Chapter Nine—Pete

Last night was tough. What started off as a quiet night ended up being two bachelor parties and a bachelorette party, too. Stan was sure was the sly one. I looked at my phone; we got in at two, and I was tired and slightly hungover—no more than slightly because I think as the morning started, I started drinking one too many times.

“Pete, I cooked lunch, seeing as you skipped breakfast.” I heard a knock on the door, a voice which I thought could be Stan. But there was no way my selfish brother would go all out for someone, apart from himself and especially not for me, when he spent most of the time telling me how much he hated me. And if he didn’t, then he just treated me that way.

“Pete!”

He repeated over and over again, so I decided to give up and confess I was in my room.

“Yeah, I’m up. Now that you’re shouting my name in my ear.”

He pulled away once I pointed out the obvious. He never came in my room, like ever. He would send a text rather than tear himself away from his beloved computer. It was like he’d changed so much in a month, I didn’t know what had changed him, I should be happy that he was coming out of his shell, one he’d ran into and I thought he would never come out of it.

“Are you okay?” I asked, trying to focus, but finding myself squinting and not seeing him properly.

“Sure, I just want to do something nice. I mean, can’t a brother do something nice for another.”

It was then that I noticed as he drew the curtains, he wasn’t wearing a dirty shirt or slacks. He hardly changed, and his sense of hygiene went out of the window the moment we were all dismissed from the marines. We were ex-SEALs. Stan had been classed as being unstable, for fucking up one too many times. I was the one who’d lost his rag one too many times and discharged on PTSD. That was part of the reason I loved construction; it offered a relief, something I never found on the field and certainly not from being a businessman.

I was trying not to be suspicious, but it was clear Stan was up to something. The question was, what?

Shit, I had to give him the benefit of doubt. Maybe he just decided to do something nice for me, and I should appreciate it. But then my thoughts raced to when he was a kid. He was always up to something, claiming he’d help me do my homework from the goodness of his heart, when really he’d taken my date to the prom, pretending he was me. I found out, and I couldn’t tell her the truth. The problem is that if people found out we’d switched places, they would think we did it all the time.

Something we’d never done, but no one would believe us if we told them. The trust would be completely lost, something we never wanted to happen.

I had to shower and get myself ready to find out what it was, but for now, the only thing on my mind was getting a shower and finding out what he could have cooked. But maybe I should stop being so suspicious. Then again, ever since we were kids, Stan was always up to something.

***

“Wow, sleepyhead, it’s about time you woke up,” Rick said as he patted me on the back as I headed into our open-plan kitchen. Feeling like a zombie, even the cold shower hadn’t done the trick. I was exhausted and I hated lying to Stan, because the last thing I felt like doing was eating.

“Yeah, Stan said that he cooked lunch.”

Rick laughed. “I’m a dad, so I can’t afford to be sleeping all afternoon. I got up when the twins got up.”

I knew he wasn’t having a dig; he was being honest. He’d given up his single lifestyle from the moment he’d taken on the responsibility of being a dad. I was an uncle, so I could sleep in, and I wasn’t going to apologize for it, not now, not ever.

“So, you only slept like three hours. Shit! I don’t have that type of energy anymore,” I yawned a little too loud, wondering if I could just turn around and go back to bed.

He chuckled. “Don’t even think about it.” I forgot that Rick knew me better than I did myself.

“Please, you’re not that old. Remember, we’re all the same age and besides, I wanted to see how Katie was doing.”

Shit, maybe that sounded weird. Why the hell would I want to know how Katie was doing?

I walked to the breakfast table, and my next question, the one about Katie shifted to what was on the table.

“Pancakes, bacon, toast, scrambled eggs,” I said as my mouth watered and my eyes darted across the table.

“Yeah, breakfast for lunch.”

We both looked at each other and said, “He’s up to something!”

Stan walked up to the table and left freshly squeezed orange juice from the juicer he proudly stated he would never use.

“Well, I thought seeing as you guys hadn’t had breakfast, you would like lunch,” Stan smiled and Rick and I met eyes for a second, then we returned Stan’s smile. We were both thinking the same thing. Once Stan left to go to his room, A.K.A, his office, then we would figure out what he was up to.

He was talking about how he used a recipe that he found on Youtube when Rick commented on him making pancakes. That wasn’t the only thing he must have looked up everything, including how to make bacon. Lately, he’d been cooking all the time. It was just weird.

Before Katie started, Stan never entered the kitchen unless it was to get his take out. I wasn’t going to say anything about it because then he would think that we were making fun of him, as he’d said we did a thousand times. I had to learn to bite my tongue. Rick told me they had another outburst earlier, and we’d already lost one family member to suicide—the worst would be to lose another one.

“It all looks great.”

“Thanks, Pete. I hope you enjoy it. I’m going to my room. I ate already with Katie.”

We’d spent weeks finding the perfect nanny, thinking it was Bianca, and since Katie came, it was as if she’d turned our lives around. No more did we even think or even care about Bianca. It was weird, because when Stan told us, it really worried us, because we’d spent so long looking for the right person to look after the twins.

Stan left as Rick and I filled our plates. I didn’t get why he wanted to eat with Katie alone. I felt a wave of jealously about the idea of the two of them together. I had to get it out of my mind. We hired her as a nanny, and nothing more.

I woke up, I thought about her.

I went to bed, I did the same.

I’d been working so hard just to get her off my mind.

Our conversation changed to Stan’s sudden love of YouTube and culinary skills, and we laughed at the idea of him having yet another passion. As long as it didn’t involve sitting in front of the computer all day, it was all good. Not only for him, but for us.