by Rebel Hart
“Yes!” Sicily said with a smile. “I’ll call my mom on the way. Let’s go!”
Once we were back in the warmth of our cars, I led Sicily to my house to drop off my mom’s car. I let her know what I was doing and grabbed a few things for the overnight, and then he drove us back to his house, right on the edge of North Postings and Postings Proper. It was a nice-sized house, bigger than mine, but nothing like the houses down in South Postings. It was a two-story, ranch-style home with tan siding and a dark brown roof. The front porch was covered in toys, bikes, balls, and just about anything else a kid would use, and a couple of swinging benches were occupied by two girls that were difficult to distinguish from the distance.
“Now, I told you that I have a fuck ton of siblings,” Sicily said as he parked his car in front of the home. “I didn’t lie. My parents, I don’t know, they were like frickin’ jackrabbits or something.”
“How many?” I asked.
“Eleven.”
I nearly threw up. “Eleven, including you?”
He laughed. “Nah, man. I’m one of twelve.” He slapped my chest. “Get ready for some chaos.”
We climbed out of the car, and my heart started to beat nervously. I’d lived in prison for four years with many more people than twelve, but they generally kept to themselves or their chosen groups of people. The adult system was only adults, and guards were always around to keep things mostly in line. I was an only child coming up, and apart from my year with Nathan, I’d never lived with siblings. This was going to be an interesting night.
“Hey!” Sicily greeted the woman as we walked up the stairs leading up to the front door.
One of the girls in the swinging bench stood up and smiled. She was actually a touch taller than Sicily, but she had his same curly brown hair and welcoming, round eyes. Her hair, however, fell clear down her back well past her waist and stopped just below her hips. “Hey. Who’s this?”
Sicily held out an arm toward me. “This is my friend Deon. Dee.” He pointed at the woman addressing us. “That’s my sister, Annika. The one I was telling you about.”
Her eyes were already dancing up and down my form with a slight blush rising to her cheeks. She walked up and held out a hand. “Nice to meet you, Deon.”
I shook her hand with a smile. “Nice to meet you.” She was very beautiful, an odd sentiment considering she looked an alarming amount like Sicily, but I tried to put that out of my brain.
Sicily pointed past Annika to the other girl, who had bright red hair and more makeup on than any one person needed on her face. “Hey, Ang!”
The woman lifted her hand into the air. “Hi!”
“That’s Angela, Annika’s best friend,” Sicily said, before pointing back at me. “This is Deon.”
Angela waved. “Hello, Deon.”
I waved back. “Hi.”
“All right. Come on, man. I’ll introduce you to my folks,” Sicily said before heading inside. I nodded at Annika one last time, earning myself a seductive look before she turned around and made her way back to her friend.
We stepped through the front door into an entryway with more shoes than I had ever seen in my entire life piled up along the walls. Sicily kicked his shoes off and added them to the group, and I did the same, though I was careful to set mine together and placed them neatly off to the side of the fray.
“How old is Annika again?” I asked.
“Sixteen, but she’ll be seventeen in a couple of months.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Why?”
“Oh, no disrespect or anything. She was making eyes, so I wanted to know how much to avoid her,” I said with an awkward chuckle.
Sicily shrugged. “Hey, Annika’s a catch, man. I’m not one of those creepy stay-away-from-my-sister types. You two could do much worse. Want me to put in a good word?”
“Uh.” My gut reaction was to say no as Cherri skated across my brain, but in the month since we came close to sleeping together, she’d made no evident attempts to leave The Royal Court behind. That ship probably sailed. “Yeah, maybe.”
“I know you’ve got the whole thing with Cherri, so don’t do it if it’s just a rebound thing.”
“No, there’s not really anything to rebound from,” I replied. “I need to start moving on, so why not with someone as beautiful as Annika?”
Sicily smiled. “There ya go!” He made a robotic noise and lifted his arm to either side of his body. “Wingman-mode activated.”
“Okay, weirdo,” I huffed back.
