guy who would get into faux-fights with his siblings, huge-assed smile on his face.
“Language, boys!” came Mom’s voice from the kitchen. “We have little ears in here!” Sydney and Brandon were talking with my parents. Well, Sydney was. Brandon was probably playing with a truck or something.
Caleb grinned wide and mimicked Mom, low enough so only those close enough to them could hear.
“Cael, you are nearly thirty years old. You should be over the ‘mocking Mom’ stage,” Jonny taunted.
“I just turned twenty-seven, asshole.”
“Oh my God, you two. Both of you, grow up,” Myke butted in. “Are we still doing the eleven?”
Years ago, it was decided that we would do a sibling tattoo and it would be the number eleven.
Eleven was a significant number in our family.
It was Dad’s number throughout his career. Mom’s photography studio was Studio Eleven. While not born in the eleventh month, Myke was born on the eleventh of February. And lastly, there were eleven years and eleven months between Myke and myself, eleven years between first child and last.
So eleven was an important number. Eleven was pretty much synonymous with Prescott.
“I’m game,” I shrugged. After a chorus of yesses, some with leading hells, we all moved to cram into Caleb and Sydney’s Pilot, the only vehicle here that could transport all six of us in one trip. Sydney stayed back with Brandon and our parents, making this solely a sibling trip.
For probably the first time in my existence as Baby Brother Prescott, I felt like an equal with my siblings.
It was a damn good feeling.
***
