CHAPTER TWELVE
Tipsy Uno was the best Uno. And no one could tell me differently.
We wound up on the back deck, facing the darkness of the ocean, enjoying the breeze and the salty air. Lane and Art sat sideways on the deck steps across from one another, while I sat cross-legged on the deck. It probably would’ve been smarter to play on a kitchen table, without the wind threatening our game every few minutes, but no one suggested it.
I looked up as the back door creaked open and Jackson stuck his head out. Spotting me, he grinned and shook his head. I waved him out. “Come. Join us.”
“Uno, you guys? Really?”
“Really.” I patted the deck next to me. “You can be on my team this round. I’m kicking ass.”
He didn’t take the seat next to me. He sat behind me, legs on either side, and pulled me back, flush against his body. If I’d been completely sober, I probably would’ve gone stiff as a board…maybe even put a few inches between us again as soon as I could have managed it. But apparently Captain Morgan thought it was a fabulous idea and snuggled into his larger form. Captain Morgan also thought Jackson was warm on my slightly chilled backside, and that Jackson smelled really, really good. Captain Morgan was such a slut.
When Jackson spoke, his voice was a deep rumble by my ear. “You do realize the idea of the game is to get rid of as many cards as possible right?”
I would’ve sent him an offended look, but that would require un-plastering my back from his front, and that wasn’t going to happen. I tried to inject disdain in my voice instead. “There’s a method to my madness.”
“Oh good.” He sounded relieved. “Because right now it looks like you’re collecting a whole shitload of cards.”
Lane cackled as she plopped down another card. “Let me help you with that. Draw four, babes.”
Bastards, the whole lot of ’em. Art and Lane had been ganging up on me for a little bit now. I collected my cards as Jackson anally began organizing my hand by color. I didn’t mind. I was just too glad that he was here. Mostly because the three of us were still a little shell-shocked, and someone had to help us achieve normal again.
Some part of me was glad I wasn’t the only one who was so thrown off by the sale of our childhood home that drunken Uno at midnight seemed like a great idea. It just…made no sense. This was our house. Our house. We’d grown up here. We’d learned every squeak, every creak, every sound the floorboards made, so we could sneak in after curfew undetected. The second step on the porch, the third floorboard in front of the couch, and the fourth stair squeaked bloody murder and had gotten me many months of grounding.
This was where we’d had huge holiday parties, the house so full people exploded from the confines of rooms and onto the lawn and back patio with festive cups and cheer. This was the place where we’d made hundreds of cookies for bake sales and did hours of homework at the kitchen island while our mother made dinner. I had a thousand little stupid memories like that. It was more than just a house.
It was home.
Jackson gave my shoulder a gentle nudge. “Your play, AJ.”
I started, looking down at my cards blindly. He sighed, reaching over my shoulder and removing a few from my hand and tossing them on the stack. He squeezed my fingers gently, letting me know, without words, that he knew my head wasn’t in it.
“Uno!” Lane cried out gleefully, slinging down all but the last of her cards.
As per our altered game rules, everyone took a shot. I poured another serving in my glass and offered it to Jackson. After a pause, he took it and slammed it back. His eyes watered a bit as he handed it back. “You’ve been doing these for how long?”
“Who knows?” Art said helpfully.
A good wind picked up, whipping the cards into a frenzy as we tried to grab and hold them down. We lost the battle as the pile in the middle took flight and headed toward the beach in a dazzling array of colors. I was momentarily stunned by their beauty as I watched them fly.
“I got ’em!” Lane screeched, taking off for the dunes, Art not far behind her.
I watched them for a moment, shaking my head, before stacking my cards. I hit them on the deck once to line them up neatly, and tucked them under Art’s glass so they wouldn’t become victims to the wind. When I looked up, Jackson was pouring us both another glass of rum. I didn’t know whose glass was whose, but it didn’t really matter at this point. I took the drink silently, and tilted my head in appreciation.
We did several shots there in the dark, quietly contemplating our own thoughts. He was the first to speak. “Have you guys considered buying the house?”
“Yeah. It’s not a good idea.”
“Even as a vacation rental?”
