Chapter 6
Chapter
Six
NOW
2 Days Later
Dash
T here are two assholes I need to text. Two assholes who could have fucking warned me.
You couldn’t have told me about the fucking blonds … I type.
Ugh. I sound like a jealous boyfriend.
Delete.
Me
Soooo, Stace bought a Hummer, eh?
I leave it at that and get ready for work. It’s been two days since the morning Stacey dropped that bomb on me. I think I’ve mostly shaken it off. I sat through an entire breakfast with one twin in Stacey’s lap and I didn’t drown the man after.
Progress.
Casey
It’s sweet, huh? Sutter likes it. Says it can climb over vehicles. We might get one too.
Me
You can have this one.
I type and send without thinking. Shit. Not good. That’s not my decision to make. I just also happen to know that when I don’t like something, Stacey thinks twice about it.
But I know better than to text Casey about shit like this. I know that if it’s between me and his brother Casey’ll choose his brother, which means I’m not getting information out of him on this one. But there are times Casey can’t help himself and he likes to stir shit and that overrides loyalty sometimes. Guess that’s not the case this time. If so, there’s only one reason he’d keep his trap shut. I must have hurt Stacey, and that fucking kills me.
Dirk smacks his hand on the inside of my bedroom door. “C’mon, Dashie. Let’s go.”
“Yeah, I’m coming.”
Dirk’s become a bit of a drill sergeant this season. Without Stacey around—our usual house captain—he naturally took the lead. He reminds me a little of his older brother, Hunter, when he’s like this. Now that we’re home, he can tone it down. While he can play manager, it exhausts him.
We take over from the lunch shift. Dirk’s acting kitchen manager while Dad’s away and I’m an acting floor manager. They’re positions we can have, but since we’re not here most of the year, Dad has regular managerial staff. We take his shifts when he’s gone. Yeah, as two people. We’re basically him in two bodies.
Though, Dirk’s been increasingly active with the restaurant. Even when Dad returned from his usual summer getaway last summer, Dirk continued on with a bunch of manager-type stuff to help out and make some extra cash. Dad gave him his first job when we were kids, and they got close when they were looking for me. Their bond kinda stuck. They’ve always had a friendship outside of me.
It’s a pub-style restaurant, so I don’t have to dress too fancy for my manager shift. I wear jeans and some plaid like Dad does. Dirk adjusts the lapels of my collar and then reaches for the black kitchen hat in the cubby above my head.
“You’re chewing on something. If you don’t tell me what it is soon, I’m ratting you out to Stacey,” he says in casual tones.
Those three—Stacey, Dirk, and Dad. They made an unspoken pack ages ago and they look out for me as a unit, none of them over the Robin era, even though I am. Mostly.
“Stacey’s the reason. You don’t have to go running to him. I’m fine, Dirk.”
He slips into the black cotton chef’s jacket, analyzing me. “And you’re not gonna tell me?”
We tell each other everything. Everything. Even if we didn’t, he knows me better than I know myself. He knew about the first time I had a crush on Stacey … and then the second time. He knew when I finally—fucking finally—gave up on the stupid Stacey obsession I had.
God. What a fucking lost puppy I was. So damn pathetic. I get obsessed over a type. Like the time I was in lust with Dirk’s brother Hunter. There are a lot of similarities between Stacey and Hunter.
But there’s only one Stacey Alderchuck.
“Stacey, um, Stacey told me something the other day and it kinda…” turned my world on its fucking axis.
“Kinda what?”
“He told me he wishes he were the one marrying me.” Dirk’s jaw drops. “I know, right? So fucking ridiculous.”
“I’ll kill him. I’ll fucking kill him.”
“Why?”
Dirk means it, too. His eyes narrow and his muscles flex. “Who the fuck tells one of their best friends shit like that right before they’re about to get married? That’s fucked up.”
I don’t know if it is or not. I know that I’m glad I know, even if it’s making me feel like a squirrel on too much caffeine. My heart hasn’t slowed since he told me, and I haven’t slept right. Usually, when I’m like this, I climb into bed with him. Something I can’t do with Tweedle-whore and Tweedle-slut around.
“I asked him to be my best man. That’s shit, Dirk, and you know it. I wouldn’t have done that had I known.”
He winces. “I mean, we’re all in your wedding party anyway, does it matter which role we have?”
“It matters, Dirk. No one thought to tell me that it was going to rip him apart?”
In all honesty, I didn’t know where Stacey and I stood on the romantic side of our relationship circus. I did my best not to know, not to think about it. I talked myself out of every potential sign that could mean more. Chalked anything that felt like “more-than-friends” up to “our special friendship”. What else was I supposed to do? Stacey made it fucking clear that no matter what we felt he wasn’t going there with us.
It was survival.
For all I knew, he’d finally succeeded in letting that go, too.
Dirk exhales a breath, thinking. He knows I’m right. While it’s not fair that I’m a fucking villain now for something that I didn’t know, I’m still the fucking villain.
“Okay, I’m convinced. The truth complicates things, but that doesn’t mean it can be ignored. Now what? You calling off the wedding?”
“No,” I shrill, covering my own mouth. “No,” I repeat as a whisper yell. “What the fuck do I do, Dirk? Please give me some real advice.”
