The throbbing in his head had finally tapered off enough that he was beginning to feel like himself again. Plus, being at his parents’ house earlier had helped put his mind and body at ease. But something still gnawed at his subconscious. I did not see a ghost today. It was a figment of my imagination. Those words had rotated round and round like he was on the spinning teacups at Disney World his brothers used to force him to go on even though they knew it made him dizzy.
“Our mom swears people come all the way from Montgomery to attend our little church just to try her pies she serves after service.” A.J.’s brother Caleb, the youngest of the four brothers, announced to the table inside The Drunk Gator, one of only two bars in their town. They were short three men right now. Owen’s wife called earlier with the news that their son had come down with a virus, so he decided to fly home early. Jesse was outside on the phone. And the groom-to-be was somewhere else in the bar, preferring not to hang with them.
A.J. briefly peered around the bar and found Brian talking with a brunette by the jukebox, the sounds of Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road playing. Thank God the bartender upgraded the jukebox from when A.J. used to live there. Not that A.J. had anything against some of the greats, like Elvis.
“I might need to come all the way down from D.C. for her pies.” Wyatt, who served as team leader of Echo Team, leaned back on the chair next to A.J., laced his fingers behind his back, and stretched. “And don’t get me started on that catfish.”
“Nothing beats Mom’s cooking.” A.J. eyed his brother Beckett sitting across the narrow table from him as the bartender set down a tray of shot glasses and a bottle of bourbon.
“Maybe if you came home more often, you wouldn’t miss it so much.” Beckett’s statement wasn’t a surprise. He was constantly trying to convince A.J. to move back to Alabama.
“I came home at Christmas,” A.J. reminded him as the bartender filled their glasses.
“And for some crazy reason, McKenna seems to like you the most even though you’re not around.” It was his brother Caleb giving him a hard time now. “Always hanging on to your every word. Begging for stories.”
“I lead an interesting life, what can I say?” A.J. offered the usual answer he gave Caleb. The guy sounded like a broken record, reciting the same lines whenever they saw each other.
McKenna was Beckett’s eleven-year-old daughter and one of A.J.’s favorite people on the planet. A ray of sunshine. When Beckett became a single dad, he moved back home to be near family to help raise her.
A.J. knew his brother Shep would chime in, too. He wouldn’t be able to help himself. And in three, two, one.
“Nah. That’s not the case. McKenna probably likes A.J. the most because he’s not around all that often.” Shep, only two years younger than A.J., threw out his two cents on the matter.
“Every time I come home, I get grilled by y’all, and yet you wonder why I don’t make the trip more often,” A.J. teased, warily eying the shot of top-shelf bourbon, not sure if he should drink given the knot on his head and the ibuprofen. But they were at a bachelor party, and no one liked the sober guy at such an event.
“Such a city slicker.” Shep lifted his shot glass and examined it with scrutiny as if the bartender had poured a Cosmo or Sex on the Beach. “You lost whatever Bama you had in you spending all that time in New York City.”
“Oh, trust me, he didn’t. A.J. becomes as Southern as Southern can get when he’s in the South.” Chris served as Echo Three when the boys weren’t running around shooting paintballs in the woods. He was the youngest on Echo Team, but not by much. He’d be hitting thirty-seven this year. They were all getting up there in age.
“I’ve noticed,” Wyatt began. “I was fixin’ to do this, and I reckon y’all better do that.” Wyatt’s imitation of A.J.’s Alabama drawl had A.J. lightly elbowing him in the shoulder. Of course, A.J. always gave Wyatt hell about his British accent becoming thicker whenever they traveled outside the U.S., so maybe it was Wyatt’s turn to heckle him.
“Well, can you blame me when I’m around these knuckleheads?” A.J. lifted his shot glass in