Page 61 of Badd Love
"I've got about…six-sevenseconds before I give up and go home," Brock quipped, to groans from everyone, including Dunc and me. "So cut the shit and let's hear my nephew's plan."
"If I never hear six-seven again, it'll be too soon," Bax said. "Finn's fuckingobsessed. He thinks it's peak humor. I've threatened to toss every electronic device he has into the passage if he doesn't shut the everloving fuck up about the two stupid goddamned numbers.IT DOESN'T EVEN MEAN ANYTHING!"
At twelve, Finnian was Uncle Baxter and Aunt Kitty's youngest. Like all of us Badd boys, he was wild, rambunctious, incorrigible, hilariously inappropriate, and often so obnoxious you wanted to punt him across the Bering Strait and let the Russians deal with him. They'd send him back in about ten seconds, though, so we keep him.
The dads finally shut up with their shenanigans, and, once everyone started listening to Dunc's plan, the keg-room remodel started to progress. Although it wasn't so much a remodel as an update of existing systems. Whatever. Point is, I spent the rest of the day down there, hauling kegs around, pulling and replacing and adding tap lines, and installing new taps. It was good, hard work made fun by my family's inability to not act like immature six-year-olds, even for dudes in their fifties.
By late evening, the bulk of the work was done—the job had been made a little trickier by the fact that we were working on the system while the bar was operating, meaning we had to make sure that most of the taps were running while working on others. The old guys went home, full of free beer and hot wings, leaving Dunc and me finally alone. We took fresh pints out into the alley and sat on the old metal folding chairs we keep out there for times like this.
"So," Duncan said, "You and Lindsey."
"No,notme and Lindsey," I answered, "which is the problem."
The door opened, and Dad stepped out, a pint in one hand and a chair from the dining room in the other. He plopped down on it, tipped backward against the wall with his long legs crossed at the ankle, resting his feet on an empty keg waiting to be picked up and exchanged by the distributor.
"Hey, Dad," I said. "Thought you went home."
"Was gonna, but I felt a disturbance in the Force." He indicated Dunc and me. "I've noticed you've been avoiding your brother for the last couple of weeks. Figured this powwow might have something to do with that."
"I wasn't avoiding Dunc," I said. "More his wife."
Dad shook his head. "My oldest boy is married. Fuckin' weird." He eyed me. "What'd Rune do?"
"Nothing, exactly. It's…complicated."
Dad snorted into his pint glass. "This got anything to do with the sparks I saw between you and Rune's best friend, Lindsey?"
"Not sure sparks is the right word," I muttered.
"Sure it is. Sparks don't just come from fire, they also come from friction."
I laughed at this. "That interpretation is accurate."
"So?" He tipped his glass in my direction. "Out with it."
I ended up spilling—most of it. Some things, my dad doesn't need to know about. Or my brother, for that matter; I hadn't meant to mentionthatlittle incident to Jax, it had just popped out. I was intentionally vague about Lindsey's background, and they both got it without having to be told—it's her story to tell, not mine…and I don't know the story anyway. All I would say is that she has some shit in her past that makes it hard for her to trust guys, and is scared of relationships.
Duncan looked at me over the top of his glass. "If she's so dead set against relationships and wants nothing to do with you, what are you gonna do?"
I shrugged. “Honestly, I don't know. I hung out with Jax when I first got back into town, and he thinks I should just give her time. What elsecanI do, anyway? I've made my case. I told her how I feel."
Dad tapped a thumbnail against the glass in his hand. "Jax is right. I know that sucks when you've got all this shit inside you, big feelings and all that, but sometimes, we gotta let people go, and if they come back to us, it's meant to be."
"What about fighting for what you want?" I asked. "What about proving that I’m for real?"
"If she's not in an emotional place where she can handle what you're offering, there's nothing to fightfor, Dane." He gave me a sympathetic look. "There doesn't seem to be much you can do but give her time and space to sort her shit out on her own, like Jax said." He snorted. "Words of wisdom from that knucklehead—who knew?"
“Took me by surprise, too," I said. "He's got hidden depths."
"He still nurturing that crush on Em?" Dunc asked.
Dad answered for me. "Nah. Not gonna say it was puppy love, but he knew it wasn't ever gonna go anywhere."
"I think it was deeper than that," I said. "I think his feelings for her went a lot deeper than any of us realized and lasted for a lot longer than we thought."
"But he knows—" Dad started.
"Yes," I cut in over him. "He categorically stated that he's not in love with her anymore."
