Free The Best of Enemies by Jen Lancaster Page B

I’m flattered. See, I’m into
women
. Right before break, I hooked up with this Kappa at Henry’s Ale House who used her tongue to—”
    I tell him, “Please don’t finish that sentence. Impressionable youth here. I mean, I’m happy for you, but the whole notion is super-grody.”
    I’m creeped out to no end imagining my brothers having drunken mash sessions. Although, I bet the idea of
me
kissing a guy likely creeps them out as well, or at least it would until they began to beat the dog shit out of the poor guy. Fortunately, or not, that’s yet to happen.
    Teddy replies, “None taken.”
    Hey . . . hold up, here. Let’s not be so quick to dismiss this whole notion of Sars dating someone in the family. The idea may hold some merit. What if she did indeed eventually hook up with Ted? Like, when we’re all grown-ups?
    I begin to consider the possibilities of a Sars/Teddy potential merger. Not the worst idea in the world. The worst idea in the world happened when John bleached his hair and rocked a Caesar cut last summer. Even poker-faced-Dad-the-litigator had to excuse himself from the room when John came in that day.
    If Sars and Ted were to couple up, we’d always be invited to her family’s Thanksgiving dinners and if you’d ever tasted her mom’s apple-cranberry-sausage stuffing, you’d know that’s worth the price of admission right there.
    “Would you date Sars? Not now, but in the distant,
distant
future?”
    “Hypothetically?” Teddy asks. “If we were both single adults, living downtown or something?”
    “Yes,” I say.
    “I dunno. She has potential, but I’ll probably always think of her as a little girl in big glasses.”
    “But you’d be open to the possibility? There’s a chance?”
    Teddy peers intently at me. “What’s with the line of questioning, kid?”
    “I’m just saying, if you married her, she’d always be family. Then we could spend every holiday together,” I explain.
    “I might eventually hit it if you need me to,” Bobby offers. I realize he’s joking, but he may be a decent alternative if Teddy doesn’t pan out. (We can all agree that John-John’s not in the running.)
    Teddy chucks me on the cheek. “Kiddo, I think it may be time to branch out.”
    “Meaning?”
    Teddy does a weird stretch and his spine crackles like popping Bubble Wrap. I’m glad he’s not playing ball competitively anymore. Sports did such a number on his body. You should hear his knees when he walks up the stairs—they’re like castanets and he’s only twenty-two! “Sars is pretty clingy and I’m afraid she might get too possessive over you. Who turns down Stanford to stay with her friend at Whitney? Stanford calls Whitney ‘Shitney.’ You need to make some other friends.”
    Before I can protest that I have other friends, he says, “
Girl
friends. If you don’t get some chicks in your life, you’re going to become an adult thinking it’s okay to live like wolves.”
    “We don’t live like wolves,” I argue.
    “Um, yeah we do,” Bobby counters, gesturing to the disarray all around him. Dad keeps hiring cleaning ladies and they all quit on us without notice. The last housekeeper lasted thirty minutes and stormed out in a huff, muttering something about trying to slap a Band-Aid on a sucking chest wound.
    Teddy says, “Do me a proper and don’t room with Sars at school. You need a little space away from her. You gotta trust your big bro here. Everyone who lives with their high school best friend in college ends up hating them by the end of first semester. Familiarity breeds contempt. Remember how John-John roomed with Paul diGregorio? We never saw him again after their first semester together. John-John said he didn’t meet any cool people until Paul moved out.”
    “Of course it was hard for him to make new friends,” I argue. “He’s an asswipe.”
    Bobby looks away from the television to raise a finger in the air, all parliamentary procedure–style.