“Well, I…But if…If I—”
I truly don’t even know what I’m trying to say, butheseems to.
“If you change your mind, you know where to find me.” He winks, and I decide at that moment, Milo Kablukov is the most dangerous man I’ve ever encountered. I need to steer clear of him if I’d like to keep some of my sanity, and dignity, intact.
There will be no compromises. No kissing. Nothing of the sort.
Eight
Milo
“And do youthink she will?” Aleks asks, stacking another box behind me as I type the passcode into the supply closet’s door. “Change her mind?” he whispers gleefully, knowing my brother is lurking somewhere nearby and that I’d been toldnotto try anything with the Welches’ daughter. The door beeps twice and unlocks.
“Dude, I have no idea,” I say, shuffling the heavy box in my grip so I can open the door. “She…Yeah, I don’t know.” Saying that Prue is different feels like a cliché, so I refuse to say it aloud, but it also feels like the only way to explain why I can’t get a clear read on her. “I hope so” is what I land on, placing my box down in front of the door to keep it ajar.
“What happened after that?” he asks eagerly, moving inside with the first of twenty boxes we need to unload.
I follow him into the closet. “It was sort of tense for a minute, then easier when we both pretended to be busy with our tasks. Then, just as we’d started chatting again, Tom came in to let her know her mom had woken up. So, she left to go deal with that and once I was done cleaning brushes, I left too.”
Aleks laughs quietly to himself. “At least you weren’t doing anything nefarious when Tom came in.”
I laugh too but wince all the same. This is most certainly my daddy issues talking, but the idea of disappointing Tom isalmostas devastating as the thought that Prue might never let me kiss her. “Yeah, thank fuck for that.”
Bringing supplies in and unloading them, we get lost in other meaningless conversations about my travels before Aleks begins telling me, in painstakingly specific detail, about the process of brewing each and every variety of beer they’ll begin selling in a month’s time.
He’s always been this way. Aleks gets his hooks into one topic of conversation and beats it to death mercilessly. The topics have changed throughout the years, but the intensity remains the same. It used to annoy the ever-living fuck out of me, but now I find his passionate rambling endearing. I think I envy him, honestly. It’s been a long time since I cared about something as much as he cares about the science of beer. Personally, I prefer the taste-testing.
“Mi!” Nik calls from the delivery entrance. “Mi, you around?”
“Hold that thought.” I interrupt Aleks midsentence as he lists off the chemical ingredients of their Little Rabbit IPA that we’re definitely pretending is not named after my younger sister. “Here,” I shout toward the exit before taking off into a light jog. “What’s up?”
“C’mere! Look!” Nik yells back, still out of sight. The joy in his voice is audible just the same.
I find Nik around the corner from what will be the seasonal beer garden. He’s smiling proudly toward the main entrance, his hands on his hips and head tilted up in a true fatherlike stance. I move to stand at his side, and look up too.
“MANS Brewery…” I read aloud, slowly. Then I read it again, just to be sure.MAN’s Brewery.No. Thatcannotbe the name my brother has landed on after all of these years of planning for this,right? “MANS Brewery?” I ask him, unsuccessful at stopping a laugh from breaking free. “Nik, really?Thatis the name?”
He glares at me. Stoic and silent. It only fuels my fire.
“No…” Another suppressed laugh turns into a bent-over, unable-to-catch-my-breath, clutching-my-chest fit. When I stand back up, turning toward him, I’ve got tears in my eyes. “Me man, go to man-brewery, drink man-beer,” I say, choking on every other word.
He sighs deeply, not budging an inch. Surely hemustknow how ridiculous this is. Where’s Nadia when I need her? She’d get in on this. I’ll have to settle for our pseudo-sibling. “Aleks!” I call, my voice wavering in pitch as I still try to contain myself. “Aleks, come here!”
“What?” He appears at the doorway, as if he’d been waiting to be called on, then moves to stand at my side. “Ah, nice, looks really good, man.”
I nearly look around for a camera crew. This is a prank. I’m being pranked. “No! Not you too?”
“Huh?” Aleks asks, cocking his head, those big blue eyes unblinking. “What’s wrong with it?”
“You cannot be fucking serious…” I scoff. “Did we not workshop this? What did Sef have to say?”
“Get back to work, Milo.” Nik’s voice is like thunder as his heavy boots take their anger out on the gravel with every step farther away.
“What the hell is your problem?” Aleks asks, shaking his head as his perpetually calm demeanor slips half an inch. “You ruined that for him.”
“What’smyproblem? Please tell me that small-town life hasn’t rotted my brother’s brain so much that he’s become some podcast-listening men’s rights truther.”
“Milo…” Aleks sighs deeply from his chest. “Did he tell youwhyhe chose MANS as the name?”
