“Since when are you drinking that cold-brew hipster shit?”Finn asks.
“You know I hate that swill,” I mutter, staring at my hands.
“Somebody give him a real fucking drink,” Evander grumbles.
Special K hops up on my kitchen counter and starts banging the heels of his cowboy boots against the cabinet face.
“If you want to bash in some custom maple cabinets, do it at your own place,” I tell him.
“My cabinets are pine,” Special K says, still knocking his heel against the wood.“I prefer a more traditional ranch motif.”
Everyone laughs.Everyone but me.
Evander digs into his back pocket, pulls out his wallet, and smacks it down on the island.“I’ll give you a hundred bucks, right this second, if you can tell me the definition of the word ‘motif.’”
“Maybe I’d rather not,” K says.
“Motif my ass, you mo-fo.”Evander snags his wallet and shoves it back into his pocket.
Finn rinses out my cup and pours scotch into it, then slides it down the marble toward me.I reach out and snag it before it slides off the end and onto the floor.
I don’t want scotch.I don’t want anything.Nothing but Summer.
“Hey, why did the chicken cross the road?”Special K breaks up the silence from behind me.“Anybody?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”Cal asks, baffled.
“It’s a joke,” Special K says.“I’m cheering Declan up.Nobody else is doing it.”
“Then by all means, please.Go ahead.”Finn makes a grand, sweeping gesture toward K.“The suspense is killing us.”
Finn smiles at me.Everyone’s trying to offer their support, but I know Finn feels especially on the hook to help.
We’ve become super close since we came up with the StellaR Tech idea a few years back.I’ve spent countless hours with Finn trying to get the company up and running.Days spent together on zero sleep, refactoring and debugging code and doing regression testing.Weeks struggling with risk assessment and mitigation, algorithms, and prototype rollout.
Finn is brilliant, dedicated, and as stubborn as they come.We couldn’t have achieved any success without him.
And since the moment he walked into my kitchen, he’s been studying me.Looking for the tiniest crack he can exploit.A way to get close enough to fix what’s broken in me.
There’s no fixing this kind of pain, and he knows that.Finn lost his first wife in childbirth, and he was never the same.
Maybe one day I’ll turn to him for guidance.Not today.
“Here it goes,” Special K says, scratching his blond head.“Wait.Where was I?”
“Are you kidding me?”Evander snarls.“We all know why the motherfucking chicken crossed the motherfucking road.”
“It’s my first joke.Be gentle with me,” K says.“Making everyone laugh is usually Declan’s territory.”
K’s right.I make people laugh.I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do that again.
My brothers study me, searching for a sign that all this stupid shit is helping.The meaningless back-and-forth.The standing around just in case I crumble to the floor and curl up into a ball.
If I wasn’t so miserable, yeah, I’d probably appreciate it.
I sigh.“All right, Kevin.Why did the chicken cross the road?”
Special K scratches his head, again.“I think I forgot the punchline.I’m pretty sure it was funny, though.”
