Page 8 of That Time I Kissed My Brother’s Best Friend

But mine was already broken.

Five years later, I stand in my bedroom, and my stomach does backflips remembering. Not much has changed since those days of solitary confinement. Not my comforter or my Nick Cage pillow. Pictures from Homecoming and Prom are taped along my mirror. I’d gone to both dances with my best friends. Molly, Claire, and Emma. Two corsages still sit in a jewelry dish. They’re both dried up and dusty now. When I pick the carnation up to sniff it, the petals crumble.

Sliding open my nightstand drawer, I pull out a pristine copy ofTwilight.The rest of my family hated all thingsTwilight, so I knew they’d never open that book. Tucked inside the pages is a picture of Beau Slater. A candid of him in his baseball uniform after our team won the league championship. That’s right. A girl doesn’t get to be in charge of the school yearbook without gaining access to photographs that never see the light of day. Beau was the pitcher for the Abieville Lancers. Brady played first base. Beau’s grinning at someone off camera. Probably my stupid brother. Beau looks so happy in the picture. Too bad someone drew devil horns and buck teeth on his face. In Sharpie.

KGS.

Kasey Graham’s Sharpie.

“Kasey! Are you home?” Auntie Mae out calls to me. She must’ve been the one banging around in the kitchen. Not Brady and Beau preparing to water-balloon me again. I slip the picture of Beau back intoTwilight, then shove the book back into the nightstand. My permanent hatred is safe and sound again. A secret between Bella, Edward, and me.

As I enter the kitchen, the scent of cinnamon almost bowls me over. Every Christmas, my mom keeps sticks of it simmering on the stove. Of course she’d do it even in July. Auntie Mae’s bent over the bottom shelf of the fridge now, her rear end straining the seams of her shorts. There’s an American flag emblazoned across the seat, which must be some kind of crime against fashion, if not the nation.

As she straightens and turns, she shrieks. “Ack!” Her cheeks turn red like the puff of hair on her head. All the Bradford sisters, and most of their kids, have hair that’s some shade of red, but Auntie Mae wins the gold medal of poodle cuts. “You surprised me,” she gasps. “I almost dropped the rack of ribs on the linoleum.”

My shoulders creep up. “Sorry, Auntie Mae.”

“Well. No harm, no foul.” With a huff and a grunt, she sets the ribs in a pan on the counter. Then she turns back to me. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Kasey. We’ve sure been missing you around here.”

“I miss everyone, too, Auntie Mae. So much.”

“Let me rinse off my hands so we can hug. I don’t want to get beef juice all over you.”

“Yeah.” I grin. “I don’t want that either.”

She runs her hands under the faucet then dries them on Mom’s Frosty the Snowman dishtowel. “Now get on over here.” She opens her arms wide and pulls me into her not-unsubstantial bosom. Auntie Mae smells more like nutmeg than beef juice, and I try to let myself relax. Maybe if I stay busy making potato salad and snickerdoodles, I’ll be able to stop thinking about Beau.

After an epic hug, my aunt gets to work prepping the ribs, and I get to work peeling potatoes. Our sink is a big porcelain basin on a butcher block island in the center of the kitchen. This means from where I’m standing, I can see the entire room. I’m elbow deep in peel when my mother comes barreling around the corner. “Ah! There you are, Kasey.”

“Here I am. Right where you told me to be. Peeling potatoes.”

My mother turns to Auntie Mae. “How are the ribs coming along?”

“I basted them up, and they’re in the oven now. I was about to head to The Shop to get the corn. I wanted the ears to be as fresh as possible.”

“Thanks, Mae,” my mom says, and the two of them exchange glances.

“Don’t worry,” Auntie Mae says. “I’ll get all the cobs they have.” It’s like they’ve got an unspoken language between them. I always wished I had a sister who knew what I was trying to say without words.

“I’ll only be gone about a half hour,” my aunt says.

“Don’t worry,” I snort. “I’ll still be here peeling potatoes. I might be peeling for the rest of my life.”

As soon as Auntie Mae’s out the back door, Mom joins me at the sink. She fills an enormous pot with water and sets it on the counter beside her. “Sorry for dropping that bomb earlier about Beau Slater being in town. I thought you knew.”

“Why would I know?” My heart pounds, but I just keep peeling at a furious pace. “I couldn’t care less, I was just surprised. I thought Beau was some globetrotting hero with a camera, off saving humanity or something.” I shrug. “Like Superman or Gandhi.”

My mother sucks in a breath. “Superman’s not real, Kasey. And as for Gandhi…” She lowers her voice. “He’s passed.”

“I was kidding, Mom. You get jokes, right?”

She huffs out a breath. “My daughter. The standup comedian.”

That’s right. I’m still not a doctor, Mother.

She starts picking up the peeled potatoes and cutting them up into quarters. Once they’re cut, she drops them in the pot. “Anyway, you’re partly right,” she says. “According to Betty Slater, Beau’s been taking pictures all around the world. She says he donates a lot of the proceeds to charities. One is for food banks, I think. And clean drinking water. That kind of thing. I suppose heispretty heroic, now that you mention it.”

“Did I mention he was heroic?” I sniff. “Hmm. Whatever. Good for Beau.”

---