“I’m trying to make you feel better!”

“I wasn’t feeling badly. I know your father has an issue with you and me. He’ll come around. I don’t need thoughts of you and Hank in my head. Jesus, Indy.”

Hank walked up. “You should know, you have an audience.”

I peeked around Lee and saw everyone quickly turning their heads away.

Great.

Hank threw his arm casually around my shoulders, like he’d done a million times before. Except this time, Lee’s eyes narrowed, at me.

“I need a beer,” I said, kind of desperately, and I left.

By the time I settled in beside Kitty Sue, I was into my third Fat Tire beer and had eaten a burger and a goodly amount of macaroni salad and Kitty Sue’s oriental slaw. I’d worn a pair of cut-offs made from a pair of old army-green pants and a black tank top with a thin design of red roses laced with gray and white barbed wire that snaked up my waist, across my torso, over my shoulder and down my back. It was too hot for cowboy boots and anyway, boots looked ridiculous with shorts (and I’d tried that look on numerous occasions) so I’d worn a pair of black thick-soled flip flops. My cut-offs were already feeling tight at the waistband and I hadn’t even had brownies or pecan pie yet.

I’d successfully avoided Lee since our little discussion. This was not hard, I’d had a decade of successfully avoiding Lee at family gatherings.

I turned to Kitty Sue and surprised myself by answering honestly, “I’m fine. Lee’s fine. Lee’s more fine than me. I’m having troubles adjusting. Lee seems pretty sure of himself. Lee seems pretty sure of everything.”

This, I realized, was true about Lee always. I’d never met someone as confident in my life. Well, maybe Hank, but Hank’s confidence was quiet and assured. And there was Lee’s best friend, Eddie, of course. But Eddie was like Lee’s twin, separated at birth, cut from the same cloth. Lee’s confidence, and Eddie’s, wasn’t like Hank’s, it was cocky and assertive.

“And you aren’t sure?” Kitty Sue asked.

I looked at her and thought maybe I should have lied. It was too late now.

“Nope. He scares me,” I admitted.

She nodded. “Yep, he’s pretty dang scary.”

I stared. My God, the woman was talking about her son.

“You agree?”

She looked at Lee then back at me. “Honey, that boy drives me to distraction. It’s like he’s not of my loins. I don’t even know where he came from. If Ally hadn’t been the exact replica of Lee, personality-wise, except female, I would have wondered if there was a mix-up at the hospital.”

I kept staring. Kitty Sue kept talking.

“Hank’s just like his Dad, smart, cautious, controlled, taking only calculated risks. I’m sure Lee calculates his risks but I think he allows for a much larger margin for error and counts on… I don’t know what he counts on to get him out of whatever scrapes he gets into.”

I couldn’t stop staring, she kept talking and everything that came out of her mouth was like a verbal car accident. If she was trying to convince me to stick with her son, she should have tried a different tact.

“He does… you know?” Kitty Sue said.

I realized she was asking me a question so I shook my head that no, I didn’t know.

“He gets out of every scrape, always did and always did it on his own. Though it’ll take some kind of woman to live a life like that, knowing what he’s like, knowing the risks he takes.”

Her hand went to my knee and she squeezed it.

“Not anyone here would think less of you if you aren’t that woman. I’m telling you because it’s true. We all love you both and we’ll always love you both, no matter what happens between you.” She stopped, sighed and continued. “Anyway, I don’t even know if that kind of woman exists. I’m his mother, I’ve lived with him surviving scrapes that would make your hair stand on end and I worry about him every day, he scares the hell out of me.”

I didn’t want my hair standing on end, that was true. It didn’t sound like a good look.

I also didn’t want to think of any other woman being the kind of woman who blithely accepted Lee’s Death Cheating Margin of Error and therefore being the one he came home to every night. And lastly, I didn’t want the family not thinking less of me because I threw over Lee because I was a sissy. I was no sissy. Lee may be scary but not that scary. I could out-margin-of-error-acceptance any bitch that came along.

“I’m gonna get the brownies,” I told Kitty Sue.

She patted my knee. I got up and went straight to Lee.

He was sitting in a lawn chair with his legs stretched out in front of him, Hank, Malcolm and Ally sitting with him. He watched me cross the lawn and didn’t move a muscle.

“Can I talk to you?” I asked.

He didn’t answer but got up. He followed me through the sliding glass door and into the kitchen. I slid the door shut behind us and turned to him.

“Are you mad at me?” I asked.

He crossed his arms on his chest. He didn’t answer me but I guessed that was a yes.

I tried to cute my way out of it and flashed him a tilty-head smile.

“What’ll it take for you to get un-mad at me?”

He didn’t answer.

Okay, that didn’t work.

I sighed and threw up my hands. “It was never Hank, it would never be Hank. Hank is not even a possibility.”

“For Christ’s sake, stop talking about Hank,” he exploded, taking my hand and pulling me deeper into the house and out of eyesight and earshot of everyone in the backyard.

“What is it then?” I asked his back when he stopped in the living room.

“Think about it,” he answered after he turned.

“I don’t want to think about it, if I knew what it was, I’d already be explaining it or apologizing for it. You’re gonna have to tell me.”

“I’m not tellin’ you.”

“Oh for f**k’s sake!” I yelled. “How can I make things better if I don’t even know what I did wrong?”

“Forget about it. I’m not angry with you anymore.”

“Yes you are,” I countered.

“No,” he said in his scary voice, “I’m not.”

“Boy, are you moody. You’re the most moody guy I’ve ever met.”

“If you really want to make things better, you could start by not talkin’ about all the men of your acquaintance. That would help.”