Chapter 11 #2
I snacked on the nuts as Dean and Lyssa’s conversation moved to their pets.
Lyssa was showing him pictures of Root Beer, and Dean was flicking through his phone for pictures of his dog, Ghost, when he scrolled to something in his gallery that had him quickly stowing his phone after a wary look at me.
“What was that?” I demanded.
“I’m going to remind you, Mike, mate, that Hannah is a grown woman, and what she does—or doesn’t—send me is up to her.”
Great, now I have to punch two fuckers in one weekend.
I heaved a massive sigh and prepared to get to my feet. Dean was my best boy, so I wouldn’t hit him too hard, but he couldn’t be walking around showing racy pics of my cousin to people.
Impractical nails wrapped around my bicep, and Lyssa tugged me back into my seat.
“One punch per weekend,” she said in my ear, which was eerily close to what I’d been thinking. “Your cousin is allowed to send tit pics if she wants to. That’s her right as a titty-haver.”
I put my head on my arms on the bar. “Stop saying Hannah and tits . My tummy is delicate.”
Dean patted me on the back in a way he thought was comforting but made me want to hit him even more.
“My phone’s away now, mate. You’re safe.” Then my notoriously tight-lipped friend did something else I’d never heard him do before. He volunteered information . “When Hannah and I first got together,” he told Lyssa over my head, “Mikey was a bit put out about it.”
“Really?” she asked. “Why?”
“Dean is old,” I replied, voice muffled.
My best mate sighed. “I was thirty-four when I met Hannah. She’s twenty-seven, same as Mikey.”
Lyssa poked me with a neon green nail. “So that age gap is fine for a best friend—someone you trust with all your secrets, who loves you without sexual bonuses—but not for a romantic relationship?”
I raised my head. “Yes. Obviously.”
“Would you have the same problem if Hannah were the one who was older than Dean?”
“No. Obviously.”
“Then you’re a hypocrite,” Lyssa said, hands on her hips.
She was very heated on this topic. This surprised me until I remembered the old guy with the pocket square from her livestream. My bad mood got badder.
Dean looked like he wished he were anywhere else. The age difference between him and Hannah had initially concerned him too (even though it wasn’t actually that big of a gap, I’d just been looking for reasons to be a hater).
“It’s the principle of the thing,” I insisted, motioning to Jason for another beer. “I may have fucked around a bit over the years?—”
Dean snorted.
“Shut up, Dean. Fine, a lot. But I always kept the age windows toit !”
My dad appeared over Dean’s shoulder, having finished his chat with Nolan.
“Kevin!” Lyssa exclaimed, joy brightening her face. “You’re here!”
Lyssa was super into my dad. Off the back of the chat about age gaps, it made me prickle.
Obviously, I knew Lyssa didn’t have designs on my old man.
Kevin Holliday was a spry enough chap, but the only way he was pulling a twenty-six-year-old was if he were significantly richer and had a dodgy ticker.
But why’d Lyssa have to be so fucking thrilled to see him all the time?
She was never that thrilled to see me.
My badder mood was rapidly becoming my baddest.
I grumbled something and took another sip of beer.
Kev pulled up a stool and leaned his crutch against the bar. Dean, who was closer than me, subtly braced a hand behind him. I looked at Lyssa pointedly, because I could climb onto a barstool without anyone to spot me, but she missed it. She was too busy making gooey eyes at my dad.
“How was your day, Kevin?” she asked.
“Can’t complain, thanks, Lyss. Busy. Did a little bit of this, little bit of that.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re an international man of mystery,” I grumbled. Dad looked puzzled and I immediately felt bad. Fixing my attitude, I asked, “How’s the knee?”
“Good thanks, Mikey. I’ll be running marathons in no time.”
We both laughed.
“Why is that funny?” Lyssa asked, looking between us.
“Hollidays aren’t runners,” Dad explained.
“Only if something is chasing you,” I said. “Even then, depends what.”
“Hannah says running is for the unimaginative,” Dean added.
The three of us chortled. I was on my fourth—fifth?—drink and starting to feel better about life. So what if I had the hots for a girl who was off limits and seemed to prefer guys who’d learned math on an abacus?
I had beer.
“Hey, Mikey, speaking of the unimaginative,” Dean said. “I was at the butcher’s this morning.”
Dad snickered.
“Don’t,” I warned him. To Lyssa, I explained, “Charlie, our local butcher, flirts with me outrageously. The number of sausage puns I get when I go in there is unreal.”
“I love Charlie,” Dad said. “I still think you two would be a good couple.”
No we wouldn’t. We were both hot heads and outrageous flirts. Two left shoes.
“Carry on with your story, Dean,” I said.
“Not much of a story,” he replied.
Of course it wasn’t.
“But I ran into Henry Wilson. His wife wanted to hire me to redo their house.”
My jaw dropped. “Did you tell him to get wrecked?”
“No—”
I growled, but Dean held up a palm. “I told him I was booked. Don’t worry mate, I know how you feel about Henry.”
“Who’s Henry?” Lyssa looked from me to Dean.
I muttered something about Satan’s rim and Henry’s tongue.
Dad answered more politely. “Henry was the guidance counselor at Tararua High School when Mikey and Caroline were there. Let’s just say, he wasn’t very good at his job.”
I scowled into my empty bottle. “Wilson blamed everything on the fact we didn’t have a mum. Anytime I got in trouble, he’d click his tongue and look smug, like a bookie who’d called a race.”
“Tell her what happened when he called Caroline a motherless hussy,” Jason prompted, sliding another round across the bar.
I growled, and Jason immediately put up his hands. “Sorry, sorry. I shouldn’t have repeated it. I was trying to help. Tell us.”
