Chapter 1

I can’t wait for you to meet my brother-in-law on Saturday. He’s gay, too!

I felt queasy just thinking about those words spoken by my next door neighbor, Sabrina Keener. The Keeners were having a cookout in their backyard the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, and I had been invited to attend. I almost declined and said I had other plans, but I didn’t because I didn’t have other plans and the Keeners were nice people. Sabrina, her husband Gary, and their daughters Leah and Holly had been nothing but friendly and decent to me ever since I moved to Evanston last year.

I inherited the three-bedroom, two-bath Victorian next to the Keeners from my aunt Corrine, my father’s oldest sister. Corrine and her husband George never had any children of their own, but they treated me like a son. After George died following a terrible stroke, Corrine fell ill herself, and the family was forced to put her into a nursing home to live out her final years. Her house, a lovely little Victorian in Evanston, was rented while she was in the nursing home. The tenants, an older married couple, took great care of the place. But after Corrine’s death, the renters chose to move to Florida when their lease ended. My boyfriend Clay and I decided to move into the house ourselves. Prior to the move, Clay and I owned a condo in Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood. We were having problems, and I naively thought a change of scenery would help our troubled relationship. So we put our condo on the market, made some renovations to the Evanston house, and moved in a few months later.

Unfortunately, our relationship didn’t survive the move. Clay said he felt “restless” living in the suburbs and wanted to return to the city. He also informed me that he’d met someone else. So, five months after we moved to Evanston, Clay and I broke up. He found an apartment in the city, hired movers to haul his things out of the house, and left me high and dry.

Seeing a moving truck pull up in front of the house only five months after we’d moved in was sad and humiliating. In addition to the pain I felt over Clay’s cheating and his hasty departure, I got another kick to the gut when he asked for a lump sum of cash to compensate him for the money he’d put into the renovations we’d made to the house. Yes, it was only fair that I paid him for the money he’d contributed, especially since the house was in my name and he wouldn’t get a dime if I sold it, but I was angry that he demanded cash only a few weeks after cheating and walking out on me. I paid him just to get him off my back and out of my life for good.

News quickly spread through the neighborhood about Clay’s quick exit, and I was embarrassed to even walk down my own street because I felt my neighbors were gossiping about me. But Gary and Sabrina never made me feel like an outcast. They spoke to me when they saw me and continued to be the great neighbors that they were when I first moved onto the block.

The Memorial weekend cookout wasn’t the first time I’d been invited to Sabrina and Gary’s house for an event. Clay and I had gone to one of their cookouts over Labor Day weekend last year and had a great time. So why was I avoiding my neighbors this time around? Because of Sabrina’s insistence that I meet Gary’s gay younger brother Eric. Until Sabrina told me, I didn’t even know Gary hada younger brother. I’d only seen and met his identical twin, Greg. Apparently, Eric, the baby of the family, had been living in San Diego and only recently returned to the Chicago area.

According to Sabrina, Eric had a bad breakup with a guy he’d been living with for a few years and decided to return to Chicago to put some distance between him and his former partner. Eric worked as a front desk manager for a hotel chain and was able to get a transfer from San Diego to Chicago. While I was sure Sabrina’s brother-in-law was a nice guy, I was still uneasy about being set up with him. But I put my reservations aside and went next door with the following lowered expectations: Eric and I would meet, we’d talk over a beer and a burger, and we’d go our separate ways.

Even though I’d never seen Eric, I spotted him the moment I entered Gary and Sabrina’s crowded backyard. He was standing with his twin brothers and an older man, and they were all laughing. Eric was tall, like Gary and Greg, but leaner and definitely buffer than his older siblings. He and his brothers were all dressed alike in T-shirts, cargo shorts, and running shoes, but Eric’s shirt was a V-neck rather than the crew neck style Gary and Greg wore. Eric’s shirt was also more form-fitting and showed off his chest and biceps. He didn’t have the body of a gym rat, but it was clear he worked out.