AllFreeNovel
Share Us
1
Dillon
Wendy: Hey, you were already gone when I got up this morning. I need you tonight at the Gull. Dave’s still sick and it’s Friday.
Dillon: I am not working at the bar on a Friday night. That was our deal. Remember?
Wendy: I remember I’m your only sister and you love me.
Dillon: I’ll pay someone to work that shift.
Wendy: There’s no one to pay.
Dillon: Then I’ll pay you to close the bar down. Whatever you’d make tonight – I’ll double it.
Wendy: Oh…you know what you sound like?
Dillon: Stop.
Wendy: Nope. I’m serious. You sound like…
Dillon: Don’t say it.
Wendy: An elitist dick. Remember when you told me to always keep you honest no matter how big you got…? This is that time. Right now. Don’t be an elitist dick and help your sister when she asks.
Dillon: I’m not being a dick. Or elitist. You know how handsy the tourists get when I work behind the bar. Like I’m some kind of genie lamp. Remember that bachelorette party two weeks ago?
Wendy: Indeed I do. They spent a lot of money.
Dillon: They tore the shirt OFF my body.
Wendy: Suck it up. I need the help and it’s too late to find someone.
Suck it up was our family motto. So, I didn’t text back, I knew when I was beat. I tossed my phone in the cup holder of my Bronco.
I was in the parking lot of the ice rink ten miles north of Calico Cove. It was barely seven in the morning, which made me worry about how much sleep Wendy was getting since she didn’t get home last night until two in the morning.
She’d be pissed knowing I’d had half an ear open, waiting for her to come home. Yes, I knew crime was virtually non-existent in Calico Cove, and yes, I knew my sister could more than take care of herself, but I worried. Sue me.
Dad taught us how to handle ourselves in a fight and we both went pro with that knowledge. I was a NHL center forward and my sister spent two years as an MMA fighter before retiring to take over Dad’s bar – The One-Eyed Gull.
But for the three weeks I spent in Calico Cove before preseason training, I went hard at being Wendy’s protective big brother. And she went hard being my annoying little sister and getting me to work behind the bar at the Gull. All while I slept in my childhood bedroom in the three-bedroom, one bath ranch we both grew up in with our parents.
Try being an elitist dick in a house with your prom picture on the wall.
Could I buy a bigger, fancier house for Wendy? Yes.
Would she let me? No.
Mom let me buy that condo for her in Boston. Dad and our stepmom, Linda, had no problem hightailing their asses down to Naples, Florida when I’d offered to buy them a house.
It was a perk of my job, buying houses.
Per Dad, he’d earned every cent of that house driving me back and forth to this very ice rink as he’d pushed me toward my success. It was true. He had.
There were just times I wish he hadn’t been such a dick about it.
No one in my life had a problem taking my money. Except Wendy. She just wanted me to work the damn bar.
