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“I think you could start with getting a job, buddy.”
“Doing what?”
“Doing anything. No shame in hard work.” The boat was really skipping along now, the waves slapping sharply against the hull.
“My mom says I should wait till I have something I’m totally into. No need to do grunt work.”
“You can start out with grunt work. I did. Lots of successful people did. Right? Paulie’s father used to clean chicken shit, if you believe his commercials.”
Bryce pondered that. “Don’t you think it’s better to be unemployed and kinda cool, or have a job doing grunt work?”
“Bryce. You’re thirty-one years old. Being unemployed is notcool. Get a job.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I guess.” He paused. “Maybe Paulie would think...well. That I grew up a little.”
“Do it. Show her you’re worth a second chance,” Lucas said.
“I don’t even know if I like her that way.”
“Have you ever missed a girl you’d broken up with before?”
“Nope.” Bryce glanced at him and smiled. “But Paulie’s not my usual type.”
“Whatisyour usual type?”
“Slutty and beautiful. The fling type.”
Lucas laughed. Colleen had said something like that, too. “Maybe it’s time to try something else, then. Have some faith in yourself, Bryce. You can be good at something other than video games and dog adoptions, you know.” He squeezed his cousin on the shoulder, and Bryce smiled.
“Yeah. You’re right, dude. Thanks for the pep talk.”
“It’s what I’m here for. Now go sit with your father.”
Joe woke up as his son sat next to him, and he put his arm around Bryce’s shoulders. Bryce kissed his father’s head, and the two sat in the breeze, the sun making the water quiver in the shimmering light.
Lucas turned his head, sensing that this was the goodbye Joe so wanted with his son.
He would’ve given a lot to have been able to say goodbye to his own father this way...or any way. To have felt his father’s arm around him once more, to have held his hand when he finally slipped away, instead of knowing he died alone on a cold cement floor in the prison basement in a state he’d never seen except through bars.
He would’ve given anything to have been able to just have seen his father’s face once more.
But at least Bryce would have that. And if Lucas couldn’t have been there for his father, he was here for Joe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
ONCEAGAIN, COLLEENwas indulging in a little Clorox therapy, this time in the ladies’ room of O’Rourke’s.
Things hadn’t been right between her and Lucas since two weeks ago, when Ellen the Perfect had swept into town in all her pregnant radiance.
They weren’t fighting. It was more like there was a tremor in the Force.
Because a judge had apparently been a member of the same secret society at Yale as Frank Forbes, Joe Campbell was now quietly divorced. Lucas had thanked her for the idea...but still, it couldn’t have been done without perfect Ellen. Not that Colleen was insecure or jealous (cough). No, Ellen was completely nice and classy and engaged and preggers, and why the hell did she bother Colleen so much, anyway? Ellen was back in Chicago now, as were Lucas’s sister and nieces. They’d come into the bar to say hello and stayed for dinner, and Colleen had had to go into the office and cry for a second—the girls were so big! Once upon a time, she and Lucas had babysat Mercedes and the infant twins. She’d never even met the fourth one.
Didi had gone off to visit a friend in Boca and would stay for the duration. It had only cost Lucas about four grand, he’d told her, and it was money very well spent. Joe could now die in peace.
The loo was now spotless. With a sigh, Colleen returned to the bustle. But all through the evening, she obsessed. Worried, fretted, mulled and, ironically, tried not to think about Lucas.
Their time together was drawing to a close. They were still sleeping together, but it was almost too much—the intensity, the meaning, the poignance. Soon, one of these times would be their last. Or not. Or they’d try a long-distance thing.
