“So she said.” Trace found the last taco in the pile of wrappers and handed it to me. “How is Uncharted Treasures going?”
“Uncharted Treasuresss,” Phelps whispered, making Finn bust up laughing. The twins were idiots.
“It’s fine. Staying busy.”
“Busy doing what exactly?” Finn asked, raising his eyebrows.
“What do you think?” I had assumed Clark would tell them I was working at a travel agency, but based on the smirk on Clark’s face, that wasn’t the case. “What did you tell them, Clark?”
“I left it to their imaginations.”
“Which means you guys think I work at…”
“A pirate-themed Chuck-E-Cheese,” Trace offered.
“A nightclub.” Phelps said. “An underwater nightclub.”
“No, I got this.” Finn slammed his hands down on the table with all the finality of a Wheel of Fortune contestant solving a puzzle. “An adult-themed tourism office.”
I ate the rest of my second taco and let their incredibly dumb answers sink in. Especially since the suspense I was creating clearly irritated them.
“You could Google it,” I finally said. “Or ask Clark.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Finn asked. “Besides, we made a bet.”
Of course they did.
“I’ve got this. Uncharted Treasures is a coupon code site.” Trace leaned forward. “Come on, baby. Let me be right.”
“Nope. Now get out of here. All the tacos are gone. I have to be up early for carpool.”
Maybe if I’d been less tired, I wouldn’t have added that last part, but I did. And all four of my brothers lit up with sudden understanding. They couldn’t guess my job with anything close to accuracy, but somehow, they’d figured out that me mentioning carpool twice held some special meaning.
Trace rubbed his beard; the beard he was ridiculously proud of and applied way too much beard oil and time to. “There are girls in your carpool. You mentioned them before.”
Clark snapped his fingers. “Therearegirls. No wonder he was so eager to get back in his old carpool.”
“But how does that work with you at Uncharted Treasures?” Phelps smiled. “You know, the boat captain school you work for.”
I rubbed my head. They were so far off, and yet way too accurate.
Trace eyed me carefully. “Yeah. All your carpoolfriendsstill work for Connecting Hearts.”
I shrugged. “My building is near Connecting Hearts. It’s no big deal.”
“It’s totally a big deal to him,” Phelps whispered to Finn. “I say we hold him down on three.”
Oh, I could see where this was going. Clark was more of a lover than a fighter, but Trace, Phelps and Finn were not above holding me in a headlock until I gave them the information they wanted. We would be old, bald, and arthritic, and my brothers would still decide that the best way to resolve conflicts was with a big wrestling match.
Pretending I hadn’t heard them, I casually gathered up all the taco wrappers… and threw them straight at the twins before making a run for it. I got the door to my room closed and locked before they slammed into it with pounding fists.
“You break my door, you’ll pay to have it fixed,” I called out. The pounding stopped, but I could practically hear them scheming. The three of them needed girlfriends more than Clark did. Or maybe an expensive hobby. It was the expensive ones that really hooked you. Once you invested money, you had to justify it with all your time. That was how my dad kept being terrible at golf.
“Come on, Noah. We weren’t actually going to interrogate you.” That was Trace. And he was a liar.
“Go home.”
“What about our bet?” Finn asked.
