Tied Up in Knotts Ch. 04

You're never too old to learn something. For example, I learned that, on Lee's scale of one—to the most important thing in the world—spending time with hot men trumped buying furniture for work. A mistake I will never make again. Me being tricked into attending Penn's birthday didn't go over well. Lee threw a fit the only way he knew how, dramatically with a side of passive aggressive. By the end of the night I had promised, on the grave of every family member I loved, that I would never hangout with the Knott brothers without him.

I was socialed-out and looked forward to a down weekend. I needed to recharge. But then Nathan and Kelsea called and invited us over. I'd been friends with Nathan since before I could form a sentence. Lee and Kelsea were cousin-besties. She was Lee's best-woman and Lee was slated to be her man-of-honor. So, accepting their invitation was a no-brainer. Spending time with them easy, it took no effort at all. Their home was our home and our home was their home.

Nathan and Kelsea lived in a weird area; a small canyon with no cell-service. Lee hated that every time we visited, he had to connect to Wi-Fi. I was the opposite; I loved the freedom it brought. No service, no interruptions.

"Al Borland!" Nathan shouted as we got out of the car. "Up for a little reno work?"

He was in the middle of cutting some two-by-fours in the middle of his yard. Nathan was handsome even if he was balding more than most our age. He'd taken to wearing a hat most of the time to cover it up. He put the saw down and met us halfway.

"Where's Kels?" Lee asked. Nathan motioned to the house and Lee took off, taking the porch in one leap. He loved Nathan but not enough to get roped into manual labor. Nathan and I laughed as we watched Lee disappear into the house.

"What's today's project?" I asked.

Nathan dusted his hands then his shirt. He'd been working for a while before we showed and had sweated through his armpits and the back of his shirt.

"Finally adding that small shed."

"About time," I laughed. "It's been, what—four years you've been talking about doing that?"

Nathan flipped me off. "Yeah, well, shit happens. Some of us have real jobs."

Now it was my turn to flip him off. He loved to give me a hard time about my job, in reality, he was jealous of my flexible schedule. He worked for a moving company and worked crazy, labor intensive hours.

We got to work on the shed. He had the foundation finished so we framed in the walls. It took us most of the day but we got it done. All he had left to do was the roofing. It was dark when we made it into the house. Lee and Kelsea were sitting at the table, drinking wine. Nathan grabbed himself a beer and me a water.

We ate dinner, laughed, and caught up. It was always a good time. It was two-in-the-morning when we finally pulled ourselves away.

"Let's do this every Friday night. We can make a standing date," Kelsea begged as she hugged Lee.

"Yes! No matter what happens, we have dinner," he demanded. "We can rotate houses!" It was a rehearsed speech of promises that they said every time we got together. Nathan and I could recite it verbatim, and did, when our spouses weren't looking.

"Why don't we do this more often?" Lee asked as we drove away. "We're so busy but this is good. We really need to make it a priority."

"I'm fine with that," I said. Lee was usually the one who turned it down. They were our best friends; it was easy to put them on the back burner. He knew they'd always be there.

When we finally reached cell service, my phone beeped with notifications. It solidified why I loved being out of service now and again. Being the doting husband and awesome co-pilot Lee was, he started reading the messages aloud while I drove. If a reply was necessary, he'd type it out.

"David wants to know if you're still hosting game night tomorrow? If so, do you want him to reach out to some of the guys?"

"Yes, and Yes. Tell him they can come at seven. We'll have pizza ready. They either leave before eleven or stay the night. And no more than ten guys."

Lee typed away on my phone before moving to the next message.

"There's dozens of messages from numbers you don't have logged." He held up the phone so I could see my inbox.

"'Come over about eleven and we'll take the boat out'
'The boats warmed up, almost here?'
'Nash...'
'Tried calling you but you're not answering'
'We're waiting for you.'

He read the messages in rapid concession before flipping to another unknown sender.

'Dude, where are you?'
'I'm going to assume your car exploded or you're dying?'"
Flip.
'Nash, you done upset the boys. Ryan and Penn are coming after you'
Flip.
'Promises, promises...'

"This one has a sad face emoji and broken heart emoji," Lee described before reading off a few more messages. They were similar to the rest. When he finished, he re-read them silently to himself. "Are these from the Knotts? Were we supposed to hang out with them today?"