“I hit the guy and got set down for three days.”
My dad heaved a sigh, like what are you going to do , but I knew for a fact he’d never felt particularly bad for Mr. Wilson.
“Henry Wilson is a prick,” Jason said. “Everyone knows that.”
I saluted the bartender with my beer. “You got it. That noxious fart was determined to write me off as a troubled boy with mommy issues and anger problems. The truth is, I just don’t let shitty behavior go. Not toward me, or to my sister, or my cousins.”
“Or the neighbors,” Dad added.
“Or random girls at the pub,” was Dean’s contribution.
“Strangers on the street,” added Jason.
“If Wilson had half a fucking brain, he would have realized Hollidays are all like that. You”—I pointed at Dad—“me, Caroline, Tessa, and Han.” Dean nodded. “All of us are scrappy little shits with an overdeveloped sense of justice.”
Especially me. I was a hot-head with impulse control issues. Caroline said this was my Big Aries Energy; and it was why I didn’t want her to know it took less than a week for me to get under her friend’s skirt.
So much for NEW MIKE.
“You most of all though, Mike,” Jase chipped in. “You’re pure of heart”—I was about to thank him for the compliment when he added—“and dumb of ass.”
And wasn’t that the truth. I had no willpower, no restraint, and now maybe no future. I’d end up working at Dad’s café for the rest of my life, bouncing different party princesses on my dick, always looking for more. For something I didn’t deserve.
Like Lyssa.
“Changing the subject!” My dad said loudly. “How’s the deck coming along, son?”
Lyssa’s eyes bugged.
I was confused by her reaction until I remembered Caroline’s story about an American casting agent who thought she was talking about the contents of his pants when she was making conversation about the view from the balcony.
In our accent, E’s sounded like I’s, which was an issue if you were talking about wood-clad viewing platforms or PowerPoint presentations.
Lyssa looked like she was going to say something, and after yesterday, anything she had to say about dicks could be deeply incriminating for me.
I jumped in quickly. “Thanks for asking, Dad, my slide deck for my presentation is coming along well.”
Lyssa turned in her seat to stare at me. “What presentation?”
Shoot. Out of the dick frying pan, into the dick fire.
“Mikey didn’t tell you?” My dad looked from Lyssa to Dean, who shook his head. “Either of you?”
I wasn’t known for keeping secrets. Not usually.
(Although I planned to take the fact I’d eaten Lyssa out in a parked car on the side of the road to my fucking grave.) Now, Lyssa and Dean were staring at me expectantly, and Jason was pretending to wipe a glass but he was really hanging off of every word.
I genuinely wanted to throw myself off a cliff more than I wanted to have this conversation, but the alternative was dick chat.
“I have this thing coming up where I have to talk to some business blowhards about my educational farm. It’s no big deal.” Dad opened his mouth, but I shot him a look. “Talking about it makes me feel like I’m going to shit my pants, so let’s change the subject, aye?”
“No way.” Dean shook his head, his expression unusually animated. “You can’t brush us off that easy. Tell us about the presentation.”
“It’s nothing,” I insisted.
Lyssa’s expressive eyes were locked on me even as her nails scrabbled uselessly against the shell of a pistachio. Today’s nails had little cheer pom poms glued to them, which must have been for my game. It made my gut flip.
“I have the chance to pitch for funding from the Tararua Rural Entrepreneurs Association to start Mike’s Place,” I said gruffly. “I had to put a slide d—a presentation together to convince the moneybags it’s a good idea.”
“What does your presentation cover?” Dean asked.
Feeling like it would be better to lay down on the bar and have my chest flayed open, I said, “Business stuff. A profit model. Some marketing.”
“You did all that?” Dean looked surprised.
“Yeah?” I said it like it was a question, shifting uncomfortably in my seat. “Tessa helped.”
“Wow,” Dean said.
“What?” I demanded. “Is this so shocking?”
“No offense, mate, but yeah.”
“Because all I do is fuck girls and milk cows, is that it, Dean?”
“Better than the other way around,” Jason joked.
“No,” Dean replied, ignoring Jason. “Because you never mentioned it.”
“Didn’t know I needed a permission slip,” I grouched.
Dean looked taken aback. I didn’t know how to explain it, but the thought of getting messages from my family and friends on the day of my presentation, asking how it went, and having to type out that the committee had laughed in my face made me want to die.
I forced a subject change. Dean let it go, because it wasn’t his thing to stay in someone’s business when they didn’t want him there.
Jason, the nosy bastard, would have asked follow-ups, but I ordered another round, which he had to go out back for.
Dad began talking about the new roof for Levitate, and I nodded and made mmm sounds.
Lyssa was struggling with the pistachios, attempting to use one of her nails as a nut chisel. When her finger slipped, a pistachio shot off behind the bar, narrowly missing Jason’s face.
I reached over and took the next one out of her hand, splitting the shell easily. I passed her the shelled center and she popped it in her mouth.
“Is Noddy helping with your roof?” I asked Dad.
He had clearly lost the thread of his story; his eyes had wandered. “What?”
Lyssa wiggled happily in her seat, chewing her pistachios, and it made me grin. I reached for the little ceramic dish so I could crack some more for her.
“Noddy?” I prompted Dad, before shelling another nut and passing it to Lyssa. “That’s Dad’s best friend,” I told her. To my dad, I continued, “You know Noddy is an awful builder. You should keep him out of it.”
Dad still didn’t say anything. Neither did Dean.
I looked to the bartender for backup. “Jason, you remember the time Noddy nailed his jeans to the fence he was trying to build?”
Dean, Jase and my dad shared a look.
“What?” I asked finally. “What are you guys staring at?”