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Do the math.
Bud was four.
Nikki’s sister didn’t get preggo until the honeymoon.
Brad ending up in Nikki’s bed, on and off, had been going on for a long-ass time. I say it like that because there are always after-shocks whenever Brad comes around.
Then, he would leave.
Nikki had tried closing up the bedsheets to him, but he could charm and seduce her and say all the nice words to her to get those sheets back opened pretty much any time he deemed her worthy.
He’d hotfoot out, and Nikki would get a text from one of our other girls (we had a lot around town), and there’d be a picture of Brad curled around another girl.
They were back and forth so much, and it’d been going on for almost four years.
This wasn’t my drama, but I was her best friend, and I was pulling the best friend card and admitting only to myself that I was tired of the Brad-drama. Also, not shocked that he’d bring Bud around when he was hooking up with Nikki. How he got Bud into the house without Nikki seeing him before the bed-capades was something I also didn’t want to know all the details about because Nikki was all looking shocked at seeing her nephew naked.
And in her house.
“What’s up, Nadeem?”
I grimaced. “Don’t speak to me.”
Uncle Cream was the most real-life version of someone who reminded me of Billy Hargrove fromStranger Things.The difference was that Uncle Cream had straight hair, not curly hair. That was it. He could’ve been his twin, both physically and personality wise.
“Brad,” Nikki snapped, but my best friend wasn’t paying much attention to her recent lay. She was back to looking at me. Studying my bags. Studying the booze in my hand.
She noticed before, but got distracted. She was back to noticing and she was figuring it out.
My best friend was catching up here.
“Jay?” she asked.
Nope. That most definitely wasn’t a frog in my throat. And it hadn’t doubled in size when I nodded back.
“Yeah,” I rasped.
Another cringe from her, mixed with a pitying look. I hated the pitying look.
The frog just did a loud-assribbit.
I looked away, and shuffled back because I knew what was going to happen. She would herd Uncle Cream and Bud, no—she’d make sure Bud got clothes on first—and once they were gone, she’d take my whiskey from me. She’d go to the kitchen. She’d pull out some drink glasses, put in some of the nice cubed ice she always keeps on hand for me, and we’d pour ourselves a drink. After that, it’d either be a veg-out night, which I was now wondering how that phrase came about? Because we’d sit, talk, fill each other in, and we’d drink. Pizza would either get ordered, or we’d go the other way.
We’d drink. Talk. And decide we needed to go out.
It was Halloween, a night we both avoided because we were usually insulted by how humans viewed us, but… Jay happened.
