Our waiter brings us both glasses of ice water with lemon wedges and also a Sprite for Jana. I play around with the lemon inside of my glass as I wait for Jana to get to the real point of this lunch. There’s always a point.
“So ... I saw Dad the other day.”
I should have seen this coming, but if she was trying to spring a Daddy conversation on me, she should have taken me out for drinks not lunch. I need to be totally trashed to talk about that bastard.
“So.”
“I think he may be sick. Seriously sick.”
I twirl the ice around in my water with the straw, watching as bits of lemon pulp swirl around inside, turning my water cloudy. Like my mood.
“So.”
“So … I think you should go see him.”
“And why would I do that?”
“So he can apologize to you before he leaves this earth, which by the looks of him is going to be relatively soon.”
I take a long sip of my water. Staring at my sister like the unbelievable turncoat that she is.
“Maybe you were too young to really remember him at his worst, Jana. So I’m going to chalk this conversation up to your youth and ignorance, but let me tell you something …”
I pull my straw out and point it defiantly at her. She watches as drops of lemon water drip down on the table, driving her absolutely nuts.
“Our father is a motherfucker, and I don’t care if he’s gasping his last breaths right this very minute. I have no interest in visiting him, talking to him, and certainly no interest in forgiving him.”
Her eyes bulge.
“Gosh, Jade, you’re so nasty when you’re hungry. Where is Mohawk dude with our food? This place is so slow.”
“It’s worth the wait.”
I have a bad habit of sitting on my phone, and cracking the screen at least twice a year. I really need to carry a bag, but I’m a bit of a tomboy and never really got used to them. They just get in my way.
I feel my phone buzzing in the back pocket of my jeans. It’s just a feeling, but I think I already know who it is. I thought he had backed off for a while, but now I’m realizing that was just the calm before the storm. He’s relentless now.
King Kong: You still avoiding me?
Me: No
King Kong: You’re not?
Me: I was never avoiding you. I haven’t even been thinking about you.
King Kong: Now we both know that’s a lie.
Me: I’m busy right now. Leave me alone.
King Kong: Busy doing what?
Me: Lunch
King Kong: With who?
Me: My lover. A famous Brazilian soccer player. You don’t know him.
King Kong: That’s a very specific fantasy lover :)
Me: Do you know a real one then? I’d love to meet him.
King Kong: I’m going to ignore that.
“Are you going to text your fuck buddy during our entire lunch?” Jana interrupts our text exchange like a splash of cold water.
“What are you talking about? Fuck buddy,” I mutter.
“I can tell by your facial expressions that you’re texting a man. A man whom you have either fucked or want to fuck. You’re smiling quite devilishly.”
“Lower your voice,” I demand.
“Am I wrong?”
“It’s just one of the other guys I work for.”
“One of those hot twins? Oh my God, are you sleeping with one of them now?”
“They aren’t twins,” I say flatly. “They’re nothing alike.”
“Oh, I just assumed. Well which one are you messing around with?”
“We’re not messing around.”
“Which one were you just angry texting then?”
I sigh.
“The older one.”
King Kong: You still there?
Me: What. Do. You. Want.
King Kong: You know what I want.
Me: Is this about Baltimore?
King Kong: It’s about me inside of you in Baltimore.
Ugh, he really won’t let this shit go, and I’m just about sick of it. I went to the harbor on a fool’s errand, but still, it was completely my own business. Then here he comes running after me. Inserting himself in my damn business. Okay so maybe I did slip and fall on his dick in a Baltimore hotel, but while I may not have Jana’s book smarts, I have plenty of common sense, and I know better than to do that silly shit twice.
Not going to happen.
No matter how much he pushes the issue.
Me: Stop texting me about this. We have to work together.
King Kong: Or I can work that tight pussy of yours again.
I’m erasing these messages as soon as I get up from this table.
He is so vulgar.
Me: You didn’t work it well before, so I pass.
King Kong: Such the little liar. You better bring your sweet little ass to the club by nine, or you and I are going to have a much bigger problem than my dick in your mouth.
Oh my God, I can’t stand him. The worst mistake I ever made was spreading my legs for that arrogant, computer hacking, asshole. I mean seriously. He’s touched in the head. Completely nuts.
“Where is our damn food?” I slam my phone down on the table livid by the exchange I’ve just had with Camden and irritated that it takes thirty minutes to get a chicken Caesar salad in this place.
“Excuse me!” Jana turns around and calls out to a group of servers who are by the register. “Somebody better bring us our food real soon or somebody’s going to catch a murder charge.”
I can’t help but laugh. Jana can be pretentious, and a pain in my ass, but sometimes I forget that she and I were raised in the same dysfunctional home. Sometimes some of that fire bred into us kicks in. Her approach works too, because lo and behold our food, which evidently had been ready and waiting for Mohawk to pick up arrives.
“Sorry ’bout that,” Mohawk apologizes. “We’re short staffed today.”
