Stirring story of what happens when a “family friend” becomes just more than a friend to two young women.
Chapter 1
Brothers
I killed the engine on my jet-black Monte Carlo just after seven-thirty, letting the sudden silence of the driveway settle around me. The silver and red trim along the rocker panels faded into the evening shadows, leaving only the dim, ambient light to catch the small graphic under the rear spoiler: “Winners may come and go, but legends live forever.”
It was late September, but the air held a stubborn, unusual warmth, hovering somewhere in the upper sixties. The sun had already slipped behind the flat horizon, leaving nothing but a bruised orange glow clinging to the edge of the sky. It wasn’t quite dark enough to need the porch light yet, but I knew this land—in another thirty minutes, you wouldn’t be able to see your own hand in front of your face.
I glanced over and saw Ray’s ’56 Ford pickup sitting in its usual spot. It was the same truck I’d given him for his thirtieth birthday. Back then, it had been tattered and beat-up, but we’d spent the next year or so piecing it back together, one late night at a time, until it was exactly how he wanted it. The metallic brown paint caught the last rays of the dying sun. Though the marine varnish had dulled and scuffed from a decade of serving as a work truck, the oak bedding remained as tight and solid as the day we’d bolted it down.
After twenty-plus years of knowing the man, I had to smile—the porch still looked exactly like him: half put together, a little ridiculous, and somehow still standing. Rural northwest Ohio had a way of freezing things in time, and Ray’s house was living proof. My apartment in the city was only an hour away, but in moments like this, it felt like another world entirely.
The house was a century-old patchwork of a farmhouse—a two-story sprawl that had been expanded and repaired so many times it had forgotten its own original silhouette. The white clapboard had long since surrendered to a weathered gray, and the front porch sagged to the right, giving the entire structure the appearance of a weary shrug. Beneath a steep roof that had seen more winters than both of us combined, tall, narrow windows stared blankly across a tucked-away rose garden. There, a late-season explosion of velvet-red Mister Lincoln and pure white John F. Kennedy roses bloomed in thick, healthy clusters, flanked by the sharp, upright spikes of Victoria Blue salvia. The concrete walkway, lined with a vibrant riot of blooming purple asters and tightly knit yellow mums, was a map of fractures cleanly cushioned by thick veins of hardy green moss.
Then there was the pig. A three-foot-tall concrete fixture guarding the steps, it had been scavenged by Ray during a midnight junking run behind the storage units up on Route 6. Years ago, I had painted it for him—pink skin, blue overalls, and one eye skewed slightly higher than the other, a permanent testament to the fact that I had been half-drunk during the process. Ray had laughed for ten straight minutes upon seeing it. From that moment on, he refused to let it be moved, granting the pig a permanent place of honor on the porch.
On the opposite side sat a large terra-cotta planter holding a half-dead fern that, according to Ray, had been “just about to bounce back” for three consecutive summers. Perched on the rail, still clinging to the delusion of its own utility, was the same cheap, faded plastic owl Ray swore had kept the birds at bay since 2007. Above it all, the porch light buzzed and flickered, casting the scene in a sickly, washed-out yellow glow.
Supertramp was leaking out of the house—”Bloody Well Right.” The guitar riff sliced through the night air, sharp and clear. I couldn’t help but smile as I climbed the porch steps.
Ray already had the door open, a beer in his hand and a grin on his face that suggested he’d been waiting all evening just to give me shit.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” he said. “You’re late. I almost smoked your half out of spite.”
“Highway traffic,” I shot back. “Stupid fuckers don’t know how to drive. Old fogies doing thirty-five in a fifty, in a double yellow.” I flashed him a smirk. “And you? You would’ve cried later tonight when you ran out.”
We headed through the living room toward the kitchen. The front room still looked as if Judy had just stepped out for a minute—the same overstuffed plaid couch with the permanent sag in Ray’s spot, the same scuffed coffee table buried under remote controls, unopened mail, and an ashtray that never stayed empty for long. The wide-plank floors creaked under our weight, the kind of ancient wood that had been there since before the turn of the last century. In the corner sat a modern 80-inch LED TV, a birthday present from me to Ray that looked wildly out of place. Family photos lined the hallway wall, a few of them hanging crooked. The air was a thick cocktail of weed, old wood, and the faint, lingering ghost of a pot roast that he and Harmony had probably made earlier.
