"Nathan! Thank God you're okay!" Louise's concerned voice rattled loudly through my phone and I winced, frantically rummaging through my exploding dresser drawer for shorts. 

It was too hot for pants and I was late for brunch.

"I'm so sorry, Louise," I paused, turning my phone onto speaker mode before setting it on the cherry-wood dresser. "My phone was dead or I would've called you. I spent the night at a...at a friend's house and time got away from me. I'll be there in fifteen minutes!"

Aha! Found them!

I clumsily hopped into a pair of khaki shorts, stumbling in the process and falling sideways into my wooden bed frame. I groaned at the impact.

"A friend, eh?" She teased, her tone suddenly playful and smiling.

"Don't want to hear it," I grumbled back before quickly ending the conversation.

    I pulled a navy blue short-sleeve shirt over my head, loosely shaking my curls back out after their brief constriction. Finding a seat on my bed, I pulled on a pair of socks  and my Chuck Taylor's. 

    As I brushed my teeth, I had a brush with genius and grabbed my new signature cologne, apparently: Vanilla Bourbon. I sprayed it over my stale, sticky body.

    I hope I don't still smell like alcohol... or weed...

    My movements since I'd woken up this afternoon had been incredibly purposeful, calculated and carried out quickly. 

    Anything to put me back where I belonged: with my family. Last night I didn't just draw a line in the sand with June; I bombed the sandstone bridge.

    I did what I had to.

    Clearly, I can't control myself around her.

    She was coke and I was the fresh shell of an addict, that first moment of pure adrenaline and euphoria meant to get me hooked and it had. She was in my gums.

    I spat into the sink.

    Static rattled through my silver KIA Soul's speakers on the short drive to Granny's Place, the locally controversial red-brick cafe in downtown Dolphin Coast. Gravel crunched under my tires. I didn't notice the lack of music on the radio until the engine cut off with the turn of my key, its paw-printed lanyard tickling the tops of my thighs. Sighing, I got out.

    Inside, the smell of coffee prickled on my nose hairs and I resisted the urge to flare my nostrils in response. I found Louise and Garrison at our usual table, with the classic red and white tablecloth and the folding menus which depicted a cartoon 'Grandma' in various sexually charged poses and scenes. Right above an unsavory image of a caked-up old lady licking a mayo-covered hotdog was the decades-old promise: 'Granny's Place: Never Leave Hungry.'

    I certainly never had.

    Garrison's amber eyes lit up when he saw me and he grinned, bouncing clumsily in his seat in anticipation as I walked over. I shook my head as I grinned at my eleven-year-old cousin, who was taking on more and more of Uncle Charlie's good looks with each passing year: bright eyes and a warm smile. He was a living, breathing piece of the man that we'd lost, yet entirely his own person. I loved him like a brother and a son.

    "I've got a few questions for you mister," Louise teased as I squeaked into the wooden chair. She stared at me, the whites of her eyes taking a peek as well, apparently hoping that I'd learned how to read minds this weekend.

    I raised my eyebrows at her, clenching my jaw slightly.

    Louise, I love you, but I wish that you'd mind your business this time.

    "I don't mind that you were late, and I don't mind that you reek of weed and clearly need a shower." She spoke slowly and Garrison looked back and forth between us, confused.

    "What I mind is that you haven't told your young, hip Aunt anything yet." Louise's voice fell into a joking whine and I laughed despite my frustrations.

    "Okay, Aunt May," I mocked her with a Spider-Man reference.

    Garrison liked that one.

    "She's the old Aunt May in the Tobey Maguire movies!" He dogpiled on, lopsided grin on his face and gripping the edge of the table with both hands. Louise smacked his shoulder playfully. 

    I held up my menu for her, pointing at a particularly lewd Grandma picture involving two watermelons, and nodded.

Garrison liked that one too and giggled into the straw of his soda.  Bubbling.

In actuality, Louise was far from an old lady. She didn't hit like an old lady, either. She smacked the menu from my hand, its filmy plastic cover flopping open onto the tablecloth. She shot me a look. A warning. 

    It was a reminder that she outranked me, despite our relative closeness in age: six years.

Charlie and Louise were a gangly pair of nineteen-year-olds when she took her first pregnancy test, those two little lines that cast a ripple across all of our lives.

Garrison and I had that in common.

Now, Louise was a beautiful, yet emotionally unavailable widow right at thirty. With her brown hair cascading down the sides of her face with artificial, but not superficial curls, it didn't surprise strangers when they learned that she was a hair stylist. 

