Chapter 31
CHAPTER 31
Max
“Why are you looking so gloomy?” Dad asks, rolling up his sleeves as he prepares to dice some veggies. “C’mon, where’s that fucking Fletcher smile?”
I throw him a stupidly fake smile while trying to make sure no one else but him sees. I don’t want the customers in this high-end restaurant during their lunch break to flee at the sight of my stupid grin.
“That’s my boy.” He scoots a whole plate of sushi underneath my nose. “Bon appétit.”
“I’m not hungry anymore.”
His brows drop as hard as his jaw does. “Since when ?”
“Since my life got so goddamn complicated.” I groan and flatten my face on the bar, barely avoiding the sushi.
“Max …” Dad says. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know if I wanna talk about it. If I should.”
“Then eat.”
“No.”
“Then why did you come here?” he asks.
“Why?” I frown and lift my head. “I come to your restaurant every week.”
“Exactly. So either eat or talk or get out and do something else.” He throws the towel he just used to wet his sushi over his shoulder.
I groan again and put my hand under my face to support myself while I languish in self-misery. “It’s this girl.”
He places two flat hands on the bar and stares at me. “A girl? Tell me all about her. What does she look like? What’s her name? What does she like? Where does she live?”
“Wow, wow, calm down,” I say.
“No, I need all the details. You’ve never mentioned any girl before.” I can almost see the hearts floating in his eyes. “I can’t believe it, my boy is all grown up and falling in love.” He wipes his forehead and pretends to faint.
I snort. “Oh God. Do I sound like that too?”
“Like what?” He picks up one of the sushi he gave to me and chucks it into his own mouth. “Mmm, delicious.”
I roll my eyes. “Anyway, I kinda messed up.”
“Messed up what?”
“With the girl.”
“Oh, right. Spill the beans.” He leans onto the bar and winks. “I can help.”
“Can you?”
“C’mon, give me a chance.”
I sigh out loud. “Well … I sort of fell in love with her the moment I saw her.”
“Oh wow.” A big smile forms on his face. “You really are just like me.”
“What, you fell in love with Mom the first time you saw her?” I frown. “But she’s an angry b—”
Dad slaps his hand in front of my mouth. “Don’t. Don’t say that shit out loud.” He leans in. “She can hear you.”
Now I’m frowning even more. “She’s not here.”
He points at the cameras in the corners.
Oh. Is that how she keeps tabs on us?
“It makes her feel better if she knows we’re safe,” he adds, picking up his knife.
“Obsessive.”
He cuts through the carrots. “I prefer to call it ‘affection.’”
“Right. Anyway, my girl is not like that. But she is cunning. And beautiful. And … so damn spicy.”
“Spicy,” he repeats before plopping some wasabi in front of me. “Try this.”
“Dad. I’m trying to talk about the girl.”
“Why is she trouble for you, then? You’ve only mentioned positive things.”
“I thought I didn’t like girls. I thought I liked boys. And it makes me so confused.”
He snorts. “Max, you do realize there’s such a thing as bisexuals?”
“What?” I stutter.
“You can like both.”
My entire face turns red. “Oh …”
Why didn’t I consider that option?
“So, I don’t see any issue so far,” he says.
“She stole from my friends, Silas and Heath, and now they want to make her pay for it.”
“The Rivera and Preston boys?” he says, like the surnames make him do a double take. “Okay, that complicates it. But it’s not a deal breaker.”
I narrow my eyes. “A thief? Not a dealbreaker?”
“Yeah. Didn’t I tell you how your mom and I met for the first time?” He puts down his knife. “Me, Nathan, and Kai were trying to rob this guy. He deserved it, trust me. Then your mom came to try to murder him, but she found me instead, and we ended up fighting on the pavement in front of his house, and her shoe nearly stabbed me in the heart.” He sighs in a woeful way. “Oh, I was smitten on impact.”
I make a face. “Really?”
“Really,” he responds like it isn’t the most unhinged story I’ve ever been told.
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. My mom and dad are casual murderers, just like Silas and Heath.
Does it run in the family? I mean, my mom is Silas’s aunt. Wouldn’t surprise me if every one of our parents had secret lives during their college days.
“You never told me any of this.”
“I didn’t? Oh.” He proceeds to chop like nothing ever happened. “Maybe your mother told me not to. Oops.”
What the…
“But about your girlfriend, your friends want to hunt her down?”
A blush spreads on my cheeks. “She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Yet.”
“It’s complicated.”
“I don’t see how.”
“My friends made me trick her, okay? They forced me to help them catch her by making her fall for me so she’d tell me the truth about her thievery, and one thing led to another, and now I’m involved, and she just found out.”
“Oh …” He pauses. “Well, she probably didn’t like that.”
“No.” I flatten my face on the surface of the bar again, slamming it so hard it definitely left a dent. “What do I do? How do I fix this?”
“Buy her flowers. Tell her the truth. Apologize.” He pushes another plate of veggie sushi under my nose, drawing me in with those delectable scents. “Eat some sushi and think about it.”
I lift my head and look at his beaming smile and the unproblematic look in his eyes. For some reason, his advice, no matter how simplistic, always manages to strike a chord.
“Maybe I should do just that,” I reply.
He rubs my hair, messing it all up. “Good.”
