“You got it, Dad. Love you, bye.” That stupid lump in my throat wouldn’t go away.
“Bye.”
I set the phone on the bar and spun it in circles.
At least I’d always have Dad.
I headed upstairs in search of Sebastian to remind him about the breakfast he’d promised me.
6
Sebastian
“What were we supposed to do, Bast? Forget everything any of us ever dreamed of doing with our lives? We all hated it here. We wanted more. You always seemed content to run the bar with Dad.” Zane was sitting on one of the stools, flipping idly through a magazine while I rustled up breakfast in the upstairs kitchen.
“Nobody ever asked me what I wanted, Zane. That’s all I’m saying. You all just assumed. What if I wasn’t content here? You left, then Brock…” I stirred the scrambled eggs a little more forcefully than I needed to. “One after another, everyone just left. It was just Lucian and me for the last few months, after Xavier got that ride to Stanford, but Lucian…you know how he is. He was working Clint’s fishing boat more than he was home, saving his bank. Then he just fuckin’ vanished. Packed a bag, boarded a cargo ship headed east, and I ain’t heard a word from his ass since.”
“Last I checked in, he was in the Philippines.”
“Lawyer said Thailand.”
“That was six months ago. I had a buddy in Intelligence ping him for me a few weeks ago, and got him tracked down to Manila.”
“Nobody ever tells me this shit,” I groused.
“That’s ’cause your caveman ass don’t have a fucking computer or cell phone.”
“I have a computer.”
Zane laughed. “Dude, that’s not a computer, it’s a dinosaur. I’m pretty sure my first cell phone had more computing power than that old piece of shit.”
It really was an ancient piece of shit. I think Dad got it in like ’96 to keep his receipts and inventory more organized, or something. I mainly used it to play solitaire on boring evenings. Sometimes it was Minesweeper, but I didn’t really understand that one. Inventory happened on a clipboard, and receipts got filed in a filing cabinet. No internet, no email, and I wasn’t sure it even had a CD-ROM player, or whatever it was called. The most technologically advanced piece of equipment in the bar aside from the twenty-year-old register was a radio connected to four little speakers I’d installed up on the ceiling. The radio got three stations clearly: country, rock, and pop; it stayed tuned to rock.
“Whatever,” I said. I didn’t want to get into the real reason I didn’t replace the damn thing.
Zane, however, was a perceptive bastard. “I get that it was Dad’s, but he’s not in the computer, Bast. He’s gone. You won’t be replacing him if you get a new computer and an internet connection.”
“Fuck you,” I snarled. “What the fuck do you know?”
Zane had done that ninja thing he could do, where he’d moved so quickly and silently I didn’t even know he was right behind me until I felt his hand on my shoulder.
“Dude, look, I get it, okay?”
I spun on him, shoved him. I knew it was stupid to physically provoke him, since he really was a deadly motherfucker, but I couldn’t help it. “You don’t get a goddamn thing, Zane! You…weren’t…here.”
He growled, and his hand latched around my throat. Four inches shorter than me, but the motherfucker was strong as hell. He had me shoved up on my tip-toes and seeing stars. “Because I was in fucking Afghanistan killing terrorists, you asshole! I was crawling through the dirt dodging RPGs when Dad died. I went off the rez when I found out, but I was in-country. What was I supposed to do? Go AWOL? Fuck you too, Sebastian. You’re not the only one who lost him.” He let me go, turned away with a sigh. “Shit.”
I followed his gaze and saw Dru standing in the entrance watching us.
“I—I’m sorry. I’m obviously interrupting.” She turned around to leave.
“Stop, Dru, wait.” Zane’s voice stopped her. “You’re getting a bad impression. Don’t go. We’re not usually like this.”
“I don’t need to be around your family arguments,” she said, opening the door to the stairs. “I’ve got drama of my own—I don’t need yours, too.” She was down the stairs then, her footsteps slow but steady.
I pushed past Zane. “Plate the eggs for three, and finish the bacon,” I told him.
He frowned at me. “Like I can cook?”
“Do your best,” I said. “If you can HALO jump, you can manage bacon.”