Five Brothers, page 10
But the younger siblings talk to Army.
He’s the one they tell bad news to, and they entrust him to tell Macon, because Army is the only one who can face their older brother. He holds him back. Calms him down. Puts it into the right words so that it deals the smallest blow. He mans the bomb. Army has to stay calm, because the house needs one emotionally stable adult.
Who does he talk to?
I cross my arms over my chest and look away, uncomfortable under his constant gaze.
“It’s too late in the semester to start classes,” he points out, “so join us until you start college in January.”
I chew the corner of my mouth. I’m not sure I’m going to college, but it’s a possibility.
“We need you.” His voice is firm. “I mean, when you don’t know what you want to do for yourself, be useful to someone else. It’s better than lazing about, right?”
He sounds like my teachers.
I love it across the tracks, but what I said last night still holds true. There’s nothing over there that’s good for me right now.
But I do need a job. I don’t want to be around my house all the time where Milo, my mother, or Jerome Watson knows where to find me anytime they want.
I don’t want to shop or go to the beach or catch up on Netflix. I want to be around people.
It’s better than doing nothing for the next three months. Just while the kids are at school. It’ll give me time to find out how to stay close to my siblings on my terms. Not my mother’s.
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
A job is a good idea, but I’ll get one here in St. Carmen instead.
Army nods slowly, looking like he knows I’m just being nice, but what can he do? They’ll find help. I’m not sure why he’s trying to convince me to come back.
He turns to leave, but I stop him. “How did you know where to find me tonight?”
At first, I thought he was here for something relating to the landscaping and the work their business does, but he said he came to give me back my tips. Wouldn’t he have just gone to my house?
He twists back around, looking like he’s holding his breath and trying not to grin.
He closes the distance between us, his words a whisper as he leans down to my face. “We have cameras in the clubhouse,” he says.
I gape at him. “Are you serious? And you’re just telling me that? Like you can trust me?”
Why would he admit that? My family comes here. Or we did. I’m sure my dad can still afford his membership.
But Army just studies me. “Maybe we have dirt on your crowd. On Milo. Garrett Ames.”
I take the last step up to him. “And my father?”
He smiles. “Maybe,” he taunts. “Who knows?”
Oh my God. They could have stuff I might be able to use.
Or stuff I’d want deleted. Especially if it’s about my family. A lot of talking goes on at Fox Hill. They might’ve picked up a lot of useful info.
My chest rises and falls.
He plucks my phone out of my pocket and taps his number into my contacts.
I gaze up at him and then down to his chest at my eye level. His sternum dips underneath his T-shirt, and I get warm everywhere.
“I’m not sleeping with you,” I tell him. “You’re too old for me.”
Just so we’re clear.
We both know that any woman around his family, and not related to his family, is on the menu. If I’m coming over there every day, I want it understood that I’m not. Women love a hot, single dad, but it’s little weird that his son’s mother is never mentioned.
He doesn’t say anything or even look at me, just fights a smile tilting up his mouth.
“What?” I ask.
He smiles like he has a secret.
He shakes his head, but he starts smiling more. “Nothing.”
He hands me back my phone, and I take it, brushing his fingers as I do.
Time slows as the wheels in my head turn. I don’t think it would’ve been Army last night. He’d said “I can wonder if it’s my son he’s playing Daddy to.”
Army already has a son, so wouldn’t he have said “one of my sons” instead?
He starts to walk away, my gaze lingering on his back.
It’s really not a good idea for me to be over there five days a week, eight hours a day.
I hesitate a moment before saying, “I need to help get my brother and sister off to school in the mornings,” I inform him. “Tell Mariette I can be there by seven thirty.”
What the hell am I doing?
He looks back at me over his shoulder. “Okay.”
“I’ll talk to her about my schedule tomorrow,” I add. “And I keep what I earn. Plus the repairs on my car.”
He nods once. “Deal.”
* * *
—
Five days a week. Eight-hour days. That was optimistic of me.
Almost a week later, I still haven’t had a day off. And every day gets longer than the last. I was here for almost twelve hours yesterday, but my brother and sister went to a birthday party at a trampoline place with our aunt and cousins, so I didn’t feel bad about staying late. There just always seems to be more to do here. Every day. Deliveries need to be unloaded, inventory stocked, someone’s sick, someone left early and couldn’t clean their stations, the soda’s out, a tour bus is coming in, my relief needs to be trained…by me. When I just started days ago.
And occasionally, very special customers have the privilege of getting their food delivered to them, which isn’t something Mariette’s does for everyone.
I even helped in the kitchen before the lunch rush today. Pretty sure she almost kicked me out when I asked, “Aren’t key limes just limes?” Twenty minutes later, I left sweating and fully aware that they were absolutely not.
Quite honestly, I love working here, though. I can get a clean fork, refill a drink, remember all the orders for a table of six without writing anything down, carry five plates at a time, and deliver the shrimp bisque to table eight, the beef tips to table one, and the beer to table eleven in one magical and beautiful dance through the room. I’m finally good at something.
