Page 18 of Last Man Standing

Enjoy your vacation to nowhere. Send me a postcard if you get a chance. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to research leg-relocation factories. This is serious business. Nothing but the best for my baby’s baby.

Snickering, I lock my phone and toss it onto my book. Lying flat on my stomach on top of my bed, I ignore the deep “motherfucker” booming from outside, then the solid thump of what may be a fist hitting… a cow. Instead, I close my eyes and luxuriate in the peace I experience inside Ryan Nichols’ old bedroom. I sleep in his bed, and when I’m bored, I stare at the walls he once stared at. For every moment my head rests on his old pillow, I swear he’s somewhere nearby, chuckling under his breath and watching me the way men watch women they’re fond of.

We’ve never even met, and he’s dead now, but I feel that ‘she’s so silly, but we love her anyway’ look when the door is closed and it’s just us. The ‘yeah, she’s strange, but we make do’ look.

He’s not my brother. He was Nova’s. But for as long as I’m here, in this home, in this room, I feel like maybe I’ve been granted quasi-little sister status.

Or maybe I’m just tired and a tad crazy.

Groaning, I turn over and let my arms dangle off the sides of the bed, while simultaneously, a booming “you fucker!” bounces through the house.

Every time Lincoln shouts, I twitch. Every time he grunts, I jump.

I can’t go out there to see what they’re doing, since that would make it seem like I care.

I don’t.

And yet…

At Lincoln’s “try that again, bitch!” I surge off my bed and stride across the room. Snatching up a hair elastic, I whip my hair off the back of my neck before it sends me certifiably insane, then moving through the door, I stalk along the hall, into the kitchen, and stop on the threshold of the back door.

Twenty feet from the bottom of the porch stairs, my brother and his friend brawl. Blood stains the snow just enough to make my stomach tumble, but not so much that anyone seems to be dying. Sweat makes their hair stand up, and moisture from the snow soaks through their clothes.

Lincoln is smaller than that other one, but then again, that other one is unusually, unnaturally large, which makes the comparison useless.

I wonder if Sebastion Jameson’s pecker is horrendously small after all that juice he injected to get so tall?

Shame. Since a younger, happier, less bitter version of me might’ve considered a fact-finding mission time well spent.

Using his weight against him, Lincoln surges free of Sebastion’s grip, bounds to his feet, and then he sweeps in fast and takes Sebastion’s legs out from beneath him. He hits the ground with an earth-trembling boom, but heavy doesn’t mean incapable, and Sebastion isn’t willing to go down alone, so he grabs onto my brother and wraps his arm around his neck, trapping the duo in a position some could, without context, consider a little romantic.

Ya know, if you’re a guy who likes guys.

“What the hell are you two doing?” I stomp across the porch and fold my arms to combat the cold.

Like a couple of meerkats, they peek this way and show off bloodied noses, bleeding brows, and dumb grins.

“Aw, man,” Nova grumbles from her rocking chair to my left. “I was enjoying the show. Why would you stop them?”

“Because they’re bleeding!” I thrust my hand in their direction and growl when Sebastion throws a sneaky jab right into my brother’s ribs. “You realize you look stupid, right?”

“He was teaching me something.” Lincoln rolls away from Sebastion and stops on his knees, panting toward the muddied snow. “We were busy.”

“Teaching you what? How to take a beating?”

Chuckling, Sebastion merely flops to the ground with his arms wide, exactly how I flopped onto my bed minutes ago.

“I wasn’t taking a beating!” Lincoln bites back. “Dude’s bigger than a Transformer, and I was holding my own.”

“Nah, you weren’t,” Sebastion teases. “You were my bottom. Again.”

“I was doing fine!” Linc pushes off the ground and stumbles three steps to the right. Because his friend scrambled his brains! Straightening himself out and wandering this way, he shows off a goofy grin as it curls higher to the side. “Nova, baby. I wasn’t losing, was I?”

“I mean…” Her cheeks blaze a fiery red. “I dunno. Do it again so I can be sure.”

“Those brain cells don’t regenerate,” I snarl. “You’re gonna be sad when you’re sixty and it feels like you’re conversing with a potato.”

“You have no faith.” Lincoln trudges up the porch steps and grabs me rougher than any other man would be allowed. Dragging me closer, he presses a sweaty, messy, bloody kiss to my brow. “Stop being so cranky.”