Dom
Taking a deep breath, I sucked the smell of greasy food and frying burgers deep into my lungs. The diner was thick with the smell of it, along with the aftershave someone at the booth behind me was wearing, more alcohol than scent in my opinion, so it was probably cheap.
I took a sip of my coffee and smiled. The food quality might be questionable, the cleaning standards weren’t all that high, but damned if the coffee wasn’t always fresh and perfectly brewed.
I set the ceramic mug down so it thunked pleasantly on the table, which still shone with the remnants of the last group in that booth.
Glancing across the table, I smirked. “It’s not going to bite, I promise.”
My nephew wrinkled his nose as he stared at his salad. “It looks like something in it might bite.”
“Micah, I’ve been here more times than I can count over the years, including when it was a true shit hole, and I’ve never gotten sick once.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” he grumbled, stabbing at a particularly large chunk of lettuce and holding it up. “Do you think they actually chop it up back there, or just rip it apart with their bare hands?”
“Actually, they might,” I snorted, watching him.
There was still the same scowl on his face that had been there when I’d found him and his mother.
..not having a good time with each other.
Moira seemed at her wits’ end about what to do with her son, who had apparently decided to skip the slow descent into being a moody teenager and taken a flying leap into being one.
Whenever I saw the two of them together, they were fighting.
It didn’t help that Micah’s moodiness had come with an extra helping of meanness, making her ready to pull her hair out.
Jace had been trying his best to run interference and maybe get Micah to ease off, but lately Micah had started giving his father the silent treatment.
Matty wasn’t a whole lot of help; she only shook her head and said that Moira had been even moodier when she’d been younger, but she couldn’t account for the rest of his foul attitude.
No one was going to say it, of course, but I was pretty sure we were all thinking that it might have come from Jace.
He had come a long way, but there was no denying he was a grumpy guy and had been worse when he’d been a teenager.
Micah crunched through the chunk of lettuce and sighed. “Did you bring me here to talk about Mom and Dad?”
“I was thinking maybe I should get you out of the hotel so everyone, including you, could have a moment to breathe,” I said, shrugging as I took another sip of coffee.
“If you want to talk about whatever you want to talk about, be my guest. But I’m not Milo, I’m not going to pester you to talk, and I’m not Mason, so I’m not going to trick you into talking. If you want to talk, do it.”
He scowled at me. “I just...Mom gets on my nerves.”
“What, do you want me to agree with you? Because yeah, your Mom can get on people’s nerves. I grew up around her, dude. I know she can be annoying.”
That stopped him short. He stared at me, and while I wasn’t on the same level as some of my siblings when it came to reading other people’s emotions, I was pretty sure I had caught Micah off guard. “What?” I asked as the silence between us stretched on. “Did you think I didn’t know that?”
“No, I...thought a lot of people thought it,” he admitted a little sheepishly. “I just...didn’t think anyone was going to say it around me.”
“Seriously? Mason is always going on about how irritating she is.”
“Yeah, but it’s Mason.”
It was said with the air of someone who thought that answer was effective enough on its own and...well, I guess it kind of was.
“Okay,” I said with a soft laugh. “You’ve got me there; he doesn’t really count.”
Micah gave an almighty huff. “She just...she always has to have things her way. And like...it’s fine if I want to do things my way in her eyes, but only what’s on her approved list. And whenever I try to tell her that, she gets even more pissy.
I can’t say anything without her getting upset anymore. ”
“Mmm, yeah, your mom can be pretty stubborn,” I admitted. “I mean, it runs in the family.”
“Most aren’t even related by blood.”
“Okay, sure, but I mean, there’s a pretty good case to be made for people still sharing stuff even though they don’t share blood.
We all grew up in this family to different degrees, Arlo, I guess, less so because he came in kind of late, but I knew this family before I joined it, and Eli came in early enough.
We were all bound to pick up stuff, and let’s be honest here, kid, you were born into the genetics of this family, and your dad isn’t exactly known for being laidback and easygoing. You were pretty doomed from the start.”
“Yeah, I just...wish it didn’t have to be so annoying.”
I snorted. “Tell me about it.”
