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“You can’t hoot with the owls and sing with the birds I guess,” he retorts and I give him the middle finger in my brain at his jab that I was always the night owl, while he was getting up at four in the morning to hit the pool by the time he was thirteen.
“You’re working today?” I change the subject.
“Yep, we’re rolling out this new software on Monday, so I have to make sure the education team is prepared. I’m hoping to be out in a few hours though. This girl I’m seeing is having some birthday shit tonight at this bar.”
“When you say ‘seeing’ you mean…?” I ask for clarification, hoping he means he’s trying to settle down.
“I mean she does this thing with her tongue where—”
“Enough, I don’t need to hear it.”
“You should be hearing it man, it’s been two months. How’s your dick holding up?”
“Fine, thank you,” I grumble as I take a sip of my coffee and walk towards the front door to step outside. The last thing I want is for Stassia to overhear any part of this conversation.
“Have you…”
“No! Seth, not every man thinks with his dick. My wife’s been dead two months; it took me a full year to sleep with someone after Tessa.”
“Times are different, man. When T died, you didn’t have the kind of access to women that you do now. Get with it, join an app and you can have a woman at your door in thirty minutes if you play your cards right.” He pauses. “Well, words. You know what I mean.”
“You’re almost thirty-five, aren’t you ready to grow up yet?”
“Excuse the fuck out of you, old man. I’m almost thirty-four, and don’t turn down your nose at me because you don’t know how to pick up women. Didn’t both Tessa and Angela have to make the first move, you pussy?”
“No,” I bark.Well…maybe Angela because, again, I was still mourning my first wife. Fucker.
“Uh, yes. Tessa was like your lab partner or you tutored her or some shit. Anyway, didn’t she plant a kiss on you out of nowhere?”
I smile at the memory. “Why do you remember that?”
“Because you talked about her that summer the whole. fucking. time.” I’m silent and he chuckles in response. “Exactly. Now listen, I am about to go into a meeting but I was thinking, I could come visit soon? I know I didn’t get to stick around much after the funeral and I feel like shit over it.”
“Don’t. I appreciate thatyoucame at all,” I say, but I can hear the resentment in my voice implied toward my sister.
“Give Elle a break, Dom. She’s stressed the fuck out.”
“And I’m not? My wife diedagain.I have to deal with not only my feelings this time around but a very sensitive adolescent who just lost her mom.”
“How is Stassia anyway?”
I take a seat on the top stairs. “I think she’s okay. One day at a time. She’s sleeping right now.”
“Wait, she’s staying…with you still?”
“Yes?”Where else would she be?“This is her home.”
“I just figured she’d go stay with Angela’s parents. She was practically attached to her grandmother after the funeral.”
“They live kind of far and she wanted to be close to her friends and school when she went back.”
“Interesting.”
I know my brother; for him to say something is ‘interesting’ means he has a whole bunch of thoughts on the subject. “What?”
“That you have an eighteen-year-old that’s basically a younger, hotter version of your late wife living with you.”
“Watch your fucking mouth,” I bite out, but I’m not sure if I’m defending Angela in that moment or irritated that he referred to my stepdaughter as ‘hot,’ but I feel my blood boiling.
