Why can’t Crane make a decent cup of coffee? We drink it every fucking day; it's not rocket science.
He slurps on his coffee beside me, and I shoot him a look.
“The fuck’s wrong with you, Crane?”
Crane rolls his head to the side, lowering his sunglasses to glare at me with sleepy eyes.
“My dad’s a prick. My mom’s obsessive. I guess I was destined to be a cunt.”
Despite myself, I snort with laughter, indicating the coffee cup.
“This tastes like fucking tar.”
“Language, Kai,” Mom scolds from behind me, picking up my hoodie from the rattan chairs beside the grill. “Clean up your shit, would you?”
Such a fucking hypocrite.
“Sorry, Ma.”
Mom shakes her head, gathering the beer cans from last night's bonding session between Crane and me.
We’ve been friends since the first day of senior high when I caught the football he’d failed to catch, and it must’ve been his scowl that wooed me into being his best friend because it sure as fuck wasn’t his manners.
He’d called me a cunt—and he had me.
“Crane, do you even have a home?” Mom sighs, but her eyes soften as they always do with him.
I swear she sees him as her own child.
“Well, I do, but we’re out of coffee,” Crane answers with a wink, lifting his mug.
“So you’re here for the coffee?”
Crane pauses, picking up a bowl from beside him.
“You also have Lucky Charms.”
He tilts the bowl to the side, allowing the milk to pool away from his Lucky Charms, and scoops them into his mouth.
“I’ll stop buying those then,” Mom teases, glancing up at the upper level of the house. “Did you see your sister last night?”
“Yup.”
I offer no further explanation, and she studies the two of us intently.
“Boys?”
Crane hides behind his cereal bowl, and I groan inwardly.
My sister issonaughty it’s ridiculous, constantly sneaking out to parties despite my parents reminding her she is in her final year and needs to get her head down.
“Was she outagain?”
I shrug, not wanting to be that dick.
Sierra may be my little sister, but I don’t snitch.
“Your dad will go mad,” Mom groans, her hands on her hips. “She promised she would study for that damn test. Biology, wasn’t it?”