"Not really. I mean, they mentioned something last weekend but it was more an off-handed comment. Nothing concrete."

"It sounds like it was more than off-handed. Did we ghost the Knotts? Please tell me we didn't ghost the Knotts." Lee stared at me, daring me to tell him we stood them up, that we had committed the biggest crime in history by spending the day with our best friends instead.

"I think they're being a bit dramatic. Besides, Nathan needed us. They are our best friends after all."

"Nash," Lee sighed. "You're an idiot."

I found his level of distraughtness over the matter quite amusing and squeezed his knee with a chuckle. "The summer isn't over, love."

"You better hope it's not." There was a slight rise in his voice, a warning. He covered my hand with his and squeezed. "You better fix this."

****

Tuesday was HOT. The Oregon coast was nothing like California and Florida, where the beaches were warm and the water was blue. It was more like the vampire trilogy movie where the vampires lived in an overcasted, rainy shadow of a town. Only the town stretched the entire coast line. It was rare to see anything over seventy. Seventy-five and everyone in town was dying. Literally. Heatagetten. Some places stop functioning when it rains, we stop functioning when it's hot.

I decided to blast some more high school nostalgia and power wash everything I could get my hands on while working on my tan. I hadn't run much since Seattle and the muscle strain felt good. I was belting the chorus of a song I wished I didn't know the lyrics to when the music cutout, leaving me awkwardly a cappella.

"You have interesting taste in music."

I jerked, almost dropping the wand but managing to not plummet to the ground. "Jesus—"

The amigos were standing a few yards away with their typical megawatt smiles. With shaky, scared legs, I climbed down the ladder. Logan and Penn were each holding a power cord: one to the power washer, the other, the music box.

"And you have a way of showing up at the most inopportune times. Like, when I'm singing songs that no one should sing." When I got off the ladder, I shook my hair like a wet dog then gave it a quick run through with my fingers, trying to tame the mess that was my blonde hair.

Ryan crossed his arms like an angry father and looked at me like I was busted. "What happened last weekend?"

"What?" I asked. "We were helping Nathan and Kels with their shed."

"You were supposed to come over. We were waiting for you."

I cringed. "I completely forgot."

"You promised."

"Honestly, I didn't think it was a serious invite. Kind of like a 'yeah totally, lets hangout sometime', but then you never do and it's okay."

Ryan was genuinely taken back by my response. "Seriously? You think that us kidnapping you and forcing you to agree to come back was some kind of non-invite?" He scoffed. "If that's the case, what does a genuine invite look like?"

"A felony. Probably five-ten," Penn mumbled from beside his brother.

I pointed at him and laughed. "That's terrifyingly accurate."

Penn smirked, proud of himself for being funny. I'm not sure I'd ever seen him make a joke.

"Then stop resisting and no one gets hurt," Ryan said.

"You don't get told no very often, do you?" I asked.

"No, we really don't. But you like to be difficult, don't you?"

"I'm the difficult one?" Nash laughed. "You're the one breaking the law every time you come here."

"We wouldn't have to resort to breaking the law if you weren't such a pain in our ass. Now come along, we're going to lunch."

I wasn't the kind of guy who spent much time on presentation, but I was in no shape to go anywhere—dripping wet and wearing shorts. "I would love to, really, but I'm in the middle of—"

Umpf. Penn flung me over his shoulder. He wasn't that much bigger than me but that it didn't stop him from tossing my grown, one-eighty-pound ass around effortlessly.

"Really?" I shouted. Ryan and Logan quickly locked everything in the garage before following us to the truck.

"Stop being so difficult all the time and we won't have to resort to such drastic measures. If you think about it, it's your fault," Logan said as he and Ryan climbed into the back seat. Penn flopped me in the driver's seat then motioned for me to scoot over.

"No shoes, no shirt, no service." I said, just in case they hadn't noticed my state of undress. There was a second of rustling before getting whacked in the side of my head.

"There," Ryan said. "Penn's clothes should fit better than mine."

I gathered the clothes in my lap then held them up. There was a worn Penn's Septic sweatshirts and a pair of athletic shorts. I pulled the sweatshirt to my face and took a quick whiff. "I'm guessing the shorts are dirty, too?"

