Page 1 of My Brother’s Best Friend

1

JORDAN

“Watch where you put that thing, Jordy! You can’t just jam it in there, my hole’s not that big!”

I arched an eyebrow at my older brother. “Your hole?”

Levi rolled his eyes and gestured to the to-go coffee cup in his hands, which he’d just topped with one of those clear, domed lids. “My hole, this hole. What’s the difference?”

“The difference is that one of them makes it sound like you’re talking about coffee, and the other makes it sound like you’re talking about your asshole.”

“You knew what I meant.” Levi sighed. “Anyway, we don’t want to keep customers waiting. Just stick it in there and squirt, will you?”

“Are you trying to make it sound like you have a breeding kink?”

“Breeding?” He frowned. “What does that even—”

“Nevermind. It’s a gay thing.”

“A gay…breeding...thing? You do understand how pregnancy works, right? And that it generally doesn’t involve assholes?”

“Believe it or not, I’m not seven anymore. I do know where babies come from.”

I took the canister of whipped cream and angled the nozzle down into the lid, then pushed it to the side. And okay, fine, maybe I was a little annoyed, and maybe I should have been more careful, but I really think that canister was powered by jet fuel, because the next thing I knew, I’d filled up the entire dome and cream was erupting out of the top.

“Careful, careful! You’re trying to fill me with cream, not shellac me with the stuff.” Levi jumped back before the excess could land on his shoes. “Fill it with cream,” he amended before I could say anything.

“Sorry.” I grimaced. “I didn’t realize it was gonna do that.”

He laughed lightly. “It’s okay. I’m sure it’s weird to adjust to new equipment. And I should have warned you that the tip on that one is sensitive.”

With a smile, he turned back to hand the double-shot iced mocha to the customer who’d ordered it.

“Do you even hear yourself?” I asked under my breath, looking under the counter for a sponge to clean up the floor.

I knew my brother wasn’t gay, but seriously—had no one told him he was a walking, talking double-entendre? Maybe I should have come home sooner. Someone needed to keep the guy in line.

Or maybe I just wanted to feel like I had a purpose here. Like there was some reason for me to be back that didn’t involve my ex-boyfriend, Harvey, cheating on me, dumping me, and kicking me out of our apartment, leaving me with no other option but to come home and crash with my brother.

When I left the tiny island of Summersea, Georgia, at age eighteen, I swore I was never coming back. I was sick of living somewhere everybody knew not just my name, but my whole family, and all of our trauma. You name it, we’d dealt with it—addiction, abuse, suicide—and the island loved to gossip. I wanted nothing more than to disappear.

Art was a refuge for me—painting, in particular—and I’d gone to New York City with all those clichéd dreams of making it that I hadn’t realized were clichés at the time. Now, at age twenty-four, I was much more aware of how hard it was to find success in the art world.

Hell, forget success. It was hard to just scrape by.

With massive debt—and even more massive self-doubt, since it was nearly impossible to find galleries that wanted my work—I’d turned to any job that would help me make ends meet. Of course, a Bachelor of Fine Arts doesn’t qualify you for much, so I’d spent the past few years hopping between catering, serving, and slinging cappuccinos at coffee shops around the city.

I tried to keep painting, but would you believe that being stressed about money and depressed about your life choices isn’t actually a very conducive mental space for creating art? Every time I picked up a paintbrush, I felt like stabbing it through the canvas instead of making something beautiful.

Harvey had been the one bright spot in my life, and then—well, no need to dwell on that. No need to ruminate over how, two days ago, he’d told me he wanted to break up, then insisted on wrapping that conversation up in fifteen minutes because he had a date with his new boyfriend. No need to wallow over the fact that he’d brought that guy to our apartment that night, as if I didn’t still live there. No need to cringe, remembering how confused they’d looked when they’d stumbled in, groping each other, only to find me on the couch.

Oh, you’re still here? Like I was the one being weird.

God, what I wouldn’t give for someone to fill me with cream right now. Just stick it in there and squirt. I didn’t want romance, didn’t even need to know the guy’s name. I just wanted to feel desirable again.

Like it was my ex who was missing out, and not me.

It had taken one suitcase and two canvas grocery bags to pack up my life and come back to Summersea. I was trying to count my blessings. But with my nieces, Holly and Sam, asking me about my super cool and exciting life in New York, Levi rumbling about wanting to bash my ex’s head in, and customer after customer exclaiming that they knew I’d end up back on Summersea eventually, it was hard not to feel like I’d fucked up.