17
“It’s not like it used to be,” Seb said, after dinner. They were on the patio, staring out over the dark yard. Seb had a whiskey in his hand. Martin sat on a cold patio chair, nursing another vodka soda.
“It went better than I thought it would.” Oliver sipped his own rocks glass.
“That was better?” Martin asked.
The brothers chuckled. The dark sound made Martin shiver.
The dinner reminded him of his first lecture at Mount Garner.Don’t look them in the eye, they said.They’ll know if you’re nervous. Don’t let them see you sweat. They smell blood in the water.
His students smelled his blood from the moment he’d left his office, two floors up from the chaos of the lecture hall. He wasn’t supposed to be teaching that semester, but he’d been asked to stand in for a week to cover for a colleague with pneumonia. The freshman students, already mid-semester and bored, took one look at him, and before he even opened his mouth, he knew it was a lost cause.
The difference between his first lecture and dinner with the Stevensons was that, at Mount Garner, he had fought to be seen and heard over the roar of the crowd, whereas at the dinner, sitting next to Seb, Martin desperately wished to vanish.
Everyone started shouting at once. Philip redirected his fury at Oliver. Parker pointed fingers and hurled insults, sometimes at Jason, sometimes at Seb. Gillian and Julian tried to break up Philip and Oliver, and Parker and everyone, and Nora kept asking if someone could pass the wine.
“I noticed Mom bought new dishes,” Seb said.
“I think we’ve broken so many of the other ones over the years that she didn’t have enough to serve all nine of us.” Oliver pulled a cigarette pack out from his pocket.
“How does that fit with your holistic lifestyle?” Seb asked.
“I’m going to quit.”
“How did the dishes get broken?” Martin was pretty sure he knew the answer.
“You should have let me handle it.” Seb glared at Oliver.
“Handle what?” Oliver said through clenched lips as he lit the cigarette. “I really thought he might kill you this time.”
“Nah. We’ve said everything we were ever going to really say to each other years ago.”
Martin had seen it coming. He didn’t even know what it was, but he’d felt the shift, like the quiet moment before rain started. One minute, they’d been talking about dinner and Oliver’s ex-boyfriend, and then something in Seb’s face changed. His pale skin went taught around his eyes and his jaw. The color rose on his cheeks as he leaned into the table.
And then Seb walked into the no-man’s land of a family dinner, armed with nothing but a tilt of his head and words aimed to wound.
“Did you really sleep with Parker’s husband?” Martin asked.
Oliver laughed around an inhale of his cigarette.
“No.” Seb leaned in to kiss Martin, quick and hard. Everything about him was kinetic in the watery glow of the floodlights that lined the yard.
“Then why—”
“Because Seb can’t even spell subtlety,” Oliver said. “It’s the silent b. Gets him every time.”
Seb punched him in the arm, making Oliver yelp and his whiskey slosh over the edge of his glass.
“First blood.” Seb grinned. “Doesn’t matter what it’s about. If you draw first blood in a confrontation, you start with the upper hand.”
“But Parker—” Martin tried to say.
“Knows it’s not true. Jason could only get straighter if I shoved a stick up his ass.” Seb snorted. “I really thought she’d have divorced him by now, though.”
“She’s got the kids. You know Parker.” Oliver tossed back the last of his drink. “She wears the pants in that relationship. The pants, the boxers, and the combat boots. She’ll leave when she’s good and ready.”
They laughed, clapping each other on the back. Oliver’s hair was darker against his skin on the shadowy patio, while Seb’s nearly glowed. But at night, all cats were gray, and they stood shoulder to shoulder. Sadness slithered through Martin as he watched them commiserate. What must growing up together have been like for them to congratulate each other on getting through a meal without a broken dish and discussing the end of their sister’s marriage like they’d run out of small talk?