"You didn't complain too much when it was my dirty clothes," Ryan cut in.

"Actually, I remember complaining a lot."

He chuckled. "Yeah, maybe you did. But Penn smells better than I do."

Anything smelled better than concrete dust. With his clothes on my lap, I carefully shimmied out of my wet shorts. The clothes shifted, almost exposing myself. I wasn't over modest and we were all grown ass men. I glanced at Penn. He was staring at the road like his life depended on it.

I knew that look. I remember driving over the mountain pass when I was eighteen. It was snowing so hard. I had never driven in a blizzard before. I was so nervous and stressed that I turned the music off so I could see the road better. Someone could've been murdered in the back seat and I wouldn't have noticed, that's how hard I was concentrating.

That's what Penn looked like, like he was driving in a blizzard for the first time. Like he had never seen another guy naked despite growing up with brothers and a dozen male cousins. I couldn't help but laugh at how uncomfortable he looked.

****

A minute later we pulled into the parking lot. It was busy with the weekday lunch rush. We were seated at a small table, Ryan and Logan on one side, Penn and I on the other.

"This is cozy," I said as Penn practically squished me into the wall. It was hands down the smallest table I'd ever eaten at. I was sure there was no way everything would fit.

"We'll share. It's either that or wait thirty minutes for a bigger table."

Fair enough.

"So," I asked as I opened my menu. "What do you guys usually get?"

"I was thinking the seafood trio?" Logan responded, looking quizzically at Ryan, who frowned.

"What about the seven mares soup?"

"Ugh, I just had that on Saturday." They went back and forth so I ignored them.

"What do you want?" Penn asked quietly.

"Hmm," I glanced at my top three choices. "The chicken salad."

"Good God, why?" Logan scoffed. "Poor Penny's gonna die of starvation." Of course they expected us to share

"It's fine. They have big salads. I'm not that hungry." Penn assured me.

"No, I can pick something else," I snatched the menu back up and looked again. "What do you usually like?"

"I'm not picky."

We settled on the two-person chicken fajitas. I asked for extra vegetables and a side of rice. Ryan and Logan settled on something that had the word crema in it and a round of sodas.

"I'll have a water."

"You're a health nut, aren't you?"

"Meh, I guess. Not intentionally though, more out of a habit."

"How do you mean?"

"Food is fuel. I run, play basketball, hike, indoor rock climbing, or whatever else I can feel like doing. When I eat like crap, I feel like crap. That doesn't jive with an active lifestyle."

They continued to ask me questions. Logan and Ryan eventually got side tracked into their own convo but Penn kept going. He was quite engaging. "Do you have any marathons coming up?"

"I have Boston next April. It's kind of a way off so I might do a half when I go to Thailand in November. I haven't decided. I'm still recovering from Seattle. I'm not sure I'm ready to jump into another one."

"Boston? That's impressive. Isn't that hard to do?"

"I don't think it's harder than any other marathon but not just anyone can sign up. You have to qualify and then sign up in time. It's definitely not for beginners."

"What does it take to qualify?"

"Well, you have to compete in a qualified race, that's what I was doing in Seattle. Then you have to sign up in time to get a spot in your division."

"And you're qualified?"

"I guess so. We'll find out when it comes time to sign up."

It wasn't until the food came and we were eating and laughing that it hit me...I'd been invited—erm, kidnapped by the Knotts, again, and didn't call Lee. If he found out...well, it wouldn't be pretty. Lee was far more outgoing and social. This kind of stuff is what kept him going in life. He wanted more friends, he wanted to be invited places, he loved lunch dates. I didn't want to see the look of disappointment in his eyes again.

"Is the food bad?" Penn looked concerned. I must've been showing my thoughts aloud.

"I forgot to invite Lee to lunch."

"Surely you guys don't have to eat every meal together," Ryan said.

"Oh no, that's not the problem," I said, realizing how the situation must seem. I didn't want them to think we were connected at the hip but I also couldn't tell them the truth: 'Lee is practically in love with you guys and he wants you to take shots off his naked body'.

"Lee works a lot and has been feeling left out. I promised to call him next time we did something and I forgot."

"Just don't tell him."

"That's not an option," I said. "I don't make a habit of lying or withholding information from my husband. It sets an unhealthy precedent."

