“I don’t sleep,” I blurt. “Or that used to be true until you came into my life. For years after Onyx died, I was afraid to shut my eyes and go to sleep because every time I did, I would relive that day over and over.”
Declan shifts uncomfortably beside me. “I don’t know, maybe it’s not me, maybe you just needed company or counseling or something —”
I chuckled dryly as I admit, “Trust me I’ve had copious amounts of both, although counseling helps me a great deal, it’s not the same.”
“O-kay,” Declan says slowly with a great deal of skepticism. “As you can tell from hanging around my family, I’m not the one with a reputation for being the most helpful person in the room.”
“I don’t know if I can explain it very well but it almost feels like I’ve been walking on a tight rope and since you came into my life I’ve found solid ground and I can walk comfortably in my own skin again. I lost sight of who I was and what was important to me because I was so afraid of making people around me upset. You give me the courage to stand up for what I believe in and to remember what makes me whole. I love that you never try to change who I am.”
Declan looks completely befuddled as he asks, “Change you? Why would I do that? I love you just the way you are.”
WELL, THAT SUCKS! THE FEELING that I could single-handedly cure cancer, fix the economy, solve the refugee problem and come up with a solution for global warming while living in complete domestic peace and tranquility at home with Jade lasted about as long as it took me to pull into my parking spot at work.
Seriously, I went away with Jade for a couple days to get away from my life, but I never expected it to be so spot-on perfect. It was the kind of story that my grandfather used to wax poetically about when he would talk about meeting my grandma at the town dance hall. Apparently, she was a lot like Jade and didn’t pull any punches either. Grandpa used to call her his firecracker. Sadly, I didn’t know her until her dementia had started to set in, so I only saw glimpses of the woman that he fell in love with. Still, until the day she died, he insisted that she was the perfect match for him. I never fully understood that sentiment. Jade changed all that for me. It would be easy to explain it all away as good physical chemistry, but it’s so much more than that. I run my hand down the elegant guitar case. It’s such a visual representation of everything that is right about our relationship. Jade seems to be able to hone in on what I need but I’m unable ask for. She knows what really makes me tick. She knows the heart of me, sometimes better than I do. It’s a scary thing to be that open with someone but it’s also liberating because I don’t have to hide anything from her — she already knows.
As I walk in the back office and place my new guitar in dad’s office, Finn looks at Rowan and openly scoffs, “Look at Justin Bieber over here, he thinks he’s going to have time to give us a concert. It looks like all that free-style living in Gainesville has turned you soft. The rest of us have to actually work for a living.”
“Get your underwear out of a twist, I had a rough few days and I took my girlfriend away for a couple of days, cut me some slack. It’s not like you guys are used to having me around anyway,” I remark with a shrug.
“You are an asshole,” Rowan grouses. “Keep your syrupy, happy self outta my face.” He slams the refrigerator door shut with his foot and turns around and leaves the room.
I turn to face Finn as I ask, “What the hell is wrong with him?”
Finn rolls his eyes at me as he responds, “It might have something to do with the fact that we been up for about forty-eight hours straight, working while you’ve been playing around. You promised to fill in for Dad, but we haven’t seen hide nor hair of you.”
“I thought senior management was covering for us this weekend,” I reason. Even as I say the words out loud, they sound hollow to my ears. I sound like a twelve-year-old who forgot to get my paper-route handled. There is just something about being around my brothers that makes me feel entirely incompetent to handle my own life.
“Welcome to the real world where plans change. You left before the directives came down,” Finn says as if that explains everything.
“What directives?” I ask, playing along.
Finn’s sighs dramatically as he responds, “Great, I suppose you don’t watch the news either?”
“Usually I do, but this weekend I was too busy making sweet, hot love to my girlfriend by the campfire, if you must know.”
Finn grimaces as he responds, “Thanks a lot for that visual — as the perpetually single guy in the group, I totally didn’t need that.”
