was still grinning. “Let’s find a table.”
Edison came and found us around midnight. He slipped right onto his dad’s lap—his new favorite place to be, even at home. Harley never said a thing even though the kid was close to his size. Edison had brought a water bottle and drank from it, his throat bobbing.
“It’s hot in here,” he announced as he capped the bottle and set it down.
“Damn right it is.” Harley nibbled Edison’s neck, making him squirm.
“Apparently, public indecency is a rule we don’t care about?” I asked without heat. I loved watching them together. Their growing comfort level was refreshing and ten kinds of hot.
They both rolled their eyes at my comment. It was uncanny how alike they could be. I laughed.
Edison told us about his night, the things he was still learning, and the people he interacted with, sharing the usual job grumbles every working person faced. He was animated and smiled the whole time. At one point, Harley whispered something in his ear, and Edison got that mischievous grin on his face that spelled trouble. He nodded and slipped off Harley’s lap, moving around the table and planting himself on mine.
He leaned back against me and kissed my cheek.
“I wasn’t jealous,” I told him, wrapping my arms around his middle.
“I know.”
I held him close, hooking my chin over his shoulder as I watched my brother across the table. I didn’t know how we’d gotten where we were, but I loved every second of it. Harley was happy, I was happy, and Edison was happy.
Edison checked the time on his phone and sighed. “I’ve gotta get back on the floor.”
“You gonna catch shit for being all over the two of us?” Harley asked.
Edison just shrugged. “Don’t care. I’ll see you at home later.”
He kissed us both right on the mouth, sharing a slip of tongue, then bopped away, hips swaying with a new level of sass he hadn’t had before getting this job.
“It’s a good atmosphere for him,” Harley said, sipping his beer and scanning the room. “I sometimes worry he might get tired of hanging out with us old farts all the time.”
“He’ll keep us young.”
Harley laughed. “Maybe. Not gonna lie, this past week has been a test of stamina. Forty’s a bitch.”
“I’m older than you.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
We both chuckled and watched Edison work while we drank through a few more beers. Harley dragged me out onto the dance floor once he knew I was too buzzed to argue, and we spent a few songs grinding together, kissing, and groping like we were as young as the crowd around us. It was freeing.
At one point, Harley swung behind me, sucking my neck, dragging his erection along the crack of my ass with his hands up my shirt, tweaking my nipples. I caught sight of Edison watching from near the bar. He grinned ear to ear, and there wasn’t a trace of the jealousy I’d once seen on his face.
I tipped my head back against Harley’s shoulder and shouted over the music. “Let’s get out of here.”
Hand in hand, we found Edison to say goodbye. He kissed us both and winked, informing us he’d be home in a while and he expected us to save some energy for him.
“I think he was calling us old,” Harley groused as we waited for our Uber outside the club.
“We need to show him he’s wrong.”
Harley offered his fist to bump, and we laughed all the way home. But us older farts decided to wait for Edison before getting frisky since we both knew there was no way in hell we’d keep up if we wore ourselves out before he got home.
Come mid-April, Harley still hadn’t put his house up for sale, although he hadn’t spent a single night there since we’d made our arrangement official. So far as anyone in the family knew, Edison was living with me. It wasn’t suspicious in itself, but Vanya was starting to suspect something was up. She hadn’t come out and asked, but the last time I’d seen her, she’d looked at me like she had a million questions on the tip of her tongue.
“She wants us over for dinner,” Harley announced one Saturday morning when all three of us were lounging on the couch in the living room; Edison asleep between us with his legs on my lap and his head on Harley’s. He’d grumbled about us waking him up too early, ate his breakfast, then crashed again while we watched Saturday morning