“I don’t do much by way of sides,” I explained. “I tend to just eat the meat and not much else. Don’t have the patience or the time for the other shit.”
She just did that sultry, negligent roll of her shoulder. “I’m not picky. Just grateful to be somewhere warm and dry.”
“You want somethin’ to drink?” I asked.
“Whatever you’ve got.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Well, being a bachelor, I’ve got tap water and beer.”
She just grinned at me. “Beer is good.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Hate to sound…I dunno, like a fartsy old guy, but…are you legal drinking age?”
“Twenty,” she answered. “Twenty-one in a month and a half.” A wry grin. “So, close enough, I’d say.”
Phew. Well over eighteen, and almost legal to drink, so I didn’t have to feel shitty about having a hard-on for a seventeen-year-old. And, really, she was only six years younger than me. Shit, my ma was eight years younger than Dad, and they’d been together going on thirty years.
She smirked at me. “You were worried I was a runaway, weren’t you?”
I shrugged, shook my head as I got us both a beer, uncapped them and handed her one. “I mean, it crossed my mind, but I knew you were probably at least eighteen.”
“Thank you,” she said, smirking at me. “I won’t tell, I swear.” She tilted her head to one side, severing a piece of roast off with her fork, stabbing it, and popping it into her mouth. “I look that young, to you?”
It’s a trap—the Star Wars quote ran through my head in Admiral Ackbar’s voice. “Uh…well? I’m not that great at knowing how old someone is by looking at them. All I know is, you’re gorgeous.”
Her ivory skin went pink as she blushed. “Thanks?”
I hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but it was true, and it was an understatement. Now that she was clean and dry and her hair was brushed, the raw, stunning, artful perfection of her face was highlighted. Her cheekbones framed her deep, pale brown eyes; the sharp point of her chin enhanced the delicate angles of her jaw, the sculpted cupid’s bow of her upper lip was perfection. God, she was so much more than merely gorgeous.
I ducked my head to pull my gaze away from her, digging into my food.
A strange not-awkward silence ensued as we both ate. She devoured all I’d given her in a matter of minutes and gave a longing look at the platter between us—I didn’t wait for her to ask, I just slid a few more pieces onto her plate, and onto mine, and we kept eating.
She glanced at me, now and again. “Do you see yourself always working on cars?”
“I don’t know. I’m working on getting my realtor license. If I can make more selling houses, maybe I could do less salvaging. I’d like to be able to do engine work full time, but I just don’t have enough clientele for that, yet. All my business is word of mouth, and I’m doing all right considering I’m only twenty-six, but…I guess I’m just impatient.”
“Well, I’m almost twenty-one and I don’t have a damn clue what to do with my life. I know it’s not waiting tables, but I don’t have any idea what it is.”
“There’s nothing wrong with waiting tables,” I said.
“Hell no,” she said, around a mouthful. “I know that. I’ve worked for Mr. Sokoli since I was fourteen. It’s a good job and I’m good at it. But it’s just not something I want to do forever.”
“So?” I said, waving with my fork. “You’ve got time to figure it out.”
“Not really. I mean, I know I don’t want to go to college. I tried that for half a year and I fucking hated it.”
“There’s lots of stuff you can do without a degree.” He gestured. “I don’t have one.”
“Yeah, but…you have the skills and experience. I just…” She sighed. “You’d have to know my family to understand. My oldest sister, Charlie, is super successful. She went to fucking Yale on a full academic scholarship, where she got not one, but two degrees.”
“Yikes,” I said. “I barely graduated high school. Book learning and classrooms just wasn’t my thing.”
“Same,” she said. “Then there’s Cassie. She went to Julliard for dance, and was lead dancer for one of the most prestigious dance companies in the world, and lived in Paris.”
I arched my eyebrow. “Damn.”