“Krisjen!” Mariette shouts through the window between the kitchen and the server station. “I warned you about the roller skates!”
I coast down the aisle, a plate of food in each hand like a pro.
Mariette mutters something in Spanish, and I’m probably glad I don’t understand.
“Where does this go?” the new girl, Summer, asks.
I drop the burger in front of Bud Kyler and take the platter from her in my free hand. “Davey always has the crawfish.” I set it down in front of him and his friend who have stopped here every day this week on their lunch breaks.
He smiles, and I wink.
“You need a refill?”
He nods. “Coke.”
I take his cup, hand it to Summer, and push off, cruising toward the window and skidding left.
“She can move in those skates!” Miguel Padron says.
I race behind the counter, stuff more straws into my apron, and fill a third Coke, grabbing the two others off the soda fountain. “Yeah, they make me faster, Mariette.”
“Let her wear ’em, Mariette!” someone else calls out.
“So she can sue me when she breaks her leg?” my boss spits back.
I drop off the Cokes at table three and twirl around, skating backward. “Actually, I’d be suing Macon, since he technically owns the place, and even I’m not that stupid.”
Hands suddenly grab my waist, catching me, and I jolt, looking over my shoulder.
Macon looks down at me, and the heat from his body instantly hits me.
I gulp, just as the screen door flaps closed behind him. I almost crashed into him.
Tingles spread under my skin, and a jolt hits low in my belly. I stop breathing for a second.
He’s never touched me. Not even a handshake or a brush of his shoulder.
I hold back my nervous laugh and turn around. “I have your lunch,” I tell him.
I start for the counter to grab the to-go box under the warmer where I packaged the bun separate from the meat, so it wouldn’t get soggy, but he stops me before I get there.
“I’m not hungry,” he says. He pulls the mail out of the slot on the wall and starts flipping through. “Reheat it for dinner and drop it off when you leave today.”
So he can just throw it away again?
I slip my hands in my pockets. I didn’t think much of it when I noticed all the uneaten food in the garage trash can last week, but he’s taken his lunch only twice while I’ve been working here. The other times it’s left on the worktable in the garage, untouched. He hasn’t joined the guys for dinner, and I haven’t been taking him anything then, either. Nor has anyone else from Mariette’s that I can tell. No idea if he’s eating breakfast. His brothers are big eaters. What’s going on with him?
He scans the envelopes, stuffs them back into the holder, and heads for the kitchen door. I slide out of the way, seeing his eyes briefly look down at the skates before he disappears.
Trace and Army stroll in next, the former shouting, “Food!”
“How you doing?” someone asks them from a table as they pass.
“Hey, man.” Trace shakes a hand.
A round of shouts goes off.
“Hey!
“What’s up?”
“Tomorrow, right?”
“Pregaming all day, baby!” Trace claps the air above his head.
They’re having a party tomorrow. Iron’s last night. Halloween.
I look toward the door, trying to see if he’s with them.
And then he’s there. Charging in, jeans and black T-shirt, dark hair covering his temples, and his sun-kissed skin glowing with water that I know isn’t sweat. He jumps through the spray of lawn sprinklers everywhere he works to cool down. I smile to myself, picturing it.
He heads for the kitchen, glancing at me and then away. He’s been acting like he doesn’t notice me, but that’s only after he looks to make sure I’m here.
I watch him stroll through the kitchen, toward the back.
“You stay out of there!” Mariette yells at him.
I arch up on my tiptoes, watching him shrug at her in the kitchen. “Just one.”
“A whole one!” Trace yells through the warming window.
“Iron Jaeger!” she growls.
“You’ll miss me!” He grins at Mariette and dives into the walk-in.
I hesitate, proud of myself for staying out of that house this week.
But he’s alone, and he’s rarely alone, and I need to know when my car will be ready, and I’m not asking Macon. I don’t want to bug him.
I roll through the kitchen, past the grills, and sneak into the cooler, seeing him scan shelves for the key lime cheesecake that’s not on the menu.
He doesn’t look my way, but he knows I’m here.
He offered a ride along the beach a few nights ago, and I kind of regret turning him down.
But I knew what would happen when we got there. It’s safer now. In two days, he’ll be gone for three-plus years.
I’ll miss him.
Somehow their table out there never seemed like it was missing someone without Macon there, but I’m going to hate only seeing three at that table for dinner very soon.
I step closer to him. The cool air feels good.
“Why doesn’t…Mariette own this place?” I ask him.
He pulls out a pink box, searching behind it. “She pretty much does. We don’t interfere with how she wants to run it.”
“But you take a cut.”
I slide in front of him, blocking his view. My chest touches his, and he looks down at me, heat filling the space between us.
“What’s your point?” he asks.