"Nate, I'm seriously dying here. Was it a girl?" She tried again in a whisper-yell as appetizers came out: cornbread and biscuits with freshly-whipped butter. We thanked the waiter and he nodded before walking away.

"Does Nathan have a girlfriend?" Garrison asked bluntly as he spooned butter clumsily onto an irregular mound i the ceramic-plated biscuit.

I wish I could do that without everyone looking at me like I was crazy...

    "I don't have a girlfriend," I responded to him, but my eyes were back on Louise's.

She cocked an eyebrow at me as she chewed and swallowed a bite of cornbread, stopping to take a sip of Sweet Tea to help wash it down. I waited.

"I'm nosy! Who am I going to tell? I have two friends and they're both here," she pleaded.

 I looked back and forth between the pair.

    Garrison leaned in with a raised eyebrow, ready for the tea to spill. He tapped an impatient finger against his temple, where his skin was the color of freshly baked bread. A light brown that glowed with warmth. 

    "Before I start," I began and a smile appeared on Louise's face. "It's already over. I'm never seeing her again if I can avoid it- Which I think I can do."

    Louise nodded, waving a hand.

    "Better than nothing. Don't care. What happened? Keep it PG for the kid, obvi'," she rattled off in short sentences as she pulled open a steaming biscuit, burning her fingertips in the process. Garrison groaned.

    "I kissed her," I admitted, attempting to shrug off the growing heat in my face.

    "Aww, Nathan!" She exclaimed while Garrison made fake gagging noises to her left. 

    I'm twenty-four and they're treating me like I'm thirteen and just had my first kiss...

Humiliating.

"Why'd you end it?" Louise asked genuinely, now holding out an arm to silence her goofy son.

"She grew up in River Crest. She might still live there, actu-"

"Did you say River Crest? Is there any way she's...?" Louise trailed off awkwardly, trying to make sure that I hadn't been with my half-sibling last night without cluing Garrison in on the potential Maury-Show-level scandal.

"What's River Crest?" He asked, confused.

"A community where my birth dad and my half-brother live." I eyed Louise as I answered both of their questions and she nodded. "But that's a secret, okay?"

"Lame secret," Garrison grumbled and Louise and I grimaced. I felt a pang of guilt, realizing that it must seem strange to Garrison that my father was alive and well. Yet, I'd never met him and likely never would.

As far as my half-brother went, I hadn't put much thought into it and I had no plans to. I didn't even know the guy's name.

This is the best way to handle these things.

It always has been...

    I cleared my throat, shifting forward and lifting my butter knife to the creamy slabs melting beside the steaming rolls and slices.

The front door's jingle, a shotty cluster of tangled strings and Christmas bells from years past, clunked and ringed and I turned my head instinctively, expecting to see one of the regulars. Like Gus and Kathy Andrews. Or Lucy Otterland, the local sex shop owner. Rosemary, sometimes.

In their place was the sandspur in my heel, the woman I was going to have to figure out how to either avoid or resist this summer. Both options felt impossible, but they were my only hope.

I kissed a married woman last night.

June hadn't seen me yet and she stood awkwardly behind an older couple placing a to-go order, picking at her fingernails with a furrowed brow. She wore a tight red tank top, rolled at the front.

Seeing her again, especially under the bright yellow lighting of the restaurant's lobby, guilt and guilt alone kept me glued to my chair.   The couple in front of June thanked the hostess before finding a seat at a wooden bench by the door, where they held hands and talked to each other quietly. 

She wouldn't come over here if she saw me... Would she?

Watching her anxiously as she approached the hostess, holding my breath and hoping not to be spotted, I considered hiding, but ultimately decided that I'd seen enough movies to know that never worked.

Instead, I subconsciously pulled the 'Edward Cullen': stare longingly, pained.

    "Who's that?" Garrison asked loudly. Louise shushed him, but it was too late. 

June, talking to the hostess in the frilly pink apron overtop a black t-shirt and jeans, did a double take over the worker's shoulder, finding my eyes twice.

I needed to, but still I couldn't look away.

She was too sad, too beautiful. Along with the tank top, she'd changed into a large pair of gray sweatpants and she had them bunched at her waist, rolled in order to avoid falling to her ankles. Her silky locks were pulled into a loose bun and I wanted to kiss her pouty lips, promising to never hurt her again.

I felt a pang of self hatred.

My head shook absentmindedly as I watched her conversation with the hostess become increasingly awkward as June took slow, purposeful steps backwards, waving vaguely over her shoulder and shaking her head.

She's leaving.

And she did.

I didn't see her for a little while after that.