“Can you unlock the place?” Hunter asks. I grab my tools from the truck and head on over to the front door. “Bro, is Gavin okay today? He’s feeling kind of warm.” Hunter has the car seat down on the driveway, and he’s pulling Gavin from the seat, curling him up under his arm as he places the back of his hand on his forehead.
“I mean, besides the beer I gave him on the way over here, he was fine when we left the house,” I joke. “It was probably too hot in the car. I was worried he was going to get cold, so that could be it.” Hunter tends to worry. It’s what he does best, actually. While I pick and choose what to worry about, I tend to wait until there’s a real reason to get worked up. Keeps me sane.
Hunter brings Gavin inside, quickly making himself comfortable on the bottom step of the hall stairwell. “Dude, I was kind of hoping he’d go to sleep so we could get this job started.”
“Carpets can wait five minutes. I haven’t seen him in two weeks, and he’s gotten huge.”
“You and Charlotte need to pop one out already,” I tell him, knowing that’ll get under his skin.
“We’ve been married less than six months and in case you forgot, we both started our marriage with one daughter each, so that’s two. We have two, loud seven-and eight-year-old daughters. That’s like the equivalent to fifteen kids right there,” he tells me.
I tear the plastic off the roll of carpet that was waiting for us and look back over to him. “You two strike me as the type who should have twenty kids or something. Yeah, you should just keep popping one out every year until she becomes infertile. Then you’d never have to miss that fresh baby smell or the cute little cries you warned me about in the middle of the night. Plus, after a while Olive and Lana will just take care of the new ones, you know?” Cute little cries…more like the sound of wolves howling. Same thing, really.
Hunter picks his head up, and the smile he had for Gavin melts into a straight line across his face. “Funny.” With my not-so-obvious hints to put my kid back to sleep, he lays Gavin back into his car seat and gently swings him back and forth for a minute until his eyes close. “He’s a good baby.”
“During the day. At night, he turns into a werewolf. So, don’t let those dimples fool you, Uncle Hunt.”
With the baby babble out of the way, we get to work quietly, avoiding all questions I would definitely be asking if the roles were reversed. He doesn’t pry, but I swear it’s because he just knows. That bastard knows everything and I can’t figure out how. Maybe it’s the whole rite of passage for an older brother shit, but I wish I were as intuitive as he is.
It’s almost like I want to talk about it.
“AJ,” he says while hammering a nail.
“It’s a long story,” I answer.
“Could I have that box of nails please?” he follows.
Oh.
“Considering I never bring Gavin to work, why haven’t you asked me why he’s is here?” I finally blurt out like a teenage girl who is desperately seeking attention.
Hunter looks over at me and sits down against the wall, removes his work gloves and folds his hands together. “You’ve been my brother for twenty-nine years,” he begins. “I figured you didn’t want to talk about whatever fight you must have had with Tori this morning. I knew you’d tell me when you were ready.” Why does it sound like I’m talking to Dad? When did he start doing the whole lead in to a conversation with an opening lecture? He’s been doing way too much parenting lately.
He is turning into Dad. “You’re turning into Dad,” I say in rebuttal.
Hunter lets his head fall back against a naked beam in the wall. “I’ll cut to the chase then,” he sighs. “Tori is a really, really sweet woman. I think you two had some good chemistry, and I saw things heading in a direction I wanted and hoped for you after your string of bad luck with women, and of course your never-mended broken heart from her.” He has no idea how bad my luck has really been with women—Cammy in particular. “But—” There’s a but. He knows more about Tori than I do, doesn’t he? “I noticed a change when you two found out about Gavin. I know you were a little shocked at first, and it wasn’t exactly in your plan, but you got over it quickly and warmed up to the idea of having a kid, faster than I would have expected.” He stops for a minute and grabs his bottle of water, chugging half the thing before continuing. “But that doesn’t seem to have happened for Tori yet. Didn’t you say neither of you wanted children, and that’s why you were so perfect for each other?” I did say that. More than once. It’s why she was on the pill, and we were using condoms. Except, the pill needs to be taken every single night, and condoms can sometimes break. Nine months later, plan unexpected comes shooting out of a dark hole.
Whatever the case, I know he’s right. “You think she’ll ever warm up to the idea of being a mom? I mean, it’s not exactly like we have a choice now.”