Chapter 4

I spent the return trip home in silence as my dad raved about how much fun had. He and mom chatted idly together for miles about how nice it was to see everyone again and how they really needed to do it more often.

“Logan,” Mom said, finally remembering I was in the car, “You had fun too, right?”

“Of course, Mom,” I answered, blankly staring out the window at the endless fields and farmhouses on the horizon.

“Bill and Marnee’s girl seemed nice. It looked like you two really hit it off,” said Dad as he drove home. “Quite a looker like her Mom.”

“Watch it, Mitch,” said Mom, annoyed.

“What did I say? She seems like a lovely girl,” said Dad defensively.

“Yeah, she was nice.” I tried to act cool, not wanting to let slip that my mind was solely focused on my sexy cousin.

“You two going to stay in touch? Maybe meet up in September?” Mom asked while still giving Dad the stink eye.

“Yeah, I-uh, got her number. I’ll call her after move-in day.”

“Hogwash,” Dad said, having picked up some country lingo. “You call and offer to help her move in. I’m sure her folks would appreciate that. It’ll let them know their daughter’s in safe hands, and there’s someone reliable there to keep an eye on her.

I certainly planned to keep both eyes, hands, and certain other body parts on her as much and as often as possible. I don’t know why, but I’ve never felt this way about a girl before. It’s a shame she’s part of my family, but as she said, no one at school knows that.

“Hey Dad, how are the Yosts related to us anyway?” I asked, wanting to do a little research on the long ten-hour drive home from rural Indiana.

“You forgot already? Marnee’s my cousin on my Dad’s side. She married into the Yost family, which weirdly intertwined with ours on and off over the generations. Guess that’s what happens in small towns, eh?”

“Isn’t that incest?” I asked, trying to be subtle about it.

“It’s a grey area, and not something we’re too proud of. I think there were a few first-cousin marriages that ... uh ... weren’t exactly legal, but things were different back then.”

“That’s kind of weird, right?”

“It’s just how things happen sometimes. It’s easy for you to judge having lived your life in the city, but it’s a different life out here. I should know,” Dad said with an air of confidence, which Mom was quick to deflate.

“Mitch, you lived one year in Indiana before your parents moved out of state for work.”

Dad grumbled under his breath, “spent a lot of summers here, though.”

I couldn’t help but dig at both of them, “You wouldn’t happen to be Aunt Mom, would you?”

That got Mom to laugh. “No honey, you know I met your father in college. The way he talks about his cousin Marnee, though, you could have been born playing the banjo and missing a few teeth.”

“I meant nothing by it dear, I was just saying, is all.” Dad sounded defensive again. It made me wonder if there was a little half-truth in there somewhere.

“You were just saying all reunion, dear,” Mom fired back.

“Well, you won’t need to see them again for another twenty years...”

I listened to them bicker for another hour, going back and forth over my Dad’s potential crush on his own cousin. I played along, if only to kill some time, but it also made me feel better about what I had done and wanted to do in the future. When I had stable cell service, I pulled out my phone and checked the laws and rules for relations with cousins. It seemed ... complicated.

It depended on distance of relation. For Lindsay and me, it appeared we were second cousins, which could be fine. Laws varied wildly by state, likely due to the population size and density of each. For where we would be at Adams, it would be legally questionable. In terms of the social and morality of our potential relationship, I think we’d best keep it quiet.

Once the fight between my parents stopped, I was able to nod off for a few hours. I hadn’t had much sleep the past few nights and was quite tired. I dreamt of being back at the frat house, in my bed with Lindsay naked beside me. We’d have all the time in the world to do whatever we wanted, and we would make sure we took full advantage, at least in the confines of my dream. I hoped reality would be just as positive.

The summer seemed to crawl by, as I was stuck at work through the dry heat of August. My local friends could tell something was going on with me as I seemed distracted and less interested in some of the girls from home. In fairness, though, I knew most of those girls already from high school, and a number of them had been around the track and back.

It was just that none of them seemed to hold my attention or interest like the girl I’d meet back up with in September. The only real fear was that she might have changed her mind before we met back up. It would be hard to know since neither of us contacted the other the whole summer, as we had agreed.

I can’t pretend to have been a complete saint, though. While I didn’t call her, not that I could with her phone number sitting on my desk at the frat house, I did creep her social media profiles. One night, I just couldn’t help myself and started checking around to see what I could find. It wasn’t that hard, to be honest, since my parents had her parents on a few.