“Fired her. She didn’t show up a few times, and I don’t have time for that shit.”
As I’m setting up the first display of bottles, Brody squats down beside me. “Are we still on for tonight?”
“Still?” I question. “Interesting. It’s almost like you’re insinuating I agreed to go out with you. We both know this didn’t happen, so I will go with my initial answer and say, no, again.”
“Come on, throw me a bone,” he says.
“If I had one, I would, so you’d move out of my lighting.”
Brody stands up and dips his hands into his back pocket. “You’re making this hard, Journey.”
As much as I’d like to believe he meant that sexually, I’ve come to learn that Brody still doesn’t think before he speaks. Therefore, I do him the favor of staring up at his package. “If that’s hard, then my no is even harder.”
Brody laughs. “That’s cute, but I assure you there is no mistaking my excessively large pride for a measly dog bone.” He knows his comeback is below par, and he’s scratching his chin as if trying to think of something to follow up with, but he falls short. “You’re a pain in the ass,” he mutters beneath his breath.
“Always have been, always will be.”
“Ready, Parker?” Brody calls over to her, clapping his hands together.
Parker gives Brett a hug and a kiss before walking to her uncle’s side. “Have a good day, kiddo,” Brett tells her.
I get a couple of photos shot when Melody plops down beside me. “I knew it,” she says, her voice sinister and full of unnecessary excitement.
“You knew what?”
“You and Brody ... that’s happening again.”
“No,” I tell her. “It’s not, and you’re dating his brother. That’s ridiculous and weird.”
I feel her gaze burning into the side of my face as I focus the lens.
“I don’t believe you,” she continues, “and it isn’t ridiculous or weird. We’re not related to them. They’re related to each other.”
I close my eyes and shake the thoughts away. “No, it still feels weird. Plus, if anything like that was happening, you know, with someone unrelated to Brett, I’d have a Viagra smile like yours. Rest assured, I do not and will not have a Viagra smile anytime soon.”
“Well, maybe if you got one of those blue-pill smiles, you’d quit being so damn crabby all the time.”
“Thanks for the advice,” I tell her.
“I give it in two weeks,” she says, standing and walking away. Melody made sure I couldn’t have the last word, but I’m not sure I feel the need to say anything else.
3
I’ve been sittingin the driver’s seat of my Jeep, staring out the front window for the last fifteen minutes. My mind is going through a loop of unsteady thoughts; blurry memories of Dad swinging me by the arm while my feet flew toward the sky. I couldn’t have been too old. He would tell me my giggles sounded like a chimp’s, and it was the best sound in the entire world. Sometimes, I think he parked across the lot, so we had a reason to walk hand in hand into The Barrel House. I would tell him made-up stories about unicorns or fairies, and he would tell me about dragons and knights. He wanted me to grow up, being well rounded, not forced into seeing only the colors of the rainbow.
A knock on my window startles me. I gasp and lower the glass. “You scared the crap out of me,” I tell Melody. She’s shivering with her arms wrapped around her chest.
“You must have left the back door open a crack because it flew open, causing a windstorm in the back room. I saw you were still out here when I went to pull the door closed,” she explains. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I was just taking a breath.”
Melody doesn’t let much pass her by and highlights the fact by glancing down at her watch. “You left like twenty minutes ago.”
“Dad used to take me to work with him when you were little. I was just thinking about some of those times.”
Melody’s gaze falls between my car door and the pavement. “No one can take those moments away from us,” she utters.
I try to stretch my grimace into a smile, but it’s becoming painful to try. “You know, you could come back to Mom’s and spend more quality girl time with us. Your apartment isn’t going anywhere,” Melody suggests.