“Especially then. Who would keep an eye on the property? Who would keep up with the maintenance? Lane and Art are so busy with their own stuff that it would really be just me. And I certainly don’t have the time or know-how to take on a project that big.” I sighed. “And even then, we’d be back to our original objection. Strangers living in our house.”
He gave me a considering look. “And you wouldn’t consider a loan?”
“Between the business and my house, I think I already owe the bank my first born, thank you very much. I’d like to keep the second.”
“I wasn’t talking about the bank.”
“No,” I said sharply. At his wide-eyed expression, I tempered my tone a little. “No, but thank you. I appreciate the thought.”
He sighed. “I figured as much. If you weren’t so stubborn, you wouldn’t have had to take a loan from the bank in the first place.”
Figured Jules would’ve told him about that. Jules had been willing to front me my half from his trust fund, but it hadn’t seemed like the right thing to do. I didn’t want it to be his business, I wanted it to be our business.
“It’s important to know how to stand on your own two feet,” I told him starchily.
“It’s also important to know how to accept help.” He shook his head. “So independent, we should stick you on a pole and fly you on the fourth like a goddamned flag.”
That startled a laugh out of me. “Shut up.”
He poured us both another shot, and we clinked glasses before we tossed them back. Man, the burn. It was a good burn, though. A distracting burn.
“Jules and I were fortunate that way. The house we grew up in was just that…a house.”
“It was beautiful,” I said, thinking back on the McMansion they’d grown up in.
“It was that. But it was just a house. And there were certainly no memories I wanted to relive there.”
“None?”
He lifted a shoulder. “My father was an exacting bastard. He wanted things done a certain way, and if you didn’t do them that way, then there was hell to pay. That pretty much made us all steer very clear. My mother had her charities and projects to keep her busy. And Jules and I were the kids who didn’t come home from boarding school on breaks unless we had to.”
“What would you do?”
“Trips and parties, mostly. Aspen for Christmas. Mexico for spring break. I did a summer in Paris…” He looked off. “I certainly can’t complain about all the experiences we had.”
I would rather have had a home. It didn’t seem like the thing to say, though. And judging from the set of his jaw, so tight it looked like it might shatter with a slight tap, he already knew that. There was something I had to ask, though. Something that I had to know.
“Was he ever physical with you guys?”
He laughed a short laugh that was anything but humorous. “Physical violence is for the brutish and unintelligent.”
The way he said it, I could tell it was a direct quote.
“My old man preferred psychological warfare. A constant diet of being disappointed in everything we did. Jules rebelled and coped with it in typical Jules fashion—he went for the gold in pissing our father off. I wasn’t even sure he was actually gay until I walked in on…” Even in the dark, I could tell he was blushing. “Well, anyway, I thought that was just one more way to piss our father off.”
I knew that Jules and his father had never really gotten along that well. I’d never known the exact reasons why. Now I did. “And you?”
“I tried to be better. Tried to conform into what he wanted. The harder I tried, the more he wanted, and the more spectacularly I failed.” He let out a pent-up, frustrated breath. “So in short, no, I don’t understand. When our parents died, I sold that house within three months.”
I bit my lip. Here I was carrying on about getting rid of my childhood home. At least I’d had one. I couldn’t imagine looking at my childhood home and thinking good riddance to rubbish.
“I’m sorry,” I finally said.
He gave me an exasperated, fond look. “How is any of it your fault?”
Despite my mood, I was still a tad amused. “You need to learn how to accept someone’s ‘I’m sorry.’ I think they have local classes at the Y.”
He looked at me for a moment before smiling, shaking his head. “I’m glad opposing counsel doesn’t have your secret weapon.”
“Which is?”
“You always know how to make me smile.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. But I knew I really, really liked having that weapon.
“What the hell are they doing?” Jackson asked, his voice a little choked with laughter.
I looked up to see Lane and Art holding hands and skipping along the beach, singing something I couldn’t quite pick up from here, Uno cards long forgotten. I shook my head. “I don’t know but it looks like fun.”
I tried to stand on wobbly legs and plopped back down. Jackson chuckled and stood, wiping sand off his pants before offering me a hand. He clearly forgot how strong he was because when he pulled me up, I wound up crashing into him. We went down hard, rolling down the steps into the sand below.