“Sorry man, you asked,” I reply as I mimic playing a teeny tiny violin.
“Actually, I didn’t ask, but the reason we’re all fried is because there was another airbag recall and it impacted nearly every brand we carry. This one goes back six freaking years. It not only impacts the new cars, but nearly all of our certified used cars too. To make matters worse, every responsible car lot in the nation is trying to use the VIN verification tool to check the status of the recalls so the website crashes every two-point-five seconds. We finally gave up and started checking all of the numbers by hand. Do you know what a pain in the ass that is? We could have used you, but once again, you completely let us down and disappeared. It was like déjà vu all over again. The only good news was that Dad had some tests scheduled and they categorically would not let him out of cardiac boot camp. If it hadn’t been for the follow-up testing, Dad would’ve been down here working his butt off.”
I fiddle with my necktie and adjust my hair tie as I let out a breath in frustration. “I told Mom to give you my emergency line if anything came up. I’m sorry if that didn’t get passed on to you. I didn’t mean to leave you guys shorthanded, but I had to get away and get my head screwed on straight.”
“Oh my God! Do you realize how many times I wish I could do that? I can’t do that because I am the oldest son. I’m always responsible. I think there are more days in the month that I wish that I didn’t have to get up and come to work and face another day selling cars than days I don’t. I envy you so much for being able to escape the legacy. Some days it’s just mild jealousy, but other days it feels like downright hate.”
The disdain in his words is stunning to me. I always assumed that he loved the business as much as Dad. They talk about it all the time. Last I heard, Finn is slated to open his second large lot in a few months.
“Geez, why don’t you tell me how you really feel?” I quip when I recover my ability to speak. Still stinging from his words I ask, “Better yet, why don’t you just do it? You’re a grown-up. What’s stopping you?”
“Oh sure! That would kill Dad for sure. I can’t just abandon the business that’s been in the family for decades. Where would that leave Dad?”
“We still have one more brother and Dad hires really good managers. That’s what most car lots do that aren’t owned by a single family. You don’t stop being a member of the family because you don’t work at a car lot. Stone isn’t even really our last name. Most people don’t even associate it with us anymore.”
Finn is silent for a moment as he steeples his fingers together in front of his chin. When he replies, his voice is rough with emotion, “You make some surprisingly compelling arguments, Middle Brother A.”
I smile at his use of my childhood nickname. “I gotta ask, what would you do with all of your new-found freedom?”
“Something, anything without a desk and a multiline telephone,” Finn answers, as he sits at the large desk and untangles a long curly phone cord.
“Oh come on, that’s not a career goal. That’s a feng shui problem. No, really what did you always want to do?” I probe.
“You are going to think that this is really stupid. It’s way too late for me now. I’ve been out of school too long to make this happen, but I’ve always been really interested in marine biology. I wanted to study dolphins and porpoises and save the manatees when I was in high school. I’ve always been fascinated by them
. I wanted to be the person out on the Greenpeace boats trying to save them.”
“You act like you’ve got a decade on me, you’re like eleven months older than I am. Sure, we missed the five year high school reunion, but we haven’t had our tenth year high school reunion yet; so don’t be signing us up for the nursing homes just quite yet,” I tease.
“It feels that way. Most of my friends I went to high school with already have degrees and some of them already have graduate degrees. I’d feel really stupid sitting in a freshman English class.”
“I know for a fact that you wouldn’t be the only nontraditional student there. Jade is going to go back to school and she’s our age.”
“Why did she miss out on going to school? Was she too busy partying?” Finn asks.
“It’s funny to me that you think that just because she gorgeous. She’s actually stuck in the same situation we are. She’s been working at her family business since she learned to read and write and she’d actually like to be able to learn to do something else. She’s facing a bunch of family pressure to stay exactly where she is. If you’d actually take the time to get to know her, you’d understand that she feels an awful lot like you do.”
