Chapter 8
Dane
"You need one more elective, Mr. Badd," the counselor told me, after looking at my proposed schedule for the upcoming semester.
"I know, that's why I'm here," I said. "I can't find one that works with my schedule."
The counselor—a short, petite, pretty woman with salt-and-pepper hair and cat-eye eyeglasses—frowned as she reviewed my schedule and then the options. "Your options, if you want to leave the rest of your schedule as is, are…let's see…art history, ceramics, or choir."
I frowned. "Choir, huh?"
I looked away, thinking, music runs in the family, generally speaking, but I've never considered myself a musical person; of the three options, however, choir sounded the least lame.
I don't really even know how well I can sing.
I typically only ever sing out loud alone in the shower or the car, and everyone thinks they're fuckin' Lady Gaga in the shower. What if I join choir and discover I sound like a dying bullfrog or something? I like singing, I just don’t know if I’m any good at it.
But the alternatives—art history or ceramics?
Nah, fam. I'll honk like a goose before I sit around listening to someone yak on and on about Degas and Dali and whatever else.
I'm not even talking about ceramics. What even is that?
Like making shit on those spinning clay dudes?
Maybe if a young Demi Moore is gonna give me a hands-on lesson, otherwise, again, nah fam.
"I guess I'll give choir a shot," I tell the counselor.
"Wonderful. I'll just add that in…" a glance at me.
"So you've got your math credits, your science credits, language, history…
and choir. Excellent." She peered at me speculatively.
"Have you given any thought to a major? After this semester, you're pretty much done with your gen-eds and basic pre-reqs. "
"Not really." I rubbed the back of my neck.
"Well, this is the semester to really start giving it some thought, Mr. Badd," she said.
"Yeah, I need to start dialing it in. So I'm set with my schedule for now, though?"
The printer on her L-shaped desk spat out a sheet, which she handed to me. "Yes, you are. Here you go. Anything else I can help you with?"
"No ma'am." I stood up and smiled, waving at her. "Thanks, ma’am. Have a great day."
I left her office perusing my schedule, which was the biggest class-load I'd given myself since starting college: 17 credit hours across four days a week, with Wednesday being my biggest day, starting with a 9 am class and ending with choir until 9 pm, which was apparently a once-a-week class from 6 pm to 9 pm.
Long fucking day.
That's on top of working at the landscaping company full-time—it's a privately owned company, and my boss is all for me going to school, so he always works with my schedule.
If classes preclude working during the day on a lawn unit, I can always go in after hours and clean the machines, wash the trucks, and do sundry maintenance jobs.
It's not a career, but it's a good job with good people, and it pays well.
In the winter, considering we don't get much snow, Doug shifts the majority of his employees to his other company: junk removal, specializing in garage and basement clean-outs.
It's hard, backbreaking work, but it's honestly pretty satisfying to watch a cluttered garage or basement get tidied and usable.
I'd decided to take a bigger class load and work more just to keep my mind off of Lindsey.
It'd been two weeks since coming home from LA, and there'd been nothing from her.
Dunc and Rune were back from their honeymoon and were settling into domestic life together, running Badd's Bar.
Rune had decided to go all in on the family and was stepping in as an administrative assistant; Delia and Hunter were busier and busier, what with kids and Hunter's empire and the much, much smaller Badd's Bars empire.
Delia desperately needed someone to come in and help her with the deeply unsexy administrative work—which apparently was what Rune had been doing and was good at.
Plus, it's work she can keep doing while pregnant, and much of it she can do from home after giving birth.
Not to mention, we have the world's largest support system, consisting of a half-billion aunts and cousins who are, to a woman, more than a little baby-obsessed, so whenever Rune needs to get work done, all she needs to do is send a text, and she'll have a dozen women clamoring to cuddle and sniff little baby Badd.
What is it with chicks smelling babies, anyway? They just smell like a baby. It's weird.
Speaking of Rune, I've been avoiding going over there…because I’ll ask about Lindsey.
I know I need to see Dunc, but I just need some time and space from the whole shitshow, and I know they'll both ask me a shitload of questions, and I just don't know how to deal with it.
I'm still pretty raw about the whole fucking fiasco.
I reached my car—a '98 Ford Ranger Dunc, Jax, and Lucas—Aunt Aerie and Uncle Canaan's son, named after the Big Fella himself—helped me fix up.
It's not a show pony, it's a daily driver.
