“They’re for you,” Dory said over her shoulder. “The Chicken is giving them away for free. Pandemic measure. Glove up against Covid.”
“I don’t think condoms will help,” Grade said. “My penis isn’t out there touching stuff.”
Dory twisted at the waist so he could appreciate the saccharine-sweet smile she gave him over her shoulder. “Maybe yours isn’t,” she said. “Some people have game.”
“Some people. Not whoever is running around with Sinestro dick,” Grade said as he stuffed the condoms back into the bag. Dory muttered “nerd” under her breath, but he ignored that. He tapped the screen to wake it up. Dory’s lock screen was an old photo of them with their Dad, in the original Dodge. Before things went to shit. Grade managed not to comment as he tapped in her birthday—wrong guess. Cody’s birthday was his next try, but that was wrong as well. Grade stopped for a second and stared at the old photo of their Dad, his arms slung around their shoulders as they squeezed up together to look out the passenger side window. The sinking feeling in his stomach made him hope he was wrong, but he tapped the date in anyhow—twelfth of March, 2012. The lock screen slid out of the way, and Grade made a frustrated sound in his throat. “Shit, Dory. Are you ever going to stop picking at it?”
Her back was turned to him again. She just shrugged as she slapped the pieces of bread together and sliced them in perfect triangles. The knife cut into the board audibly.
“No.”
Grade opened his mouth to argue. All the old faithfuls were there, ready to throw at her head. If Dad wasn’t dead, then he’d just run out on them. People in real life didn’t get amnesia and disappear, and they weren’t kidnapped and held for a decade. They died, or they left. Pick one. Except he’d said it all before, and he’d managed to hurt Dory’s feelings a few times, but he’d never convinced her. At the end of the day, reality didn’t matter.
Dad coming home was her LA.
“I’m not the boss of you,” he admitted as he looked down at the phone. The screens slid to the side under his thumb as he hunted through a hundred random app downloads for the one he wanted.
“So?” Dory said, her voice pitched to pierce. “Are you going to tell me why you were out all night? Did you blow off your family ’cause you got lucky? That’s pretty shitty for my only brother.”
Grade was about to shoot her down, but he didn’t get the chance.
“I don’t know how lucky he was,” Clay said. He leaned against the back door, shoulder propped against the frame, and gave Dory a slow, suggestive smile. “I think I got the better end of that deal.”
Dory stared at him for a second. “Uh-huh,” she said. Then she sidled around the table and grabbed Grade’s arm. She hissed in his ear, “Can I have a fucking word?”
There it was. Grade tapped the tracking app with his thumb. It opened up and then stalled as it started to update something.
“No,” he told Dory. “It was work, OK?”
Dory let go of his arm and punched him in the shoulder instead. She still knew how to throw a punch.
“You promised that you wouldn’t bring that around Cody,” she hissed. “I don’t want him involved in anything shady.”
Grade rubbed his arm. “I didn’t. He wasn’t there,” he said and waved the phone at her. “I’m going to need to borrow your phone.”
“What? No,” she said.
“Why?” Clay asked.
The interruption caught Grade off guard. He had been low-key aware of Clay all night—for reasons that were smart and, ah, not so much—but the familiarity of bickering with Dory had distracted him. He’d almost forgotten Clay was there.
“I asked him that,” Dory said, prickly at the offense of it. “He wouldn’t tell me.”
Clay smiled, slow and crooked, as he tucked his hand into the pocket of his jeans. The battered denim slouched low around his lean waist.
“I’ve got a bit more leverage,” he said. “Your brother wants to keep me… sweet.”
He winked at Dory. She frowned at him.
“I know you,” she said. “I’ve seen you at the Chicken, collecting the money from my boss. He’s scared of you.”
Clay’s smile didn’t slip. “Yeah, well, he’s supposed to be,” he said.
“My van was stolen,” Grade said. “I need to get it back.”
“You’re going to call in a favor?” Clay asked. “I could have lent you my phone for that.”
Dory rolled her eyes. “He doesn’t do favors,” she said. “It’s cash or credit only with him. Paid up front.”