We looked at one another for a moment, blinking in surprise. And then I giggled. Which sent us into full-blown laughter. Stomach-hurting, gut-busting laughter as we rolled in the sand like idiots.
“Oopsie,” I said through my giggles. Ooh, that rum was starting to really kick in. “Why’d you Incredible Hulk me?”
“Is that a verb now?”
Which set us off again.
“Drunken fools,” he finally managed. “The whole lot of us.”
I watched Jackson stagger up out of the corner of my eye, but then it hurt too much to focus in one on thing, especially something in my peripheral. I stopped trying to strain my eyes and he disappeared from my vision, so I laid there, blinking up at the night sky. Looking at all the stars.
God, the stars. They didn’t look like that at my house. Not that I ever bothered to go outside at night and look at them, but with all the streetlights and house lights and city traffic that never seemed to stop, I knew they wouldn’t look like this. All glittery and shiny like someone had plastered a star stencil up in the sky and colored it with moonbeams—
“Argh!” I shrieked as Jackson picked me up and the world went topsy-turvy. He righted me in his arms and I grabbed on to his neck. “Where are you taking me?”
“Down to the beach,” he declared. “We can’t let them cavort alone.”
He began heading for the beach, but I shook his arm like a dog with a bone. “Wait. Wait!” I shook his arm some more even though I already had his attention. “I gotta grab the rum. You don’t go onboard a vessel without bringing rum.”
“There is no…never mind.” He looked amused, but dipped me enough to grab the bottle from the deck. And we joined our fellow revelers in the sand, acting foolish and forgetting about everything that made us sad under the watchful eye of the stars and the moon.
*
Light. Cursed light streamed through the windows. For a moment, I was afraid I had gone blind, and then I realized that no, I was just looking directly into a shaft of pure sunlight. I blinked and my eyes watered furiously.
God. I felt like I’d gone ten rounds with Holyfield. Maybe that was because my brain had officially liquefied. Then someone had mixed it with rum before dumping the contents back in my skull. “So this is what it’s like to be dead,” I murmured conversationally.
“No.” Art’s voice came from behind the couch, somewhere on the hardwood floor. “I think death is supposed to be pain free, so…yeah. Definitely still alive.”
I lifted my head again, craning my neck to peer over the couch. “You look hungover,” I informed him.
“You look embalmed,” he said candidly.
“Where’s Jackson?” I wanted to know.
“I think he went to sleep in a bed, like a normal human being.”
“And left me?” I tried to scowl, but any facial formations were causing my headache to worsen. I tried to smooth out my face like I’d had an aggressive round of lunchtime Botox. “Anlefme?” I repeated without moving my lips.
“You pushed him off the couch twice,” Art informed me. “It was for his own safety.”
“Gooooood morning,” a voice boomed from the doorway, the volume making my eyes water. I squinted at the doorway as our dad strolled in, looking like the very picture of health. I almost chucked a pillow at him.
“What’s so good about it?” Art groaned.
“I think I’m going to make a nice healthy breakfast,” Dad said, patting his stomach. “Maybe power down a smoothie so I can eat crap for dinner.”
I didn’t know what he was worried about. Clearly the man was going to live forever.
I groaned and rolled over. My dad proceeded to go around the room, checking each of us for vital signs. He lifted my wrist and felt for a pulse before nodding. When he got to Art, he waved a hand in front of Art’s nose.
“Still alive, but just barely,” he concluded. Satisfied, he gave Art’s cheek a healthy smack, and Art whimpered. With a grin, he went on. “I think we can rebuild him. We have the technology.”
“Dad,” Art said with a pathetic whine. “Jesus, have pity.”
“Jesus does have pity,” Dad said kindly. “He died on the cross for our sins.”
A groan came from the other side of the couch and Lane covered her eyes with her hand. “Talking. Too. Much. Talking.”
“It’s so good to have all of my beautiful children under one roof,” he said, beaming.
“Aw,” Lane began. “That’s so—”
“That being said, I want all you drunken louts out of my den in the next five minutes. I want to watch TV,” the king of Siam announced primly before heading off to the kitchen.
“That’s it,” Art said. “We’re putting him in a nursing home.”
“I heard that!”
“You were meant to!” I informed him.
But to be fair, I didn’t think any of us really meant it until he started up the blender.