We walked out of the entryway and into a huge, open living room. Three identical kids, maybe about ten or eleven years old, were situated directly in front of a large, flatscreen television, all with video game controllers in their hands. They were all wearing varying hoodies and were difficult to distinguish from one another. Sicily whistled, and they looked over in unison. It was borderline creepy.
“Hey,” Sicily said. “This is my friend, Deon.”
“Hi, Deon,” they resounded.
“Shit, that’s weird,” I couldn’t stop myself from saying.
Sicily chuckled. “Yeah. Those are the triplets. The far one’s Max, the middle one’s Mina, and the closest one’s Mave. Mina and Mave are girls. I know it’s hard to tell. Max is trying to figure some stuff out, currently using they-them pronouns.”
“Not a problem,” I said, offering a quick wave before following Sicily through the back of the living room, through a dining room, and into a big, open kitchen. The second I was smacked in the face with the amazing smell of seasonings and fried food, my stomach started to growl. “Oh my god. It smells so good in here.”
“Yeah. Mom’s a cook. Like a legit one. She’s got her own place and everything,” Sicily replied. “Ma!”
A woman standing at the oven turned around and smiled. She looked like a slightly aged version of Annika, though with shorter hair. She had a form that I refused to believe had birthed twelve children. She didn’t even look old enough, so I was beginning to convince myself that it was actually another one of Sicily’s sisters, but he walked over, kissed her on the cheek, and greeted her again as his mother before turning to face me.
“Ma, this is my friend, Deon. Deon, this is my mom, Nijah. Do not call her Mrs. Luciano because she’ll hit you, I’ve learned,” he introduced.
“I will,” she added. “Nice to meet you, Deon.”
“Nice to meet you. I have to say, you do not look old enough to have twelve children,” I said.
She laughed. “Oh, well, thank you. I don’t have twelve children. Tank here came out of me, but the older five came from their father’s first marriage.”
“That makes no difference,” I said with a laugh. “Seven kids is still crazy.”
“Yeah, well, we like big families, what can I say?” She tapped Sicily on his head. “Why don’t you take Deon up, and I’ll bring dinner up when it’s done?”
“Okay. Thanks, Mom,” Sicily said, then nodded in the direction of the other door out of the kitchen, and I followed.
He led me up a flight of stairs, introducing me to two more younger kids as we went, Bella, a preteen with lighter hair and a face still similar to Sicily, and Vio, a kid of maybe seven or eight that looked nothing like Sicily with borderline blond hair. I was assured Vio looked just like their dad. We walked down a long hallway with doors on both sides, and when we got to the last one on the left, Sicily opened it and led in.
There were two beds in the room, one against each wall. Sicily pointed at one that didn’t appear to be recently used and said, “You can sleep there. It’s my older brother Jamie’s bed, but he started college this year. Dorm life. I can’t wait.”
I set the bag I’d packed down on the bed and sat down on it. There was a TV on a dresser with a Playstation next to it and a small bookcase between the two beds with a picture on top of Sicily and a man that looked like he could be his twin. “Is this Jamie?” I asked.
“Yeah. I know things are a little chaotic around here now, but Jamie is like
a walking tornado. God save his roommate this year. I love him, though. He’s my bro.”
“You’re the oldest in the house right now?”
Sicily sat down on his bed. “Yeah. You met everyone who lives here now, except for my dad, but he works the night shift. Jamie and our even older brother Mottley are in college, Jamie’s a freshman. Mott’s a junior. Then the twins, Chris and Kait, are all moved out and live on their own, and my oldest brother Grayson Jr. is up the river.” I looked at Sicily, and he winked. “What? You thought I couldn’t pick a jailbird out when I first found ya? Why else wouldn’t my family be bothered by the sight of you?”
I shook my head. “You are one strange guy.”
He laughed, almost proud. “That’s what I hear.”
