Page 13 of Hot Chicken (Sunday Brothers #6)
CHAPTER SIX
WEBB
The worst part about hosting a secret baby-announcement-cookout for the bunch of weirdos who had all, at one time or another, called Sunday farmhouse home wasn’t the food prep or the tidying.
It wasn’t the chaos or the noise, which were basically family traditions.
It definitely wasn’t that my siblings and their partners felt relaxed and comfortable enough to kick off their shoes, fetch their own drinks, and flop on our couch.
It wasn’t even that I had to try to be sociable, when what I’d really wanted to do after a day in the orchard was bring my husband upstairs and continue making up for the week of sex I’d denied us.
It was that my uncle didn’t trust me to man my own damn grill.
“Back up, firebug,” Drew said, hip-checking me out of the way and snatching my tongs from my hand. “You’re not burning another batch of drumsticks on my watch.”
“That happened one time!” I protested.
“At least twice that I recall.” Jack—my now-former best friend—popped open a beer and took a seat next to Hawk on the porch stairs.
“More like half a dozen,” my traitor sister, Emma, said from her perch on the porch railing, daring to sound aggrieved.
“Face it, Webb, you’re kind of a repeat offender.” Gage looked up from his phone with a pitying glance. “Drew’s taking the tongs for your own good.”
I narrowed my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest. “You know, that reminds me, Gage, I have the most amazing thing to show you over by the barn. Come see!”
Gage started to rise, but Knox leaned over and put a proprietary hand on his thigh, keeping Gage beside him on the porch swing.
“Don’t fall for it, baby,” Knox said mildly.
“The ‘amazing’ thing Webb wants to show you is the cow pasture. He’s going to pretend he can understand what the cows are saying and tell you he’s uncovered their plots. ” Knox paused before adding, “Again.”
“Wait, really?” Gage’s jaw dropped. “That wasn’t funny the first time, Webb. The coming bovine uprising is no laughing matter.”
“But hearing Webb teach you how to speak cow was hilarious,” Hawk said.
“I think cows speak French anyway,” Porter said, apropos of nothing, from his rocking chair by the steps. “At least the evil, plotty ones do.”
Gage and I exchanged a confused look. Gage shrugged and made a drinking motion with his hand, but I shook my head. Porter hadn’t been drinking, but he had been acting weird ever since he and Theo had brought Aiden and Bear home.
“Is there, ah, any particular reason for that, Porter?” Jack wondered.
“Hmm? Oh. No.” Porter darted a glance through the screen door, where his boyfriend was helping Marco and Luke prep appetizers. He rocked his chair harder. “No reason at all.”
“Anyone hungry for appetizers?” Luke called. “Marco’s outdone himself in here.”
“Sick, bruh! I’m starving !” Aiden ran in from the yard, where he and Bear were playing fetch, sensitive as usual to any call for food. “Uncle Porter and Uncle Theo only have seedy wheat bread at their house, and that’s barely even real bread.”
“Didn’t stop you from eating half a loaf of it at breakfast, traitor!” Porter called as Aiden ran past.
Chuckling, I clapped a hand on Porter’s shoulder as we followed Aiden inside.
While the others helped themselves to Marco’s bacon-wrapped dates, hummus with za’atar, and a tray of miniature goat cheese tarts, I caught my husband, wrapped an arm around his waist, and pulled him into the corner.
Luke’s smile was extra radiant today. “You ready for this?” he whispered.
To my surprise, I really was… and that was all thanks to Luke.
I’d known for years that our relationship was different from any I’d ever had and that with him, a burden shared truly was a burden halved.
Somewhere in my blind panic, though, I’d let myself forget that, and I was fucking grateful that my patient, tenacious husband had reminded me.
It took a special person to let you know when you were being an asshole but make you feel loved and understood while doing it.
“We’ll make the announcement at dinner,” I confirmed. “Five bucks says Drew cries.”
Luke laughed. “I don’t take sucker bets, baby.”
Aiden sat on the kitchen floor with the dog’s head in his lap and a plate of food in one hand, recounting every detail of his sleepover to Emma and Knox. “So I was Aragorn, and Uncle Porter was the mountain with the ghosts?—”
“ You will not enter here ,” Porter called in a deep voice from the counter where he’d been conscripted into helping Marco whip up a batch of his famous potato salad. “ You are not of the line of Isildur .”
“—and Uncle Theo was Gandalf… well, until he had to go do an emergency Zoom meeting. And then he put his cape on Bear like this.” Aiden waved his free hand around the dog’s head in a dramatic reenactment of a cape flourish.
“I think you mean I bestowed my mantle upon Bear, son of Barkmir,” Theo said as he sank into a chair at the table with a fresh beer. “For he is wise beyond his kibble and brave beyond his breed.”