“Still clinging to the classics, I see. Some things never change,” I said, gesturing back toward the porch. “You’re still cheap, and I’m still reliable.”
He snorted. “Some of us have taste. And you’re only ‘reliable’ when there’s weed involved, or when Harmony bats her eyelashes at you.” He pointed the neck of the beer bottle at me for emphasis. “Which, by the way, is getting embarrassing. Twenty years I’ve known you, and you’ve never once told that girl no. Not once. She calls you Uncle Him like you’re blood, and you just… fold. Every single time.”
The kitchen was pure Judy. This was and still is the hub of the friendship me and Ray have. Many a Sunday night I would travel out here just because I knew Judy was making her faous eggplant parm. (it was to die for) The black and white linoleum flooring was worn thin in front of the sink, and the refrigerator was a massive side-by-side unit seamlessly built flush into the wall. It was covered in the same tired beadboard and wall covering as the rest of the room, to the causal observer, you would never know it was there. One door featured a magnetic chalkboard plastered with a mosaic of takeout menus—Porky’s Pizza, Taco El Grande, and Dan’s Palace of Gluttony—all held firmly in place alongside a few of Harmony’s old grade-school drawings by an assortment of colorful dot magnets. The other door held a framed family portrait of Ray, Judy, and Harmony, when she was about six. In the center of the room sat a late-fifties cracked red ice Formica kitchen table, the kind wrapped with a wide, gleaming strip of ribbed chrome around the edge. It was paired with four matching chairs, their vinyl seats worn soft, each featuring a distinct white strip running right up the center of the backrest.
A single bulb under the stove hood cast a dull, white glow over the room. Above the antique white stove hung an old chef’s rack loaded down with a heavy assortment of pots, pans, and cast-iron skillets. Resting directly on the stove’s surface was a black wire basket housing a cluster of wooden spoons, a couple of metal spatulas, and a worn whisk. A neat stack of clean, dry dishes from earlier sat in the dish drainer beside the sink, and the window above it looked out onto the pitch-black backyard.
I dropped two one-hundred-dollar bills on the table. Leaning in, I took a deep, heady whiff of the weed in the bag, the scent hitting me like a physical slap in the face.
“She’s family,” I said, my voice trailing as I lingered over the aroma. “You’re the closest thing I’ve got to a brother, which makes her my niece. I’m allowed to spoil her.” I straightened up and shot Ray a grin. “Dude, this smells incredible. You’ve really outdone yourself on this one.”
Ray leaned against the counter, laughing so hard he had to set his beer down. “Niece. That’s cute. You hear yourself? You’re out here playing the soft uncle while the rest of us are actually trying to survive. She’s got you trained, man. You’re just Pavlov’s dog with a credit card.” He jerked a thumb toward the fridge. “Beer’s in there if you want one. Though we both know you’d rather I had a bottle of that Bacardi 151 you used to treat like liquid religion. Man, you and that rocket fuel… I’m still convinced you permanently scorched your taste buds.”
I pushed away from the table and stood up. Opening the fridge, the cool air hit my face as I spotted a plate of leftovers covered in foil alongside the drinks. I reached past the bottles, peeled back the foil, and pinched a thick, cold slice of the leftover roast beef before grabbing a beer.
Ray stared at me, deadpan. “Really, dude?”
“I’m starving, man,” I said. “Had an onion bagel and a cup of coffee around six this morning. Had a small workout, rolled over some options before the market got freaky weird. Seriously, it’s Friday the 13th—they should outlaw working on that day. Haven’t had anything since. You don’t mind, do ya?”
“Kinda too late now, don’t ya think?” Ray muttered.
I chewed, pointing a finger at him. “Harm made this, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, how’d you know that ?”
“Cause you would’ve burned it.” I said, talking around the food.
Ray flashed a smile. “Fuck you.”
“Seriously, though,” I said, leaning back against the counter. “The Monte’s been acting sluggish during acceleration. Maybe the fuel filter, or the timing… but what do I know, you’re the doctor.”
Ray shrugged, taking a sip of his beer. “Same deal as before. You buy the parts, a six-pack, and stay out of my way. If it is the timing, you’re buying premium beer… and if you watch, it’ll cost you double.”
