6 Mountain Brothers for Christmas

by Rye Hart

  While the suds slipped down my bare breasts, the band’s last break ended and the noise below caused my shampoo bottles to vibrate against one another. I could feel the music through my feet and up into my bones. Exhausted or not, I couldn’t deny the love I had for their sounds—haunting harmonies mixed with a hint of metal. They really rocked, and Rain’s voice was incredible. She could hit any note with ease and was one of the most sought-after singers in the area. She had offers left and right, but wanted to do her thing, her way. She formed Live Wired, and the band hustled hard around the Austin area ever since. They’d even done a few short tours, opening for some big-name acts.

  I’d known Rain since I’d moved to the area in high school, and our contrasting personalities brought us together like magnets. When my mom died during my first year of college, I moved in with Rain and her aunt, Helen. Aunt Helen was renting a garage apartment to an old man at the time, but when he moved away, I took up the rent and moved upstairs. I wanted to know what it was like to really be on my own, and shortly after, I wanted to know what it was like to be in a serious relationship. That’s when I met Devin.

  Things had been wonderful for a while, and felt like life couldn’t get any better, but then he started sneaking around until one day, after a double shift, I came home to find him fucking some groupie in the bed we shared.

  The only reason he’d been so brave was that Rain was working with her boyfriend at the time, and Aunt Helen had gone on a trip to see her sister who lived in Florida. He hadn’t expected me home so soon, and once I caught him, he admitted it wasn’t the first time. His excuse had been that it was part of his reputation; that with him being a musician in a band, I should know what comes with that lifestyle.

  He never expected me to find out and begged me to stay. There was no way in hell I would take him back, and the rejection really seemed to get to him.

  He proceeded to bed a different girl every night, which, according to Rain, he did for the two weeks after our breakup. He conveniently made certain that he was hanging around the house with his fling whenever I arrived home from work. He was ruthless.

  I finished my shower and pulled on my boy shorts and a tank top and went to the kitchen to grab my dinner. When the music stopped, I could hear the sounds of the band leaving, and let out a sigh remembering that I was once a part of the gang just months earlier.

  Footsteps on the stairs told me Rain was on her way, and sure enough, the brief knock on the door announced her seconds before she opened it and came inside.

  “Hey, Kam. Do you mind if I grab a soda? We’re all out downstairs.”

  “Help yourself.” She was in the fridge before I could finish my sentence.

  “Man, what a night! You should have been here earlier. We had a surprise visit from Daren down at Metal Shop. He’s got us a whole list of gigs. We’ll be booked through the end of the year. I swear, that guy is so hot.”

  “Did you eye fuck him?” I turned on the TV with the remote and fell onto the couch beside me before taking my fork and cutting up my Salisbury steak.

  “You know it. We’re supposed to get together next week.” She plopped down on my mismatched sofa across the room and popped open the soda can.

  “That’s awesome, Rain. He’s a catch.” Daren Craig owned and operated the largest music studio and store in the area; Metal Shop. It was a musician’s paradise, and not only was he one of the hottest men Rain had ever taken an interest in, but his connections were also gold.

  “I can’t wait to see him again. He kissed me before he left. Said we could come down and use his back room to practice.”

  Now she was speaking my language.

  “That would be great. Then I wouldn’t have to watch as Devin molested his groupies in my stairway.”

  “Well, he’s clearly trying to make you jealous with his flavor of the month.” She leaned forward, placing her drink on the battered coffee table between us and rested on her elbows. “You know what you need, right?”

  “A baby.”

  “I was thinking sex actually. You mean you still want to get pregnant, even now??” Rain’s eyes lit with surprise.

  “You know I’ve wanted a child, that I’d even considered having a baby all by myself after mom’s death, but then I met Devin.”

  “Aren’t you thankful you didn’t do that?” Rain let out a long breath and stared at the ceiling. She’d been against me looking into the single-mom life, and she was only looking out for what she thought was my best interest. It wasn’t the right time for me to become a mother, but I couldn’t wait for the day to finally come.

  “Yeah, and I’m glad I didn’t go out and get a pet like you recommended.” She’d tried to get me to get a puppy.

  “Big difference.” She looked in the mirror and smoothed her hair.

  “I think I’m at the point in my life where I’m done waiting for my knight in shinning armour. Most guys I meet don’t want a serious relationship. Just one-night stands. No thanks.”

  “You don’t know what they want. There are some nice guys out there. You’re just not looking in the right places.”

  “Maybe so, but I’m not getting any younger. Besides, guys are repelled to girls who want to have a family.”

  “Stop making excuses. You’ll find someone and the time to get knocked up. I’ll help you. I want to see my best friend in love again.” She got up and came around the table to give me a hug. “It’s going to be OK, Kam. The right man will come along, and he’ll be worth the wait. I really want you to give dating a go again.”

  “Thanks, Rain. I’ll think about it.”

  Too bad I stopped believing miracles since I was a kid.

  CHAPTER TWO – TATE

  Waking up alone for the first time in months was a good thing. I hadn’t expected my relationship with Terri to last a lifetime, so our fight last night barely bothered me. She’d come back begging again when she realized how much money she’d given up access to. Unfortunately for her, I didn’t believe in second chances. Once you’ve crossed me, you’re history.

