4. Dance of Our Bodies
dance of our bodies
Mirren
“Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Davie replies. “They’ll be here in the next half an hour.”
I wanted peaceful. I wanted an escape. I wanted a safe space. What I got instead is Davie inviting Charlie and Jamie over and all the shots we can sling back.
Which is to say all the shots they can take, because I learned my lesson. Or lessons. I also value my sleep and my intestines in their current condition. I got that whole too-drunk thing out of my system a while ago. Tipsy is fun. Sloshed is not.
“Well then, have the kitchen fire us up something decent to eat, because those two will need it or we’re stuck driving them home.”
“You’re stuck driving them home.” He points to himself. “I live here and am going to enjoy my own product.”
My brothers are indispensable, wonderful, and complete pains in my ass.
Thank God my parents stopped when they had me.
I’d say they reached perfection after enough tries, but I think they were exhausted and figured one girl pregnancy scare was the equivalent of the scares of all their sons combined.
Maybe that wasn’t their answer, but I can’t imagine the sex conversations and condom stock with five rowdy boys. I don’t want to imagine it. Ever. There’s not enough brain bleach to even consider those discussions. My own was—a shiver racks my spine from hairline to tailbone—mortifying.
“Then have the kitchen make something with breading to soak up their liquor and something with veggies for me. No guarantees I’m staying after this sabotage.”
“Sabotage?” Davie thumps his chest dramatically. “You wound me. Here I was rallying the troops, and you throw it in my face?” The theatrics mount higher and higher.
I offer one curt nod. “Yup. And you missed your calling. You should’ve been a soap opera star.”
“Arcade-slash-bar owner suits me just fine.”
It so does. “Games by day, games by night, and all the quarters you can handle.”
“Quarters,” he mutters, making himself busy, shuffling bottles behind the small wooden bar in the private room. “It’s digital, sis. Like a credit card. You must’ve missed that part.”
I didn’t, but he doesn’t need to know that. The whirling, swirling music and the dinging and ringing of the games is more muted behind closed doors, but still, I wonder if his ears echo these sounds in his sleep.
I toy with the cocktail pick holding the stuffed olives and swirl it in my drink.
No one would take me for a martini girl.
Definitely not the frilly, pink French ones, or the lemon ones.
Because I’m not a sweet-drink girl, but a dirty one with olive brine in it, better yet with stuffed olives… yeah, absolutely my weakness.
As if reading my mind, my brother passes a small plate with more speared olives my way, and I slide a stack of three into my mouth, using my teeth to scrape them past my lips, just as the door pushes open.
“No, really. I can’t believe it’s been this long. Two years? Three?”
“Yeah. At least that long.”
That voice. No, no, no, no. No.
I suck in a breath, and the green fruit I love lodges in my throat, throwing me into a coughing fit. Waving my hands near my neck, as if the wind will dislodge it, I hack until tears form in my eyes and fall over my bottom lashes.
“Scooter?” A large hand whacks me between the shoulder blades, and the contents of my mouth become projectiles. Nothing like a great third impression.
My first was… odd. The second was shit. This one? Everything is devolving. By number four, I might as well be wearing a diaper.
Charlie’s big palm rubs my back. It’s warm and soothing, just like him. “You okay, Scoot?”
My eyes drop closed. Scooter. Scoot. Maybe I don’t need that diaper. Maybe I just need my family. The effect is the same.
I twirl on my stool to face my brother and the man who would be my kryptonite if I weren’t so damn awkward.
“Yeah, Skip.” If he’s using my nickname, I’m using his. “Deep-throating olives backfired on me.”
Charlie flushes red and groans. “Fuck me. Never say that again. Please, I beg of you.” Turning to the man at his side, he makes an unnecessary introduction. “Strider, this is my sister, Scooter. Scoot, this is a buddy of mine from way back, Strider Anderson.”
A smirk dances across Strider’s lips as he extends a hand to shake. “Nice to meet you, Scooter.”
“Strider,” I acknowledge, with my palm in his for the second time today. “How do you know Skipper here?”
“Skipper?” He looks at my brother and fights a laugh.
I take what little time I have to wipe away the tears and whatever makeup has run down my face.
“Family hazing basically. We all have terrible nicknames. That’s Rookie.” He points at Davie. “Hambone will be along anytime.”
The amusement lighting Strider’s face is undeniable. “I’ll stop complaining about my parents and their The Lord of the Rings names now.”
“I wondered.”
“You did?” His reply is quiet and goes unnoticed by my nosy brothers.
Shit. I said that out loud.
Strider
She gives a subtle nod, rolling her bottom lip between her teeth to bite as if that will stop her from speaking.
I notice. My dick notices. Everything in my humming body notices.