I grinned back, gobbling down the last piece of meat and wiping my hand on my jeans. With my appetite temporarily sorted, I turned my attention back to the beer. The cap yielded with a sharp, metallic snap. For a heartbeat, I balanced the metal disc on my fingertip, then snapped my fingers. The cap hummed through the air with a tight, lethal spin, clipping the beadboard with a sharp whack—just enough to rob it of its momentum and drop it perfectly into the trash can below.
I took a slow pull of the beer and turned my attention back to the weed, carefully picking a few dense buds from the bag and transferring them to the rolling tray.
“Show-off,” Ray grumbled, though he was still watching the trash can. “I’ve spent half my life and still can’t even get the damn cap to spin.”
“To make perfect, many tries it takes. Patient, you must be, young Grasshopper,” I said.
He flipped me off with a grin. Again.
I let out a small chuckle. “Love you too, man. Besides, she’s a good kid.”
“She’s a smart kid,” Ray corrected. “There’s a difference. She knows exactly which buttons to push with you. Always has. Remember last year when she wanted those concert tickets? You drove halfway across the state in a torrential downpour because ‘Uncle Him wouldn’t let her miss it.’ And you didn’t even buy the nosebleed seats like we used to get, noooo! You had to go full VIP. Backstage passes, front row seats, the meet-and-greet, the whole nine yards… I still give her shit for that.”
I shrugged, continuing to break up the weed. “Hell, man, she had straight A’s and made the honor roll… without missing a single day of school. She deserved it.”
Ray laughed. “And here we are. Couldn’t pass a class to save our souls, barely went a week without skipping a class… or two… or three.”
“Yeah,” I replied, grinning at the memory. “Still can’t believe I skipped an entire year of gym… and still passed.”
I licked the rolling paper and twisted the joint shut. “That 151 had character. And don’t act like your hands are clean—your poison of choice was that fucking Hiram Walker Blackberry Brandy. Sweet as hell and twice as dangerous. You’re just mad at me because Harmony likes me better.”
Ray took the joint and let out a short laugh. “Christ, don’t remind me. That shit would sneak up on you. One minute you’re fine, the next you’re telling a total stranger your life story, then trying to pick a fight with a mailbox.”
“What was the name of that barmaid at JJ’s Place?” I asked. “The one that made those killer Kamikazes… tasted like Kool-Aid going down, then they’d smack you upside the head when you least expected it… What was her name?”
“Maddy,” he said. “And don’t change the subject. Your shit had a warning label longer than the bottle. Remember when you tried to convince me it was ‘smooth as silk,’ then I watched you cough for five minutes straight? Here’s to the good times.” He raised his beer in a mocking toast.
He took a hit, shook his head, and pointed the joint at me. “Same energy, by the way. You’d sit there red-eyed and wheezing, swearing the 151 was fine… same way you swear you’re not a complete sucker for Harmony. Speaking of which, she’s been on my ass all week about some stupid Justin Bieber doll. Some ‘Collector’s Edition.’ Forty bucks for a plastic pretty-boy with dead eyes. I already told her no. Guaranteed she’s just waiting for you to show up so she can bat those baby blues at you and work her magic. She’s out back with a friend right now. They’ve been out there ever since you texted.”
“Oh, yeah… Madalyn. She had really nice, firm tits, jiggled like jello… J-E-L-L-O… and she would squeal like a chipmunk when she got really excited,” I said, finishing off two more joints.
Still grinning at the ghost of a past romance, I sparked the joint and shrugged. “Maybe she’ll surprise us both and ask YOU again.” I glanced toward the sliding glass door, the backyard still as black as ink. “Friend?”
“Yeah. Her name is Kathy. School friend,” Ray replied. “She’s a bit older than Harm. Probably do her good hanging around an older female, even if it’s only by a few months.” Ray took a slow sip of his beer, his eyes tracking the smoke drifting toward the stove hood. “They’ve been hanging out a lot this year, though. Seems like she’s over here more than she is at home.”
“That good or bad?”
“Depends on the day.” He took the joint back, the cherry glowing briefly in the dim light. “Her mom’s a lush. Functional enough to keep a job, but the second she clocks out, the bottle comes out. Dad bailed when she was little—just up and left. So she kind of floats wherever she can find a place to land. Harmony took a liking to her, and now I’ve got two of them eating my cereal and leaving hair in the shower drain.”