Suddenly, the main doors burst open, and my mother’s other lovers, Kai and Nathan, step inside. Technically, they’re all each other’s lovers, with all the poly stuff they’ve got going on. “Goddamn, I’m hungry,” Nathan says. “What’s for dinner, Milo?”
“The same as always,” my dad replies, shrugging. “Why do you even ask?”
“Courtesy.” Nathan approaches and gives him a kiss on the cheek. “You’re looking good, as always. Now bring me my California rolls.”
Milo grins. “Yes, Sir. On the way.”
“Make it a double for me,” Kai tells him, as he sits down beside me. “The casino still doesn’t have a good sushi place, and it sucks.”
“Maybe it’d be a good idea to invest in a new restaurant … like mine, for example.” Dad winks.
Kai rolls his eyes. “I know, I know. I just have to get Ares on board.”
“How is your brother?” Nathan asks.
“Good, in a very Ares way, I guess.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“He’s not the talkative type,” my dad fills in, winking. “He just barks orders, that’s it.”
“Max, your mom told me to tell you not to come to the RIVERA clubs anymore,” Nathan suddenly says.
“What? But we go there on the regular. I’d hate to miss out.”
“I know, but she’s trying to keep things clean on the books, and every night you guys attend, extra liquor seems to vanish from the register.”
I blush and raise my hands. “Not me.”
“I’m just saying … can you relay the message to Silas and Heath?”
“Why can’t you tell them yourself?” my dad asks.
“Because you know how Felix acts when I try to correct his kids, okay?” Nathan responds. “I don’t like dealing with him. You know that.”
I snort. “Didn’t think petty arguments were still a thing at your age.”
“Excuse me?” Nathan’s eye twitches.
My dad begins to laugh, then spanks him on the ass. “He called you old, bro!”
“You fuckin—I’ll make your ass shrivel up next!” Nathan growls at him, chasing him back into the kitchen, while my dad simply giggles like he’s twenty again.
I wonder if this is what they were like back in their day.
“Anyway, gotta run.” I stuff more sushi into my mouth before I hop off my seat. “I have some flowers to buy and a girl to woo.”
“Good luck on the wooing,” Kai says. “Tell us how it went.”
I run off before they ask me anymore questions. “Sure. Later!”
The moment I enter Murphy’s Magnolias, the scent of flowers instantly fills my nostrils, putting a smile on my face. The little bell above me rings as the door closes, and a woman in a soft blue dress steps out of a storage room.
“Hi! Can I help you?”
“Um … yeah, I’m looking for a bouquet. A big one.”
“Of course.” The beaming smile on her face is infectious. “What’s the occasion?”
Here comes the blush again. “An apology.”
Her eyes glisten. “Wait, you’re Milo’s kid.”
“Yeah.” I scratch the back of my head. “I’m Heath’s … friend.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful! I’m so glad he finally made some more friends. Other than Silas and Mavis.” She laughs as she grabs a few flowers and pushes them into a bundle in her hand. “Let me make you a custom one.”
“Thanks,” I say. “So has Heath never mentioned me at all?”
She shrugs. “Maybe? He doesn’t talk a lot about any of his college friends, actually. I only know about Silas and Mavis through Penelope.” She makes a beautiful bouquet filled with roses and blue hydrangeas. “Not since his sister left, anyway …” She sighs.
“Well, in any case, could you give him a message for me?”
“Um, sure,” I reply.
He’s their kid. I don’t understand why she can’t do it herself, but I’ll listen.
“Tell him his dad and I still want a chat. Please have him call me,” she says.
I nod as she hands me the bouquet. “Sure. Thank you.” And I swipe my card.
“I’m sure she’ll accept your apology.” She winks.
It takes me at least three tries to gather the courage to actually knock on her door. I swallow and hold my head high as I prop up the bouquet with a smile so wide it might break my face.
But the door never opens, and Ivy never appears.
Weird.
I knock again and hold my breath, hoping she just didn’t hear.
But the third knock is when a door behind me opens.
“She’s not home.”
“What?” I mutter.
Behind me, a granny with flipflops and her gray hair in a perm blows out some smoke from a cigarette between her fingers. “You’re looking for Ivy, right?”
“Yeah.”
Who is this woman?
“I’m the babysitter,” she says, coughing like she’s trying to hack up her lungs through her mouth. “You look like you’ve got some extra money on hand, judging by that giant bouquet.”
I frown. “This is for her.”
“I don’t want your flowers, silly little boy.” She takes another whiff of her cigarette. “Gimme a hundred and I’ll tell you where she went.”
“Why would you—”
“You look like someone she trusts.” She eyes me up and down and I feel weirdly violated.
Still, I fish the hundred from my pocket and hand it to her. She swiftly tucks it away between her boobs, and I pray I won’t ever have to touch that paper again.
“She’s at some party. Ransom … no …” She taps her head a few times. “Phantom boys … Phantom group … no. Dammit. Phantom something.”
My eyes slowly widen. “Phantom Society.”
The Phantom Society are rivals with the Skull and Serpent Society, and they’re wildly unreliable. There’s no way she’d go there, unless…
Shit.
“Yeah, that’s the one. Anyway, she told me she’d be back by eleven. That’s all I got.”
I bolt off back through the hallways. “Thanks!”
“What, that’s it?” the neighbor barks, but I’m already gone.
I have a thief to catch.