34. The fight（s）
34
THE FIGHT(S)
CAMPBELL
I’m tellin’ ya. All you gotta do is jiggle that handle thingy and the frothed milk’ll spit right out,” Gator Johnson said, pointing at the espresso maker behind me.
“And I’m telling you , I don’t care. If you want a mocha frappe fuckoccino, you can go someplace else.”
“Leave the boy alone,” Gator’s wife, Lang, told him as she dumped their weekly provisions on the counter.
Gator was a grizzled bumpkin with a rural Louisiana accent and a comic book collection. Lang was an outspoken, Connecticut-boarding-school-educated high school principal who came from a wealthy Vietnamese family who made their fortune in advertising. No one knew how they’d ended up together, let alone what made their twenty-plus-year marriage work.
“Well, he doesn’t have to be such a grump about it,” Gator complained.
Lang patted her husband’s shoulder. “Maybe he doesn’t like that his brother is on a date while he’s stuck minding the store.”
“Which brother?” I asked, as I rang up the two frozen ice pops the couple would enjoy on their way home.
“Levi just showed up at Rusty’s with that romance novelist,” Gator said, turning his phone screen so I could see the photo posted on Neighborly.
I dropped a can of soup on my foot.
Hazel and Levi were leaning in over a table, it looked like they were sharing a beer, and my brother, the emotionless robot, was fucking smiling . Levi reserved smiles for only the most amusing occasions. Like the time Gage ran face-first into Mom and Dad’s glass patio door.
I suddenly wanted to ram his face into a glass door.
My phone vibrated in my pocket in several successive bursts. News traveled fast.
I stonily hurried through the transaction and the bagging. Lang was looking at me like I’d sprouted bat wings.
“What?” I demanded, accidentally shoving my fist through the bottom of a paper bag for the second time.
“You seem…stressed,” she observed.
“Nope. I’m the opposite of stressed. I’m living the dream.” I crumpled the bag, threw it on the floor next to the first punched one, and shoved the rest of their order in a reusable tote.
Gator leaned in, looking concerned. “You got like a headache or maybe a fever or something?”
“Have a nice day,” I said through gritted teeth.
They took the hint and their stuff and headed out of the store.
I was already pulling out my phone before the door closed behind them.
The Everyone but Livvy message group was on fire.
Laura: Is Livvy on a date with Hazel or did Garland get into Photoshop again?
Gage: What the hell?
Laura: They look kinda cute together.
Me: No they don’t. They look stupid.
Laura: Sensing you’re not a fan, Cammy?
Gage: He’s just mad because we told him he couldn’t date her.
I put the back in 15 sign on the counter and stormed out into the evening heat.
Laura: Cam and Hazel??????
Me: I didn’t want to date her.
Laura: Not buying it. Cam doesn’t have a romantic brain cell floating around in that noggin.
Me: I can be romantic if I want.
Gage: He kissed her. Twice. Livvy and me told him to back off.
Me: Now I know why.
Ignoring their responses, I concentrated on not punching anything on the walk to the bar.
“Hey, Cam… Okaaaaaay,” Rusty called from behind the bar as I stormed past.
I pushed through the door and stepped out on the deck in time to catch Hazel and Levi with their heads together. She looked like she was enthralled with whatever bullshit he was spinning for her.
“Well, this looks cozy,” I said, stealing a chair from a neighboring table and plunking it down between them.
“Cam!” Hazel sat back in her chair, looking guilty.
“Thought you were closing the store tonight,” Levi said.
“Took a break. Thought I’d see what all the fuss in Neighborly was about.” I tossed my phone on the table for them to see the picture. “Didn’t know you two were hooking up.”
“Seriously?” Hazel said, picking up my phone. “Somebody needs to do something about this Garland guy.”
“I’m not hearing any denials,” I said, snagging Levi’s beer. “You two seeing each other?”
“No!” Hazel said.
“None of your business if we are,” Levi drawled.
“We’re not hooking up,” Hazel insisted. She looked back and forth between Levi and me as if hoping that one of us would help her out.
“We don’t owe you an explanation,” Levi said to me.
“Gotta hand it to you. You jump down my throat, say she’s off-limits. I didn’t see it coming. I bought the whole ‘for the good of the family’ bullshit,” I said, then drained the glass. I set it down on the table with a clunk.
“Is that like the opposite of calling dibs?” Hazel asked, shifting in her seat.
The eyes of everyone on the deck—and a few from the patrons and staff inside—were on us.
I looked at her, putting some extra chill in my gaze. “Thought we had an arrangement.”