“Uh, huh,” my sister says unconvinced. “Can you please just bring us some ketchup and some extra napkins? Like right now?” she snaps.
“Of course.” He raises one of his eyebrows at that finger snap. “I’ll be right back with that.”
“He’s going to spit in your ketchup.” I chuckle. “This is a nice restaurant. It will be easy for him to do it because they bring it in a little dish, not a bottle, and he’s pissed with all that finger snapping of yours.”
“Nice restaurant my ass.”
I take a bite of my salad. It’s delicious like I remembered. They make a great Caesar dressing here. No one can pick an out of the way restaurant with great food like Roman.
“So how’s school?” I ask, sincerely wanting to know.
“Professor Owens is working my ass off of course. So I’ve been staying up all night grading tons of papers, and he keeps taking all the credit.”
“Well isn’t that what teaching assistants do?”
“Yeah, but now that I am one, I see the gross inequality of it all. Seems like everyone in academia works their asses off when they’re young, so that one day they can sit back and not have to work at all when they’re forty. It’s called tenure.”
“Isn’t that what you want?”
“I guess so. Tenure is part of my fifteen-year plan. Guess I shouldn’t deviate from it now.”
“Guess not.”
“So tell me everything.”
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me everything about the twin.”
“Not a twin,” I say annoyed. I’ve told her that a million times before.
“Right. What’s his name?”
“Camden.”
“Right. So tell me about him.”
“There’s nothing to tell, Jana. You’re looking for some interesting love story, but you know that I don’t do relationships.”
“I know you haven’t had any relationships since Tyson, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. For God’s sake, Jade, you two were only kids the
n.”
“I understand that, but it doesn’t really matter. I have zero interest in ties or relationships. I work at a place where I meet sexy, amazing men every night. Who wants to be tied down to one man when I’m always in the middle of the best smorgasbord ever?”
Jana puts her fork down for a moment.
“Not every man is horrible, Jade.”
I don’t look at her and continue eating.
“I never said they were.”
“Mom wouldn’t want you sleeping with every Tom, Dick and Harry.”
This would be the second time I’ve been called a whore in three months.
“Is that what you think of me, Jana? You think I’m a whore?” I ask defensively.
“Of course not.”
“And why bring our mother into this?”
Our mother died when we were just kids from ovarian cancer. She was a warrior. A saint. Bringing her up is just fighting dirty.
“I’m not. I’m sorry I said anything. Just tell me about your boss. I want to know why after he texts you, something lights up inside of you. Like sparklers.”
“You watch way too much television. I’m just annoyed. There is nothing lighting up inside of me.”
“Then why does he annoy you so much?”
Jana uses her fingers to form air quote signs while saying the word annoy. Did I mention that my sister is a psychology graduate student? On track to having a rewarding research and teaching career.
“Because he won’t leave me alone.”
“In a creepy way?”
“No, not like that.”
I’ve called him a creep before, but I’m not going to let my sister think he’s one.
“Did you sleep with him?”
Might as well confess. She already thinks I’m a slut.
“Yes.”
“Does he want seconds?”
“I don’t know what he wants.”
“Ah, so that’s it. He doesn’t just want your body, he wants more.”
“He doesn’t want more. He’s just playing around. He’s never been in a serious relationship in his life.”
“Ohhh, so he’s damaged just like you.”
“I don’t think he’s damaged, and neither am I by the way.”
“What’s wrong with him then?”
I might as well tell her. She won’t stop asking questions.
“I’ve known him for a long time, Jana. He knows all about Tyson. He was there when it all went down, and Rome got me out of there.”
Jana looks down at her plate. This is exactly why I didn’t want to talk about this. Anytime I mention Tyson, this guilty look spreads across her face. She and I had a falling out back then. She told me, begged me, many times over to leave my ex, but I wouldn’t. At the time I felt trapped. At the time I thought that if I left him, that no one would love me again. My warped thinking and inability to get out of my toxic relationship created a wedge between me and my sister, and we stopped communicating for a long time.
That’s why she thinks she failed me, because she wasn’t around to help me when the shit really hit the fan. But I don’t feel that way at all. She’s three years younger than me, our mother was dead, and she was really a kid. It was my job to take care of her and look out for her. Not the other way around.
Unfortunately her guilt, our sibling rivalry, and my inability to put up with a lot of her passive aggressive bullshit is why I have to keep a certain amount of distance from her. I love her, but it’s best that we talk occasionally and see each other rarely. Especially since she started speaking to our father again. I want nothing to do with that.
“So are you embarrassed that he knows about that part of your past or something?”
“I’m not embarrassed about anything, Jana. I’ve accepted that I’ve made some bad choices. Everyone has. I’m just saying that we know so much about each other. Too much.”
“You must be really attracted to him then.”
“What? Why do you say that?”
“After everything you just said about what he’s seen, and how much he knows, you still slept with him. That tells me a lot.”
