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I bring the phone to my ear and let the static fill my head while I wait for him to speak.
“Kellan?”
“Pace.”
An ocean breeze whips over his phone’s receiver, muffling his question: “How’s it going, man?”
I let my gaze fall through the pines, landing on the gushing river below. It’s narrow here—not even the width of a tennis court—so the water is fast-moving.
Pace gets my point and clears his throat. “Got some teddy bears coming your way. Double nickel and penny. You ready for ’em?”
“Always.”
“They’re good bears.” He pauses, as if thinking. As if we haven’t had this conversation thirty times before. He adds, “Made in America.”
I roll my eyes. Pace and his love of talking in code. I can only assume that ‘Made in America’ means the weed he’s bringing me from California is higher quality than what he usually sends.
“Sounds good. I’ll be ready.”
This is where I’d choose to end the conversation, but my cousin never can just let things be. Pace is an awkward motherfucker. Coming up on fifty, he’s a beach bum with nothing to his name except a lot of good intentions. I like Pace well enough—as kids, we called him Uncle Pace—but these phone chats can get tedious.
“You doing okay?” he asks after a silence.
I shut my eyes. “Fine.” The word is sharp.
“Really?” he asks.
Fucking Pace.
“Just checking, dude,” he says defensively. “Robert has been sniffing my ass crack, wanting to know if you’ve decided anything.”
“I don’t want to talk about this, Pace.”
“I know, but—”
“Fuck him,” I growl.
“You just... you can’t say that, man. Robert is—”
“Who do you work with, him or me?”
It’s a simple question with a complex answer. I’m not being fair to Pace. Not that I really give a fuck. He’s not being fair to me, either.
I hear him breathing. Biding time as he tries to figure out how to broach forbidden subjects. I hear the phone brush the scruff of his beard, followed by his low voice saying, “Whitney called him. She said she hasn’t been able to get up with you.”
Whitney. Of course.
My fingers rearrange themselves around my phone. “I haven’t noticed any missed calls from her,” I lie. Whitney has been calling weekly for three months.
“You’ve got everyone all stirred up,” Pace says in his low-but-nasally voice. “Man, I’m worried too. Don’t get all butt hurt, but we all have the same horse in the race. We’re a motherfucking family.” In a low voice, he says: “No one wants to see you wind up like Lyon.”
The mention of my brother makes my eyeballs ache. Pressure builds inside my head. I suck a deep breath back and clutch the phone. “Don’t go there, Pace. Ever. You have a problem with Robert, deal with it. He’s your burden—not mine.”
I hear a shuffling sound: Pace’s flip-flops on that little deck that hangs over the beach. He puffs some smoke out; I can hear his breath. “I just want to help you, man.”
“You can’t, so stop trying.”
I want to punch him in the teeth. I want to roar at him. I can’t believe he mentioned Ly. Instead, I say, “Till one-one, then.”