I chuckled. “Sounds familiar. You used to complain about the same shit when Judy was still ali…” I stopped, letting the words drift away. “Sorry. Sometimes it’s hard to remember.”
“Yeah… well… it’s okay.” Ray smirked, the dim kitchen light catching the engine grease etched into the creases of his palms. His voice dropped an octave, turning raw. “Hell, ever since Judy passed—cancer’s a son of a bitch—it’s been too quiet around here. Having the girls around …. keeps the old place alive and a reason to keep me going. It isn’t the worst thing.” He took another hit and passed it back to me. “You’re one to talk anyway. City boy with divorce papers still warm. We both got stupid and married early. Difference is, I lost mine the hard way and you… well, you just signed some papers.”
A dry laugh escaped me, though there wasn’t a shred of humor in it. The divorce had been her idea, not mine. I was still in love with her, but she had fallen in love with her own budding career, a trajectory that apparently didn’t have room for me. It didn’t matter anyways. I was never home, always chasing the next trade and grinding through eighty-hour weeks just to survive the volatility of the market. She loved the money, the luxury house, the cars, the vacations, all of it… but she didn’t actually want the man providing them. She wanted a predictable 9-to-5 husband, and I had never been that.
“Difference was, YOU HAD TO,” I said, nodding toward the dark window where the girls were. “And I WANTED TO… Jesus, man… change the subject. This is getting morbid. Remember when you had that old Cougar? Blasting whatever music was trendy at the time, thinking we were going to start a band, move to California, and change the fucking world?”
Ray wiped his brow, a classic mechanic’s habit that left a faint smudge of soot near his temple. He spent forty hours a week, sometimes sixty, when he could get them, keeping some ancient machinery alive at the local plastic factory. It was backbreaking, honest work—just enough to keep the lights on and Harmony fed.
Me? I was an independent private investment broker, a city boy swimming through the shark tanks of the stock market. On a good Tuesday, trading high-yield tech futures or shuffling corporate portfolios, I could clean up before lunch and make more in a single week than Ray brought home in a month… maybe two. My hands were clean, my suits were tailored, and my bank account was bloated.
But money was never an issue between us. It never had been, not since we were kids scraping up quarters for a shared soda from the corner store. What was mine was his, and what was his was mine. That was just the law. That was how ‘brothers’ were supposed to be, completely independent of whatever numbers were printed on our tax returns.
Ray stared into the depths of his beer bottle, a faint grin finally breaking through the exhaustion on his face as the memory of that old car took hold. Not a speck of rust on it, clean as a whistle, although the paint was totally sun-faded into a shade we called ‘baby shit’ yellow. The interior was a wasteland of pitch-black pleather, the kind that would scorch the skin off your thighs in the middle of July.
The real crown jewel, however, was the stereo. Ray had wired the beast himself, a high-powered, late-1990s Blaupunkt setup that turned the interior into a vibration chamber. The detachable head unit pulsed with neon-blue graphics in time with the music, flanked by an undrr-dash Alpine graphic equalizer whose neon-green spectrum bars provided a sharp contrast to the dancing blue bars above it. In the trunk, two massive JL Audio 12-inch subwoofers were anchored in a set of particle-board speaker boxes. He’d installed a dedicated second battery just to keep the system alive, coupled with a pair of massive heat sinks from the Alpine amp that pummeled out five hundred watts of pure power per channel. Yeah, Baby Cakes, take that. Every time the bass dropped, the headlights dimmed. When we cranked it, the entire car shook, sending a primal rattle straight into our bones.
When we listened to Ted Nugent ripping on his guitar… so did the entire neighborhood!!!
“Man,” Ray chuckled, shaking his head. “We really thought we were something, didn’t we? That damn stereo was worth three times as much as the car. I’m surprised we survived… or at least didn’t go deaf from the fucking volume.”
I looked up from rolling the weed. “What?”
Ray grinned, grabbing his lukewarm beer off the counter. He pointed the bottle at me before taking a long drink. “Don’t act like it was just me. You were the one who bought that broken bass off the classifieds for fifty bucks because ‘it had good bones.’ It didn’t have shit. One string and a short in the cable.”
“It had character.”