He glared at me. “You don’t have to ‘relate’ to me, you know. Everyone keeps trying to do that. I don’t need everyone to act like they know what’s going on just because they were thirteen before.”
God, I’d forgotten how irritating teenagers were.
Which wasn’t a condemnation of Micah, I hadn’t been all that fond of teenagers when I was one.
..hell, especially when I’d been one. I wasn’t built for that, but I could take a crack at it my way.
“Dude, I’m not trying to relate to you. And feel free to take offense, but I don’t want to relate to you. ”
His brow creased further. “Yeah, okay. You know I’m not exactly stupid, Uncle Dom. I know when people are trying to pull tricks. I grew up around Mason.”
Oh, ho, the kid that had spent years insisting that he could call all but Matty, Marcus, and Moira by their first names was suddenly insisting on dropping ‘Uncle’ in front of my name...and not Mason’s? Little shit.
“Look,” I said, clasping my hands and staring at him across the table.
“I no sooner want to be thirteen again than I want someone to run me over with a bus, alright? I fucking hated being thirteen, alright? I remember smelling all the damn time, I remember being angry and frustrated with everything. I was horny all the time too, constantly, just...horny. So yeah, dude, I don’t want to relate to you because that time sucks balls, alright? ”
Micah had sourly begun stabbing at his lettuce, and at the ‘horny’ party had frozen after skewering a tomato, prepared to bring it to his mouth. The impaled tomato hung in the air as his lips parted, the angry furrow in his brow flattened as he stared at me until I finished.
I smirked. “Was that too much information for you? Please tell me that with the family you have, you aren’t horrified because I dared to bring up sex. C’mon, dude.”
“No, no,” he insisted quickly. “I mean, I know what Mason and...Dad get up to, even though I really wish I didn’t.”
“Would you prefer knowing what Moira and Kayden get up to?”
“God no! That’s even worse!”
I chuckled. “Okay then.”
“I just...I mean,” he said, and took a breath. “I knew about stuff...like, about you and all that.”
“Stuff.”
“Yeah, like...you don’t really settle down is the way Grandma Marty puts it.”
“Aww, that’s nice of Matty. Normally, she just calls me a man whore to my face.”
Micah blinked. “Really?”
“Yeah, dude. Your grandma is a swell woman, and I trust her with my life and the life of anyone else that matters to me, but she’s a lot more blunt than you think.
Trust me, she was something else when she was Mom of a bunch of kids instead of Mom to a bunch of weird adults and a grandma to one kid. ”
“I’m not—”
“Don’t pull that indignant shit on me,” I told him with a snort. “I won’t call you a kid anymore, but don’t get pissy on me.”
“You’re still going to think of me as a kid.”
“Because you are.”
“Right,” he said sourly. “So just have patience, and wait until life gives you answers, right? That’s how Mom acts.”
“And how does Jace act?”
He sighed. “It’s like Dad is...scared of me. Which is fucking stupid, you know?”
“Not really,” I said, and wondered if I should have held back on that answer. “Look, you know your dad has gone through...a lot in his life.”
“That’s dumb,” he said with a frown. “Why would he worry about that? It’s not like anyone abuses or neglects me.”
“Well, that’s where I’m not going to be much help,” I said with a shrug.
“Everyone has to find their own way to deal with that shit. There’s a reason your dad is so worried, because he’s lived it, and you know what, I have too.
You’ve got a good family, at least think about what we’ve talked about, that’s all I ask. ”
His glower could have peeled paint, but he looked out the window with a huff. “Yeah, sure.”
Not exactly the enthusiasm I might have preferred, but I knew better than to push it. He wasn’t mature yet, but he was certainly smart enough and had shown enough wisdom for me to know he was capable of working through things on his own.
I hadn’t been a whole lot different than him at that age, but I hadn’t been as smart.
I probably would have gotten into a lot more trouble if it hadn’t been for Levi.
He had been a calming presence, even though he was filled with his own frustrations and bitterness.
He had always been the sensitive one, the first to put his anger aside to deal with other people, even if it meant sacrificing something about himself.
He’d never defend a true dickhead, but he was the first to turn a situation around to peer at it from a different angle and figure out what was really going on.