We discussed a few miscellaneous things over the course of the next hour, including Sicily convincing me to try out his Playstation after learning I’d never owned a gaming system. He had me playing some game with a weird fox thing jumping all over the place, eating some weird fruit, peaches maybe, and spinning to attack his enemies. When there was a knock at the door, I was all too happy to put it down and reclaim my brain.
“I got dinner,” Annika’s voice broke across the threshold before she walked in, balancing three plates across her arms along with three bottles of water in any crevice that could hold them. I jumped up and grabbed a couple of plates to help, and she smiled. “Thank you.”
I handed a plate to Sicily, and then Annika distributed the bottles of water and sat on the floor between the beds, facing us.
Dinner was fried fish over sauteed rice and mixed with different vegetables. My mom was an okay cook. Her food was enjoyable, and a few things she’d mastered were really good, but I couldn’t coin her a chef. The dinner we were having now was beyond the best thing I’d eaten since I got out.
Annika giggled. “It must be good.” I nodded with my cheeks stuffed full of food. “There’s plenty more if you want. Mom always makes big batches so that there’s leftovers.” I held a thumbs up, and she laughed a little more.
As much as I may have wanted to eat more, I was so full that it felt like my stomach was gonna burst, so when Annika offered to get me more, I politely declined. She collected the empty plates and left to bring them down to the kitchen, promising to be back.
“All right, what do you think?” Sicily asked as soon as she was gone from the room. “I’ll lob a, ‘How’s the single life going?’ and you just pick it up and run with it.”
“What?” I asked.
“Wingman-mode. What are we doing?” he asked hurriedly. “Don’t tell me you’re backing out. Cherri kept it moving while you were gone, so time for you to keep it moving.”
He wasn’t wrong. “Yeah,” I said, though the thought of truly moving on from Cherri settled in my stomach like a lead brick.
“So? What? Want me to mention something you all have in common? She likes reading, and you like reading,” Sicily said. “Give me the play.”
“I don’t—”
Before we could get the plan decided, the bedroom door opened again, and Annika walked back in. She returned to her spot on the floor and looked up at us. “What?”
Sicily looked at me, and I just stared back at him, unsure of what to do. Finally, Sicily turned and looked at Annika, opened his dumb mouth, and blurted out, “Deon was just telling me he thinks you’re very beautiful and would like to take you out.”
My jaw dropped. “What the fuck!”
Sicily’s arms flew up. “You didn’t tell me the play!”
“So then just wait. That wasn’t wingmaning. That was just telling her!”
Annika laughed a little, then tilted her head at me. “Do you really want to go out?”
“I was going to do it much better than that,” I replied. “But, yeah. I’d like to.”
“How does tomorrow sound?” she boldly asked, and it sent a rush of excitement through me.
I smiled at her, still wary of moving on from Cherri, but I knew it was the best plan for me. “Tomorrow sounds great.”
18
Deon
Thankfully, Annika was much more laid back and relaxed than her brother. After finishing breakfast with the massive Luciano family, I disappeared to one of only two bathrooms in their household to shower and then made my way downstairs where Annika was sitting in the living room, talking to a man who made the guys I was locked up with look like middle schoolers. His arms looked like tree trunks on either side of his body, and even though he was sitting, I could plainly see he was six and a half feet tall, if not more. His hair was closely shaved, close to being bald, and he was wearing a warehouse polo and a pair of cargo pants. His dark eyes were sunken, and he had wrinkles poking out from just about everywhere, but the second Sicily and I stepped into the room, he stood up, towering over me.
“Hello,” he greeted, and then he held his hand out to me.
I took his hand, and the way he squeezed was not a subtle warning, but it took a lot more than that to frighten me. “Hello, sir. Nice to meet you.”
“Deon, this is my old man, Gray Sr. Pop, I’m guessing Annika told you already, but this is my friend, Deon.”
Grayson still had a tight grip on my hand, and he shook it a couple more times. “Good to finally meet you. I hear you’ve earned the affection of more than one of my kids.” He released my hand and crossed his arms.
“I’m lucky,” I replied. “If it’s okay, I’d like to take Annika out today.”
