Nico grimaced while his sister smiled. “You’re a freak of nature.”
“While you were waking up at six in the morning everymorning for training, I was recovering from a long night’s bender.” She shrugged. “We’re just built differently.”
Nico watched Cooper make the rounds behind Natalie, schmoozing with donors. Cooper wore a smile when face-to-face, but that smile would dissolve the second he turned around. It was a pattern Nico noticed rather quickly, not that he was watching the other man all night.
Nico turned to his sister, for no other reason than to find a way to distract himself from what he couldn’t have. It’d been three weeks since the mile-high shenanigans and all advances since then had been rebuffed. All work. No play.
“How’s dad?” he asked.
“Doing dad things.” Natalie laughed, but then her face drew something more serious. “Why don’t you ever ask about Elon?”
The name still stopped Nico’s heart every time he heard it. It was easier to forget when he was hundreds of miles away, living in Columbus. He motioned for the bartender with two fingers, signaling another round of shots.
“What’s there to ask?” He shrugged it off. “If something changed, like waking the hell up, I’m sure someone would call.”
The bartender poured two more shots and each of the siblings took one in hand.
Nico raised his glass first. “Cheers to our dearly departed brother who’s still here.”
He threw back his head and downed the shot, the tequila stinging the back of his throat. This time, he forewent the lime as a show of bravery. Yet, he stillgrimaced, exhaling between gritted teeth. “Next time you see him, let him know I’m going to finish this.
She thumbed over his cheek and smiled. “He’d be so proud of you.”
“I think we have two entirely different memories of our brother.”
“He was an asshole,” she pointed out, and points to her for correctly assessing the reality.
So often when something tragic happened to someone, people glossed over all the bad parts. Nico wasn’t like that and sometimes, he hated himself for it.
“Maybe not so different,” he said.
“But he was our asshole.”
“But this…. All of this.” Nico gestured at the crowd of football players gathered in the downtown building. “This is what he wanted. This was his dream. If he were here, he’d pry it from my hands. And I’d let him take it.”
“You were born to play football.”
“He was the better player, but I got drafted into the big leagues and he’s in a coma, so I guess that means I won.”
Nico fought to contain an uncomfortable laugh, but couldn’t muster the strength. He’d learned to deal with trauma with humor, and most people in the world wouldn’t understand that. Natlie would though, and she did.
She laughed quietly with him. “You know he loved you.”
“Had a wonderful way of showing it.”
Like the time Elon tied Nico to a tree and threw rocks at him. What a sign of brotherly love.
Natalie poked him in the chest, somewhere around where his heart beat beneath the surface. “You’re not the most expressive person yourself.
“I was taught well by the two men in my life.”
Natalie rolled her eyes. “And what did I teach you?”
Nico grinned. “To always wrap it up.”
She tried to hide a giggle behind a scoff, but she was how-many shots too deep and couldn’t contain it. For his part, their father had always left the safe sex part of the conversation out of any talks about the birds and the bees. Sex was something to be ashamed of and abstinence was the gospel.
“You’re welcome for that lesson, but no, I was referring to the idea that the faults of others do not define you. You are not our father. You are not Elon. You are you, Nico. And for what it’s worth, I think you’ve turned into an amazing man.”
