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The tray was filled with delicious, gooey-looking mac and cheese that was a diet killer, but one we partook in on occasion. The top was dusted with breadcrumbs, and my stomach rumbled at the sight of it.
Jay sat down in one of the chairs, taking in the sight of the mac and cheese.
“That’s all you guys,” he said. “One bite of that is another quarter mile I need to tack onto my daily run.”
Evan scoffed, already shoving his serving spoon into the mac and scooping out a big portion, the orange and whites of all the different kinds of cheese dripping and stringy.
“More for me,” Evan crooned as he plopped the mac onto his plate. “Want some chips?” He pushed a bag of kettle chips toward Jay.
“I’ll pass. Steak’s fine for me.”
Evan shook his head. “Check out Mr. Discipline over here. What’s the point of working out every day if you’re not going to cut loose every now and then?”
I said nothing, my eyes fixed on the mac and cheese. Evan and Jay set to work on their meals, Jay cutting into his steak and popping the bite of still bloody meat into his mouth.
“Uh, you alright over there, Dunc?” Evan asked. He waved his big hand in front of my face. “Macs for eating, not staring at.”
I shook my head, coming back to the moment.
“This is weird.”
Evan and Jay both cocked their heads in confusion as I said the words.
“What’s weird?” Jay asked.
“The breadcrumbs?” Evan guessed. “I mean, it’s not the healthiest thing to eat, but it tastes pretty damn good. You know, gives it some texture.” He followed this up by shoveling a massive forkful of the food into his mouth. “Oh man.” He rolled his eyes into the back of his head as he chewed. “So freaking good.”
“Not the breadcrumbs, dude,” I said. “This.” I swept my hand toward the mac and cheese. “The fact that this was Trish’s recipe. I mean, she was kind of a snobby pain in the ass, but she could make a mean mac and cheese. I just never would have expected she’d be a decent cook. Always preferred someone else do it for her.”
Evan swallowed down another enormous bite of mac and cheese. “Yeah. And Dad had to go and fuck it up by cheating on her. Not even married for a year.”
“The only thing surprising about that,” Jay replied, “is how you honestly think relationships last longer than it takes for one person to get bored of the other.”
In addition to being rough around the edges, Jay had what you might call a cynical outlook on love. Namely, that he didn’t think it was real. He and Evan and I had all gone through our fair share of women over the years, breaking a few hearts here and there. Jay’s MO had always been to end things when the woman “caught feelings,” as he liked to describe his take on love and romance.
“Just the way Dad’s always been,” I said. “Straight-shooting man, works hard, always goes to church, talks on and on about the importance of doing the right thing. And then he cheats on his wife with some twenty-three-year-old he met off a dating app? What the hell was he thinking?”
Another smirk from Jay. “Kind of cute that you think the image dad created for himself is anything close to what he’s really like.”.”
I reached over and gave him a shove. Jay only chuckled in response.
“And you guys know about Dream, right?”
Jay stopped eating, and so did Evan. Just the mention of her was enough to put us at attention.
“She’s back in town, you guys know,” Evan announced, a broad grin on his face.
“Of course, we know,” Jay replied. “We’re all in the same group text with her, remember?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Evan said. “But I want to know why. Not like we pry into each other’s personal lives, but she got kind of weird when I asked her about the reason why she was moving back.”
“Something with Adam,” I said. “And I’m guessing whatever it was, it wasn’t pretty.”
Jay shook his head, taking off his sunglasses and showing off the flash of anger in his eyes.
“If he did something to hurt her…” he trailed off. “I don’t even want to say what’s on my mind. Never liked that prick. Not a surprise that he’d do something shitty to one of the few good people in this world.”
My brothers and I, we all had a relationship with Dream that could best be described as complicated. We’d known her since we were kids, the four of us consistently being in one another’s lives in one way or another. Hell, we were even there for her when she lost her dad in a car accident when she was ten. After that happened, the guys and I made a silent pact with one another to look out for her, make sure we did whatever we could to keep the scary parts of life far away from her.
