4
Spencer
I’m woken by two bundles of joy bounding down the stairs and bouncing onto me. There are definitely pros and cons to crashing at my sister’s house after a night out.
“Hey, Uncle Spence,” my niece, Tabitha, says.
She’s the oldest of the two kids—nine going on fifty.
“Wake up! Wake up!” Robbie shrieks.
He’s five, and don’t I know it.
“I’m awake, buddy. I’m awake.” It would be impossible to sleep with these two clambering all over me.
“Sorry,” my sister, Emily, says as she comes down the stairs after them.
They’re all still wearing pyjamas, so I guess it really is early.
“It’s fine. I was awake anyway.” Obviously, I wasn’t, but I’m not going to make my sister feel bad.
I have an open invitation to crash here whenever I’m partying at Hamish’s. Her house is much closer, and there isn’t a train back to mine past midnight. I get a cab here, crash on the sofa, take a shower, and eat whatever breakfast she provides me with, and then head home at a sensible time of day. Or if I happen to be on shift, I go straight to the hospital.
“Good night?” she asks as the kids put the TV on full blast.
Saturday-morning cartoons. Oh, how I miss actually thinking they were the most amazing thing ever. They’re all created digitally now rather than the hand-drawn cartoons Emily and I grew up with. Fuck, that makes us sound old, but it actually is amazing how much technology has moved on.
“Turn it off,” Emily says before giving me an apologetic look.
“It’s okay. Let them watch.”
I wriggle out of the sleeping bag she’d left out for me and follow her through to the kitchen in my trousers. Yes, I slept in them.
“Good night?” she repeats now that we’re alone.
She checks the fridge and starts pulling out things to make pancakes. I knew there was a reason I liked sleeping here.
“Yes, it was.”
“Did you meet anyone?”
She doesn’t know that I go to kink parties. There are some things I don’t need to share with my sister, including the fact that I like guys to call me Daddy. She thinks I go to singles’ meet-ups.
“Yeah, I met a cute guy.”
“Oh?” She weighs out the flour.
“It was nothing. A once-and-done thing. We didn’t even exchange numbers.”
Now that I’m awake and looking back on my encounter with Corey, I wish we had. He was great to talk to and definitely fun to fuck.
“You had sex?” She measures the milk out and adds it to the flour before cracking a couple of eggs into the jug.
“Yes. I’m a big boy now, Em. I’m allowed to have sex.”
She gives me a withering look. “You’re also in your mid-thirties and still only having hook-ups.”
“Ouch, don’t remind me. I’ll be cashing my pension in soon.”