  Acting like a child had been her downfall, and it led to her drinking too much at the club and behaving like a total slut on some other guy. Then screaming in my face was the final nail in her coffin. It was more than over; it was dead and buried as far as I was concerned.

  I glanced down to the morning wood tenting my covers and got up to head to the shower. Not only did I need to take care of it, but I still smelled like the club from the night before. I set the temperature of the water and stepped in, slathering my palm with conditioner and gripping my cock with my slippery hand.

  I was so sick of Terri’s games. She’d been begging for a breakup for a good month now, and this time there was no going back. I closed my eyes and tried to think of another girl, one who wasn’t like the usual plastic, gold-digging bitches I’d been dating for far too long. I searched my mind, visualizing a crowd of women, some real and some fantasy, all bare breasted and smiling, giving me seductive looks.

  I went through about a hundred before I found her. She was a beautiful brunette, with gorgeous green eyes. Her pale, alabaster complexion and the long, naturally wavy hair that hung down to her shoulders made her an all-natural beauty. She was someone I didn’t even know, but someone I’d seen once, maybe twice. But where? I never could seem to remember, and I didn’t know her name. She was my ideal woman.

  I thought about her tall, slender frame as I worked my cock, jerking the bastard from my base to tip, which was angry and swollen like a ripe berry waiting to be squeezed till it popped.

  The girl smiled, showing a perfect row of pearly teeth, and she licked her lips seductively. I imagined her down on her knees, sticking out her tongue for me to place myself against it. Then she lapped and licked and sucked, taking me over the edge.

  I came hard, the hot jets shooting out in thick ropes and finding the drain, I leaned against the shower wall and caught my breath as the image faded from my mind. The girl, gone for now, but stored
away in mind for next time.

  I made quick work of soaping the rest of me and washing my hair before I got out of the shower and toweled off. I went to the closet and found some loose jeans to put on with a gray T-shirt. I scrubbed at my stubbly face with my palm and knew I wasn’t ready to shave it off, even if it was annoying everyone who knew me.

  I found my camera next to my bed and sat down on the messy covers to see what kind of pictures were on file. I had some of my shots on this particular one, but out of the five cameras I owned, this one was mostly for taking pictures of random objects and people. I didn’t like to adjust settings, so I’d just buy a new camera for each subject I was shooting.

  This infuriated my father, who thought my love of photography was a colossal waste of time. He didn’t care about the fact that I’d already sold my astral photography for some of the highest premiums in the industry.

  My dad’s disappointed was nothing new. Ever since my teenage years, I’d started a collection of tattoos on my arms, chest, and various other regions of my body. Every time he’d catch a glimpse of my inked skin he’d bark a long string of curse words.

  Sorry Pops. You’re going to have to accept that your son is a complete fuck-up, as far as you’re concerned.

  The memory card revealed several of Terri’s nudes, and for a moment I wondered if I should take to the internet to plaster her image on every porn site I could find, but that wasn’t my style. It might imply that I actually gave a shit. Besides, knowing her, she’d love the attention. I deleted the images and took the card out of the camera and walked it over to my computer. I had some others I wanted to download but wasn’t sure what I would do with them.

  It was definitely time to focus on my work. It was also time for a trip out west, so I sat behind my computer and turned it on as I checked my calendar for the next new moon. When the moon was away, the stars would play, and that was when I photographed them in all their glory.

  I needed to work on my latest project to give the proceeds from my next batch of portraits to a nonprofit that my mother got me into, Dream Weavers. They provide income to single moms in Nicaragua, with home-based businesses sewing authentic clothing items, to feed their families. I planned to match the profits from the project 100 percent from my own savings. It turned out this spoiled trust fund prick had an okay side to him. Maybe so, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to let that shit spread. I had a playboy reputation to uphold.

  The phone rang before I could lose myself in planning my trip. “It figures,” I mumbled when I saw my old man’s mug on my phone’s screen. He had a knack for calling at the worst times.

  “Hey, Dad.” I waited for the familiar attitude that always came through my phone when he called.

  “Where are you?” The man always asked the same thing. Never hello, champ or how are you?

  “I’m home.”

  “Of course you are. You should be out looking for employment. I guess that girl of yours has you playing house again this morning?” He’d been upset to learn that Terri had been staying with me most of the tie instead of living with her roommate.

  “No, and you’ll be pleased to know we broke up last night. So, she’s not around.”

  “Well, I hope you didn’t let her make off with the credit cards.” He’d also been pissed when she’d accidentally took the wrong credit card from my wallet and bought dinner on it. It’d been an honest mistake since she’d meant to steal my own instead of the one for family emergencies, but my father wouldn’t let it go.

  “It was fifty-five-dollars, Dad. I paid you back. And no, she didn’t get away with my credit cards.” I wanted to tell the old man off, but I held my tongue.

  “Watch your tone, boy. I wanted to call and tell you that your trust check is here. The bank didn’t do a direct deposit this month. You’ll need to put some serious thought on settling down with a descent girl soon, if you expect to see your full inheritance.”