I pray her brother doesn’t, though, because nine years of casual friendship and grabbing a beer when I’m in town will be over if he sees me eyeing his sister like I want to unwrap her like a Tootsie Roll pop and start licking until I find the creamy center.
I grab the spine of the stool next to hers. Though my body is turned toward her, I twist my neck to Charlie and poke the bear. “Skipper like on a boat or like what’s sandwiched between hop and jump?”
He merely shrugs. “No clue, man. Mom and Dad started it, and I didn’t ask. Some of the others are… questionable.”
“And Hambone isn’t?”
“Did someone call for me?” A man enters the room from the back. He’s taller and thinner than Charlie, but darker. He smirks, but his eyes are shrewd. Somehow I know the tilt of his mouth is a farce.
“Jamie.” Mirren jumps off her stool, with a wobble, and throws herself into his arms while I fight irrational jealousy that her brother holds what I wish I could.
The man ruffles her hair before letting her go and staring straight at me, sizing me up. He extends a hand. “Jamie Jones.” His shake is firm, if not tight, as he holds my eyes.
“Strider Anderson.”
Mirren returns to her seat, and I step aside, giving her room to pass, hoping the dance of our bodies moving around each other isn’t obvious to her three brothers.
I don’t know anything about Jamie or the man they call Rookie, but Charlie’s never struck me as a man to mess with… much less with his sister in the mix.
And cheesy nickname or not, Jamie looks like he would use his eyes to shoot laser beams at anyone who gets within a three-foot radius of him. He doesn’t say more, he simply dresses me down with his eyes, while keeping a grasp on my hand, daring me to break first.
It’s his brother who halts the stare-down. He rounds the bar and extends a hand for me. “Call me Davie. This”—he lifts his hands like a ringmaster under the big top—“is my place. You can play all the PAC-MAN you want.”
I whisper, “Waka Waka,” and Mirren snorts, choking on her drink.
“I’m cutting you off,” Davie says to his sister.
“I haven’t had enough to cut off, unless you count the olives, and I’m doing myself a solid now, and avoiding them. I’m not willing to die over fruit.”
“Are olives a fruit?”
My question goes unanswered. Then again, the PAC-MAN sound effects certainly got a reaction.
Charlie plops on the stool next to the one I’m covertly claiming, leaving me with the one between him and his sister. Davie circles the bar and is right at home with his role as host. Jamie leans on the wall not far from him, watching and wary.
Here goes nothing. I slide onto the stool, pulling it back a little, so I don’t block my friend’s view of his sister. “So, Scooter, what do you do?”
She cuts her eyes to me and hedges, taking a sip of her drink. “I have a little rental in town. And I pick up odd jobs here and there so I can travel.”
My bullshit meter rings. “Why do I feel like that’s a half-truth?” My words are quiet and meant only for her, but it’s the staid brother on the wall that answers.
“She was an Army Ranger. Don’t let that proprietor-of-a-cottage bullshit fool you.”
My eyebrows hit my hairline. “Army Ranger.” It’s a statement, not a question.
“Career-ending injury.” She rubs her right knee, though I don’t know whether she knows she’s doing it.
“My baby sister is a badass,” Charlie pipes in. “My brother too.” He lifts a glass to Jamie on the wall before drinking deeply.
“Definitely a badass,” Davie adds. Turning to me, he lifts a brow. “What are you drinking?”
“IPA. Local if you have it. Anything I can’t get in Illinois.”
“What brings you here from the land of Lincoln?” Davie really could be some carnival master of ceremonies.
“The land of Lincoln,” Mirren repeats into her glass.
“I had a work thing for a couple of days nearby but extended my trip. I wanted to soak up a little sunshine and see if I could get some freckles before I go home.”
“I get it,” Davie says. But it’s Mirren’s swift intake of air that hits me below the belt.
“Strider worked with me after Hurricane Samantha.”
It’s Davie who continues. “That storm was gnarly. I lost power for five days. And it was steamy and hot. I was dying.”
“Dramatic much?” Mirren offers.
“Hot is relative.” Jamie pushes off the frame and slides through the door behind him.
“What was that about?” I take a pull from the beer Davie slides my way.
“Jamie was in the Persian Gulf during that storm. Hot there is sand in your teeth, a hundred and twenty degrees in the shade, and sweat running through your fatigues under a forty-pound ruck.”
“Were you there too?”
“Not at that time.” She pauses, changing everything in her voice when she continues, “I was in basic during Samantha. Couldn’t be here. Even if I could, I couldn’t help. I’m stronger than I look, but that storm… It was rough.”
Charlie lifts his glass and clinks it to mine. “Thanks for being here then. Glad you’re here now.”
Would he say that if he knew what I wanted to do to his sister?