“You begin to understand,” she said, droll. “But wait, there’s more. Lexie, my sister who’s getting married, did the whole college thing, went to the University of Connecticut and then Sarah Lawrence for women’s studies or something like that. But overall, not totally out of the ordinary, right? Just a normal girl going to college. Only, she recently did some kind of dumb shit and got herself kicked out of Sarah Lawrence—what, I don’t know—and she and Charlie went on some super cool road trip. Lexie met Myles North, and yes, I mean the Myles North, and now Lexie is getting married to one of the most famous humans on the planet. But wait, there’s even more—he got her to play the guitar and sing for him, and they discovered she’s like insanely talented. He recorded her and that video broke world records for most views in twenty-four hours.”
I dropped my fork. “Wait. You gotta be shittin’ me. Your sister is that Lexie? The Lexie from Myles and Lexie?”
I nodded. “Yes. That Lexie is my sister.”
I rocked back in my chair. “Okay, that’d be a little intimidating. She’s crazy talented.”
And crazy hot, but I didn’t say that. Mainly because the girl across the table from me was, in my opinion, even hotter—and not just because she was here in person, in my home, and was not getting married to a rich and famous dude with magazine perfect looks and bonkers musical talent.
“Yes, it’s a little intimidating, and it makes me feel inferior.”
“Well, she’s her, and you’re you. You gotta live your life.”
Torie rolled her eyes at me. “Thank you for that stunning insight, Rhys.”
I laughed. “A little inane, huh?”
She held her thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “Just a little.” She stood up, took my plate and hers to the sink—scrubbed the forks and the plates clean with my sponge and soap, and set them in my drying rack.
“You shoulda let me do that,” I said.
“I appreciate the hospitality, but I like to be useful. With four sisters who are all way more talented and successful than me, being useful is about all I’ve got.”
I frowned. “Wait. Charlie, the oldest, went to Yale, Cassie the next oldest is a dancer, Lexie is marrying the Myles North…that’s three sisters.”
“Can’t forget about Poppy, my younger sister. She’s eighteen, and poised to become the next, like, Georgia O’Keefe. My dad built her her own art studio in the backyard, she’s that talented. She graduated high school just before her seventeenth birthday because she’s crazy smart and has zero chill, and got accepted to Columbia University’s visual arts program, where she’s in a private study program with one of the most famous art instructors in the world, because she’s got this, quote, ‘brilliant and unique voice as a painter.’ Apparently, she’s, like, a genius with brushwork and lighting, and can replicate some of the best works by the greats of the Renaissance. But her real passion is this artwork she does with her own black and white photography and magazine cutouts and paint…I don’t know exactly how she does it. Anyway, it’s taking the art world by storm, I guess. Plus, she’s always been the prettiest of all of us.”
I arched an eyebrow. “I dunno, Torie. I’m sitting here looking at you and thinkin’ I’m not sure how anyone could be prettier than you.”
She blushed again, fidgeting and squirming uncomfortably. “Oh, shut up. You’ve seen the video of Lexie. I’m the plain sister, no question about it.”
“There is absolutely nothing plain about you, Torie.”
She got up, headed for the bathroom, snagged her phone off the top of the toilet tank, and brought it to me, bringing up a photograph. It was of her whole family, her mom and four sisters and Torie,
and had obviously been taken within a year or two.
“This was two, almost two and a half years ago, before Mom moved to Ketchikan. So Poppy is only sixteen here.” She tapped the sister in question on the screen. “She hit puberty just shy of her tenth birthday, had bigger tits than me by thirteen, and was fully developed, done growing, and was basically, physically fully an adult by the time this photo was taken. Her junior year, the year after this photo, she actually got our high school English teacher fired because he kept hitting on her. Claimed he thought she was a teacher. She’s been proposed to four times by adult men, propositioned countless times, has had multiple offers from every reputable modeling agency in the world despite not being the classic model body type and, oh yeah, some big name Hollywood producer offered her a starring role in a major summer blockbuster. She almost took the offer, but she had to be topless, and Mom flipped her wig.”
I believed every word. In the photo were six women: their mom, and the five girls. And, by god, each of them was unbelievably beautiful. All of them had their mother’s dark hair except one sister with platinum blond hair, but she had their mother’s facial features. It was ridiculous, honestly. Even the mom was—at the risk of sounding like I’m into older women, which I’m not—sexy as hell, fit, ageless, yet obviously a mature woman. Of all the girls in the photo, Torie most closely resembled her mother, being tall, slender, with thinner hips and a smaller bust than the sisters.
