by Rye Hart
“Uh yeah,” Jenn said. “Where would they go? Black Oak is their home.”
“I dunno,” I said. “Figured they'd get football scholarships somewhere and get out of Black Oak. At least Quinn.”
“Yeah, he did,” Jenn said with a shrug. “Notre Dame. But he blew out his knee and ended up coming back home.”
“Oh,” I said, suddenly feeling sad for the guy – he deserved better than that. “Quinn was actually nice to me.”
“Hell, all of them are still good guys,” Jenn said, removing Marty from her breast and straightening her shirt. “I went on a date with Ben before Martin and I got back together. We had a good time, but it didn't end up going anywhere. Obviously.”
I looked over at Jenn and tried to imagine her with Bennett McCormick – the oldest of the brothers. He'd been a senior when we were freshman, and the last time I saw him, he'd been dating one of the cheerleaders. Typical jock move. Back then, he'd never given us the time of day. “You went on a date with Bennett McCormick?” I asked. “And you never told me about it?”
Jenn shrugged. “Like I said, it didn't go anywhere. He was nice, but I was already interested in Martin by then.”
Back in high school, there was no way Jenn or I would have chosen Martin Drake over any of the McCormick brothers. No girl of sound mind would have. The McCormick brothers were the most gorgeous men in school. They were practically royalty in Black Oak and had their pick of the girls. And for the most part, they'd been cocky assholes. But like I'd learned, a lot had obviously changed since those days. And Jenn was happy, so that was all that mattered.
A mischievous little grin spread across my best friend's face. “Why don't you go over there, Hailey?” she said. “I'm sure they'll just die when they see you!”
My cheeks burned and flushed with color as I looked down at my hands. “They wouldn't even know who I am,” I said. “They never did back then.”
“You'd be surprised, sis,” Jenn said. “Seriously, go say hello.”
“Maybe later,” I said, no longer straining to see if the brothers were in the truck.
I didn't want to look too desperate. Besides, I may have been single, but I was far from ready to start dating again. Just the idea of entering into a relationship so soon after getting back to town made my stomach roil and a wave of nausea rise up within me.
Not that I stood a chance with any of the brothers in reality, anyway. Even if I looked a lot different than I had back then, my transformation was nowhere near as dramatic as Jenn's. She was like an entirely new person.
And me? Well, I was apparently still very much me.
CHAPTER TWO - CASON
Preparing for the Bonfire
“Think I could get some help here?” I asked.
I pushed the door to my brother's bedroom open. Bennett – the oldest of the three of us – was already up and at the restaurant. But Quinn, the middle brother, was sleeping in.
Quinn rolled over in bed and grumbled something that vaguely sounded like English at me, the girl next to him still snoring away. The girl – Shelly Stewart – was an on-again, off-again fixture around the house, so that wasn't surprising to me that she was snuggled up with him in bed.
What was surprising though, was that both of them were fully clothed. Usually, I got an eyeful when I opened the door to Quinn's room in the morning. Typically, I either got a glimpse of my brother's bare ass or Shelly's boobs – which she didn't seem to care about hiding.
But today, they were both in pajamas, which was different.
Ever since I'd graduated from high school, I'd slacked on the workouts and wasn't nearly as in shape as I used to be, especially compared to Quinn and Ben, who still worked out hard every day – and it showed.
Sometimes, I envied my brothers’ muscular physiques. Having a leaner build, when I saw either of my brothers with their shirts off, was another reminder to me that I needed to hit the gym.
Except for the fact that he was more muscular and in better shape than me though, Quinn and I were spitting images of one another – right down to the reddish-brown hair. Quinn was desperately in need of a haircut though, with his shaggy locks spilling down to his shoulders. I kept mine trimmed neatly – mostly because I needed to keep it out of the way when I was working in the kitchen.
“Quinn, seriously, we need to get moving, bro,” I said. “We need to get the grills set up by ten.”
Sometimes, going into business with my brothers seemed like it was more trouble than it was worth. There were times I felt more like a babysitter than a partner. And other times, I enjoyed the hell out of it. The camaraderie we shared sometimes made the workdays fun and entertaining.
This though, wasn't one of those times.
Quinn peeked out from under his squinted eyes and he groaned when he saw me. But instead of fighting me, like he used to do in high school, he instead, immediately swung his legs over the side of his bed. Running a hand through his long hair, he sat there, certainly not in any hurry to actually get out of bed.
“Come on, Shells,” he said, not turning to the girl in his bed. “I have to get to work.”
His voice sounded more detached than usual; distant and there was a tension in the air I hadn't noticed before. Groaning, Shelly got up, and quickly threw on her shoes. I looked at Quinn with a question in my eyes, but he merely shrugged. The silence in the room was as awkward as it was painful to witness.
“I'm going to be outside,” I said, excusing myself from an obviously awkward situation.
Quinn and Shelly had been together on and off since high school. Everyone always assumed they were soul mates, but living under the same roof as my brother, I knew the pain Shelly brought to him. I knew the way she turned his heart and mind upside down and inside out. But he kept going back, like a loyal lap dog to its owner. Every single time. Whenever Shelly called, Quinn was right there, wagging his tail, begging for a little love and attention.
