“Jesus, fine. Won’t bring it up again.” Carter rolls his eyes and joins me on the front porch, placing the box he’s carrying on top of mine. “You sure did accumulate a lot of shit in only a year while living in Tampa.”
“Kiss my ass. You’re just allergic to manual labor.”
The front screen door creaks open and slams shut.
“Boys. Language,” Mama McIntyre scolds, handing us glasses filled to the brim with sweet iced tea. I drain mine in two seconds and set the glass on the top rail of the porch balustrade.
Carter smiles, his dark brown eyes crinkling. “Sorry, Mama Mac.”
I swear she blushes. Carter has that effect on most women. Half Haitian, half Puerto Rican, and a hundred percent flirt, Carter could swoon the panties off any woman he met. And did. Until he met his match with Christy, his fiancée.
Carter and I have known each other since the sixth grade. He’s been one of my best friends since the day I beat up Toby Durham for pushing Carter into a locker at school. I have a tendency to use my fists rather than my words. The school-appointed therapist said I had anger issues. No shit, lady. Growing up in foster care my entire life, being passed from one family to the next, would make anyone angry. Feeling unwanted and unloved. Always asking yourself, “What’s so wrong with me that nobody wants me?”
Not all the families I lived with were bad. The elderly couple I stayed with in Asheville for a couple of years were really nice. But my one true saving grace was the McIntyres. My other best friend Bennett’s family. Bennett is the third side of my and Carter’s ride-or-die triangle of brotherhood. The three of us grew up together, played baseball together, even went to the same university and lived in the same dorm together. Every good memory in the shitstorm I call my life involves the two of them.
Other than the time I was in Asheville, I basically resided at the McIntyre’s house. Had my own room too. Becca McIntyre loved me like her own. When I aged out of the system, I moved in permanently to their house. It was home. The McIntyres were my family. Always had been. From the time I was a teenager, the townsfolk in Dearborne called me Mason McIntyre. I never corrected them. The surname Yancy written on my birth certificate held no significance to me other than as a reminder of the mother who didn’t want me, and the father who walked away before I was even born.
I’ve always considered Dearborne my home, just like I consider the McIntyres my family. When I was offered the coaching position a few months ago to head the baseball program at my high school alma mater, I eagerly accepted, then immediately made an offer on this two-bedroom bungalow when Mama Mac told me it was up for sale. It was a house I was familiar with since it was down the block from the McIntyre’s. Bennett and I passed it a million times on bike rides, on our way to the park, or when we took the shortcut through Mr. Hanson’s backyard to get to Carter’s house.
“You need some potted flowers. A little pop of color. I’ll pick some stuff up at the garden center later. You also need to go to the grocery store.” Mama Mac takes a seat on the porch bench swing and fans herself with her hand.
The roof of the veranda shields us from the intensity of the punishing July sun, but not from the pervasive humidity that chokes the air. North Carolina in the summertime can be a sweltering cesspool of misery.
“You left enough pre-prepared meals in the fridge to last me a month,” I remind her.
She huffs at me. “Essentials, Mason. Milk, bread, butter, fresh produce.”
“I can get that stuff at home,” I tease. The woman lives to feed me.
Carter plops down next to her on the swing, his long legs extending out several feet.
“Whose house are we watching the game next Saturday?”
Bennett is the only one of us to go into the majors after college and currently plays for the Houston Lone Stars. Carter and I love baseball, but we never lived and breathed it like Bennett. I didn’t want that transient life anyway. Professional baseball players live out of their suitcase for the majority of the year, and I’d been shuffled and moved around enough in my life to know that wasn’t what I wanted for my future. I wanted to set down roots. Have a semblance of permanency. A foundation for a future I could build upon.
Picking up the topmost cardboard box, I reply, “We can do it here. I want to try out my new wide-screen and surround sound. I’ll call Douglass and set up a Zoom watch party.”
My best ‘girl’ friend, Douglass, lives in Woodspire, Texas with her husband, Jordan, and his sister, Harper. Harper is Bennett’s wife; she’s also a Dearborne native and went to school with the guys and me. It’s true what they say about six degrees of separation.
When my phone vibrates in my back pocket, I toe the screened door open with my foot and walk inside the house, carefully depositing the box marked ‘dishes’ on the quartz countertop in the kitchen.
Digging my phone out, I click accept on the video call. Douglass’s gorgeous, freckled face comes into view.
“Hey, baby girl.”
“Tell me a joke.”
I met Douglass through Harper while at CU. It was an instant friendship. An instant connection. Kindred spirits. We were both damaged. Both broken. Douglass was the calm to my chaos,and I was the light she needed to guide her out of the darkness. Over time, our friendship turned physical. A ‘friends with benefits’ kind of thing, even though I despise using that figure of speech. We were just two people seeking comfort in the person we trusted most not to hurt us. When I met Aria, Douglass and I switched back to being just good friends.
“Why are men like cars?”
“Why?” she asks, playing along.
“They pull out before they see if someone else is coming.”
Her burst of laughter is music to my ears. “As you can clearly hear, my husband doesn’t have that particular automotive problem.”
“I’m taking that as a compliment,” Jordan says in the background, trying to calm their screaming two-month-old.
