Page 45 of Floodgates

“I’m having a bitch of a week.”

His grin fired his eyes and made his dimples pop. “You really are.”

“Maybe I need to be cleansed by a shaman or something.”

“Maybe you need a new job and a faithful boyfriend.”

“Or just a vacation,” I threw out.

“Or that,” he agreed, beaning me with a pair of my jeans and ordering me to go take a shower. Apparently he didn’t want me stinking up his car on the way to the airport. I couldn’t very well blame him.

Chapter 6

MY FATHER, Raymond Brandt, did what he always did when conflict arose. He took no one’s part and refused to pass judgment until he had heard both sides of the story. Alex related all this to me as we drove to the San Francisco International Airport to pick up my brother Evan. My father was going to wait and talk to Breckin before he said anything. That was his way. I had always looked to my father to be fair. He never let his emotions get the better of him. Alex and I, on the other hand, were much more like my mother, riding the emotional highs and lows at every turn.

“Can you believe it?” Alex asked me as we parked his Toyota Highlander and got out. “I mean, for crissakes, Tracy, it’s about the hell time Dad got mad for once! This is a big fuckin’ deal!”

“I know,” I groaned, sagging back against the side of the SUV and leaning hard. “Hey, you got a cigarette on you?”

His eyes got big. “What?”

“A cigarette,” I repeated. “Do you have one?”

“Not for you I don’t.”

“Oh, gimme the goddamn cigarette,” I snapped at him, sounding more surly then I felt.

He pulled a pack from the inside pocket of his black leather biker jacket, pulled out two cigarettes, and lit them both. He nursed them for a second, making sure both were sufficiently burning, then passed me one. When I had been a smoker it had been merely recreational. In college there had been clove cigarettes and, of course, pot, and a few times things even stronger. I never got a taste for drugs, but I had really tried to be a smoker. It just never took. And I had been a lightweight anyway; it was all about the menthol. My brother did not know from menthol. He would have smoked them without filters if he could have found the time to roll them himself. As it was, I nearly coughed myself to death on the Camel he gave me. I didn’t even know they made anything that full of toxins.

“Oh yeah, this is good for you,” he snarked, rolling his eyes at me as we made our way across the parking garage to the elevators.

I put out the cigarette before we entered the building, then stood beside him as we waited with others to go down to the terminal and the gates. I noticed a woman and a man looking at me and wondered what they must be thinking.

Aviator sunglasses were hiding my puffy and bloodshot eyes. I had seen myself after I took a shower at the hospital. I was pale and hollow eyed. I looked like a refugee. I had on three layers—T-shirt, plaid shirt, and a slim brown leather jacket over that. Low-rise jeans and my ancient brown brogue boots completed my outfit. I was warm, and that was important. I couldn’t seem to get my body temperature to regulate, so I needed to be piled with clothes.

The woman was still looking at me when it was time for us all to get on the elevator, and I noticed she and her husband had kind of drifted back away from us. Not huddled into a corner or anything, but damn close. Alex grabbed my arm as we got on, and when he held the door open so they could join us, the man politely informed him that they would take the next one. It was official: I was scaring people.

In the terminal I walked silently with Alex as we threaded through the crowd. He had his arm draped over my shoulder. I didn’t even know where we were going until we reached the security check.

“Looks like we’re a few minutes early,” he sighed before turning to smile down at me. “You want me to get you a coffee or something?”

“Tea would be good.”

“Yeah, okay, tell me what kind,” he said, dropping his arm to pull his wallet from his back pocket.

“Get me an Earl Grey latte.”

“Okay, I’ll be right over here. Don’t go anywhere.”

He was worried, and it was nice. I turned back to the monitor as they announced the landing of my brother’s flight. I knew he would be, like, the second one off, as he always flew first class. I couldn’t remember a time that he hadn’t.

Evan had graduated from Columbia with a degree in Art History but just barely—he had been so much more interested in his acting career. He’d done some theater work, but mostly he was not the kind of guy who did summer stock or Shakespeare in the Park or anything off Broadway. My brother was definitely the guy who did commercials, then walk-ons, then bit parts, then bigger ones. He was less about the theater or his craft and more about models and money. He was young, only twenty-seven, and maybe when he hit sixty he’d care about Broadway. But after a show on CBS playing a hot FBI agent, he’d moved on to HBO. He’d told Alex on the phone that he had news, so I was looking forward to hearing it. As passengers began streaming out from the opposite side of the security checkpoint, I looked for him. He wasn’t hard to spot.

Alex and I looked alike; people always said so. We both resembled my mother—same brown hair and tanned complexion, the Portuguese and Spanish clearly evident in us, her brown-eyed children. Evan, being the youngest, somehow got mixed different. He pulled from my father’s side of the family—Scottish, Irish, French, and German. He had gray eyes, dirty-blond hair, and a golden tan that he kept year-round. People always thought he was adopted until they met my father, who he looked just like.

“Tracy!”

I turned to the sound of the yell and found Evan striding toward me across the floor. I didn’t know why, but seeing him made me feel worse. And maybe it was because the only reason he was home was because I was in trouble, or maybe it was the way he was looking at me, like he was sorry. Either way, I wanted to crawl under a rock.