Mason and I already took bets on how long it’ll take Mom to remind me that I’m the oldest, the one she expected to get married first, yet here I am, single once again.

Though I’m not complaining.

There’s another tug on my line and I jerk it back, waiting half a second to see if I caught anything. The line doesn’t move again, so I slowly reel it up, somewhat thankful the bait is gone. Resting my pole against the side of the boat, I heft into one of the seats, warmed by the sun, and grab a beer from the built-in cooler.

The boat is only two years old, and was a much-needed upgrade from the old hunk of junk Dad insisted still “ran just fine,” despite us getting stranded in Lake Michigan for five hours during a storm until the Coast Guard could come out and tow us in. I bought this new boat for Dad on his birthday two years ago, and while it’s a bit over the top for a birthday gift, I figured it was the least I could do after my parents footed the bill for me to go to medical school and become a doctor. I had it paid off in only a year, and we’ve already got our money’s worth out of this thing.

We’re on Silver Lake today, much smaller than Lake Michigan, and the breeze coming in over the water is hot and sticky.

“Or go out with her,” Mason counters. “Wine and dine her, fuck her good, and then ghost her.”

“You’re despicable,” Jacob quips, leaning over the boat railing and looking down into the water. He won’t say the real reason he’s on the fence about going out with this girl is because he’s still bitter over his last relationship ending with his girlfriend cheating on him after two-and-a-half years together. Only Mason and I know he’d gone out looking at engagement rings the week before things blew up in his face.

“Tell her from the start you don’t want anything serious,” I suggest. “That’s what I do, and it’s worked out so far.”

“Yeah, it’s worked out well.” Mason rolls his eyes. “How many times have you and Stacey broken up and gotten back together?”

“Four,” I say with a shrug. We started dating a few years ago, and we get along just fine. But fine is all I can describe us as.

The sex is fine.

Her company is fine.

Everything is so fine there’s no substance to it. She agrees with almost everything I say, and I don’t actually know what she really likes or doesn’t like, even after three years off and on. If I want to get Mexican food, she does too. If I want to watch hours of murder documentaries, she does too. It sounds ideal, I know, and I fumble every time I try to explain why having someone just blindly go along with me is off-putting.

It would be one thing if she enjoyed the murder documentaries, or got excited to watch football with me, but she doesn’t. She’ll just sit there, looking bored as she stares at the screen of her phone. Physically, she’s there with me, but she mentally checks out the second we get together. No, she doesn’t actually enjoy any of that, and instead it feels like she’s doing it to appease me so she can get something out of it in the end…which she usually does.

I spent the weekend watching sports with you, take me shopping now?

“It must be good pussy to keep going back,” Mason notes.

I shrug. “It’s okay.”

“Just okay?” Mason’s brows rise incredulously. It’s the first time I’ve so much as hinted that things between Stacey and me aren’t hot and heavy. I’ve had a reputation to uphold, but honestly, I’m just tired right now. “Time to move on.”

“I plan on it,” I say, not going into detail that we were together just two months ago. I had a particularly rough shift at the trauma center and burn victims are some of the hardest to treat and to see.

It’s worse when said victims are children…burned by the result of evil, vile parents who inflicted the burns as a form of punishment.

A brother and sister were airlifted to us, and we lost the three-year-old girl. I put the five-year-old boy in a medically induced coma, and we didn’t know the extent of the brain damage until he was stable enough to wake up.

I was exhausted but couldn’t sleep, and Stacey was still up when I called her at one AM. She came over, and sex has always been my go-to solution of all of my problems, no matter how temporary it is.

“Shit,” Jacob mutters, looking at his phone.

“What?” Mason and I ask in unison.

“Mrs. Nelson’s horse has colic again. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the low-hay, high-grain diet she’s feeding him,” he grumbles. “Mind if we head in early?”

It’s not quite four in the afternoon again, and while we had planned on being out here until we had to go home for dinner, I’ll gladly check in early and get a nap in before Mom calls the whole family down for Friday night dinner. “I’m good with it.”

“Me too.” Mason wipes sweat off his forehead. “It’s hot as balls out here today.”

“I’d say jump in the lake to cool off,” Jacob starts, looking at the water. “But it feels like fucking bathwater this late in the summer.”

We put our fishing supplies away and Jacob starts up the boat. The lake is small, and we’re close to our childhood home, where everyone but Jacob is staying for the weekend. He’s the only one out of the four of us who still lives in Silver Ridge. Mason moves all over as an FBI agent and is currently residing in Detroit, working at the Michigan FBI headquarters, and I did my residency in Indianapolis and ended up at a hospital with a trauma center in Chicago. Rory is four or so hours way in a small town in Indiana, not too far from me, actually. We’re all within driving distance, at least for the time being.

About half an hour later, we’re pulling off the road onto the gravel driveway that takes us to the farmhouse we grew up in. It’s been updated over the years but has retained the overall look and feel that brings me an instant sense of comfort. I hated living in a small town in my youth, but now that I’ve been out and living in big cities for years, I’ve developed a certain appreciation for the slower pace of Silver Ridge.

“Rory’s here already,” Mason states the obvious when we see her car parked in front of the garage. I smile, looking forward to seeing my sister, but more so my nephew. We park the boat down near the barn and get out, grabbing our shit and heading inside. There’s a note taped on the door leading into the mudroom from the garage, saying Adam is napping so be quiet.

“Hey!” Rory says quietly when we get inside. She’s sitting in the kitchen with her husband, Dean, and gets up, coming over for a hug. “You smell like lake water and worms.”

“Nice to see you too, sis.” I pat her on the back and turn to Dean. “How was the drive up?”

“We didn’t hit a second of traffic, but Adam cried for the first half of it,” Dean says, slowly shaking his head.

“He wore himself out.” Rory goes back into the kitchen and takes something out of the oven. “I just laid him down in the pack-and-play upstairs. We’ve been having a hard time getting him down for naps. He just wants to be held, and we’ve kind of caved to it.” She looks at Dean, smiling guiltily.

“If he wants to be held, then I’m going to hold him,” Dean says back. “I can’t say no to that face.”