US seasons. It wasn’t something I was proud of. Some men wanted to clear their browser history because of porn they’d watched, I wanted to clear my Hulu history because of Love Island.
Me: I was just showing them around town.
The bubbles indicating Billy was typing immediately popped up.
Billy: I didn’t know that you were offering tours to newcomers now. Good to know.
My neck crawled with irritation. He was getting way too much enjoyment from this.
Billy: I should put up a flyer on the bulletin board. You can give land tours and Jimmy’s got the seas.
I put my phone back in my pocket. This conversation was over.
When they were growing up, both my brothers had been a little scared of me. They would talk shit to each other but never dared to do it to me. I’d been off-limits. As adults, that reverence or respect or fear had gone right out the window. I wasn’t sure when it had happened but neither of them had it.
There was a knock at the door, and I opened it to find Lincoln Byers on the other side holding two large pizzas. I grabbed them and then handed the kid a twenty-dollar tip. I knew that he was saving up for a car before heading off to college next year, and he was a good kid.
“Thanks, Mr. Comfort.”
“I told you. Hank.” I hated when people called me Mr. Comfort because it reminded me of my old man. And I prided myself on being nothing like him.
“You got company?” Linc asked, glancing over my shoulder.
I always ordered two larges because I kept leftovers in the fridge for Jimmy. My baby brother, who I guess was a man now that he was engaged, had a hollow leg. At a little over six foot, he was the runt of the litter, but he put down more food than Billy and me combined. When he was a teenager, I’d taken him to the doctor convinced he had a parasite because he was eating us out of house and home, but the doctor assured me it was just a growth spurt and it would level out. That was ten years ago, he hadn’t grown an inch in at least six years and from what I saw he wasn’t slowing down.
One day his bad eating habits were going to catch up with him when his metabolism slowed down and he’d have to adjust his intake. But until that day it was easier keeping the fridge stocked with leftovers so I didn’t have to hear him whining about being hungry.
“No,” I answered the question the delivery boy had never asked before in the two years I’d been getting the same order.
“Oh, my mom said she saw you down on the dock having ice cream with someone. Said she was real pretty.” Linc leaned to the side, craning his neck.
I shut the door.
With two large pizzas in hand I headed back to the kitchen. My shoulders tightened with tension as I faced the very real possibility that my excursion with Skylar would, in fact, end up on the front page. People were talking. Obviously. And it wasn’t just Linc’s mom. Billy knew about the ice cream and the trolley ride and I sure as hell hadn’t told him. I doubted Mrs. Byers had been the one to fill him in considering he’d been at the bar and she considered liquor “the devil’s elixir” and wouldn’t step foot in Southern Comfort for fear of being struck by lightning.
Maybe I should tell Skylar that people were talking, I thought as I found myself once again looking out the back window toward Old Man Thompson’s place.
This time, I didn’t find Skylar and Luna dancing and laughing. When I looked out, I saw Skyler fanning smoke out of the kitchen window.
Alarm gripped me. I had no idea what the electrical was like in that house. It was an old house and hadn’t been lived in for years. I rushed out onto the back porch and I saw her open her back door carrying what looked like the charred remains of a roast or maybe a meatloaf. It was hard to tell from this distance.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t edible. Their dinner was obviously ruined. And as luck would have it, I’d ordered enough for a bottomless pit of a brother.
Without giving it a second thought, I went inside and grabbed the two large boxes off the kitchen table. As I walked through the field between our houses,