3. Mason
MASON
“Hey.” Nino slides onto a stool across from me, giving me one of his cocky smirks. “What’s new?”
I don’t even ask what he wants to drink. It’s always the same. The man doesn’t know how to be creative when it comes to his beverages. He likes one craft beer we’ve had on tap forever, and I don’t think we’ll get rid of it because it’s popular with him and other people in the neighborhood.
“Nada,” I tell him as I set down a full glass in front of him. “Same shit, different day.”
He lifts the glass to his lips and pauses. “That’s not what I heard.”
I stare at him, searching his face for a clue.
I don’t want to get into anything with him, but my curiosity also won’t let me walk away without hearing what he has to say.
I lean forward, taking some of the pressure off my back.
I’ve worked too long today, and my boots need to be replaced because I wore these out a month ago and my feet are getting tortured. “What did you hear?”
At that moment, Nino decides to take a sip. But not a short gulp…he slowly downs half the glass. Typical Nino. He likes to play games. Usually, I’m down for it, but since the topic has to do with me, I’m not exactly thrilled by his lack of speed.
Although I’m closest to Zoey out of all my cousins, it’s because we work at the bar together every day and have for years. But Nino and I have always been thick as thieves since we’re close in age.
But unlike me, Nino has gone the nontraditional route with life. While he says he’s studying to be a tattoo artist and is going to be asking Tate for a job soon, he’s somewhat of a hustler, which doesn’t make Aunt Daphne and Uncle Leo very happy.
“I heard you have a date tonight, and you didn’t tell me. I feel like you’re hiding things from me.”
“I didn’t think I had to report everything.”
“Uh, hello. Of course you do. Now, who’s the chick?”
“You’ve met her.”
He sets down his beer, leans back, and crosses his arms. “Recently?”
I nod.
“The lady at the bookstore?”
I snort and shake my head. “Nino, she’s a little too old for me.”
“Yeah, but she’s hot as fuck. Am I right?”
“She is that,” I tell him.
I almost fell over when Nino said he wanted to go to the bookstore.
I didn’t even know he read anything besides the dark sites he finds on the internet, learning how to better his hustle.
And then he hit on the lady working there, trying to get her number.
It was so odd to me and more than a little surprising.
“So, again, who’s the chick?”
“Lizzy.”
“Lizzy,” he repeats, and I can tell by the vacant look in his eyes the name isn’t clicking.
“Hunter’s sister.”
He sucks in a breath as his eyes widen. “You can’t bang his sister, man. That’s a big no-no. I do some fucked-up shit, but that’s even beyond me.”
“I’m not banging her.”
The door to the bar opens, and my attention is drawn away from Nino. But to my shock, and maybe my horror, Amelia strides in with her head held high.
“Fuckin’ great. Who’s talking shit?” I ask him as my gaze drops to his face.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he mutters behind the rim of his beer glass.
“You and Amelia are here at the same time, and it’s not a family dinner. Who opened their mouth?”
“About what?” He feigns innocence.
“My date.”
“Aha,” he barks and points a finger at me before setting down his beer.
“I’m here. I’m here,” Amelia says, breezing through the bar like she comes here every day. “What’d I miss?”
“He just confessed about his date,” Nino tells her as she sits down on the barstool next to him.
“Good. That’s half the battle.” Amelia gives me a smile as she shrugs off her coat. “What’s the plan?”
“Plan?” I ask, looking between them. “There’s no plan and no date.”
“He just called it a date before you walked in.”
“A woman like Lizzy doesn’t just go out with a man. She dates,” Amelia informs me. “Also, I want an espresso martini.”
“Of course you do,” I mutter before moving to make her drink. “You’d never drink something as plain as beer.”
“Don’t use the cheap stuff either. I want the creamy liqueur.”
I sigh as I grab the top-shelf chocolate liqueur. “I wouldn’t dream of using the cheap stuff on you, M.”
The girl is high-class. She always has been, from a very young age.
She and Nino are very much alike in that way.
It’s probably because they’re only children with no siblings to share time, attention, and material things with.
They were spoiled from the moment they were born and continue to be to this day.