"So, you'd rather piss him off over something so trivial like lunch?"

"I guess that's subjective. What's trivial to one person might be important to another. Rather I share the same opinion with him or not, I'd never tell him that his feelings are ridiculous. That's incredibly disrespectful, in my opinion."

"Shit, no wonder you're nominated for Man of the year." Logan looked guilty. He glanced at Ryan, Penn, then back at me. "You're going to make us look like terrible husbands."

"Or, maybe you can take his lead and learn to be a good husband," Penn said pointedly.

"What would you know about being a good husband?" Ryan kicked Logan under the table and Logan recoiled. "I didn't mean that."

"It's fine," Penn set down his utensils, set his napkin on the table, and excused himself.

I tried to mind my own while Ryan and Logan had a wordless argument. Penn wasn't happy when he got back and the rest of lunch was eaten in silence. When the bill came Ryan tossed the whole thing to Logan, who didn't argue. He had ruined lunch after all.

We went back to Penn's truck, which was really nice. Both Ryan and Logan drove newer, white work trucks. Penn's was neither brand new or a work truck. It was probably ten years old and well taken care of. The beast was completely blacked out, just like the death trap he tried to kill me in on his birthday.

The irony wasn't lost on me. His brothers were blonde with short haircuts, blue eyes, they drove white trucks, and had outgoing personalities. Penn was the black sheep, literally. He had dark hair, dark eyes, all his toys were black, his truck was black, he usually wore dark clothes, and he was quieter and more reserved than the others.

"I have to take them back to work first, is that okay?" Penn asked as he pulled out of the parking lot.

"Your truck, your rules." I said and Penn's lip curled and it made me smile.

The ride wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as lunch. Whatever Logan had done was forgiven and they were back to their normal banter. When we pulled up to the jobsite, there was no long goodbye. Ryan told me that we would be doing it again soon. Then they were gone.

"Is he always like that?"

"Bossy?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah. Does it bother you?" Penn glanced at me before returning his eyes to the road.

I looked out the window and thought about it. "A little. I just don't understand it."

"Understand what? Why is he an ass?"

"That," I laughed. "But more like, why does he—well all of you really—going out of your way to include me. It's sudden and unexpected."

"Sudden?" He said. "I guess that's subjective."

"Ah, I see what you did there, except it's not subjective. Less than a two-month period is definitely considered sudden."

"You'd be right, except you're wrong." I raised my brow and turned to give him my full attention. "They've been inviting you over for the better part of a decade. That's hardly the definition of sudden."

"Well, yeah, but those weren't like, real invites," I waved him off.

"Speculation."

"Okay," I sighed. "I guess I can't say they weren't genuine invitations. Your family is very social and hosts a lot of events, yes?" Penn nodded. "It's hard to feel like the invite is genuine when literally every person is invited. It becomes a status thing. So many people go because it looks good on social media or they think it gives them some sort of credit. That's not me. I socialize for a living. I'm out there in front of everyone, and I love it, but when it comes to my personal life, I want authentic relationships. Being invited to big social events by someone I barely know isn't how I want to spend my free time."

"Did it ever occur to you that you're invited because you're the kind of person we enjoy being around?"

"No," I laughed. "It doesn't matter anyway. Don't take this the wrong way, but how do you build authentic relationships with hundreds of people? Take your birthday for example. I floated around making small talk because Ryan forced me to stay then disappeared. I didn't have a relevant conversation all day. It wasn't until I ditched everyone to hang out with your nephews that I was a part of something I enjoyed."

"We went riding together, I think that counts for something," his tone was defensive.

"Yes, but—and I don't mean this negatively, just my perspective," I clarified. "But you looked irritated that I was there. And you didn't exactly invite me riding, you commandeered Kayde's invitation and turned it into attempted murder." Penn pursed his lips. He looked...troubled. Maybe I had come on too strong or sounded like an arrogant ass. "I'm not saying I had a terrible time. I did have fun—not riding with you, of course, that was terrible," I teased. "But overall, it was good."

He seemed to think about what I said. "What about the Third?"

I looked at him and smiled. "Minus being blindsided and kidnapped? It was great. But our time together didn't include half the town. It was just the three of us. It was intentional. That's the stuff I can get behind."