Page 54 of For Pleasure Or Worse

"Jesus Christ," I gasped, my heart dropping into my stomach. My mother shot backward a step from creeping over me and I hid the screen of my phone against my chest. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Is that your brother?” she asked, flipping a dish towel over her shoulder nonchalantly. “I worry about him. He hasn't brought a woman home in years. Your father and I were starting to think maybe he swung the other way."

"How would you know that he hasn’t had a woman over?"

"The basement ceiling is thin, honey."

I frowned. "Well, I wouldn't take anyone home with you two listening to my every move either."

Mom chuffed. "Like we didn't see the purple ding-a-ling you were shoving up your ass."

"Okay, all right, enough." The recliner slammed closed as I hopped up and paced away. “The point is that the man needs some privacy.” I let myself out the sliding door into the backyard, more stressed than I needed to be, and dying for the day my parents packed up their shit and left my house and my wife and me to shove whatever the fuck we wanted up our asses in peace.

Me

Final count: Echo, no, Ang, no, Wink, yes

Angelo

I want a code name

Pike

You don't choose your call sign, your call sign chooses you

Echo

In due time

Me

Everyone booked a flight for Vegas?

Pike

Aye aye, Cap

Me

This fucking wedding shit is stressing me out

After the awkward dinner at Palm Beach for John’s birthday, Tally’s excitement for the wedding was noticeably withered. When Mom tried to talk to her about the details she was worn down by the responsibility of it. Her parents stole that girlish wonder away and replaced it with worry about every last choice that she made, and even my constant reassurance was barely scratching the surface. I didn’t know how to fix it.

I ran a hand down my face, scratching at the shadow of a beard growing. Tally would want me to be clean-shaven for the big day, but I'd let it do its thing for over a week at that point because I hadn't had the time.

The yard looked like shit. Grass that was usually golfing green short was threatening to tickle my ankles, and there was a hive of shitty wasps making a home under the gutter pipe at the corner of the roof. I'd need to find time to do these things among everything else going on and the longer that mental list grew, the harder the knot in my stomach tightened. It was festering into dangerous outburst territory. Not a thing was in my control anymore.

My phone rang in my hand and Pike's name lit up the screen. I looked back at the sliding door and walked away from it, out into the yard and toward the tall wooden fence at the edge of the property. "What's up, brother?"

There was a beating of distant helicopter wings behind his voice, cueing me in that he was at work at the airbase in Colorado. He had a new job teaching military protocol to fresh pilots in training, something I was proud of him for pursuing despite the setbacks with TechOps I was facing on account of it.

After a crash that nearly ended his career and several lives, mine included, I wasn’t sure he would ever have the confidence to fly again.

"What's stressing you out?" Pike asked.

“You got all day?"

He laughed that burly, infectious Frankie laugh I hadn’t heard in so long. “Mom and Dad?"

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