Chapter Twenty #3
“Have you even asked her to stay?” Gray asked, snatching his attention back.
“What?”
“Have you even asked her to stay?” he repeated patiently. “And save me your stoic big brother act, please.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You might be putting on a whole just-friends-who-were-roomies-for-a-bit act around town, but we know you, Nick. You’re into her in a way we’ve never seen you into a woman before.”
“She’s going to Miami. That’s always been her plan.”
“Plans change.”
“It’s none of your business.”
Gray made a humming sound. “It kind of is.”
“It’s definitely not.”
“We live with the fact you gave up your dream of playing pro ball because Dad died and we weren’t old enough to do the work.
And Mom hadn’t had a job outside of doing Dad’s paperwork for years.
She couldn’t have earned enough to keep this roof over our heads and feed three teen boys.
And we know you gave up a dream coaching job when Mom got sick.
And yes, you did it for Mom, but you also did it for us. ”
“I don’t have any regrets,” Nick shot back. “I would make the same choices every single time.”
“And that’s fine, but what we’re not going to do is let you give up Lucy because of—” he stopped and waved his hand around “—any of this. Us. The house. The company. If you want to go to Miami with her, go. We can run the business without you. We don’t want to, but we can.
And if you’re telling yourself anything different, you’re not only screwing yourself over, but you’re insulting the hell out of us. ”
“I would hate Miami.”
“Maybe. Maybe not, especially if Lucy’s there. Or, again, you could ask her to stay. I assume you haven’t because, well, you’re you. Putting yourself last.”
“I’m not putting myself last. I’m putting her first, and yes, there’s a difference. She’s wanted to do this thing in Miami for a long time. It’s her dream, and she has a friend there who’s already in the business. It’s a perfect opportunity for her.”
“I still think you should ask her,” Gray said. “Nick, you know better than anybody that dreams change. But they don’t always change because something bad happens. Sometimes they change for good reasons.”
“If her dream had changed, I doubt she’d be in the process of packing her car up, with a brand-new Rand McNally on the passenger seat.”
“You’ll regret not asking.”
“I’ll live with it.”
“Hey,” Theo yelled out of his open second-floor window. “Since we’re having all the serious conversations tonight, Beck and I have been talking, and we think it’s time to change the name of the company to Slater Brothers Construction.”
“Do you know how much it would cost to redo everything?” Nick shouted back.
“Beck and I never really got to work with Dad, you know. To you and maybe to Gray, maybe this is a legacy you’re carrying on, but to Beck and me, it’s been us. The four of us, working together.”
“He’s got a point,” Gray said. “Dad was a builder and we learned the ropes with him, doing jobs around town. He kept a roof over our heads and we learned to pound nails. He was a good man and a good provider. But this…this company with the excellent reputation—the company that’s known throughout New England as the guys you want if you have a summer place in this area—that’s us.
You came in and you kept it going as we came up, and together we’ve built something Dad would be damn proud of. But we did it.”
Nick swallowed the lump of emotion in his throat and had to blink a couple of times to clear his vision. “We did.”
“Plus, you don’t look old enough to be our dad, and the name really confuses people,” Theo yelled down.
Nick laughed while Gray tried not to choke on the mouthful of beer he’d been in the process of swallowing. There was a time, when Theo was very young, that he’d actually thought his middle name was you’re too much.
“Theo, you’re too much,” was something almost every single resident of Wayward Harbor had said to the youngest Slater at some point in his life.
“We’ll need new hoodies,” Nick yelled back. “And if we can spend money rebranding the company, we sure as hell can afford to get the original supplier back.”
“Done,” Theo called, and then they heard his window slam closed.
Gray snorted. “Remember the time he leaned too far out the window, trying to eavesdrop on our parents, and he fell out of the window, rolled down the porch roof and fell into the rosebush?”
“I remember it took Mom, like, an hour to pick the thorns out of him with tweezers because he wouldn’t sit still.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the night sounds, and then Nick pushed himself out of the chair. “It’s been a long day, so I’m heading up.”
“Don’t forget to brush your teeth again.”
“Funny.”
“And Nick,” Gray said as he was pulling open the screen door, “we all know we can lean on you. Do all of us a favor and figure out you can lean on us, too, okay? And if there’s something you want, go after it. We’ve got you.”
That lump in his throat was back, so he just nodded and went back inside.