by Frankie Rose
“SURPRISE!”
BRANDON shows up on the doorstep of the ridiculously large apartment I’ve rented with a huge red ribbon looped around his head, complete with a messy bow tied on top. He stands there grinning at me with his arms spread wide, waiting for me to tumble into his embrace. He’s such a goofball sometimes. I can’t help but laugh and do as expected, squeezing him until he pretends to wheeze and choke.
“What’s wrong with you, kid? You tryin’ to crush an old man to death?”
Where Morgan and I have an arrangement not to fish for compliments, I’ve never managed to convince Brandon to do the same. He’s incorrigible. I wave him into the apartment, helping carry his bags inside. “You’re forty-six, Brand. You’re hardly old. It’s not like you’re about to fall down dead.”
He drops his bag on the kitchen floor and sweeps his hands back through his thick brown hair. “You see that?” he says, pointing exaggeratedly to the top of his head. “That’s a receding hairline. I’m losing more hair in a day that I can possibly hope to re-grow. I’ve calculated that if it continues to fall out at this rate, I’ll have a comb-over by this time next year.”
He doesn’t have a receding hairline at all. He knows it; he’s just being a fool. I shove the other bag I’ve carried in for him into his chest and tut. “Come on, then, old man.”
I show him the three other spare rooms and he throws his stuff into the one opposite mine before immediately cracking open a beer. “It smells great in here, Ave. What have you been up to?”
“The usual.” I take his beer can from him and put it back in the fridge. “It’s not even eleven. You’ll be asleep before the food’s ready and I’m not listening to you snore while I try and eat my buttered parsnips.”
Brandon tramps into the living area of the apartment and sinks down onto the sofa, sulking. “You’re turning into your mother, you know that?”
That has to be the most offensive insult anyone could possibly give me. “Fine! Screw you, buddy. You can drink all the beer you want and fall asleep. I don’t care. I’ll watch Charlie St. Cloud and polish off some wine. I’d much prefer that over being abused by you!”
Brandon pulls a face and kicks his feet up onto the glass coffee table. “No way. No Efron in this apartment. I won’t stand for it.”
Brandon thinks Zac Efron is genetically modified in some way, and the last time I tried to watch that movie he chucked a fit. I smile and throw myself down next to him, knocking his feet off the rented furniture as I do.
“What’s new with you then, old man?” I don’t really want to know the daily happenings of his life in Breakwater, but since my dad has been gone he’s really stepped up and taken care of me. I feel bad that he’s back there on his own most of the time. He’s a little rough around the edges, and in a town like Breakwater that doesn’t earn you any friends.
“I’m gonna tell you something now,” he says, “and you’re not gonna believe it for one second.”
I sit patiently waiting for him to spill his secret, but ten seconds tick by and he just smirks at me. “Well, come on then! What?”
“I,” he says, grinning while he pulls a pack of smokes out of his pocket, “went on a date.” His eyebrows waggle comically as he flicks a cigarette into his mouth.
“What? That’s amazing! Who with?” Brandon didn’t go on a single date the entire time I lived with him, and he probably hadn’t been on one before then, either. Maybe not since my Aunt Mel died. I finally realize what Brandon is about to do as he leans forward to light his cigarette, and I snatch it out of his mouth.
“You didn’t hire this place. When you’re responsible for the deposit, then you can smoke indoors. There’s a balcony. Now tell me who you went on a date with!”
He groans and tips his head back against the sofa. “I took Monica Simpson out to that fancy Thai place you like, and she was bor-ring.” He stretches out the word so it sounds like two, and I bite back a bark of laughter.
“Monica Simpon? Candice Simpson’s mom?”
“The very same.”
“The one with…” I gesture with hands towards my chest. Monica is a petite woman but she has a huge chest that nearly all the men in Breakwater have fantasized about getting their hands on. She’d already suffered through two breast reduction surgeries by the time I left high school.
“Exactly.”
I can’t keep the laughter in this time. “Why on earth did you ask her out? I mean, she seems like a nice enough woman, but…”
“I didn’t ask her out. She asked me.”
That makes it even funnier. I guess I am too used to him after all the years I spent growing up with him, but Brandon would probably still be considered a good looking guy by some people. Older people. Much, much older people. I laugh so hard that I snort.
“Hey! I hope you’re not finding it funny that a woman asked me out. These are modern times, y’know. It’s completely normal for the broad to ask the guy. Maybe you should keep that in mind, huh?”
I give his arm a light punch and rest my head against his shoulder. “I’ll be sure to remember.”
“Don’t get too comfy, kid. I didn’t get that smoke out the packet to look cool. I fully intend on lighting it. On the balcony!” he adds before I can object. “Plus I have something for you.”
“A gift?” I sit up straight and grab hold of his arm. “Seriously?”
“Well, I know it’s not Christmas yet but I thought it might be nice to give you something now for having me up here and cooking and everything.”
I eye him suspiciously. “Will we be opening presents together on Christmas, too?”
“Yes,” he laughs. “I swear. I’ll come back to the city if that’ll make you happy. We could even rent this ritzy palace again. Now do you want your present or not?”
“Of course!”
Brandon hurries to his room and comes back thirty seconds later with a reasonably big box in his hands. It’s wrapped in Transformers gift paper.
“Aw, Transformers. You shouldn’t have!” He hands it over and I do the whole shake-it-to-see-if-you-can-tell-what-it-is bit. “You didn’t steal this from under some poor kid’s Christmas tree did you?”
“Scout’s honor.”
I tear off the paper and stare down at the box in my lap. It’s a video camera, the kind I’d always wanted when I was a kid. A Super Eight. I’d forgotten about my dream of someday becoming a movie director, but Brandon clearly hadn’t. He collects up the shredded Transformers paper and scrunches it in his hands.
“I figured you could, y’know, practice filming yourself for when you’re a TV reporter or something.”
I look up at him, stunned. “This probably cost a fortune! A working Super Eight? They’re almost impossible to get ahold of now!”
“Yeah, well, I’d love to pretend I spent big but I’d be lying. It’s been sitting in the attic for years. I used to screw around with this old thing before you were even born. Your dad, too. He used to borrow it when he had enough beer to bribe me with.”
My dad used to film with the camera sitting in the box before me? For some reason my eyes are welling. I reach inside and lift it out, surprised by how heavy it is. It kind of looks like a speed gun traffics cops use—a small lens, a boxy square, black metal housing and a grip handle. I point it at Brandon and he smiles a sad smile.
“Your aunt used to film our games with that bad boy. I’ll show you how to use it later. But first…” Brandon holds up his cigarette and grins, a little of his melancholia drifting away. “I must smoke.”
Seven
It’s A Date
