I kept scanning the customers, looking for someone who stood out. Someone who maybe was uncomfortable seeing us there or seemed itchy to start something or run. But everyone there was minding their own business, only giving us the barest passing attention. I took a slug of my beer and grimaced. It was just a little too warm and right on the edge of being skunked. And mostly foam.
“Man, I got so drunk last week,” Jordan said beside me. I turned to respond to him but noticed he wasn’t talking to me. He was directing his words all the way across the bar to Danny, who looked over his shoulder at him. “I went right the hell home and passed out. Good thing I didn’t have a girl with me—I would have been no fun at all. What about you, Danny? What did you do that night?”
My lips pursed as I watched my brother walk right up the edge of starting a fight, draw a line in the sand, and then proceed to erase it immediately.
“What night?” Danny asked gruffly.
Jordan grinned, his teeth shining in the dim yellow light of the bar. He was turning on the asshole charm, being the sarcastic bastard that had annoyed me on so many occasions.
“You know, the night our bar burned down,” Jordan said, his smile never faltering. But his eyes were like daggers.
Danny’s face settled into an expression of hatred, and he lifted his head so his chin stuck out, and he looked down his long, pointy nose at Jordan.
“If you are here to accuse me of burning down your bar, I didn’t do it. Okay?”
The sound of chairs sliding across the wood filled the silent bar, and I shot both arms out, one to block Jordan from hopping over the bar and lighting into Danny and the other to ward off my other brothers from doing anything similar.
“That’s enough,” I said, and Danny’s gaze went to me.
“I think it might be time to roll out,” Tyler said behind me. “A man can only take so much warm beer and cheap cigarette smoke.”
“Better than god-awful costumes and fancy girl drinks,” Danny muttered behind the bar. I turned to lock eyes with Mason and stop him from jumping down Danny’s throat. Thankfully, Mason seemed almost amused at how ridiculous the statement was.
“Yeah, God forbid, a bar for people who aren’t the comic book definitions of the town drunk,” he said, and several pairs of eyes moved to him.
“Yeah, it’s time to go,” Jordan said, pushing his chair back into the table. He took his shot and slammed it down, placing the glass back on the table. “How much do we owe you?”
“I got it,” I said, cutting them all off. I didn’t want to give Danny the satisfaction of counting up all our tabs, or the argument and pettiness of my brothers arguing over prices or tip.
Instead, I opened my wallet and pulled out a crisp hundred-dollar bill. I folded it once and placed it in front of me. In my peripheral, I could see Jordan’s mouth turn up in a huge grin.
“This should cover it,” I said and stood.
“Get the hell out of my bar,” Danny muttered, but I watched him as he grabbed the bill and tucked it into his apron as we walked toward the door. I opened it to let my brothers out and then turned to face him one last time.
“If it was you, Danny,” I said and left the sentence unfinished, leaving and shutting the door behind me. Nothing else needed to be said.
12
Amanda
I woke up the next morning with my mouth feeling sticky and parched.
I spent the first few moments of being awake with my eyes closed, not wanting to move too much just in case a raging hangover was waiting in the corner of my head somewhere and would get shaken loose and attack if I moved too fast. After a few seconds of lying there without any pain taking over, I braved opening my eyes.
Everything still felt pretty good, so I went through the slow, painstaking process of climbing out of bed. By the time I got my feet on the floor, I was pretty confident I had managed to avoid feeling too horrific this morning. It felt like somewhat of a miracle considering how ridiculous things got the night before.
I’d needed that time off and a bit of fun, but maybe it had gone a little bit too far. Once out of bed, I cautiously opened the door to the bedroom and looked for Tom. When I saw he wasn’t asleep on the sofa bed, I checked the time. It was far later than I usually slept. By this time back home, a good portion of my work for the day was already done.
It was disorienting having slept so late, and at first, I didn’t know what exactly to do. The room was quiet, so it seemed Tom wasn’t there. I was considering calling him when I found a note telling me he had gone to meet with his brothers again.
In a way, that was a relief. I didn’t exactly feel presentable at the moment, and I really needed to focus on getting work done.
After a shower to cut through the fog and a quick breakfast, I sat down at the desk and settled into work. My productivity kicked in, and I was getting things done when my phone rang. Without looking at it, I scooped it up and answered.
“Hey, Amanda,” Tom said. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”
I was about to answer him when I realized he was teasing me for being asleep when he left.
“Very funny,” I said.
“What are you doing right now?” he asked.
“I’m working.”
“Would you want to meet my mom?”
My heart fluttered in my chest a little. “Sure. I’d like that.”
“Good. Go ahead and get ready.”
“Get ready?”
“Yeah. I’m going to come pick you up, and we are going to have dinner with her,” he said.
Meeting his mother shouldn’t seem like that big of a deal. It probably would have been stranger if he didn’t ask me to go with him to see her or bother to introduce me to her at any point while we were in Astoria.
And yet, there I was. A bundle of nerves.
My mind drifted back to the night before and the tripping incident. The memory of stumbling into his arms and the way Tom had looked at me gave me a little shiver and brought a whole new wave of butterflies. I needed to call Emily.
I dialed her number and put the phone on speaker as I looked at all my clothes.
“I was wondering if you were ever going to call me,” she said rather than greeting me. “What’s going on? Tell me everything.”
“Actually, I just have a question for you,” I said. “What should I wear to meet Tom’s mother?”
Emily gasped so loud it sounded like she might inhale her phone. “He asked you to meet his mother?”
“Not like that.”
“What do you mean not like that?” she asked. “Did he or did he not ask you to meet his mother?”
“He did,” I admitted. “We’re going to have dinner with her, but I’ve already met everybody else in his family. His brothers and his sister-in-law. Doesn’t it make sense that since we’re in town, I would meet his mother?”
“You know what I think,” she said. “I’ve said it before, and I’m going to say it again. The two of you need to stop hiding your feelings for one another. Yes, it makes sense for him to introduce you to his mother since you’re in town. Does that mean having dinner with her? That’s up for debate.”