Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91864 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91864 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
We spent hours in the pool. Johnnie got out before Sean and I did. We tried to lounge on the same float, but it sunk or one of us would roll off. We laughed and tried again because that was the fun of it.
Afterward, Johnnie grilled chicken and the four of us ate dinner together. The conversation was kept steady the whole time. Sean’s family laughed more than any family I’d ever seen. I remembered laughing a lot with my parents and wondered if we would have continued it to this day. If we would have been like Sean’s family or maybe if they would have been here with us right now.
Evening beat down on us. Sean started a fire in their fire pit and we sat around it, talking about everything. It was peaceful…relaxing. The nerves from earlier were gone because it was impossible to be uncomfortable around Sean’s parents.
“What made you go into architecture?” Barbara asked.
A quick glance at Sean told me he tensed up at the question but I shook my head. I didn’t need him to protect me even though it was so damn ingrained into who he was.
“My father. He loved architecture. It was his dream. He’d had to drop out of college when my mom got pregnant with me. He never lost his love of it though. He used to read me books I didn’t understand and talk to me about buildings and how to put things together. I always knew I would accomplish his dream one day.”
Barbara reached over and squeezed my hand, and I smiled at her.
“But you love it,” Johnnie said. “I could hear it in your voice when you spoke about it. You fell in love with it like your father did.”
“Yes,” I replied. “It was the first thing I let myself love after I lost them.” I didn’t tell them that I thought his son might be the other one. I couldn’t tell Sean that either. I didn’t know how.
Sean wrapped his arm around my shoulders, and let it rest on the back of my chair. His fingers brushed across my skin in support.
“You remind me of Brady,” Barbara remarked.
“What?” I frowned and my pulse accelerated. Not because I didn’t like the comparison but because I didn’t understand it.
“Quietly noble,” she replied.
“Have you met me?” I teased. “I’m not quiet at anything I’m good at.”
Everyone laughed, and Sean squeezed my shoulder. “Yes, but that’s surface stuff. You keep the rest of it close to you,” Sean said. “You joke about things that don’t matter, but when it comes to the fact that you really are a good man with a big heart? The kind who would fight to make his father’s dream come true, those are the things you hide.”
I studied Sean, tried to see what he saw in me. I didn’t feel as though I did those things. I was cocky as hell and not everyone knew how to deal with it. “I think you guys are mistaking me for Sean. He wants to protect everyone he loves, and those he doesn’t even know.”
“He does. He got that from his brother,” Johnnie said. “They were a pair, the two of them. Big hearts, big egos, and hero complexes, the both of them.”
“See?” I told Sean. “You have a hero complex.”
“Remember when they went through that phase where they were obsessed with playing practical jokes on each other?” Barbara asked.
They launched into stories about Brady after that, Brady and Sean. I listened with rapt attention. Laughed. Held on to every word because it felt like it brought me into a part of Sean’s life I didn’t know.
He laughed and told stories too.
It was Johnnie who eventually said, “He would have liked you, Ethan. He would have been happy for the two of you.”
My chest swelled up and I wondered why I couldn’t have had this. Why my grandmother and I couldn’t have spoken about my parents for hours the way they talked about Brady. “I would have liked him too,” I replied because I knew I would have.
“And your parents…they would be real proud of you,” Barbara told me.
Sean leaned over and kissed my shoulder and I just sat there, hoping they were right.
Things wrapped up after that. We put the fire out and then said our good-byes. Barbara hugged and kissed me the same way she did Sean. Johnnie hugged me too.
I was quiet when we got back to the car. We were almost home when Sean asked, “You okay?”
I paused. “Yeah. I’m better than okay.” I wanted to tell him I felt like I had a family but again, I didn’t know how to make the words come out. They seemed to be locked in my chest. It was a whole lot easier to give him shit, joke about fucking him, or even to show him how I felt about him. The family thing took it to a different level.