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“He drove us down the street. It was only ten dollars. I won’t miss it.”
He frowns. “That’s not the point, Kat.”
I tug on his arm to pull him toward the front door, and he complies. “Stop making a big deal out of the money. In a few months, you’ll have your signing bonus and enough money that you won’t have to think about it ever again.”
“It won’t be that much money,” he says, his breath creating a white cloud in front of us. “I play hockey, not football or basketball.”
“It will be enough for your mom to stop working at the diner and for you to buy a car and move into an apartment.”
“Hey, maybe I like taking public transportation. Did you ever think of that?”
“No one likes riding the bus with the dude that jerks off in the back late at night. So, don’t even try to convince me that you enjoy the drive back home when you have that weirdo hogging up space.”
“Jerkoff Jerry is a staple on the sixty-seven bus.” He has trouble saying the words without laughing.
I chuckle. “You are so ridiculous.”
“You’d be bored without me.” He lowers his deep voice to a more sensual tone.
We walk into the restaurant, decorated with wood accents, and the smell of steak fills my nostrils, causing my stomach to growl.
“Hi,” I say to the hostess standing behind a big oak desk. “We’re looking for the Baldwin party.”
“Party?” Dean cocks an eyebrow at me.
“Dad rented us a room for dinner,” I tell him, not wanting to make a big deal out of it.
I grew up with more money than I ever knew what to do with, while Dean and his mother have struggled their entire lives. I often feel guilty for having so much when they have so little. That’s why I wanted to do something special for them both, though Dean has no idea what I have planned for him.
A beautiful brunette,
dressed in a floor-length flowery dress, gives Dean a once over before she makes a gesture that looks like an invitation for sex. He ignores her, as he normally does when we are together. Dean has always acted as though no one is in the room with us.
The hostess leads us upstairs to the private room, where I find three of my four brothers. Tucker and Theo are chatting amongst themselves in the corner of the room, hovered over one of their cell phones and laughing. The twins get lost in their world most of the time, completely shutting us out. They have what I consider their twin language because their inside jokes tend to mean nothing to any of us.
Duke, my eldest brother, has his shoe propped up on his knee, drinking a glass of whiskey. He and dad share the same love for the liquor, while I can’t even stomach the scent.
“We’re here,” I announce, as we step into the room.
“About damn time,” Duke says with his usual scowl. He gets up from his chair and sets the glass in his hand on the table. Palming my head with his big hand, Duke breaks the grip I have on Dean, as he pulls me into a bear hug that crushes my insides.
“Denny,” I say, kissing him on the cheek.
He wipes my lipstick from his face, acting as if he’s disgusted by my nickname. “You’re lucky I like you, Kit-Kat.”
Since we were kids, our dad has called Dennis Duke, after his favorite movie actor, John Wayne. My dad and Duke would watch old Westerns together, with Duke pretending he was in the movies by re-enacting the scenes with my dad. He knew every movie by heart, and to this day, he can still quote True Grit verbatim. It’s something Dad and him did together, and even more so after our mother’s passing.
We all have special traditions with Dad. He was around so little, because of all the traveling he did for hockey, that my father had made it a point to have something for each of us to look forward to when he would come home.
For Duke, that was old movies. With Austin, the second eldest, they collected bottle caps and kept a collection in the basement. The twins liked comic books, so that was always their thing to do with our father.
Being the middle child and the only girl, my dad always treated me differently. We had our traditions, too, though they weren’t very girly. I wanted to learn how to play hockey. That was a given with my brothers, but the thought had never even occurred to my dad until I asked him to teach me how to shoot a puck.
He had no idea how to raise an eight-year-old girl, so that suited him just fine. Hockey he knew like the back of his hand, but menstrual cycles and makeup were like something out of the Twilight Zone for him. He didn’t even know how to braid my hair.
Duke was the one who figured out how to make me look presentable for school and can most likely still tie a half decent braid, though he would never admit that to anyone—not even to me. Austin sat with me every night to go over my homework and would quiz me for my tests since he was always the smart one. Between Duke and Austin, and help from the staff at the Baldwin Estate, my older brothers raised the twins and me while Dad was on the road with his team.
“Look who Kit-Kat brought with her,” Duke says over my shoulder to Dean, causing me to cringe. “Are you still hitting on my sister?”
