They showed up unannounced, the way bad news always does. My brother and his wife had moved into my town, close enough to be neighbors, far enough for me to ignore them. I didn’t know much about how they were living, but from the bits and pieces I got through the kids, it wasn’t great. They were barely getting by, and I guess that’s what happens when life hands you a busted deck and no one ever taught you how to cheat.
She had some kind of job at Macy’s, painting faces, selling people the illusion that a little powder and foundation could fix their miserable lives. My brother? I don’t know. Probably holding everything together, like always. The guy was a natural caretaker, a mother disguised as a man. He was always the one making sure the kids had their jackets zipped, their shoelaces tied, their heads on straight. Meanwhile, his wife was busy being something else entirely.
I wasn’t doing great myself. Retired from engineering, stuck in a dead marriage, dragging myself through therapy sessions where the only real takeaway was that my wife didn’t like me. Just didn’t like me. No mystery to solve, no deep psychological puzzle—just a woman who looked at me and felt nothing but obligation and mild disgust. She was turning into her mother and knew it, and that scared her. But instead of fixing it, she just let it happen.
None of this had anything to do with the story, but it’s worth saying.
So my brother’s wife and my wife spent some time together one afternoon, sharing whatever women share when they sit around and talk. When I got home, my wife told me we were all meeting at Red Robin before my brother and his family headed back to LaPine. Fine. Red Robin was a circus, a safe place where kids could scream, I could drink a beer the size of my head, and nobody would notice the cracks in anything.
So we met. We ate. The kids spilled things. My brother played the role of the perfect mother, cleaning up after them, making sure nothing got too wild. His wife? She drank. Hard. Like a woman with a grudge against sobriety.
When we finished, I leaned over to my wife and told her I was heading to Cascade Brewing. She barely acknowledged it. My brother was still wrapping jackets around his kids, getting them ready for the cold.
Then his wife said, “Mind if I follow you?”
Everyone just nodded like it made sense. “Sure, yeah, why not?”
And that’s how I ended up at Cascade Brewing with my brother’s wife, drinking beers, watching the night twist itself into something I wasn’t expecting.
It started off normal enough. Two people drinking, talking, trying to pretend life made sense. I ordered a Pine Marten IPA, she picked something, we clinked glasses, and then, just like that, she started in.
“A man like you deserves better.”
I didn’t like where this was going, but I took another drink anyway.
“A man like you should have a woman who takes care of him.”
I stared at my beer.
“A man like you should be getting a blowjob every day.”
I looked at her. Jesus Christ.
She leaned in, serious as hell. “I make sure your brother is taken care of. If he needs more, I bring in another woman. I do what it takes.”
I downed my beer. Fast.
She kept going. Descriptions. Details. Things I didn’t need to know about my brother’s sex life. I tried changing the subject five times, but she kept steering the conversation back like a drunk driver gripping the wheel.
Then she said it.
“Let me do something for you.”
“What?”
“Right now. Here. Outside. Just for paying the bill.”
She leaned in again. I took a step back.
“No. No. No. Not happening.”
“Come on.”
“Nope.”
I tossed some cash on the table and got up. “We’re leaving.”
We walked outside. It was cold, the parking lot half empty. I turned to her. “Are you good to drive?”
She just stared at me. Then she smirked.
“You sure you don’t want me to…?”
Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
I got in my car. Started it. Drove away. Left her standing there, alone with her bad decisions.
When I got home, my wife was awake. I told her everything. She lost her mind. Apparently, she and my brother’s wife had been talking about our marriage, about sex, about expectations. My wife admitted she wasn’t great at intimacy, that she didn’t know how to show appreciation.
And somehow, that turned into this.
Two days later, my brother showed up at my door. Needed rent money.
I went to my safe, pulled out $1,500, put it in his hand, and held onto it for just a second too long.
“This is it. No more. No reason to come back.”
He looked at me, confused. I didn’t explain. Didn’t tell him about his wife, about the brewery, about how she threw herself at me in a parking lot. I just gave him the money and shut the door.
A few months later, they couldn’t make rent. Couldn’t hold down jobs. Packed up. Moved back to Colorado.
And that was the last I saw of them.
Some people show up in your life and you think, maybe this is the start of something good.
And then you find yourself at a brewery, listening to your brother’s wife talk about blowjobs like she’s writing a fucking manifesto.
And that’s when you realize—some people should stay exactly where they came from.
