Friday evening, just before I’m about to trowel on all of Sephora’s latest and greatest offerings—via Harper, there’s no way I could ever afford all of this fabulousness on my non-income—for the mixer later tonight, Jet calls me to the Black Bear for dinner and a proposition he says I won’t want to pass up.
I trudge over to the Black Bear all by my lonesome. I tried to convince Ava to tag along. I even tried to entice her with free fries—on me!—but she’s too sidelined at the moment deciding which top to pair with her barely-there skirt. I tried to tell her that Grant prefers her with her top off so it really didn’t matter, but I know that deep down Ava is really hoping that I’ll click with Daisy when left to my own devices. She thinks it will be better for the two of us in the long run if we work on our relationship now. For whatever reason, Ava has really taken to my brother’s ditz of a girlfriend. I’m pretty certain that I will never click with Daisy over anything, not now and for sure not in the long run.
The Black Bear smells like lust-filled frat boys who wear too much cologne and cruise around with a beer in their hands while doing their best to get laid. That conversation I had with Lawson comes to mind. There’s no way I’m willing to be passed around The Row like some bimbo blow-up doll. I have no clue why I wanted Lawson to think that would be my main educational objective during my time here at Briggs. What I meant to say, not that it was any of his beeswax, was that I want to experience a series of relationships—nothing more than first base. Don’t guys just date anymore? Can’t you see someone for a continuous amount of time without having to inject a condom into your body? Why is everyone here so sexed up anyway?
I spot Daisy and Jet in a heavy lip lock from across the room and groan. Leave it to those two to prove my sexual point. I head over and steal a fry off my brother’s plate.
“Hear, hear, I call this meeting to order!” I shout in an effort to put an end to their tongue twister.
Jet straightens with his eyes sprung wide as if I’ve just caught them doing far more carnal things than kissing. Truth be told, I have no idea what’s taking place underneath the table nor do I want to use my impressive sleuthing skills to investigate. “Do you realize how disgusting it is to use the wordpropositionwhen it comes to your baby sister?” A part of me enjoys torturing poor Jet. In no way does he ever want to imagine me as a sexual being, so I get a kick out of taking him down that thorny horny road now and again, although he walked into that one all on his own.
Daisy swats him, and her hair blows back as light as cotton candy—ironically, she douses herself with a cheap perfume that just so happens to be just as country fair inspired.
“I’m working on him, Lucky.” She bounces her finger off the tip of his nose, and they both give a little laugh as though it were some dirty inside joke. Probably is. “What he meant to say was—”
“Please don’t put words in my brother’s mouth. I find it both rude and condescending.”
Daisy smirks as if she expected this on some level, but Jet’s eyes roll with fire.
“Apologize,” he growls.
Jet always swore he would never let another human being come between us, and he’s done just that. Once my mother died, effectively leaving us orphans, he swore on her grave that he would be my father, my mother—that he would protect me and provide for me, and there wouldn’t be a single thing that I would want for. Who knew that, fast-forward a decade, the only thing I’d really want was my brother all to myself once again. I’m pretty sure that’s the only thing in the world he can’t gift me. I hate that his relationship with Daisy has affected ours. I hate that he, in fact, left me just like our parents did, like my sister. I groan at the thought. I realize how adolescent it all sounds, and yet deep down, I buy every bitter word.
“I’ve got a job offer for you.” Jet pushes his burger in my direction, and I take it.
“What kind of a job?” A part of me demands to crack a comment about tracking down Daisy’s brain, but I hold back. Sometimes my sarcastic superpowers land me in hotter water than I think they should. And I know for a fact my brother would hold my head under those hostile hot waters until I bleated out an apology, so I refrain from sharing my theories on her lobotomy.
“At the shop.” His face smooths out. “Think Ink is a part of a new docudrama, and I want you to participate. You’re family—plus, I need a few more employees to fill in the blanks. I had three quit because they had arrest warrants out, and they didn’t want any airtime.”
“Cool! I mean, not to the arrest warrants. I’m rooting for the authorities, by the way.” I give a little shrug. Who knows, maybe I’m headed to law school yet? I always did have an affinity for all things justice. “So, what do I do? When do I start?”
“You do your homework, and you start on Monday.”
Daisy nods. “We just need a hand behind the counter.”
We. I smack my lips in lieu of turning on the faucet of my aggression. I don’t know where she gets off using the termwe. Jet built that business from the ground up—or at least he resurrected life back into it when he took it over from the last guy. My brother happens to be the best tattoo artist this side of the continental divide and most likely the other side of it, too. That’s another thing I’m not too crazy about when it comes to my brother’s first and worst girlfriend—she’s weaseled her way into every facet of his life. If he ever marries her, it might as well be his funeral. She’s vacuuming his identity from him one soul-sucking kiss at a time. The sad thing is, he doesn’t even realize it.
“I’m in.” I take a bite out of his burger, and a thought comes to mind. “Hey—um, insanity wouldn’t happen to run in our family, would it?” I can’t let that comment go—or more like where that comment took me. Jet and I have never talked about the horror our mother went through. Once our father died, it was a big relief and my mother was more than elated—not outright or anything, but you practically had to hold her down the way she kept floating to the ceiling now that the boulder in the shape of my father was rolled off her chest.
“Yes,you,” he says it dead serious, and I flinch as if this might be true. As horrific as it sounds, I loved my father. We were very close. He called me his special girl. He saved his wrath for my mother, but for me he saved the best part of him—the heart he tried to convince the rest of the world that he didn’t have. “No.” Jet shakes his head, emphatic. “Is that for a class or something?” He crumples up a napkin and shoots it my way.
“Yeah, something like that.”
We shore up dinner and hug it out before I take off for Cutler Tower once again.
No insanity in my family—with the exception of my brother losing his mind over a girl.
Thank God that’s one mental disorder I don’t ever plan on tapping into.
Lawson
Thankfully, I don’t ever plan on pinning myself to a wax board and letting some chick dissect me for the rest of my life. I glance around Beta house as it fills with bodies. Ava and Grant have already done a disappearing act. Rush is gathering the prospects by way of regaling a crowd of Kappa G girls with his storied youth. Rush’s family is locked and loaded, so if he doesn’t get them with the mention of their private jet, he’ll land them with the chateau in Vale.
My own family used to be locked and loaded themselves until we imploded. Dad still has his shipping business, but last I heard he’s looking to sell it to the highest bidder and sail the world with a woman he met a little over a year ago. I do like Lynette, and I get along great with Knox and Trixy—Rex is always a wild card as far as that goes, but a part of me wishes I could magically stitch my old family back together. Although I’m not sure why. For some reason, my mother and father’s inability to keep it together—my mother’sabilityto drift so far apart from her children—has left me jaded toward relationships in general. How long will it be until all of my siblings move away and we pretend like we never even knew each other? I’m sure once I’m through with Briggs, the few friendships I’ve made here will end, too. Dad and Lynette just mentioned the other day that they’re getting ready to put my childhood home on the market. This entire line of thinking leaves me headed toward the nearest beer.
A hand lands over my shoulder, and I turn to find Knox himself grinning at me.
“Dude.” I slap him five. “Good to see you. I was just thinking about you, man.”
