True (True Believers #1)(46)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“I seriously did not know that.” But I could picture it. I wondered why in three years I had never bothered to ask what had taken Tyler ten minutes to discover.

“I thought he was so cute,” Susan said, pulling an electric carving knife out from under the counter, her blond hair falling in her face. “And he was actually interested in learning something new when I was offering him suggestions. So many people bristle, like you’re calling them stupid for trying to help them make a choice. I was just trying to help, and he understood that.”

“How did you two meet?” Dad asked, trying to sound casual, but not quite pulling it off.

Technically we had met when Kylie had started sleeping with Nathan. But I told him, “Tyler is my tutor.” It was true.

“What?” My dad laughed. “Since when do you need a tutor?” He clearly didn’t believe it.

“American Lit might as well be ancient Hebrew to me, so he helps me interpret the books I have to read.”

“Really?” Now I had my father’s attention. He looked at Tyler with a new respect.

“Yeah, you know how literal I am.”

“You come by that honestly.”

“Tyler’s been really helpful.”

“You had a B in the class before we started studying together,” Tyler reminded me. “You weren’t exactly a failure.”

“For these two, a B is a failure,” Susan told him.

“Well, I think tutor is too strong a word. We really met through mutual friends and started studying together. She helps me with science and math.”

“Are you an English major?” Dad asked.

“No. I wish. I’m in the EMT program. I needed to do something that wouldn’t take four years and would guarantee me a job afterward. I do think I’ll like it if I can survive all the bio classes.”

“He’s graduating next semester,” I said, hearing the pride in my voice.

“Wow. That’s great.” Mental gymnastics were going on in my dad’s head, clearly.

“What about this guy?” Susan asked, touching Easton on his back as he leaned over the island, staring intently into a terrarium that my dad frequently fussed over. “What grade are you in, Easton?”

“Fifth,” he said, his words muffled from his fists shoved into his cheeks as he rested on his elbows.

“Do you like school?”

“No.”

“Well, at least he’s honest,” Dad said, amused.

Tyler wasn’t. He didn’t say anything, but I could see the thoughtful concern that crossed his face. He worried about his brothers, especially Easton, that was obvious to me. Frankly, he probably had a reason to. Jayden was easy to read, and he seemed like a happy enough teenager, especially under the circumstances. Easton might have a million thoughts running in his head, good or bad, and no one would ever know what they were. Or he might be thinking about a whole lot of nothing. It was impossible to say.

“Are you hungry, Easton?”

He shrugged.

“We are!” Susan’s dad, Bob, called from the family room. Jayden had sat down next to him and they seemed to be discussing something about the game. There was lots of pointing on Jayden’s part and head nodding from Bob.

Susan’s mother, Nancy, was knitting something. I was kind of hoping it was a scarf for me for Christmas. She made those fuzzy circle scarves that were like an acrylic barrier between your skin and the wind.

“Don’t be a grumpy old man,” Susan told her father. “We’re ready to eat. Everyone to the dining room.”

As they all shuffled in the direction of the dining room, I picked up a casserole dish of au gratin potatoes. “How are you, Aunt Molly?” I asked. She was staring at the front of my father’s refrigerator, water glass ready to fill, but I noticed she wasn’t pushing the button.

“Hmm?” She snapped out of it and focused on me. “Oh, fine. Just battling the dragons in the physics department, as usual. How are you?”

“I’m great.” I was. With the exception of Jess and Kylie, all my favorite people were in my house. I leaned closer to her. “Isn’t my boyfriend cute?” I whispered, curious about whether my aunt even thought in those terms anymore.

Her eyes widened and her gaze shifted across the room to Tyler, who was directing Easton where to sit at the dinner table. “Oh! I suppose so. He certainly is the epitome of masculinity, and females are hardwired to find the strongest males as attractive in order to guarantee their future offspring will have the greatest chance at survival.”

Huh. Now there was a completely nonsexy way to think about dating.

“Exactly,” I told her, giving up. Hey, for all I knew, there was complete truth to it. I was overly fascinated by Tyler’s muscles. I just didn’t want to think in those clinical evolutionary terms. I wanted to be a girl and feel giddy and romantic.

There was no danger of me becoming Aunt Molly after all.

I sat between Jayden and Tyler at the table, Easton on Tyler’s left, nervously playing with his cloth napkin.

“Why are there so many forks?” Jayden asked me.

“One is for salad, one is for your dinner, and one is for your dessert.” I pointed to each one as I spoke.

“Whoa.” He looked stressed out.

“Don’t worry about it, U,” Tyler told him. “Just pick one and stick with it if that’s easier.”

“No, no. I can do it right.” He resolutely took the salad fork and started eating his mixed greens from the bowl Susan had placed on his plate.

The meal went a whole lot smoother than I would have expected. Bob and Nancy were chatty people, and they seemed to enjoy peppering the boys with questions. It gave them more options for conversation, because normally they tried to pry a sentence or two from Aunt Molly then gave up. My father looked triumphant as usual when he carved the turkey, having his big-man moment for the year.

Jayden ate every scrap of food on his plate for two courses, earning appreciative comments from Susan and Nancy. “Would you like more mashed potatoes?” Susan asked him as his finger came out and slid across his plate to clean up the gravy.

I knew Tyler hadn’t seen or he would have reprimanded him, but I figured this was probably the best meal of his life, so why ruin it with rules? We had all licked our fingers at one point or another.

Jayden nodded. “Thanks, Mrs. Susan.”

I wasn’t sure where the title had come from, but Susan seemed to take it as a compliment.