Sex Says(37)

“Can people stop saying shit?” my dad called from the recliner in the living room. “I missed my morning constitutional, and I’m feeling inadequate.”

I smiled, but my sister was too wrapped up in her husband’s dirty dealings to reflect on our dad’s sense of humor.

“Cam!” she railed. “You know better than to do anything my brother ever says. Jesus. We had this talk the night we started dating!”

I raised my eyebrows, impressed. “I was a first-date topic? Geez, sis. I’ve never felt so loved.”

“Shut up, Reed.”

I didn’t do what she said. Shocking, I know.

“Don’t worry, Laura, it was no big deal.”

“Yeah, right. You’re such a bullshitter. I’m amazed anything clean ever comes out of your mouth with all of the dirty lies you’re always spewing.”

“Laura,” Cameron started, his voice a consoling version of its normal deep timbre in an effort to head off the green-eyed monster, but she was already on a bender.

See, my sister Laura was the hysterical kind of woman. Pure energy and pure heart, she was always trying to bring the rest of us derelicts up to her level. Unfortunately for her, some of us just weren’t meant to live life on the highest road, and as a result, she’d never reach the goal she so valiantly strove for.

“What’d you do, Cam? I swear to all that’s holy it better not be anything that’s gonna make me tell this baby its father is a no-good criminal.”

That was the other thing about Laura. She was already a tornado, but this embarrassingly pregnant version of her was hell on wheels. Just a few months from her due date, and I was convinced that given the right angle, her baby could eat my soul.

“The little bambino is going to be fine. All he did was get me an address.”

“Reed!” Cam yelled at the same time Laura shrieked, “On the police database?”

I waved at them both, like maybe cooling them down physically would aid in their emotional response. “He only did it because he didn’t want you to know that he had an incident with a transvestite prostitute in Amsterdam.”

“Fucking shit, Reed!” Cam yelled. I glanced to my dad, but with his eyes now glued to the TV, he didn’t even flinch.

“I’m doing you a favor,” I explained, but at the same time, Laura leveled him with a look so hostile I wondered if I was lying. At this point, even I didn’t know.

“What incident?” Laura gritted out as Cam talked himself out of taking out his gun and shooting me on the spot. The flexed jaw and wild eyes were dead giveaways that he was treading water right on the edge.

“Nothing even happened,” I told her casually, picking up a carrot and dipping it into the bowl of ranch dressing before popping it in my mouth. “She tried to pick him up. I honestly don’t know why he’s been so hell-bent on keeping it a secret all of these years.”

My sister’s icy exterior started to thaw, but Cam wasn’t having any of it.

“Maybe because it’s fucking embarrassing.”

I waved him off. “It’s not. It’s natural and funny, and now I can’t ever force you to do anything you don’t want by holding it over your head.”

The deep cloud of his anger dissipated like the San Francisco fog as what I said rang true. Still, just like my momma always said, it kind of seemed like his face froze like that.

“See,” I said. “I did you a favor.”

He didn’t look like he thought so.

But he didn’t look like a man in the throes of a murder either, so beggars can’t be choosers.

“Uh-oh,” my mom muttered as she swept into the room with a freshly washed stack of dish towels. “What did Reed do now?”

I smiled at her frankness. My family as a whole was traditional in almost every sense of the word, but my mom was the kind of woman who didn’t pull any punches. Actually, my sister was almost a perfect reflection of her—if she were constantly hopped up on sugar and heroin.

“Same shit, different day,” Cameron muttered, pulling my dad’s attention from the other room again.

“I told you it isn’t the same shit. I haven’t been able to force a raft into the river for goddamn anything today.”

“Turn off the game and come in here, Jimmy,” my mom called, completely unfazed by my father’s TMI, as I laughed and Laura and Cam cracked smiles.

My dad was the kind of guy who embarrassed you when you were younger by coming out to meet your friends in his tighty-whitey underwear and farting during the school Christmas pageant. He did the same kind of stuff now that we were adults, but it was a whole hell of a lot easier to appreciate it for its comedic value. Though, if I’m honest, I always appreciated it—but I never cared what anyone else thought.