Damn.
Poppy was everything Torie had claimed. If I didn’t know she was only sixteen in the photo, I’d have taken her for eighteen, at least. She had the face and body the younger Kardashian sisters had paid a fortune in surgery to attain. Poppy was the kind of beautiful that started wars—the face that launched a thousand ships. She was angled behind Torie in the photo, so her figure was mostly hidden, but it was obvious that she was…blessed with an excess of beauty in the figure department.
“She’s only gotten more beautiful since this photo,” Torie said, sounding annoyed and amused.
“Crazy.”
“Doesn’t seem right, does it?”
I hunted for something to say that wouldn’t be creepy. “I mean, yeah, she’s really pretty.”
Torie snorted. “It’s okay.”
I laughed. “Okay, fine. Yeah, she’s pretty unbelievable.” I met her eyes. “But she’s not you. And I’m not attracted to her. Not like you mean it. And not like I am to you.”
She swallowed hard. “Easy there, tiger. Don’t play all your cards at once, huh?”
I shrugged. “I’m not playing cards, or games. Just putting the truth out there. I think you’re damn sexy. Yeah, your sisters are all beautiful, and yeah, Poppy is definitely…somethin’ else. But Torie, so are you. I’m not playing, or blowing smoke at you.”
“Isn’t the phrase ‘blow smoke up your ass?’”
I snorted. “Yeah, but most ladies I’ve met don’t appreciate crass turns of phrase like that, so I changed it.”
She smirked. “Well, I appreciate the gallantry, but I’m not sure I’d call myself a proper lady.” A laugh. “And it wasn’t for lack of Mom trying like hell. She raised us to be ladies, but we all had other ideas.” A thoughtful glance at the ceiling. “Well, Cassie, Lexie, and me, at least. Charlie has always been the proper one, and Poppy is just…Poppy. Charlie always seemed to feel like it was her responsibility to be the proper and responsible one.”
I eyed her. “You’re a rule breaker?”
She shrugged, lifted the beer she was casually holding. “Sure. I mean, this obviously isn’t my first drink, right?”
“That doesn’t make you a rule breaker, more of a totally normal young person. I mean, shit, I was drinking fairly regularly by the time I was eleven. But then, I grew up redneck white trailer trash.”
“You shouldn’t say that about yourself.”
I laughed. “I say it with pride. It’s where I came from and who I am, and I ain’t ashamed of it. But there are certain stereotypes that are just true. I had access to all kinds of alcohol at a young age, and I was left unsupervised, like, pretty much my whole life. I did what I wanted, and no one said boo about it.”
“How old were you when you had sex the first time?” she asked.
I was surprised by the forwardness of the question. I laughed and rubbed the back of my head. “Ah, like…fourteen, almost fifteen.”
She made a face, but I knew it was meant to cover somewhat judgmental surprise. “Fourteen, huh?”
I shrugged. “Shania Lautner. She lived in the trailer next to ours. She was sixteen, I was fourteen. Her parents were a mess, mine were always working, so we were both home alone a lot. Well, her folks were always drunk and fighting so she was never in there if she could help it. She came over a lot, and we’d watch TV, drink my dad’s beer, and sometimes steal her dad’s shitty whiskey if he was passed out. And one day, she looked at me, shut the TV off, and took her top off.” I laughed, remembering. “I was shocked as hell. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I was a horny fourteen-year-old with a hot sixteen-year-old neighbor, and those bathroom windows weren’t exactly frosted too well, so I’d gotten some looks at her, I’m ashamed to say. But oh boy, seeing her take it off in front of me like that? Coulda knocked me over with a feather.”
She laughed. “Lucky you, huh?”
“I guess so, yeah. She and I…well, I wouldn’t call it dating. We were just kids and it was mostly just sex. But it was some good times. Then she started dating Kyle Kuhn, who was nineteen and had a cool Trans Am, and that was it for me and Shania.”
“Just like that?” she asked.