With a sigh and a shake of my head, I left them to work out their latest issues in peace.
Walking out front, I moved my pickup truck to the garage where we stored everything for the business that wasn't in the restaurant itself. As I opened the garage door, Shelly slammed the front door behind her, and walked down the steps, huffing and puffing her way to her car, parked on the street in front of the house.
“Mornin'” I said to her as she passed.
She didn't say a word to me. Typical. But, what wasn't typical was how she slammed the door of her car and sped off, like a bat out of hell. Or the red, puffy eyes she'd had.
Quinn peeked out the front door, a nervous look on his face.
“Don't worry,” I said, glancing into the garage as I took inventory of everything we'd have to move. “She's gone.”
Dressed in jeans and a Notre Dame t-shirt, my middle brother was by far, the largest of the three of us. Not that any of us were small. We came from strong, Irish stock as my mama used to say. But Quinn took his workouts very seriously and was bulkier than either Bennett or me.
When he stepped outside and joined me at the garage, Quinn didn't say anything about Shelly's grand exit, so I took it upon myself to play counselor.
“So what was that all about?” I asked.
“With Shelly?” he asked.
“No, with the other girl who stormed out of here,” I teased.
Quinn helped me lift one of our larger grills into the back of the truck, not answering my question. I wasn't going to grill the guy – no pun intended – but I could tell that whatever had gone down between them was bothering him. He wouldn't make eye contact, at all.
“I dunno, man,” he said with a sigh. “She's been offered a job in New York City.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You're not –”
“No,” he scoffed, shaking his head. “No fucking way I'd move to New York. Besides, she doesn't want me to anyway.”
“Good,” I said. “Because she's not worth it.”
Quinn flinched like I'd slapped him in the f
ace when I said it, and I could see that what I'd said bothered him. But I wasn't one to coddle my brother. Sugarcoating things wasn't going to help him, he needed to hear the truth.
“Seriously,” I said, loading a few smaller items into the truck bed. “She's not. She twists you all up and makes you feel like shit half the time, man.”
“I know,” he sighed.
“Man, you can do so much better than her,” I said, leaning against the truck. “She's done nothing but play you since the beginning. And you just keep going back for more and more abuse. Do you even love her?”
Quinn shrugged. “I don't know. Which I guess should tell me a lot. I mean hell, if I loved her, I'd know it, right?”
“Yeah, I think you would.”
It was a relief to know Quinn wasn't in love with Shelly and wasn't planning on moving away to New York City on a whim. We might have our differences, but the three of us owned a business together now, and we needed him.
“Come on, let's get this stuff over to the park,” I said, shutting the truck bed. “Ben should be meeting us over there soon.”
CHAPTER THREE - QUINN
The park was already starting to fill up with booths and people by the time we got there. It was a warmer than usual fall for us, and it still felt like summer during the day – especially with all the damn humidity in the South. But, warm or not, the leaves were changing and there were already big red and orange piles of them all over the ground.
“South Carolina apparently didn't get the memo that it's October,” I muttered to myself.
I wiped the sweat from my brow as we finished setting up the grill behind the food truck Bennett brought over. Most of the cooking happened out back, on the massive grill we brought out for special occasions. Good BBQ couldn't be made inside a piddly little food truck.
Cason and I were working the grill, and I wasn't too thrilled about the idea of standing outside in the damn sun all day. Bennett would be in the nice, cold air conditioning of the truck – taking orders, handling the cash and doing whatever else needed to be done.
As soon as we were done with the hard stuff, Ben drove up in his truck and parked alongside ours. Climbing out, I noticed he was dressed nicer than the two of us. He was in dress slacks and a button-up shirt. His hair, darker than ours – a chestnut brown opposed to the reddish-brown color most of the McCormicks are born with – was neatly combed and styled. He took after our mother in the face, but his build was all McCormick. Clocking in at six-foot-three, he had the same wide shoulders and chest that we all had.
“Where the hell have you been?” Cason called out.
“As usual, he waits until the hard stuff is over to show up,” I teased. “Probably had to get his hair done.”
Bennett McCormick was the brother who cared most about appearances – specifically, his appearance. He always took care to make sure he looked his best, right down to his freshly shaven babyface and meticulously trimmed hair.
“Business isn't all about what goes on behind the grill, boys” he said. “Someone has to make sure the bills get paid.”
And that was Bennett. Cason was the chef, Bennett was the numbers guy. I still wasn't sure where I fit in, but I helped where needed. Sometimes marketing and advertising, other times alongside Cason on the grill. I was the more jack-of-all trades type.
“And those bills just had to be paid this morning, huh?” Cason teased, wiping sweat from his forehead with his t-shirt, which was covered in charcoal and dust.
Ben shook his head, an almost condescending look on his face – an expression that never failed to make me want to smack him right in the mouth.
“Not like you'll understand it,” he said, his tone matching his smug expression, “but I was meeting with the banker this morning to discuss our expansion.”
“Explains the suit,” I said.