  “I’m on it dad.”

  That was a lie. I had zero fucking clue what I was going to do about my inheritance issue.

  My grandmother left me a fortune in money that was to be paid out in a trust until next year, when I reached the age of thirty-five. At that time, I’d get the rest in a lump sum. The fact that his mother had split up her money between her grandchildren, claiming her no-good children had enough money of their own, had always chapped his ass, as well as the fact that he couldn’t tell me how to spend it.

  The one thing he managed to do was convince my grandmother that I needed to be settled before the money came to me in full. Apparently, their definition of settled was married with at least one child. So I had exactly fifteen months to find a girl I wanted to be tied to for the rest of my life and get her pregnant. Great.

  The fact that my father, who’d been a total womanizer who’d practically driven my mother away, would give a shit about family life was fucking laughable.

  “Have you even looked into finding work?”

  “I am working. I’m head deep on building my photography.”

  My father thought if I didn’t work, I’d end up in trouble or running off like my oldest brother, Daniel. No one had heard from him in months. I wasn’t that close to him, though; not like I was with my sister, Megan.

  “A man needs a job. A real job, not a hobby like that star photography shit you’re into.” That ‘shit’, as he liked to call it, meant a lot to me, but he didn’t care. And one day, I was going to make a huge name for myself, so that my dad could eat his words.

  “Have you heard from your sister? I’m not sure I like that new roommate she’s living with. That girl is trouble. She’s only going to get Megan in trouble, and I’m afraid it will hurt her career. I want you to try and talk her into moving home. She’s still got a room here.”

  “She doesn’t want to live with you. She’s a grown woman, and you treat her like a child. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that she hasn’t called.”

  Or that Daniel took off.

  “She was just upset that I brought Evangeline here to live with me. She'd still not forgiven me for the incident with your mother.”

  “You cheated on her and divorced her; let’s call it what it is.”

  “Yeah, well your mom moved away, and that’s not my fault. She should have stayed close.”

  “We speak at least three times a week. She’s living her own life, like the rest of us. I’ll talk with Megan, but I’m not convincing her she needs to be anywhere she doesn’t want to be. I have an extra room, and she knows it’s hers if she wants it.” I wasn’t going to tell him that she’d used the extra room several times already and he sure didn’t need to know why.

  The only thing my father and I agreed on was her roommate. That girl was trouble.

  “Just check on Megan.” He hung up the phone.

  I took a deep breath. I didn’t need his passive aggressive bullshit. I’d just lost a gold-digger with the same problem.

  I needed a break more than ever, and planning a work trip out to West Texas would be a great way to clear my mind. With nothing but my camera and camping gear, I’d be able to escape. I hadn’t taken a trip to do my astral photography as often as I liked in months. Terri didn’t appreciate my hobby any more than my father did, and the only thing she wanted me taking pictures of was her; naked. She hadn’t been too pleased when I wanted to take her out to sleep in a tent and brave the wild animals and Texas-sized mosquitos to get pictures of the sky. She also didn’t want me going alone for some bullshit fear that I’d pick up a chick on the way out of town to warm my sleeping bag.

  I spun around in my computer chair, still looking for the calendar and moon phases. I wanted to make sure I had everything planned out so I could leave town. The only person I’d tell I was leaving would be Megan, and I’d ask her to stay at my house while I was gone. It was a sure way to kill two birds with one stone. I’d get my rest and the images I needed for my project, and I’d know right where my sister was.

  As I got up and hea
ded down to the storage closet to find my sleeping bag and tent, I thought about how I couldn’t put off finally finding a girl to settle down with, if not for the damn clause in my inheritance but for my own sanity.

  Next time, I was going to find a real girl who not only loved photography but didn’t mind roughing it.

  I didn’t know if she existed, but I’d sure as hell do my best to find out.

  CHAPTER THREE – KAMI

  Sunday mornings were for family, so Aunt Helen always cooked a big breakfast and insisted that Rain and I be around to eat it. I’d gotten up early and was ready to go down in plenty of time to help her finish cooking.

  I walked into her bright living room, where the sun was shining in through the windows shadowing the couch beneath and blinding me.

  Then Devin’s unsettling voice brought me around. “Morning, Kam-Kam.”

  I whirled around as he sat up shirtless, clearly seeking attention. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Rain walked up behind me from the kitchen. “He was too drunk to drive home last night, and I was too tired to take him. Aunt Hel insisted he crash here.”

  “Whatever. Don’t call me Kam-Kam.” I hadn’t minded the nick-name when we were together, but since the breakup, he’d only used it as a way to annoy me.

  “I would have gone home with my girl, but we broke up. It was time for a change anyway. I’ve got plenty of girls barking at the bit.”

  I wanted to say, “Seems fitting for a dog like you,” but I didn’t want him to think I cared enough. So I turned to go into the kitchen and help Aunt Helen. She lined a pan with bread, and I took over by getting the butter out of the fridge and buttering each piece.

  “Thanks,” she said, wiping her brow. She took a load off while I popped the pan into the oven to make our toast. “You’re down early today.”

  Rain joined her aunt at the table. “You’ve also been pulling doubles a lot lately. You should slow down.”