My Only Bitchy Cousin Is A Yankee-type Guy- The... Direct

And yet, every Christmas, there he was. Sitting at my grandmother’s dining table, correcting everyone’s grammar.

His name is Bradley, but I’ve called him “Bratley” in my head since we were nine. He’s my only cousin on my mother’s side—my only cousin, period—and he is a Yankee-Type Guy. Not just a guy from the North, mind you. He’s the stereotype . The one who thinks sweet tea is an abomination, that “bless your heart” is a declaration of war, and that any temperature above 72 degrees is a personal insult from God.

But I didn’t have her patience. I was a feral, barefoot girl who climbed pecan trees and fought with snapping turtles. Bradley and I were oil and water—except the oil was also complaining about the water’s pH balance. My Only Bitchy Cousin Is a Yankee-Type Guy- The...

Aunt Patty, who had just driven four hours through Atlanta traffic, looked like she was considering using those discrete units to commit a felony.

By high school, he was six feet tall, razor-thin, and had developed a vocabulary specifically designed to make you feel like a piece of lint on his blazer. He went to a boarding school in Connecticut where they apparently taught Latin, crew, and the fine art of condescension. I went to public school in Macon, where I learned how to hotwire a golf cart and make a bong out of a Gatorade bottle. We had nothing to say to each other. And yet, every Christmas, there he was

“Why do you come down here every year if everything we do is wrong, everything we eat is garbage, and everything we say sounds stupid to your fancy Yankee ears?”

I stood up. “Bradley,” I said, sweet as pie, “I have a question.” He’s my only cousin on my mother’s side—my

That was Bradley. He never learned to cool off. He just got sharper.

“I know,” I said, sitting down next to him. “You’re a terrible liar.”

My uncle laughed. My grandmother handed him a towel and said, “You needed to cool off, honey.”