I grinned. “Okay, I would have had to retaliate a tickle attack, but I’m guessing you had a rough go as a kid, so I’ll give you a pass this time.”
Chase lifted his arms from his sides. “Go ahead. I’m not ticklish.”
I raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t lower his arms even when I drew nearer. I was half expecting some sort of trick the second I touched him, and I wasn’t exactly put off by the idea. With one last glance at his face, I poked his ribs.
Nothing.
I poked again. Added a few wriggling fingers.
More nothing.
“Oh, come on!” I said, bringing my other hand into the mix and tickling him in a way that would have had me squealing like a pig. Chase barely moved. “Nothing?” I shifted my attack all over his torso.
“Nothing that makes me want to laugh, but keep trying, maybe—”
I pulled my hands back, feeling my cheeks flush. “You’re not ticklish anywhere? Not even the back of your knees?”
He eyed my legs. “Areyouticklish on the back of your knees?”
I stepped behind a box, hiding that part of my body from view. “I’m ticklish everywhere. When we were little, my sister used to sit on me and pin my arms down and then tickle me until I cried. Hey, that’s not funny!” But Chase was already laughing.
“And what did you do in response?”
“I used to pour warm water on her bed while she slept. She still thinks she was a bed wetter up through seventh grade.”
He laughed harder, supporting his weight on a box that was labeled Chase and Brandon’s Video Games. My laughter tapered off at the reminder of my brother. These were his things too. All around me were pieces of his childhood, memories only Chase could tell me about if I could ignore the wave of guilt that crested inside me each time I used him that way.
“You said you and Brandon grew up more like brothers than cousins. Didn’t you torment each other as kids?”
“I would put hot sauce in his pop, or there was this one time he wrote a note on the back of my math homework declaring my love for my fifty-five-year-old teacher.”
“He did?” I couldn’t help smiling at the small glimpse into my brother’s younger years.
“Yeah, but he ended up confessing to me on the way to school and helped me black the whole thing out with magic marker before I turned it in.”
My smile grew. He was tenderhearted. I liked knowing that about Brandon.
“But we never inflicted long-running psychological damage on each other. You never told your sister?”
“About the bed-wetting? I’m waiting for the night before she gets married.”
“Girls are evil.”
“Yeah, well, remember that next time you think about tickling me.”
Chase ran a hand over his closely cropped hair. “Not much of a threat. But you can tell me not to tickle you again and I won’t.”
So fast, I said, “Don’t tickle me again.”
He half inclined his head. “Done.”
I edged out from behind the box, overly hesitating in my movement toward him, even though I believed him. “And you could apologize for the first time.”
He considered me. “You had it coming.”
“Mom jokes are not the same as tickle torturing. Not that it was a mom joke so much as ayoujoke.”
“I wouldn’t call what I did to you torture.”