I waved a hand. “Eh, I knew it was coming. She told me as much. After, one time. She was like, ‘you know, one of these days I’m gonna have to find a boyfriend who can get me the hell out of here, and I hope there won’t be no hard feelings.’” I sighed, because I really did have fond memories of Shania. “She told me before she started dating him. Gave me a real nice last hurrah, and told me she had to stop coming over to see me, because she was gonna start seeing Kyle, and she was gonna get him to move to Lexington with her so she could get the hell out of our shitty podunk little trailer park and shitty podunk little backwoods town.”
Torie was intently watching me. “And? Did she?”
I winced, shook my head. “Nah. He knocked her up, and now they’ve got four kids and she’s cutting hair at a Fantastic Sam’s or something like that, living in a different trailer with him in the town we grew up in.”
“Oof. That sucks.”
I nodded. “The way shit works for a lot of folks. Shania’s mom had her when she was sixteen, and Shania had her first kid at just barely seventeen—sometimes, you just get stuck.”
“But not you.”
I laughed, not a little bitterly. “Yeah, not me. I kept my ass unattached and saved every penny I could. The day I got my diploma, I had my truck packed and I was gone. Didn’t even bother walking in the commencement. Got the diploma from Principal Hyde, and I left from school that very day. I’d already said goodbye to Ma and Dad, and they knew I wasn’t coming back.”
“How’d you end up in New Haven?” she asked.
“You got a lot of questions, don’t you?” I said, wryly.
She pulled a face. “Sorry. I get nosy. You don’t have to answer.”
I waved. “Nah, ain’t got any real secrets. I left town with no clue where I was going, just figured I had to get away. I’d planned on going west; I guess I was thinking California because that’s basically as far from Kentucky as you can get. But I took a wrong freeway exit and ended up going north. So I said fuck it, I’ll go north. I was sort of homeless for a while, lived in my truck. I’d stop at a local mechanic in a random town or city and beg for busy work. Those guys always got brake jobs and oil changes and shitty boring tedious things like that when they’d rather be doing the big-dollar stuff. So I’d do those shitty jobs for cash, and take little enough that they’d make a profit on the job. That work put cash in my pocket and
taught me more of my trade. I’d stay in town a few days, then keep heading north.”
“Wow. And you were, what? Eighteen?”
“Seventeen, couple months shy of eighteen.” I gestured at the shop below us. “I ended up here sort of by mistake. I was driving around looking for somewhere to park so I could sleep. Happened by this building—it was opened up and had a For Sale sign. The owner was just about to close up, and I asked him how much he wanted. I had quite a bit of cash saved up, because my goal all along was to open my own shop. He named a price, and I haggled him down. We came to an agreement, and I managed to talk a banker into giving me a loan, with almost all my cash as a down payment. Shouldn’t have gotten that loan, honestly, being seventeen, no credit, just a duffel bag full of cash I’d spent ten years saving.”
“It’s impressive as hell, Rhys, is what it is.”
I shook my head. “Nah. Just making ends meet, keeping food in my belly.”
She blew a raspberry. “Quit being modest, Rhys. You’re twenty-six and running a successful garage. It’s an impressive accomplishment.” She gestured at her backpack and the pile of sopping wet clothes. “That’s just about everything I own. I have no education beyond high school, no real skills other than waiting tables, and not even a hobby I’m passionate about.”
I sighed. “If you ask me, I think you’re being too hard on yourself. Just because your sisters have figured their shit out doesn’t mean you’re behind because you haven’t decided at twenty what you want to do with the rest of your life. You’re twenty and you’ve been living on your own and taking care of yourself. That on its own is no mean feat. Most twenty-year-olds I’ve met ain’t got a clue about taking care of themselves. You and me, we’re a rare breed, Torie.”
She yawned, stretched, and I had force my eyes away from what the stretch did to press her tits against her shirt. “God, what a day,” she mumbled.
I pointed at the corner of my loft where my bedroom was. “Take the bed. I’ll head back downstairs and work for a while so you can get to sleep.”
She shook her head. “I appreciate your kindness and generosity more than I can say, Rhys, but I draw the line at taking your bed. The pull-out is absolutely fine.”
A Real Goode Time Page 4
