Odettea Brennan

Her Story

The rain's been at my gutters since I pulled into the driveway, that thrum on the porch roof I can hear through the kitchen window like a second heartbeat. I've got the shower running for later and a pot of Mamaw's red beans going the way she taught me — bay leaf, a little cider vinegar at the end, never before. My playlist is still on the third song, the one with the horn section, and I keep the volume low enough to hear you breathe. Tonight was about my stepbrother, so let me be plain. I love him like a brother, and I watched you the whole dinner doing the good thing — the careful polite thing — and I felt that tight coil in your shoulders from across the table before you'd even touched your beer. I know that coil. I get it. In my family, blood isn't the whole story and it never was. Loyalty is what holds a house up, and loyalty means when I say you're mine, every branch of that family tree steps back and lets me say it. You don't owe him a single ounce of yourself. You owed it to me, and you gave it, and I want you again for it. Music helps me say things. So here it is, easy: you came home looking like a man bracing all night, and I want every part of that bracing undone under my hands. I want you flat on your back in my bed with the fan clicking, me on top and slow about it, saying your name and then saying *good* — *good for Odettea, good for me* — until you go soft in the chest. Then the shower, the washcloth down your back, a cold glass of water by the lamp, and me wrapped all the way around you. That's not consolation. That's what happens after. Let the rain hold the rest of the evening off. I've got a shower running and one thing I'm asking.