“We all have slip ups now and then.”
“I don’t believe in accidents, Jade, only fate.”
Four
Jade
I stroll into Lotus at 9:23 p.m. on purpose. I know exactly where all the cameras are located in the club, and I know that my creeper is probably watching them from his perch up in the club’s office. I stop to talk to Marco, the bar manager. I flirt with him from time to time, because it’s just fun. Nothing serious. Nothing that’s ever going to lead anywhere.
I can feel his eyes on me everywhere though.
Watching me.
Clocking my every move.
He’s probably sitting in his chair practically seething, because I’m late. That and the fact that I’m being so cavalier about it. Uh-oh and here comes the other one.
“I think my brother is looking for you, little hobbit,” Cutter King says with a mischievous smile.
He calls me hobbit and a million other names as if I don’t already know when I wake up everyday that I’m vertically challenged. It just baffles me why all three of these jerks I work for have to remind me of it every single day of my life.
“Why?” As if I didn’t know.
“The hell if I know, but it probably has something to do with the fact that he fired Ray today.”
Ray is the manager who we never really needed. He kind of did the work that the old manager Larry used to do. Day to day stuff. But with all three of us working out of the club now, and the boys having only a few clients, I don’t think there really is a need for Ray. Yet I have an inkling that his firing is about something else entirely.
I make my way upstairs to the club office and knock, something I usually don’t do, but I have a feeling that I better keep it purely professional right now.
“Come in,” his voice rumbles.
When I enter the office, Camden is sitting at the desk with his laptop open, but the screensaver running. He’s not actually doing any work. He’s in here stewing about something. When his head pops up and it registers that it’s me who’s entered the office, some sort of fleeting emotion passes over his face, and then his demeanor returns to normal. Hard. Unreadable.
“You’re late.”
“You fired Ray?”
“My business.”
“Can I ask why you fired him? We didn’t need him before, but now that you guys have these new Miami clients, you’re going to be stuck doing all the shit work around here and still have to deal with Miami.”
“Correction, you’re going to have to do the shit work.”
“What!?”
“You are now the acting manager of Lotus.”
“Oh, hell no, that’s not in my job description.”
“You don’t have a job description. You do whatever the hell we tell you to do.”
I suck my teeth.
“That means I’d have to be here almost every day and night of the week, Camden.”
“I know what the job entails.”
“Roman will never go for that.”
“Roman is working the Miami clients, planning a wedding, and having a baby. He doesn’t have time to deal with the shit here. Someone needs to handle it.”
“So you do it!”
“I have a lot to do for the Miami clients too, and Cutter is handling Mendez on his own. Neither of us has the time to order olives and lemons for the bar or cash out the register.”
“Why did you fire Ray then?” I challenge.
“We didn’t need him.”
I stare him square in the mouth. I locate a spot on his strong, angular jaw that I’d like to punch the hell out of, but I digress. The days of physical altercations with men are over for me.
“Why did you fire Ray, creeper?”
“Why are you calling me names, midget.”
“That’s politically incorrect, asshole, and not even accurate. I�
��m short, but not that short, and you are most definitely a creeper. That’s just factual.”
“I should make you get on your knees right now.”
“Shut up.”
“You’ve done it before,” he grins.
“I thought we had an agreement. Baltimore never happened. It’s been months now, and you need to let it go. Stop texting me about it, stop making references to it, and please stop talking to me like that.”
“I never agreed to forgetting shit, and talk to you like what?”
“Like I’m your personal whore!”
Camden stops talking for a moment and quietly studies me in the careful and confident way that he always does. The look that sends shivers down my spine when no one is looking.
“If you must know, I fired him because he was in my way.”
“How? In what way?”
He glares at me angrily.
“You fucked him, Jade.”
“So?”
“So I didn’t want to look at his fucking face anymore.”
I look down at the floor, but I’m smiling inside. Something about the way he spews his accusation makes me feel warm and jittery. I don’t want to feel this way, but I do. He’s jealous, and I think that I actually like it. A man lost his livelihood, because Camden was jealous, and I should be outraged. But I’m not.
Regardless of the things said in the heat of passion, I foolishly believed that after he left my hotel room all those months ago, that we had forged some sort of unspoken agreement. That we’d keep our one-night stand between us and not let it affect our working relationship or friendship. But I read Camden completely wrong. He won’t let what happened go. And if I don’t watch it, I’m going to turn into one of those girls who I hate. Girls who ruin themselves over elaborate pipe dreams fueled by meaningless fucks. We can never be more than that one night. That’s just common sense.
“I want thirty days,” he says to me.
I pop my head up. “What do you mean?”
“Work the manager job for thirty days. If you want to quit after that, you can.”
“And what about my work for Roman?”
“Is Roman the only boss you care about?” he asks with an unfamiliar edge to his voice.
The King Brothers Boxed Set Page 3
