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DUNCAN
The steak hissed as I flipped it over on the grill, juices dripping down and falling into the flames below. My stomach was growling like freaking crazy. I’d put in a hard hour at the gym, and some steak and beer sounded like heaven on earth.
I placed the can of Bud that I’d been sipping against my forehead, the cool, wetness of the can nice as hell in contrast to the heat coming off the grill. I was grateful for the warmer than usual winter this year, not that Charmed Bay ever got that cold to begin with. But it was milder than usual, which meant being able to grill outside.
“Yo, Dunc!”
I glanced up to see my younger brother Evan. He was lounging in one of the chairs in the backyard of my place, some Arctic Monkeys blasting from the Bluetooth speaker on the table.
“Dude, I’ve been telling you for ten years not to call me that stupid nickname.”
Evan, who stood 6’1, his hair a shaggy, sandy-blonde and his eyes the same green as our mom, flashed me the same, broad, goofy grin he always did when he was screwing around. He had his hands weaved together behind his head, the big Navy SEAL tattoo on his right pec on full display as he relaxed.
“But it always gets your attention, doesn’t it?” he teased.
“You know, there’s different kinds of attention. And the kind you’re getting from me now is the kind that’s going to end up with me dragging your sorry butt off that chair and tossing you into the pool.”
He let out his usual loud laugh, bounding out of the chair and coming over to me, beer in hand.
Evan was the goofball out of the three of us, always cracking jokes and pulling pranks. He was lively and energetic to the point that most people had a hard time believing that he’d been in the service. But he had – and he had the medals to prove he’d been a hell of a SEAL.
“You’re a big talk, Dunc,” he said, spreading his arms and acting like he was about to grab me off my feet. “But let’s see if you’ve got the actual moves to pull it off.”
I smirked, moving out of the way as he rushed toward me.
“You want your steak burned, dude?” I asked. “Because this is how you get your steak burned.”
Another laugh sounded from him as he craned his neck to look over my shoulders and check out the progress.
“Looking good, looking good. That one’s mine, right?” he stuck out his finger toward the largest.
I snapped the tongs at his finger. “Be careful, or I might barbeque your ass next.”
He grinned, tossing his empty beer can into the trash near the grill before fishing a fresh one out of the cooler.
“Hey, you guys want to keep it down?” The voice belonged to Jay, the youngest of us three. He was on one of the other lounge chairs near my heated backyard pool, his eyes hidden behind his mirrored aviators.
Jay had dark hair and dark eyes, and like Evan and me, he was tall, broad-shouldered, and built. On top of that, he was what the girls in high school referred to as brooding. Which to me was a funny way to say, “prickly as a porcupine.” The girls seemed to love it, climbing over one another for a chance to be the one to tame him, or whatever crazy plans they’d had in mind.
He also had a mouth on him and was always getting into trouble with teachers or local cops.
The guy was as smart as they came, though, getting grades that always managed to blow Evan and mine out of the water – and ours were nothing to sneeze at. He could’ve gone off to any Ivy League school he’d wanted, but he’d enlisted like Evan and me, him going into the Navy with Evan. A good thing, too. With the amount of trouble he was known for getting into back in high school, part of me had been certain he’d need the sort of straightening out that only some time in jail could provide.
“Oh, sorry,” Evan said, affecting a playfully sarcastic tone to his voice. “If you want, we could move this barbeque to the library. Might be a little quieter there.”
“Funny,” Jay replied. “Real cute.”
He lifted his glasses to show his narrowed eyes before letting them drop back down onto the bridge of his nose. Jay was usually up in his own head, lost in his thoughts, but there was something different about him that afternoon, something more on his mind.
I had a feeling what it was.
I finished up the steaks, plopping them onto the red plastic plates I’d brought out.
“Finally,” Evan said. “I’ll grab the other stuff from inside – should be ready by now.”
I carried the plates over to the small table by the pool, setting them down and moving aside the book on military history - this one about the Napoleonic wars - to give us a little more room. Evan hurried into my house, the place ranch-style like most of the other homes on the cliffside. Moments later he returned with a couple bags of chips and a tray of steaming food.
“Hell yeah!” he said as he set down the tray. “There’s got to be like, ten pounds of cheese on his mac.”