“How’s Uncle Vinnie?” I ask her.
“Pops is good. He’s at the gym.”
Where else would the man be? He retired years ago, but he continues to stay in shape and push himself just as hard as he did when he was training for the professional league.
“But I’m not here to talk about him. We’re here to talk about you and Lizzy,” she says as she takes the martini glass from my hands and studies it. “This looks perfect.”
“We have nothing to talk about,” I tell her. “And I have a bar to run.”
Amelia glances around the dining area and then down the length of the bar, looking both ways. “Looks kind of dead to me. Don’t make excuses.”
“I love you both, but I’m old enough that I don’t need dating advice from two people who are also single.”
Amelia takes a sip of her martini and does a little dance in her seat, giving me a thumbs-up. “Maybe you don’t need advice from him,” she says with that same thumb toward Nino, “but you need advice from me because I’m a girl.”
“You are?” I ask, doing my best to appear shocked by the news. “I didn’t know. And that makes you a Lizzy expert?”
She nods. “You two have gone out a bunch, though, right?”
I nod, figuring I’ll play along.
“Have you kissed?”
Man, they all are really nosy. Have my cousins always been this way? Maybe I’ve been left out of the loop when it comes to this stuff, because I don’t really have these discussions with Brax, Tate, Lulu, or Zoey.
“We’re taking things slow.”
“Does she know that?” Amelia asks.
“We’re friends.”
Amelia groans. “I know Lizzy likes you, and you like her. It’s time to make the big move tonight, or else you’re going to lose her forever.”
“I don’t know if you realize this, but she doesn’t live in Chicago, M. I’ve never had a long-term girlfriend, let alone done long-distance dating.”
Amelia stares at me over the rim of her martini, slurping the creamy liquid.
She knows the sound annoys me, and that’s why she does it for an excruciating length of time.
When she sees my patience starting to fray, she pulls back, licks her lips, and gives me a devilish smile.
“Well, that’s a complication, but it doesn’t make anything impossible.
If you two like each other, distance won’t matter. ”
“Are you making excuses because you’re too scared to make a move?” Nino asks as he stares down at his phone. “I think you’re chickenshit.”
Am I chickenshit? Maybe a little. I’m so into her, and the thought of fucking it all up before we have a chance to get started makes my palms sweaty.
“I’m not chickenshit,” I tell him because I’ve never been that man. At least, not before Lizzy.
I never cared if a woman shot me down. It’s happened more times than I’d like to admit, but it’s never killed my ego or stopped me from trying again.
But things are different with Lizzy. Not just because I really like her, but because her brother is marrying into the family.
If things don’t work out, we’ll have to see each other for the rest of our lives.
Awkward isn’t even a strong enough word to describe that aftermath.
“Prove it,” Nino says as he finally glances up from his phone with a wicked gleam in his eyes. He knows what he’s doing.
“I have customers to take care of,” I say, pushing myself away from the bar.
Amelia leans forward and looks at Marv. “Yeah, Marv looks like he needs a refill.”
I give my cousin the middle finger.
“I could use another,” Marv says, outpacing his normal beer an hour. I don’t know how the man does it. I imagine he doesn’t have just blood running through his veins. It has to be half booze, given the amount the man downs like it’s water, and it doesn’t affect him at all.
“What do you think, Marv?” Amelia asks him.
Marv’s been around so long, he knows everything about our family, including the gossip.
“Should he make a move?” Amelia adds.
“He’s too chickenshit,” Marv mumbles, knowing damn well he’s going to make me mad.
I cross my arms as I pin him with a glare.
He clears his throat as he says, “But I have faith in him. He’ll do what he needs to do.”
Amelia shakes her head as her lips flatten. “Marv, I thought you had a stiffer backbone than that,” she says.
The door opens, and for a moment, I think I am saved from this conversation because I’ll be too busy waiting on a new customer. My hopes are dashed as their face comes into focus.
“Hey,” my dad says as he stalks toward the bar, untangling an extra fuzzy scarf from around his shoulders.
“Unc,” Amelia and Nino say in unison as my father plops down onto a stool next to them.
