“No.”
“You planning to tell her?”
“I should,” I sigh.
“Doesn’t sound like you’re going to.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yes, it is,”he snaps.“You either tell her, or you let her find out from someone else. And trust me, small towns talk. Someone’s gonna say something.”
“I don’t even know if she wants anything with me,” I bite out. “We haven’t even fucked. Is that a relationship if we haven’t?”
I picked the wrong person to ask. If I haven’t had the opportunity to form any relationships, he’s had the opposite situation. He’s formed too many and too quickly, screwing everything with a skirt. How he managed to keep this a secret from the women of the family is beyond me, but he’s very careful in his escapades.
“I mean.”He pauses.“I don’t know. I don’t think so. You gotta fuck to see if you are compatible. Right?”
Covering my face with my hand, I groan my regret of sharing any bits of my life with him. He’s probably more fucked up than I am.
“I gotta ask Mom if she dropped you on your head when you were a baby.”
“What? It’s not like you’re not doing it.”
Little does he know, I don’t do that. When I’m working, living in a trailer on jobsites, sometimes in the middle of nowhere where my crew, bears, and moose are the only things around, they go to towns for adventure—my crew, not the moose, though that might not be the case for Little Hope—while I stay behind with my book. Another habit I picked up along the way.
“Goodbye, Jethro.” I’m about to hang up when he stops me.
“Wait. I didn’t mean—”A sigh.“I didn’t mean to offend you. You just know how I am around women.”
“I know,” I sigh back. I wish I could say it’s not his fault, but maybe it partially is.
“What is she like?”he asks after a pause.
I don’t reply right away, and he doesn’t fill the space. He waits.
When I finally speak, it’s rough. “She’s kind. Real kind. To everyone. She wouldn’t hurt a fly.” My voice breaks at the end.
“Shit.”
“Shit is right.”
“Maybe it’s good though.”
I blink. “Good?”
“It means she’s different. Maybe she’s what you need to finally—”he takes a deep breath to continue,“move on.”
“I’ve moved on.”
“Have you?”His voice is quiet. Careful. Guilty.
“What do you want to hear?”
A pause on the other end of the line tells me just how uncomfortable he is with this whole conversation. Maybe even more than me.
When the silence is too stretched even for us, he cackles.“Well, I want to hear about the famous rooster.”
“Junie told you?”
