“Best friend?” Ezra whispers, touching his heart. “Barbara really said that?”
“Fuck if I know,” Pete answers. “It wasn’t my dream.”
“Language,” Momma scolds Pete from behind me. I look over to find her leaning on the doorframe, watching us. I didn’t even hear her come back down the stairs. “False alarm, thankfully.” Her eyes focus on Little Dick. “Ezra, is it?”
Ezra nods. “Yes, ma’am.”
She walks across the room and kneels in front of him, taking his hand in hers. “You are a very special young man.”
“I am?”
“You are.” She kisses her finger and presses it to the tip of his nose the way she used to do with us after she told us our bedtime story. “Gosh. She told me how adorable you are, but I didn’t realize just how cute you’d really be. Every night, all she did was brag about what a sweet boy you were, and how you deserved the world. She says I’m supposed to give it to you, but I told her the world ain’t mine to give.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about in the slightest,” Ezra says. “But please, do go on. What else did Babs say?”
“Well, she said you had really pretty eyes.” Momma stares into Ezra’s eyes. “She was right on the money. She also said you had the biggest heart she’s ever seen. ‘Course, I’m not really sure how or why she saw your heart, but she said it like it was true, and she hasn’t lied to me yet.”
“I have a very large heart,” Ezra says proudly.
“It’s just a shame it’s filled with so much hate,” Jaden says.
“Eat shit and die, trash.”
Jaden’s smile stretches ear to ear. “God, I like you.”
Ezra cocks an eyebrow. “The feeling isn’t mutual. Maybe one day it will be, but after forcing us to watch you perform anilingus like our living room is the Cannes Film Festival, I think we can safely say today is not that day.”
“Maybe tomorrow?” Jaden asks hopefully.
“’Kay.” He turns his focus back to Momma. “Continue.”
“Well,” Momma says. “She led us right to you, and right to our Johnny. Barbara told me you haven’t had the best life, and that your parents weren’t very much in the way of parents at all.” She squeezes his knee. “Was she telling the truth about what they did? How they kicked you out when you were just a baby.”
“I was thirteen,” he says, and his voice is smaller than it should be, because he doesn’t have anything to be embarrassed about. He’s done nothing wrong.
Momma looks at me, then back at Ez. “She says you’ve recently met the love of your life. Is that true too?”
“She fucking said what?” Ezra growls.
I’m surprised when Momma don’t scold him for his language the way she always does with me and my brothers. Hell, she made Bubba eat a bar of homemade soap last time we went to visit, after he made the poor decision to announce, “A merry fuckin’ Christmas to all, and to all, a good cockfight.”
“There’s a lady present, Ez,” I warn him. “She’ll make you pull a switch from the tree out front and use it to tan your hide. I’ve seen her do it before, and she’s sure as hell sure to do it again.”
Momma shakes her head, but she doesn’t look away from Ezra. “Don’t listen to him. You talk however you want, baby. I don’t mind.”
“You don’t mind?” I ask, probably louder than I should considering we’re in such close quarters. “You don’t mind?”
“Thank you, Ms. Boyd,” Ezra says, cheesing at me. Asshole.
“You didn’t answer the question,” Momma says.
“Which question?”
“Are you falling in love?”
“I’m—She can’t …” Ez closes his eyes and huffs out a breath. “Dammit, Babs.”
He ain’t admitting it, but he also ain’t denying it. I know this thing between us is new, but the longer I spend with him, the more natural it feels, because Ezra is mine. Mine and Bubba’s. I think a big part of him knows that we’re his too.