“It had termites!” Ray shook his head, a wide grin splitting his face. “We’d sit in the garage for hours, you pretending you could play and me pretending I could sing. Then we both went and got married like a couple of dumb-asses and the guitars went into the closet. Now look at us. Buying weed on a Friday night in the middle of bum-fuck, Egypt and arguing about some stupid, fucking Justin Bieber doll.”
I took another hit, held it, and passed the joint back. “Speak for yourself. My guitar’s still in the case. I just haven’t opened it in… Christ, man, it’s been a few years.”
Ray’s eyes flicked toward the backyard again. “Well, Harm’s friend, Kathy, she’s still in that phase. Headphones on half the time, always mouthing some sort of lyrics, talking about vinyl and shit, like the world hasn’t already moved on. Harmony says she’s got good taste in music. I’ll take her word for it. All I know is she doesn’t eat much and always says ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ while she’s here. So she’s alright in my book.”
Ray paused, his gaze drifting toward the hallway. He let out a slow, rattling breath—the sound of a man finally admitting defeat.
“She’s eighteen, Jim,” he said, his voice sounding hollow. “Actually eighteen. Not ‘almost eighteen,’ not ‘basically eighteen.’ The clock started ticking the second she blew out those candles.”
I leaned back, watching him. The realization had been settling in for months; the house was still full for now, but the silence was waiting in the wings, ready to take over.
“You okay with that?” I asked.
Ray shrugged, though there was a heavy weight to the gesture. “I’ve had some time to get used to the idea. It’s a weird feeling, knowing the house is gonna go quiet again, in a year or so. But hey,” he added with a grimace, “better she leaves wanting more than staying because she thinks she has to.”
“Besides,” he added, his voice trailing off, “there’s a new girl at the plant. QC lady. Our age, real cute, and she’s a redhead with a lot of freckles. We’ve talked a few times… I think we clicked.” He shrugged again, a small, hopeful glint appearing in his eye. “Who knows… When Harm’s gone… maybe.”
He paused for the longest time, staring at the floor as if his life was passing him by. Then he looked up and gave me that same shit-eating look he’d been giving me for twenty years.
“Of course, none of that matters, because in about two minutes Harmony’s gonna walk in here, hit you with her birthday eyes, and you’re gonna fold like a cheap lawn chair. Mark my words.”
Ray exhaled a cloud toward the ceiling. “She’s already asked me! Now she’s waiting for you. You’re her mark. Always have been. Remember when she was little and she got you to buy her that giant stuffed unicorn because she said it looked lonely? You drove to three different fucking stores. Three! I still tell that story every Thanksgiving. It’s hilarious.”
“It did look lonely,” I said, laughing as I took a toke.
“You’re hopeless.” He shook his head, but he was smiling. “Twenty years of friendship and this is what it’s come to. I get the bills and the lectures. You get the ‘Uncle Him’ treatment and the privilege of being wrapped around her little finger. Unbelievable.”
I exhaled smoke toward the ceiling. “You’re really stuck on this bet, huh?”
“I’m stuck on being right. There’s a difference.” He tipped his beer at me. “Three minutes. Tops. Then you’ll be walking out of here with two girls and a mission to buy a fucking plastic doll. And I’ll be here alone with the rest of the weed, laughing my ass off.”
From the backyard, Harmony’s voice carried faintly, followed by another girl’s quieter reply. Footsteps started across the patio.
Ray raised his eyebrows. “Here we go.”
I just shook my head and kept the joint between my fingers.
Ray glanced toward the sliding door and then back at me, eyes gleaming with pure brother malice. “Try not to embarrass yourself for once. Just this once. Say no. For the culture.”
I took another hit and handed the joint back. “No promises.”
Ray sighed like a man who’d already accepted defeat. “Yeah. I know. You’re gonna fold in under three minutes. Hell, I’ll bet you fold in less than one. Winner gets the rest of the bag.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’re that sure?”
“Brother, I’ve known you half my life. You’re already reaching for your wallet in your head. Just admit it.”
I didn’t answer. Mostly because I knew he was probably right. Ray handed the joint back to me…
The sliding glass door scraped open. Harmony stepped in first, still talking over her shoulder to Kathy, and then she turned and caught sight of me at the table. Her whole face lit up like someone had just flipped a switch.
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