“She just seems like she’d be the kind of woman who likes life on the wilder side, that’s all I’m saying,” Finn argues defensively.
“Jade has her moments, but you’d actually be surprised about what makes her the most happy.”
At that moment, my cell phone buzzes and Finn smirks at me as he remarks, “I can see that she’s already got you on a short leash. I never thought I’d see the day that a tumbleweed like you would be tied down.”
I’m only half paying attention to my brother’s razzing as I try to process what Jade has just written to me. Any way I read it, it’s not particularly good news. I mean, I knew in the back of my mind that this day was going to eventually come; I just had hoped that it would be much, much further away.
Finn finally cues into my change of mood and asks, “Are you okay?”
I silently shake my head no as I answer, “Eventually I will be. Right now, I’m just bummed. This day started out so well too. Somewhere along the way, the wheels just came off of it.”
“What’s wrong?” Finn asks again.
“Jade has to leave,” I answer bluntly.
Finn’s eyebrows raise in surprise as he asks, “Why?”
“Remember all of those expectations I was telling you about? They’ve come back to bite her in the butt. One of the other tattoo artists has to go have her wisdom teeth taken out. Since Rogue was covering for her, Jade has to go back to Ink’d Deep.”
“I’M TELLING YOU, SODA BREAD is one of the easiest things to make. It’s virtually impossible to screw up,” Claire insists. “Let me know if you want the recipe, I’m happy to share mine with you. Declan loves this recipe. He can help you since he knows how to make it. The kids have been making it forever.”
“I don’t know… I’m pretty well-known for messing up baked goods. It’s just not my thing,” I confess. “I think that’s the last of the recipes we need, what else do we need for the party this weekend? I can work on getting it together while you and Finn go pick up Connor from the rehab center.”
Claire walks by me and pats me on the shoulder. “I’m sure going to miss you when you’re gone, I like having you here,” she remarks emotionally, before clearing her throat. I’m surprised that she’s a little choked up. “I think all the serving dishes got put away with the Thanksgiving stuff. All that stuff is out in a big box in the boys’ ‘Man Cave’ as I call it. It should just say, ‘Company Dishes’ on the box.”
I nod as I reply, “Okay, I’m going to go take a quick shower and get into some sweats. I want to try to shake this nagging headache. I’ll take care of it later after I try to sleep this off. Go get Connor home.”
Claire sighs as she says, “I’ll be so glad to have him home, but it might take me a while at the hospital, I have to meet with that dietitian and a physical therapist while I’m there.”
I have to laugh at myself and my shaking hands as I try to hold the flashlight steady on my cell phone. Darn my dad and his habit of making me watch horror movies with him as a kid. Don’t get me wrong, I loved them too, but it makes it a little scary to explore someone else’s house — my imagination is a little more active than most people’s. Wait… is that my heavy breathing? I hold my breath — no easy feat because my heart is beating a million miles an hour. No. I don’t think that was me. Shi—it! It’s always the woman who is home alone that gets murdered in these shows.
I pull my car keys out of my pocket and put them in my dominant hand and adjust the grip on my phone. I take a deep breath and let it out like they taught us to do in self-defense class so that I don’t pass out. I listen closely again and I don’t hear anything, so maybe I made it all up in my head. I sweep the flashlight around the room and I see a shadow reflected against the back wall that comes from my nightmares. I should probably do something or say something, but right now I’m stunned into total speechlessness at what I see projected in front of me: it’s like my own personal horror movie. It is the silhouette of a man holding a handgun to his temple.
A strangled, horrified gasp escapes my lips as I try to utter the word, “Stop.”
The figure in the black leather chair spins around and much to my horror, it’s Rowan wearing an old baseball hat with a logo so worn that I can’t even make it out. When he recognizes me, he makes a wild gesture toward the door using the revolver. “Get the feck outta here. I’m gonna have no check… no… I mean chick of Dec’s mess my plans up again.”
