How long it’s been since I’d been in touch. That I left and didn’t look back, and that didn’t mean people’s lives stopped just because I wasn’t a part of them anymore.
Then, it dawns on me. “Wait. Where are Phil and Tracie?”
Looking around, so much of the place was the same, but so many of the little touches of Tracie seem to be missing.
Homemade, floral curtains replaced with deep browns and slates.
HerLil’ Bit Saltysign and other cow and chicken themed accoutrement gone from around the top of the cabinets and above the stove.
The lingering smell of cigar smoke is also absent.
“Florida,” Gabe answers me.
His mom always talked about retiring to Florida, about getting away from the snow and into some sun. “I bet Tracie’s happy about that, but Phil’s miserable.”
He hates the sun. And outdoors. And people.
It’s where Gabe gets his grump, whereas Greyson’s perpetually positive personality comes from Tracie without a doubt.
“Oh, he lives to make Mom happy. I wouldn’t worry about him too much.” He stuffs his honeycomb ice cream in his mouth like he knows they’re happy together. Because it’s a basic truth. Those two have been undeniably in love since I was a child.
“And you got the house?” I ask Gabe, who’s staring into his peanut butter cookie pint.
“Bought them out a couple of years ago.”
It must be how they were able to afford the move. No one in Pinebrook is making big bucks, except for maybe the Lancasters.
“He updated the appliances and finished the basement. You’d like it.” Greyson points behind me, and I spin to the new, gleaming six-burner glass stove and double oven.
“Mom would be so envious of that piece of equipment.”
Gabe finally offers me a small smile. “She is.”
A grin blooms across my face again, my cheeks hurting as I laugh. “Because I bet she helped you pick it out, didn’t she?”
Mom’s good like that. The crinkle around his eyes tells me that I’ve guessed right.
I devour my pint of ice cream as the two of them bicker back and forth.
They look alike but so different: Gabe blonde, covered in tattoos, and a bad boy persona.
Greyson darker, scruffier, but the good old boy next door. They have the same mannerisms, like how they both stab out the center of their pint and scrape their way outward.
Yet, they behave so differently.
Quiet and reserved verses outgoing and charming.
Not that Gabe isn’t charming in his own way.
When he lets you see it.
They’ve both played such pivotal parts in my life growing up.
Big brothers.
Big…hot…brothers.
Men.