Aiden chortled. “Yeah, that. And then Uncle Porter made hot fudge, and Uncle Theo eventually got off Zoom after, like, six hours ?—”
“More like one hour, kiddo,” Theo protested, laughing.
“More like three.” Porter gave the potato salad an exceptionally energetic stir that made Marco tsk and push him aside with a sharp “We’re not beating eggs here, Porter.”
“And then we all turned on the movie and ate Sunday sundaes, and Uncle Theo helped me work on my Aragorn voice.” Aiden cleared his throat and sat up straight, one hand resting dramatically on Bear’s head like a battle-worn general addressing his troops.
In a low, raspy voice, he declared, “ Fight for me, and I will hold your bones sacred! ”
Emma and Knox clapped politely.
“Wow,” Luke said, clearly impressed. “Excellent.”
Aiden added in his regular voice, “And then Bear sneezed, which kind of ruined the vibe, but it was still awesome, and we stayed up pretty much all night.”
“Not quite,” Porter and Theo corrected in unison. They shared a look, but Porter quickly turned away to grab something from the fridge .
“See what you’re missing, Em?” Theo teased. “Not too late to transfer from UVM to Hannabury and take my Shakespeare seminar.”
“Oooh, hard pass,” Emma said. “You grade too hard.”
“Moi?” Theo pressed a hand to his chest. “Lies and calumny. I’m extremely fair.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Porter had to take your class twice ’cause he failed the first time, and he’s the love of your life.”
“So he says,” Porter agreed in a voice so aggressively cheerful that Luke and I exchanged a worried look.
Before I could really think about it, though, Drew and Marco’s voices rose from outside.
“I’m just saying you don’t need to keep every concert tee you’ve ever sweated through,” Marco snapped. “That’s what downsizing’s all about . ”
“But those shirts might be worth something someday!” Drew argued, gesturing wildly with the grill tongs. “I’m going to pass them to my nephews and niece.”
“Look out, kids,” Marco said dryly. “Twenty years from now, one of you might inherit a size XXL Indigo Girls concert T-shirt Drew bought in Hampton Beach in 1997, complete with marinara dribbles down the front from a mozzarella stick he ate in 2001. Balance your retirement portfolios accordingly.”
Everyone laughed, even Drew.
Marco kissed Drew’s cheek, soft and sure. It was still strange seeing them open like that after years of keeping their relationship under wraps, but it was good. Really good. As Luke might have said, a reminder that amazing things happened when you kept the faith.
“It’s not the shirts that are important,” Marco said gently. “The experiences you had, the memories we’ve made… that’s what matters. And I want us to make more memories. Together. That’s why we’re doing this, remember? So we can travel more. ”
“I know.” Drew gave him an affectionate look, then grunted. “But stop throwing out my stuff before I’ve had a chance to go through it, okay? It’s a process .”
Marco had the grace to look guilty. “Alright,” he agreed. “No more.”
“That’ll be us someday.” Jack leaned back in his chair, slung his arm around Hawk, who was seated beside him, and nodded toward Drew and Marco. “We’ll be an old married couple, still passionately in love.”
“Yeah.” Hawk leaned into Jack and sighed. Then he added, “But you better not get any ideas about downsizing my throw blankets.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Jack assured him, tilting his chair back.
Gage and Knox exchanged a look, and when Knox nodded, Gage grinned. “So, ah… turns out Knox and I will be an old married couple someday, too.” He held up his hand, displaying the band on his finger. “I made an honest man of your brother… whatever that expression means.”
Jack set his chair down with a thud. “Hell yeah! Congratulations, you two!”
A round of loud back-slapping and congratulatory hugs ensued, deafening even for someone used to Sunday family chaos.
“Hang on. You two have been together forever,” Porter teased. “Surely you’ve already had a wedding?—”
Gage punched Porter in the shoulder. “I think I’d remember, jerk.”
“Okay, okay!” Laughing, Porter held up his hands. “I must’ve dreamed it up.”
“Yeah?” Knox punched Porter’s other shoulder, less gently. “Stop dreaming of my fiancé, Porter.”
While everyone was laughing, I nudged Luke and nodded toward the hallway. He tapped Aiden on the shoulder, and the three of us slipped into my home office .
“Bruh, come on, we’re missing the fun,” Aiden complained, but when Luke grabbed an envelope off my desk, clutched it in his hand, and gave him a nervous smile, he wrinkled his nose. “What’s going on?”
“Aiden.” Luke licked his lips. “Being your bonus parent is pretty much the best thing that ever happened to me, right up there with marrying your dad. You know that, right?”
“Well, yeah,” Aiden said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.