“What plans are those, Rowan?” I ask cautiously. “Having yourself a little party down here?”
He holds up a bottle of Jack Daniels that’s alarmingly two-thirds empty and says, “Yup, me and JD here are becomin’ real good friends with Mr. Peacemaker.”
My heart about stops. Great. Rowan is, at best buzzed and at worst, flat out drunk, and he’s waving around a gun like it’s an American flag at a Fourth of July picnic.
“Hey, you got a bunch of bullets to go in that Peacemaker? My dad’s got one at home, but he accidentally ran over it with his Harley, so it doesn’t work quite right and he can only load four bullets in it. How many do you have in yours?” My heart pounds as I try to remember Tristan’s instructions about humanizing myself in the face of a threat and trying to get information for law enforcement in case I need it later.
Rowan snorts at me as he laughs and says, “I thought my stupid big brother said you’re smarter than our bitch of an ex. Everybody knows it only takes one bullet to kill yourself.”
“That doesn’t sound like much of a party to me, why are you trying to kill yourself?” I ask as I carefully text #912 to Declan, holding my phone down by my side where hopefully Rowan won’t notice it. Declan and I set that system up several months ago when he started worrying about me working late hours at the shop. I informed him that I couldn’t dial 911 every time I got a little scared of the shadows. So, he told me to dial #912 if I ever needed him to come rescue me like a knight in shining armor.
Right now, Rowan isn’t paying much attention to me at all. He is too busy raging at the ghosts in his life, past and present. Rowan sits up in his chair and for the moment, sets the gun down on the computer table behind him. I make a calculated gamble and resend the emergency signal to Declan. I have no idea whether it actually went through because I’ve turned off all the notifications from my phone.
“You wouldn’t know anything about what I’m going through because Declan is f-fecking perfect all the time. The sensitive one, the artistic one — the one Shannon wanted to be with… but she settled for me. Don’t think I didn’t hear about that every d-damn day we were married. “Now look at him—” he continues after taking a swig of alcohol. “He comes w-waltzing back home, but is he s-s-sorry for the s-shit he put everyone through? Oh hell no — he walks in like he owns the place, kicks me off my place on the showro
om floor and back into the shop like he hasn’t been gone all these years. I’m back in the r-repair shop like I’m some flunky who can’t close the sale. I’m not like Finn, Dad is never going to give me my own lot and now Finn is going to have two. Nobody cares if I’m even in this family, I should just end it all and make everybody’s life easier. I just can’t take being a failure anymore. My wife doesn’t want me, my family doesn’t want me in the family business, even the people I hang out with online to play video games with don’t really want me around anymore. They say I’m too competitive and don’t play by the rules. Some of them said it’s not fun to play with me anymore. I mean how God damn pathetic do I have to be to not be able to make Internet friends, creepers who take children for sex slaves make Internet friends. I’m just sick of it all. I’d rather not be here; there isn’t anyone around who would really miss me. I’m tired of pretending I’m okay when I’m not.
“That’s not true,” I challenge softly.
“You don’t know anything!” Rowan pushes back.
“Actually, I know quite a bit,” I assert. “You’d be surprised by what I know about video games. My business partner and his brother-in-law practically own an arcade. Tristan Macklin invented more than a few of them himself.”
“Now you’re just full of crap, there’s no way you know the Tristan Macklin,” Rowan replies skeptically.
I shrug and say, “That wasn’t exactly what I was arguing with you about, but if you boot up your computer, I can pull him up on Facebook.”
Rowan scoffs as he argues, “Anybody can bring up his corporate site; it’s a matter of public record.”
I sigh and force myself to act casual. “What would it take for you to believe that I actually know him?”
Rowan practically sneers at me as he answers, “Photographic proof - and not the Photoshop kind. I want the real deal.”
“Video or stills?” I ask.
“Yeah, right. You’re just stalling,” he retorts.
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