“We do. This isn’t a date.” She looked at Levi again.
He gave her a subtle head shake. A secret guarded. It made my civility snap like a dry twig.
“Yeah. Had ,” I said. “I was getting bored anyway. Kind of expected more out of a romance novelist, you know? Good time to call it quits.” One look at Hazel told me I’d gone too far. Way too far. The shock of hurt on her pretty face went straight to my chest, but it quickly burned off into the kind of feminine rage that had my DNA issuing fight-or-flight memos.
“That was uncalled for,” Levi said coolly.
“Yeah? Well, I think this was uncalled for,” I said, gesturing between the two conspirators.
“You owe the lady an apology,” my two-faced brother said.
Every occupied chair on the deck behind me scooted back as our audience braced for what was coming.
“Don’t think so, Leev. Maybe you owe the family an apology for ‘putting the business in danger.’” I got to my feet during my liberal use of air quotes.
Hazel got up from the table. “You are unbelievable, Campbell,” she hissed at me.
“Hey, it was fun while it lasted,” I shot back. It was liquid stupid running through my veins. Growing up, I’d always been the hotheaded one. Once my fuse lit, it burned fast and bright until I inflicted some kind of damage. Thanks to adulthood, that legendary temper had been dormant for a long while. But one look at the two of them together and I was a volcano about to erupt.
“Not cool, man,” Levi said, getting in my face.
“Fuck. You.”
“I’m gonna stop you right there.” Hazel held up a hand. “You’re one sentence away from really pissing me off.”
The temper in me wanted to say something smart-assed, but Hazel was grabbing me by the arm and dragging me off the deck. She didn’t stop until we were on the sidewalk. Then she turned and glared poisonous eye darts at me.
“First of all, we never discussed not seeing other people,” she said.
I opened my mouth, but she stopped me again with a sharp finger to the chest.
“Uh-uh. You’re listening right now. What’s happening here is you’re trying to provoke a misunderstanding that will force us to go our separate ways. Readers don’t like that in books, and women sure as hell don’t like it in real life. It’s a lazy conflict that’s too easily avoided by two adults communicating, which is what I am doing right now.”
I closed my mouth and crossed my arms. “Go on.”
“Even though we never discussed not seeing other people, I too was under the assumption that while we were getting naked together, we wouldn’t be getting naked with other people. That should have made it into our agreement, but it didn’t. Be that as it may, I was not here with your brother for romantic or naked reasons.”
“Then why were you here? And why the fuck didn’t you tell me about it? I had to find out from customers in my damn store. You could have texted.” I sounded petulant. It made me want to punch myself in the face.
“You’re absolutely right. I should have texted you.”
That took a bit of the edge off, not that I was ready to let her off the hook. “Yeah, you should have.”
“Right after you left, I got some…upsetting news.”
“What kind of upsetting news?”
“The kind that isn’t relevant now,” she said. “I was lying in the dirt in the front yard being pissed off about it when Levi asked me if I wanted a drink.”
I was back to being mad. But this time it was mostly directed at my idiot brother. “My brother asked you out.”
“He asked me to go for a drink,” she said, as if it were an important clarification. “I was eighty percent sure it wasn’t a date and that he wanted to talk to me about something, and that made me curious enough to forget about being upset.”
“So twenty percent of you thought my brother asked you on a date and one hundred percent of you showed up for it.”
“Another point for you. Yes. But I was just getting ready to text you to give you a heads-up when Levi started talking about the thing he wanted to talk about, which has nothing to do with being in a relationship or having sex with me.”
“What did he want to talk about?” I demanded.
“He asked me not to tell anyone, and I’m not going to. So if you want to know, you’re going to have to take it up with him.”
“I’m taking it up with you.” And as soon as I was done taking it up with her, I’d be taking it up with my brother…using my fists and maybe my feet.
“Cam, I’m giving you the chance to not completely fuck this up. Yes, I made a mistake by not giving you a heads-up, and I can absolutely understand how frustrating it is that I’m not telling you why Levi wanted to talk to me. But if you’re looking for an out, this is a pretty shitty, cowardly one.”
“So you were twenty percent sure you were on a date with my brother, and now you’re keeping secrets with him from me. And you’re saying if I stop having sex with you because of that, I’m a coward.”
“No points for selective hearing. Try again.”
I ran my tongue over my teeth and clenched my hands into fists. This woman was so much fucking work. “Fine. My brother wanted something mysterious from you, and you being you got all curious about it, so you agreed to go for a drink with him. You were too pissed off about your own mysterious news—that you also don’t feel like sharing—and then too enthralled by whatever the hell conversation you two were having to bother to give me a heads-up. But apparently none of that actually matters because we didn’t have an agreement about monogamy.”