No lift, no fancy tires, stock radio, crank windows, original engine and transmission—with over a hundred thousand miles—but it runs well, and it's mine.
It's baby blue with a white stripe running around the lower edge and cheap steelies on the tires.
As I climbed into the cab—I'd replaced the original tattered leather upholstery with saddle blanket upholstery—my phone buzzed with an incoming call.
I checked it as I cranked the engine. "Duncan, I was just thinking about you. What's up, bro?"
"When are you coming over? I feel like you're avoiding me."
"I am."
“Lindsey?”
"Yup."
"I get it. But look, I need some help. We're redoing the keg-room because it's woefully outdated and slow, we need a new pump system, and we have room to add some new taps, so we need to pull everything out and—"
“Yeah, yeah, I don't need the explanation. I get it," I cut in. "I'll be there in a few. I was just on campus nailing down my schedule for next semester."
"Just a fair warning, Rune is gonna wanna talk eventually—there’s no getting away from it forever.”
I groaned. "Why do you think I've been avoiding you guys? I don't want to talk about it."
"I know, I know. Just come help. I’ll feed you beer and wings for your trouble."
"Jerk," I muttered. He knew I was a sucker for beer and wings slathered in mouth-scorching buffalo sauce.
"Gotcha!" he crowed. "So I'll see you in a few?"
"Yeah, I'm on the way. Just tell your dear wife that I'll only have the patience to answer a few questions."
"I'll tell her, but good luck getting my wife to listen. She's determined to get you two through this."
"It's not me she has to convince, bro." I paused. "Also, it's still weird to me that you have a wife."
"Right? I can't stop fidgeting with the ring." I heard distant, muffled voices. "I gotta go. See you when you get here."
When I got there, I parked in the alley and entered through the kitchen, studiously avoiding looking at the spot where Lindsey had been crouched.
I followed the noise down into the cellar, where the keg room was.
It was chaos. Dad was there neck deep in stacked kegs and a tangle of tap lines, while Uncles Bax, Brock, and Zane all crowded the space, playing musical kegs and cursing at each other.
Duncan was sitting on the stairs watching, chin in hand, amused, as the brothers fought exactly the way Dunc and I do—with curses, insults, playful but hard punches and shoving, and a lot of inefficiency.
I sat next to Dunc. "So this looks like it's going well."
"Yeah, they showed up after I called you and took over. they're making a mess and getting nowhere, and I have a plan, but I can't get their OLD, DEAF, STUBBORN ASSES TO FUCKING LISTEN TO ME!" he shouted the last part.
Dad stopped, wiped sweat off his forehead with his wrist, and stared at Dunc over top of a stacked pair of kegs. "I'm not deaf, boy."
"But you are old and stubborn," Bax said.
"Fuck you,” Dad shot back. “If I'm stubborn, I don't think there's a word for what you are."
"A literal saint," Bax answered, making a face I think was meant to look…pious? "A prince among men. A holy man."
Zane doubled over laughing, and Brock joined him. Bax looked around, offended. “Well fuck you all very much."
Zane couldn't breathe for laughing. "A h-holy man! Oh god, good one, bruh."
"Bruh? Bax echoed. "You gonna start saying skibidy next?"
"I've got about…six-seven seconds before I give up and go home," Brock quipped, to groans from everyone, including Dunc and me. "So cut the shit and let's hear my nephew's plan."
"If I never hear six-seven again, it'll be too soon," Bax said.
"Finn's fucking obsessed. He thinks it's peak humor.
I've threatened to toss every electronic device he has into the passage if he doesn't shut the everloving fuck up about the two stupid goddamned numbers. IT DOESN'T EVEN MEAN ANYTHING!"
At twelve, Finnian was Uncle Baxter and Aunt Kitty's youngest. Like all of us Badd boys, he was wild, rambunctious, incorrigible, hilariously inappropriate, and often so obnoxious you wanted to punt him across the Bering Strait and let the Russians deal with him.
They'd send him back in about ten seconds, though, so we keep him.
The dads finally shut up with their shenanigans, and, once everyone started listening to Dunc's plan, the keg-room remodel started to progress.
Although it wasn't so much a remodel as an update of existing systems. Whatever.
Point is, I spent the rest of the day down there, hauling kegs around, pulling and replacing and adding tap lines, and installing new taps.
It was good, hard work made fun by my family's inability to not act like immature six-year-olds, even for dudes in their fifties.