Reunion

I love my cousin.

I mean, yeah, I should love my cousin because hey, he's my cousin. But I mean <b>Iove</b> my cousin. Before you get all icky on me, let me show you the degrees of separation here: We share a common great-grandfather. So, that means there's...well, at least two infusions of non-family blood in there. Plus we look absolutely nothing alike.

His name is Brett. I know, he hates it too. But the worst part is his middle name is Jasper. Jasper. His mom, who is our common relative, named him after our great Uncle Jasper, who I remember as a dried, string-bean of a man who smoked a lot (as in,"A lot of water goes over Niagara Falls each day") and finally died from it. It also gives him the unfortunate initials of BJ. Don't think this escaped the local high school jokers. He's a cop (Brett, not Jasper. Well, technically Jasper since Brett's middle name is Jasper, but I digress).

You wouldn't think Brett would be my type. In the past, I have been all about the big burly mens, the mens who could be lumberjacks (if there were any call for lumberjacks in this part of North Carolina anymore). Brett is actually kind of small, not much taller than I am. His Daddy is a Kearney. They are all little, like tiny leprauchans. I also always loved the classically handsome, everybody-thinks-he's-fine kind of guy, like Brad Pitt or somebody. Brett, while not ugly by any stretch, is just a regular guy. He's got really black hair (it's the Indian in us, my Granny used to say) and a trim little mustache (which is apparently part of a police uniform, don't you think? ha ha) We are two years apart, him being the oldest. We've been friends my whole life. I can remember playing Candy Land with him in his room when I was about four. He seemed so much older then.

Nowadays, if he sees my car at Momma and Daddy's house, he'll stop by and come in to see us. Sometimes, it's late at night because I am there with Daddy's asthma acting up (Momma get's scared and calls me because A- I live close and B- I'm not married, therefore I don't have a life in their eyes). He'll park that Spring Mills Police car outside under the Live Oak tree and come up to the door, all jangling keys and crap hanging off his belt. He won't ring the doorbell because Momma would levitate right up out of her Rice Brothers purchased bed. He'll tap tap tap and whisper up at the crack of the storm door: "Beth? You in there?"

Anyhow, it was a night like that over the summer when I first started feeling...it. Don't be nasty, I mean, feeling like I might be falling in love with him. We were sitting on the sofa at about two AM one Saturday morning, watching Squidbillies. We love that cartoon. Anyhow, both of us were all slumped down on the sofa, half-laying with our heads propped up, and I looked over at him in the flickering light of the TV. He was still half smiling from the last thing Early had cussed, when I felt it: that warm, oozing blanket coming over me. Like caramel being poured, lapping over and over with sweet, sticky gooeyness.
I just wanted to snuggle up next to him (avoiding that gun, you know) and put my head on his chest (which always feels hard because they wear those bullet-proof vests, you know). I thought, "What? What the Hell is this?" It was a feeling I remembered from high school, from college, from watching a boyfriend come out of the Piggly Wiggly with a twelve pack of beer for them and a four of wine coolers for me. A comfortable, companion-type feeling, but edgier than that. You can feel that way about a faithful dog and not want to crawl up in his lap. It was romantic love...sexual love.

Oh my God! I had to hop up and go into Momma and Daddy's kitchen on that. I stood at the sink, looking out at the dark back yard where the light at Daddy's shop glimmered on the bones of the old swing set. Brett whisper-hollered:

"Hey, Beth? Has your Momma and Daddy got any Dr. Pepper in the 'frigerator?"

I went to the Kenmore and stared blankly at it's white interior. Buttermilk, Food Lion cheese, a lemon.

"They got diet," I husked back.

"Aw, damn a bunch of that. I want sugar."

The thought "I'd love to give you sugar!" zipped across my mind before I could stomp on it. I clapped my hand to my mouth in horror. God was definitely not going to understand this. I better start praying to Jesus first and work my way up.

See, that kind of thing is what made it so much worse when everybody decided that Brett and me should be the ones to handle the details of the family reunion.