“And the haircut,” Cason added. “But still not why it had to be done this morning when we could have used another set of hands to put this all together.”
“Hey now, I'm not the one sleeping with my ex still,” Ben said, turning the attention back on me.
I shrugged. “At least I'm getting laid these days. One of us has to keep the genes alive.”
“And besides,” Carson said, “Quinn got up and busted his ass this morning.”
While I gave them shit right back, the mention of Shelly reminded me of what happened the night before. For the first time since we started hooking up, starting way back in high school, I knew it was the end. Hell, we hadn't even slept together last night. At least not in the sexual sense. We shared a bed one last time before she left for the bright lights of the big city.
And this morning, when I asked her again ifshe was sure she wanted to end this, she made it perfectly clear that we were over.
She also called me a selfish prick in the process.
And while her words stung, being outside with my brothers made me almost forget about her and that whole scene entirely. Almost. I tried to remind myself that it wasn't like we were ever going to settle down and get married or some shit like that. I knew it, she knew it. But, most of the time, I liked spending time with her. My brothers didn't like Shelly for a lot of reasons. And while it was hard for me to fully understand why they hated her so much, deep down, I knew they were right in some of the things they'd said. I was too close to the situation, obviously, and didn't see some of what they saw.
Both Cason and Ben still enjoyed playing the field a bit, and since I was officially free from Shelly, I thought that maybe I'd join them. It'd be like old times – the McCormick brothers back out on the prowl together.
Except for the fact that we knew most of the women in Black Oak – and very few of them seemed enticing. Everyone knew everyone else, and at times, the whole town felt almost incestuous. A lot of people were distantly related to others by marriage. Not to mention the fact that, in a graduating class of sixty-five students that you pretty much grew up with from day one, many of them felt like family.
If the brothers McCormick were going to go out and conquer women together, we were going to need to find a new fishing hole to dip our poles into.
CHAPTER FOUR - BENNETT
My brothers just don't understand what it actually takes to run a business. To them, it's all about grilling up the food and serving it. And yeah, that's a big part of it. But there's so much that goes on behind the scenes – payroll, the bills that have to be paid to keep us afloat, licenses, and all. There's a million things I do that they don't see, that if I didn't do them, the Driftwood would have closed down long ago.
But, I think that's what makes us strong; we all have our defined roles within the business.
Cason is the grill master. He's the one old man Dierks passed the recipe down to, and it was his idea to buy the Driftwood in the first place. I'm the brains behind the operation – I keep the books and do most of the advertising. I'm the face of the Driftwood. And Quinn is kind of our Jack-of-all-trades. He does a little bit of everything, helping out here and there.
“Hey, pretty boy,” Quinn said. “Can you make yourself useful and grab those boxes out of the truck?”
I look down at my slacks and shirt. The last thing I want is to get myself dirty. Cason and Quinn might not care if they were filthy and grimy, but I sure as hell did.
It's always been that way though. Cason has always been pretty tidy, but not anywhere near as fastidious as I was. And Quinn has more or less always been a slob. I loved my brothers, but it's one of the things that's always driven me the craziest about them – especially given that we share a house.
“Come on, bro,” Cason called from the back of the truck. “You've been playing businessman while we've been busting our asses out here all morning.”
I sigh and unbutton my shirt. Taking it off, I laid it neatly on the passenger seat in my truck. Stripping out of my slacks, I laid them over the shirt. People were milling about, getting their booths set up and ready for the bonfire, but I was still in a t-shirt and
my boxers, so I didn't care. I grew up playing sports and spent my fair share of time in the locker room, so my sense of modesty isn't all that high.
Grabbing my gym bag off the floor of the cab, I threw on my shorts and changed out my shoes. If I'm going to be getting sweaty and dirty doing manual labor in that heat, I sure as hell wasn't going to do it in my nice clothes. My brothers may be the kind of animals who are going to wear the same clothes they're in now to the bonfire, but I'm not.
As I'm tying my shoes, I look over at Cason and Quinn, who are laughing and joking with one another. And as I looked at them, I was struck – not for the first time – by how similar, and yet, how different we all were.
Although we all had that McCormick build, Cason and Quinn took more after our mother in the looks department. My hair and complexion were a little darker than theirs – more like our dad's. Although we were all athletic, to an extent, Quinn was always the best of us when it came to sports. I was good, but he was the natural athlete – a skill that earned him a scholarship to Notre Dame.
It always bothered me that Cason was naturally smarter than me and Quinn was always the better athlete. But, as I got older, I learned to appreciate the fact that I was good in both areas. While maybe not as exceptional in one area or the other like my brothers, I was still well above average in both.
Not that either of them let me ever forget they were better than me. If there's one thing we all got from our family's genepool, it's that healthy McCormick ego. Growing up, everything had been a competition between us. Our father believed sibling rivalry and competition was good for the soul. Good for developing a young man. And so, he nurtured that sense of rivalry and competition between us.
It one thing that's never changed between us – although, as we've gotten older, it's more about fun and bragging rights than it was the bloodsport it had been growing up. But my brothers and I still find ourselves competing over one stupid thing or another all the time.