“He asks permission? I like this guy!” He grinned at me. “You may. Just don’t keep her out too late, and treat her well.”
“You have my word,” I replied.
“All right, well.” Grayson wrapped an arm around his daughter. “I did the dad thing. I love you. Have fun. I’m going to get some rest.”
“Night, Daddy,” Annika replied, and after that, Grayson ambled off toward the stairs and out of sight.
Sicily snapped his fingers. “Sounds like that’s code for you two crazy kids to get outta here.” He fished into his pockets, pulled out his keys, and handed them to me. “Take the beater. She’s no Lambo, but she’ll get ya around.”
I grabbed the keys, grateful that I’d managed to find such a good friend, given my circumstances. “Thanks. I’ll have your sister and your car home in a few hours.”
Sicily smiled and winked at me, and I turned to Annika. She looked amazing in a floor-length, brown-and-green striped romper. She had a long-sleeved jean jacket over it, and her long brown hair flowed down the sides of her face and over her shoulders. It was a very fall look, perfect for the date I had planned.
“Ready?” I asked.
She nodded. “Ready.”
Given that the date cropped up out of nowhere, I didn’t have much pre-planned. Fortunately, when you’re locked up, you have a lot of time to think about the things you’ll do when you get out. I must have imagined fifty or more date ideas in my head, and though I’d planned to go on them all with Cherri, it at least gave me a reserve of options to pull from. I drove us about an hour outside of Postings to one of Maine’s most popular apple orchards. By November, all the leaves had fully changed from green to different shades of orange, red, yellow, and brown, and it gave the property a gorgeous fall atmosphere. It was a little cold, but that was fine because it meant we could hold close to each other while we took a hayride from the front of the property to the back, and we could stick additionally close together while we picked what was left of the season’s fresh apples and bought some discount pumpkins to gut for some seeds to roast.
The real crown jewel of the orchard was the inside of the barn at the base of the property. You could cook apple slices and pumpkin seeds over burning fires that let off enough heat to sit around them comfortably, regardless of the cold outside the barn. They sold cups of fresh apple cider and even melted caramel to make caramel apples if you wanted. My mom used to bring me when I was younger, and I always dreamed of bringing Cherri someday. She loved apples. It was one of
her favorite foods and her favorite smells, and I always thought she’d really love coming.
As I stood in line for cider while Annika found us a fire to sit by, I couldn’t stop my mind from wandering to the person I’d always imagined I’d come to the orchard with. Annika was great. She was really beautiful, funny, and kind from what I’d gotten to know of her the day before, and during the hayride, she talked about her plans for college and beyond. She was also incredibly smart. She didn’t seem bothered by my criminal history and was a delight to be around. There was really no reason why I shouldn’t be enjoying myself, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep Cherri out of my mind.
Our first date had gotten cut short that day when everything went to shit, and before we could have our first date, our first kiss, our first time together, we were ripped apart. All I could think about when I was in prison was getting out and picking up where we’d left off. Why did everything have to get so messed up? Was I meant to believe it was a complete coincidence that not only was she taken, but she was dating my brother when I got out? Either Nathan, my dad, or both had done that intentionally, and as frustrating as it was, there was nothing I could do about it until she was willing to realize that The Royal Court was no good for her.
I shook the thoughts of Cherri out of my mind, collected a couple of mugs of apple cider, and then went to where Annika had found a bench near an open fire. We pulled out some of our pumpkin seeds and apples to cook as we talked and got to know each other more.
“I’m having an amazing time,” Annika said with a smile. “You came up with this idea really fast.”
I chuckled. “Yeah. Truth told, I kind of had it in the back of my mind.”
“For someone else?” she asked. My jaw went a little slack, and she shook her head. “It’s okay. Be honest. You’ve been kind of distracted, and I can see that you’re thinking of someone. Don’t worry. I can take it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Maybe this was a bad idea. Not you. You’re great. I honestly didn’t expect to really like anyone so soon. Something recently fizzled out with someone I’m kind of…in love with.”