“Okay, there are some bitterness and immaturity mixed in there, but overall, I think you get it.”
“So if I wanted to ask some woman out for drinks, I could and you couldn’t get mad.”
She rolled her eyes. “No. I could still get mad because you can’t legally agree not to have emotions. But I couldn’t claim that you had broken any promises to me since you never made that specific promise.”
We stared at each other for a long beat.
“So you don’t want to date my brother?”
“No. And to be fair, I don’t want to date you either.”
“Do you want to have sex with my brother?”
“Not if I’m still having sex with you. Do you want to ask another woman out for drinks?”
In a move so immature I refused to acknowledge I was doing it on purpose, I let the question linger in hopes that Hazel would feel a sliver of the stupid jealousy I’d felt. “Not if I’m still having sex with you,” I admitted finally.
“Well, if and when we figure out if we’re still having sex with each other, I’d suggest editing our original agreement for clarity.”
With that, she walked away from me.
Levi sauntered over, hands in his pockets. “My place?”
“Yeah.”
Levi’s place was a small timber cabin nestled into the woods on the lake between town and the lodge. There were no chickens in the coop, I noted as we circled each other under the trees.
“You’re a real fucking asshole, Leev. You know that?” I said, giving him the first shove.
He rolled back a step, shaking his head ruefully like he couldn’t believe I was making him do this.
“Out of the two of us, only one deserves that title today.” And then his fist was ramming into my jaw and snapping my head back.
“Shouldn’t have pulled it,” I said with a bloody smirk before firing back with a left hook to his face.
We traded leisurely blows for a few minutes. “Don’t know what you can handle these days. Been gone a while,” he said, delivering a one-two punch to my gut.
I grunted. “Well, I’m back now. You told me not to date her, and then you took her out.” I feinted right, then glanced my left off his face when he dropped his guard.
“I didn’t take her out, you monumental piece of shit. But you sure as hell did after we told you not to.”
“We aren’t dating. We’re sleeping together,” I insisted.
He leveled me with a look that suggested that distinction wasn’t as important as I thought it was.
“No, fuck you,” I said, sticking my finger in his face. “We’re talking about you making a big deal about how I’d be endangering the family business if I got tangled up with a client just so you could clear the deck and ask her out yourself.”
“How do you even get dressed in the morning? We weren’t on a date, you fucking simpleton,” Levi spat out.
“Don’t pull that gaslighting shit with me, you overgrown fuckface.”
“I didn’t ask her out to take her to bed. I asked her out so I could talk to her about writing, you stupid, temperamental baby.”
I dropped my fists and stared at my brother. “Writing? What? You wanna start a career in romance?”
“I was thinking more like thrillers,” he said, delivering a swift uppercut that rang my bell.
I caught him around the neck and dragged him in for a headlock. “Are you fucking serious?”
“What do you care?” he rasped.
“You’re my brother. My asshole brother. Of course I care. I just thought you didn’t want to do anything but work for the business and pretend to have fucking chickens.”
He dug his meaty, military-trained fingers into my forearms. “You moved away to do something different. Gage is a lawyer. Why the hell don’t I get something that’s just mine?” With a grunt, Levi swept my legs and took us both down to the ground.
“You never said anything,” I complained through gritted teeth as we half-heartedly wrestled for purchase.
“Why the fuck would I say anything? Bishops don’t talk.”
He was right. I rolled off him and onto my back. Levi stayed where he was, stacking his hands under his head and staring up at the leafy canopy above us.
Was it my fault it was true? Had I failed my younger brothers by not teaching them how to communicate?
“What are we supposed to talk about?” I asked.
“How the fuck should I know? We didn’t talk about Dad’s stroke. Laura’s accident. Miller.”
Our brother-in-law’s name hung there between us. If he were here, he’d have dragged us off each other and then kicked both our asses.
Both times, I’d arrived for the aftermath. But Levi and Gage had front-row seats to the trauma.
“I’m thinking about sticking around…for good,” I added.
Levi grunted his acknowledgment.
The late-summer breeze ruffled the leaves above us. The excited voices of canoers carried across the sparkling water. Meanwhile two grown men lay in the dirt, bleeding unnecessarily.
“So thrillers, huh?” I said.
“Yeah. Keep being a dick and I’ll murder you for research.”
“Noted.” I preferred Hazel’s research methods. Just the thought of her made me wince. “I think I fucked up.”
“No shit, Sherlock. You really like her.”
“No shit,” I echoed.