I’d ask Dad if he were here, but I’m not phoning him on his vacation. It’s his special alone time. He’ll be back in a few days and this problem will still be here then. But if Stacey thinks I’m getting on board with this … with his what? New boyfriends? Personal sex toys? Whatever they are, hell will freeze over faster than me accepting them into his life.
“You look like you just drank sour milk, Dash.”
That’s what thinking about those two does to me. Ugh. Their hands on him. Ugh. Their penises on him. “Help. I need help.”
“Can you stay with Syd for a few days? The distance could help you wrap your head around it.”
“Syd’s away, remember?” No way am I staying anywhere alone. Casey and I are the same that way. Syd’s a lawyer, but he’s also an investor. He likes to travel the world and find houses and even apartment buildings to buy and rent out. He wanted me to come with him, but I didn’t want to go.
Why? Why didn’t you want to go, Dash?
Dirk raises a brow. He didn’t ask me the question—that stupid little voice in my head did—but he might as well have.
“Dash? I think you might want to be with Stacey.”
Something akin to lightning flashes on the inside, adrenaline burns like liquor through my veins.
Fuck him for not lying to me. Can’t he lie to me, just one time?
“I think … I think I’m gonna pass out.”
Dirk’s strong arms hold me up, and I sink into them. Casey and Jack hold me like this too. It’s normal. It’s no different than what Stacey and I do. It’s not. Not different in the least.
I let Dirk sway me until my racing heart calms from hurricane squirrel to small whirlwind squirrel.
“We had our opportunity—no, opportunities, Dirk. Plural. It didn’t happen, and I wasn’t waiting for him anymore. It’s too late. I’ve made my choice, and it’s too late,” I repeat.
Dirk nods into my head. “Then it’s too late. You’ve got your man.”
“I do. Syd’s all I’ve ever wanted in a man.”
Dirk huffs.
“You don’t believe me?”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you, but you’ve always had a type. Remember when you crushed on Hunter?”
My cheeks heat. When I look back on it, it’s fucking embarrassing. I meet Dirk’s hazel eyes anyway because he’s like a brother to me, and I won’t let him know he’s getting under my skin. “How can I forget when you remind me every chance you get?”
“That’s why I thought it would be you and Stace. Eventually. Hunter’s too much of an older brother to you. Stacey’s the non-brother version.”
Stacey’s a helluva lot more than that. He’s everything. At least, he would have been everything.
“Syd’s got Hunter and Stacey qualities,” I argue.
“Syd’s the beta version compared to them, and you know it.”
I step out of Dirk’s arms, wiping at tears I didn’t know I was crying. “I’m marrying Syd, Dirk. This is just some stupid side quest.”
He crosses his arms. “This is an explosion waiting to happen,” he says. “Why are you bein’ so stubborn?”
“Knowing Stacey fucking Alderchuck, he’ll have some other martyrdom to kneel for. I’m tired of his brand of altruism, and I won’t do that to myself again.” The more I think about it, the more my hands curl into angry fists.
“There it is.”
“I’m too broken for Stacey to treat me like I would have wanted him to. Syd doesn’t have any of those biases in his head.”
Stacey’s too careful with me. I want to feel alpha male energy. I want to be owned.
“Hang on, there’s a lot to unpack here. Did I hear that right? You haven’t told your husband-to-be about Robin?” he whisper-yells, looking around, making sure no one else is on their way back here yet. They aren’t. It’s just us, the smell of rotting shoes people forgot to take home, and piles of abandoned aprons.
“Yeah, and I don’t plan on it.” That was the mistake I made with Stacey. It ruined my chances with him.
Dirk runs a hand over his scalp, knocking the ball cap loose. Seeing that gesture triggers my brain, but I can’t grasp onto the why.
Oh.
Wait.
I know.
Dirk’s Wildcats hat. I haven’t seen it. Where has his hat been? The hat he’s been wearing lately is a different one.
I’m about to ask why, but a few employees about to start their shift wander back here, effectively ending our private conversation.
“Stacey doesn’t think you’re broken.”
I draw my mouth into a line. He was there for the whole thing—the whole me and Stacey thing. Maybe broken’s a little far, but once Stacey realizes how many bones I’ve buried, he’ll revert to mentor Stacey mode. It’s the purgatory we live in.
And I hate it, hate it, when my family and friends can’t admit the truth. Broken is how I feel or at least cracked—I’m a vase with cracks. I’m almost protective of those cracks. I earned them and they make me, me. Is there something so wrong with the me I am now that it needs to be erased in exchange for perfection?
“This isn’t over, Nolan,” Dirk says. “We’ll talk later.”
Yeah, I bet we will, but he can fuck off with that. I’m not telling Syd shit. I want to keep the past in the past and there’s no better way to wake up that sleeping giant than to start talking about it with Syd. He’ll worry about me like Stacey does. Like Dirk does. Like my dad does.
I don’t want Syd in that club. I’m not sure I want Stacey or Dirk in that club either. The remnants will never go away, the ones that shaped me, but the bulk of it’s over and they all need to get with the damn program.
How can I convince all of them that while, yeah, I have scars that’ll never heal, Robin doesn’t hold any power over me?