“I just think it’s interesting that she does the work of a business owner but isn’t the business owner,” I tease. “And then she has to share her profits with people who don’t work here. Do you have that kind of arrangement with a lot of businesses in the Bay?”
It’s not their style to take from their own people. I’m only half- serious with my underhanded accusations. I just want to spend a minute with him.
But there’s a reason the Jaegers insist on maintaining control of this restaurant and the bar next door. The rest make sense. An auto shop. A storage facility. A run-down drive-in up the coast a few miles, and lots of land where they collect rent from people parked on it.
But this place is Mariette’s. In every way but the one that counts. Why?
“What aren’t you telling me?” I ask him.
“Why should I tell you anything?”
“If you don’t set me straight, I’m going to think you all are extorting protection money from that nice woman.”
“Like Al Capone?”
He digs in his eyebrows, his air of amusement making him look younger than Trace. I follow the line of his lips as they lift to one side, brushing the stubble on his jaw as something swims in my stomach. His face is more oval. Trace’s jaw is more square.
I guess I’m staring too long, because he shifts in a way that makes him seem closer, and he drops his voice. “I would actually love the opportunity to set you straight,” he taunts.
The pulse between my legs throbs just once, so hard that I expel the breath I’m holding.
He plants both hands on the rack behind me, walling me in with his nose an inch from mine. “Will Trace mind this?”
I haven’t taken my eyes off his mouth. God, I’m hot. My blood is rushing too fast. “Why don’t you ask me if I mind it?” I whisper.
A current flows between us, and I know he’s going to do it before he does. He takes my jaw in one hand, squeezing it lightly, and I suck in a breath just as he’s about to come down, but…
He doesn’t kiss me.
He stares into my eyes, smelling like grass and vanilla and the beer coming off his breath. “Mariette can’t own the restaurant,” he says. “Or rather, she doesn’t want to risk it. She’s off the grid.”
Off the grid?
“She would’ve needed a loan,” he explains. “To get a loan, she needs accounts. To get accounts, she needs identification. To get ID she needs a Social Security card. Get it?”
I stare at him. “Yeah.”
She’s undocumented.
He releases me and looks away. “And I don’t know why the fuck I told you all of that.”
It still doesn’t make sense. Business owners don’t need to be full-fledged citizens. “She’s been here since she was a child, right?” I press. “How has she not applied for permanent residency at least?”
“Because she would’ve been deported as soon as she applied, and she wasn’t young enough to meet the requirements for DACA.”
Right.
And by that time, this was home. She has family here.
Iron continues. “She stayed through several changes in ownership, one of them finally naming the place after her, because her key lime pie was the biggest draw to customers. About six years ago, after she’d worked here for thirty years, the current owner was about to lose it to the bank, so we bought it.”
“How’d you get that much money?”
It wouldn’t have cost seven figures, but at least in the low sixes.
Iron just sighs. “I have no idea. I was seventeen at the time. Macon took care of it.”
The old rumor about Macon and Army selling Oxy and Molly to the college kids back in the day to support their siblings after their parents’ deaths surfaces in my brain, but there were so many rumors about them that I never knew what to believe.
Iron states, “Mariette gets to stay in the place she loves, take care of her family, and we make sure she can do that.”
Got it. Not that I ever thought that they were taking advantage of her, but it’s one of the many reminders that the Jaegers bend and break whatever laws they feel are unjust, and that they are comfortable making that distinction on their own. What people don’t know until they spend time over here, though, is that it’s always in service to others. Macon could’ve taken that money and renovated the house. Bought a car. Moved. He stayed.
“You can’t tell anybody, Krisjen.”
I dart my eyes up to him. “You don’t need to say that.”
“No, I do,” he states plainly. “Because if you turn on us, it’ll be my fault, because I trusted you.”
He trusts me. His brothers wouldn’t. They’d be pissed if they found out that he divulged that information.
But I’ll never tell anyone. Mariette’s worked hard, and she’s lived here longer than anywhere else. This is her home.
“When I come back,” he says, “I need this place to still be here, okay?”
I nod, a lump wedging in my throat at the reminder. “I really hate that you’re going there. How are you not depressed all the time? I would be.”
He laughs quietly, relaxed again, and I look up at him. “Are you going to be okay?” I ask.
But he ignores me, instead asking, “You coming to the party tomorrow night?”
“Who will be there?”
“Me.”
I snort, and we both smile at each other, but then he comes in close again, and I know what he’s going to want if I come tomorrow. I inhale through my nose, taking in his scent and seeing if I remember it from that night. He smelled like grease and wood and tasted like heat with a whisper of bourbon, but all I smell now is water and sunscreen.
Leaning down, his forehead nearly brushes mine. “Would you mind it?” he whispers.
The front of his jeans brushes mine, and everything feels alive.
“Do you mind it?” he teases.
I hear a bell ring outside, and I blink, remembering I have tables. Shit.
I push him away and start to leave. “Y’all are trouble.”
