Chapter 8: Brent

I arrived home pretty late. The guys had wanted to hang out after our shift. The only thing I had waiting for me was preparing for class tomorrow. I could get up early and do it. I’d forgotten all about Jenny as I headed into the living room and noticed her sitting there, staring at the screen. It wasn’t on.

“What are you doing?”

She shrugged. “Everyone’s gone to bed. It’s pretty late.”

Maybe in her world, but in mine, ten wasn’t exactly late. Maybe she’d lived like a fairytale princess and going to bed at this hour was way past her bedtime.

“You’ve eaten?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, so I’m not hungry. Do you want me to make you something?”

I chuckled at the idea of her heading to the kitchen and getting me something to eat. Even Mom never did that. She’d taught us our way around the kitchen pretty much from the time we were in middle school.

“I’ll do it. Don’t worry, you can go back to doing…”

She laughed. “Nothing.”

I nodded in agreement. I didn’t beat around the bush.

“Do you mind some company?”

“No, Jenny. Come. We want you to feel at home. We don’t want you to feel like you have to hide yourself away or anything. We’re an easy-going family.”

“I can see. You have a nice house.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You seem surprised.”

“Just that you and your brother work a lot, so I just I assumed…”

“We were poor?”

I stood in front of her. She was in a Mickey Mouse short PJs. They were cute, but then I saw her nipples through the small shirt, and I turned away. It wasn’t something I would dream of doing, nah not to my brother, because I could tell Trent was into her. Sure, we yelled at each other all the time. Him for being so uptight and me for being so lazy, even if I did feel the term was an exaggeration. Just because I didn’t plan every second of my life, it didn’t make me lazy.

“Why doesn’t your brother go to our school?”

She sat on the barstool and faced me. I grabbed some things out of the fridge after deciding a ham sandwich with cheese would get rid of my hunger pangs and not fill me up too much to stop me from sleeping. I could never sleep on a full stomach.

“He has dyslexia. Do you know what that is?”

She nodded. “Isn’t that when they get the letters mixed up, and they put them back to front.”

“Yeah, that and he has problems reading. He can read a page, and by the time he gets to the next page he’s forgotten what he read on the first one. He has a short-term memory deficit, so he needs support, and as for math, he has whatever it’s called, same kinda problem.”

She folded her arms. “Sounds rough.”

“Not really, he just needs support to learn. He’s a lot smarter than us, that’s for sure, just don’t treat him differently. He hates when people say, you poor thing, you have dyslexia, etc. Just winds him up the wrong way.”

She smiled. “Okay, I won’t say anything. He was a little shy at dinner as we sat down with your mom and brother in the house earlier. He didn’t really say much. Then again, dinner was a little quiet.”

“Yeah, Mom’s worried about you. I spoke to her earlier when I told her that I was coming home late,” I replied, thinking that this was the first time we’d really spoken properly since she’d been living here. It had been a crazy summer. Both Trent and I had been working like crazy, trying to earn as much as possible before we’re back to school. I loved watching the way her brain worked. There was just something about her, she was more than you’d imagine on the surface. I felt it in the way we were connecting.

“You’re really direct,” she said.

“Does it bother you?”

She held my gaze as she put her hands on my shoulder as if she was challenging me.

“It’s funny you say that. I’m direct too. Trent tends to say that I have no tact. Mom says that it’s the start of me making a good lawyer,” I replied.

“You want to be a lawyer too?”

“Yeah, I want to be badass like Mom. Dad was too, but I’ve seen Mom in court. She takes no prisoners.”

She agreed. “Yeah, I saw her up against Dad’s lawyer, Russell, the other day, and she was like that.”

I was just about to ask if she wanted a sandwich as we talked, and I finished making mine, when the name she’d just said rang a bell.

“Russell?”

“Yeah,” she said, and then she stood up, getting ready to leave.

“Oh, that a-hole. Mom says that they’re always in the courtroom together. He’s the typical lawyer that tries to get the rich off for doing everything they get caught doing. She has beaten him a few times. The problem is that he’s done the same to her.”

She sighed as she put her hands on the stool.

“I can imagine. I could tell they knew each other, but I didn’t realize they knew each other well.”

“You want one?”

She giggled. “I must admit, I wasn’t hungry, but watching you make that sandwich, well, it did wake up my taste buds.”

“If you think it looks good, then wait until you taste it.”

I turned, and everything I’d put in the fridge I took back out again, from the mustard to the homemade bread that Prent made—he’s the cook of the family.

“Prent made the bread. You can give him your take on it in the morning.”

“No way!”

“Yeah, he’s pretty good. I’ve had a few dates, and they always want to come back for the one dish I can make well. There’s only one, which I do well. I’m not that much of a hand in the kitchen. We may be triplets, but we’re different in other ways.”

She propped back on the stool, as if she was intrigued by my revelation.

“Yeah, you all look different and even wear your hair differently.”

I shrugged. “Now, but not all the time.”

She giggled. “You guys ever swapped girlfriends at some point? I mean, pretended that you were another brother.”

I confessed. “Well, when I had my dates over, he would cook. Start the conversation, take the glory and when it came to dessert I would take over, but only because I would buy a mix or something, and it would seem as if I made it from scratch. But, I never did.”

“The dates never knew? They never noticed?”

I tried to think back. “Only one time. She did say that I smelled differently when I came back in.”

“Ah, she caught you.”

I passed the plate with the sandwich. Jenny bit into it without hesitation and then hummed as she took another bite, then another.

“This really is so good. The bread is soft, even though it’s cold, and the texture, hmmm. Prent is really talented.”

I changed the subject, remembering the main topic at hand.

“I suppose she did in a way catch us. It did freak me out. I mean, who the hell knows what their date smells like?”

She put her hand up.

“Guilty.”

“Really? We even use the same aftershave. Well, we do most of the time.”

“Yeah, but a scent is a scent.”

I lifted my arm up, silly I know, and between each bite said, “Wish I knew what I smelled like.”

She laughed. “I’m surprised you just did it on dates. Nothing else. I always think of triplets tricking people and pretending to be another brother.”

I shook my head, “Nah, we’re not jerks. We would never do that. If we did have a girl, we would want her to know who is who. Only unless it came to cooking, nothing else. There has to be a line.”

It was as if she’d put a thought in my head. No more were we talking, but the room filled with silence as we ate. I was lost in the idea of us sharing one girl and letting her know we were three brothers. Jenny, on the other hand, was no longer sad like she’d been when I came home. If anything, she had a smile on her face as if she’d had an idea, and it was a very dirty one.