Outside the house

"Hi Jake! Name's Patrick. Nice to finally meet the brother Kristin's been talking so much about!"

Grabbing my hand in a firm handshake, the guy who is supposedly my sister's first boyfriend gave me the most pretentious smile ever.

I had to say, he was pretty decent looking, and from the looks of it, he has the body to back his looks. It was not hard to picture him being constantly surrounded by the more popular kids in school. It was precisely this image of him that made me suspicious of his intents for Kristin.

You see, Kristin was never a popular girl. Even though she can be really beautiful when she dresses up, which she rarely does, she is the girl that likes to dress plainly and stay out of the limelight.

Growing up, she has always been the one who was the more matured between the both of us, and many times it felt as if she was the older sibling instead. Therefore, what had surprised me the most, was not only that she had found a boyfriend for herself all of a sudden, she had found someone like Patrick.

"And this, Is my sister-in-law. She just married my brother yesterday."

I watched Patrick warily as my sister introduced my wife to him. I watched Patrick's eyes light up when he saw Anne as he shook my wife's hand.

"Beautiful indeed! Any man would be considered lucky to have you!"

I flinched slightly when I heard the way Patrick phrased his sentence. It sounded almost like Anne's man was not decided yet, when in fact she was already married to me!

I glanced over to Kristin to see if she had noticed her boyfriend's strange phrasing of his words but she was already busy loading their bags into the trunk of the car, too busy to pay attention to her boyfriend who was happily chatting up a storm with her sister-in-law.

"Alright! Everyone in the car! We're going to be late if we keep dwindling around!".

My mom's loud voice brought my attention back as everyone quickly gathered their stuff and squeezed into the car.