My dad ran the bar for years with his siblings.
He spent more hours here than I care to remember.
He wasn’t an absent father, but many nights were spent here instead of at home.
Mom was with us at night since her bakery was busy in the morning and afternoon.
Between the two of them, they had the entire day covered.
We never spent time with babysitters. On rare occasions, my grandparents would watch us when Mom and Dad needed some alone time.
“Hey, kids. What are you two doing here?” he asks them.
“Bothering him,” Amelia replies with a smirk.
“Making sure he doesn’t screw up tonight,” Nino adds.
Dad’s eyebrows rise as his gaze moves to me. “What are you going to screw up?”
I sigh as I pinch the bridge of my nose and rub away the tension, or maybe it’s annoyance. “I’m not going to screw anything up.”
“He has a date with Lizzy,” Amelia says, ratting me out.
“About damn time,” Dad says.
I groan. “Not you too.”
“Lizzy’s a good girl, and if you’re smart, you need to make a move before someone else does,” he tells me.
“I know. I know. I’ve got this handled,” I reply. “But it’s complicated.”
“I understand complicated love and relationships. But if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.”
“And how do you know if it’s meant to be, Unc?” Amelia asks, saving me from asking him myself.
He swivels his stool to face my cousins, leaning forward to glance down two spots at Amelia. “When you can’t imagine your life without the other person, and the desire to be near them is more important than breathing.”
“Oh. Is that all?” she says, teasing him.
“More or less,” he mumbles.
“I hope that type of love finds me someday,” she breathes.
“It will when you least expect it. I never thought I’d fall in love again, but then Tilly opened the shop next door, and the rest is history.”
There’s still sorrow in my father’s eyes. I’ve seen old pictures of him, and his vibe is entirely different now. Losing his first wife, Tate and Brax’s mom, stole something from him that nothing in the world, including the love of my mother, could ever replace.
Is he happy? Yeah, my dad is a happy guy, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a wound that can’t ever be healed, no matter what joy he’s found later in life.
And my mom understands his pain since she lost her first husband.
She doesn’t question Dad’s loyalty to her or his love because she knows the grief he’s experienced and continues to deal with decades later.
Dad smiles as he turns back around, staring at his own reflection in the mirror behind the bar. “I’d say we were meant to be. If she hadn’t opened the shop next door, I may have never met her. I’d hate to think of what life would be like without her in it.”
“You were lucky Mom was right next door. Lizzy doesn’t even live in this state,” I tell him.
“Grab me a coffee, kiddo,” Dad says. “I need something to take the chill out of my bones.”
“Beer works better,” Marv says, lifting his glass to my dad when they make eye contact.
“Good to see you, Marv,” Dad replies with a kind smile. “You’re looking well.”
“I’m at my favorite spot. Nothing makes me happier,” Marv tells him. “It’s good for the soul.”
When I look at the two men, I know I want to be like my father and not Marv.
Dad is being nice, saying that Marv looks well.
He lied through his teeth, though. Marv looks like shit.
How could he not? He spends all day, every day here, drinking like there’s no greater thing in life.
I don’t want to be a sad sack, sitting on a random barstool, nursing a beer alone, when I am in my sixties.
I grab my dad’s coffee and set it in front of him, not bothering to grab the sugar and cream. The man has always taken it black, and no matter how many times I try it, it always makes my stomach sour.
“Son, distance doesn’t matter when you love someone.”
“I know, Dad, but we aren’t there yet.”
“I see the way you look at her. How you comforted her when her brother was in the hospital. You have feelings for Lizzy, even if you haven’t figured out what they are yet.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Work harder and faster,” he says, as if it’s easy.
“Got it,” I reply.
What else is there to say?
I can’t get my hopes up. Lizzy has an entire life, and most of it isn’t in Chicago.
Sure, her brother is here and her niece, but I don’t think that is enough to make her move to the big city.
They’ve been here a while, and she hasn’t done it.
Would I be enough to make her finally decide to take the leap?
I guess I’ll have to do everything in my power to give her a reason to uproot her life and start a new one with me.