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“What?!” he snapped, flinging an empty bottle of Coke at me. It bounced off the hoist and clattered to the cement floor. “I’m pissed!”
“At what?” I laughed. “Pissed looks funny on you, bud.”
“At you!” he shouted. He grabbed his drink off the reception desk and headed out back to the dock behind our apartment. The lime green slides he wore with duct tape on the left one really set the scene, too.
For fuck’s sake. What had I done to piss him off? I couldn’t remember the last time he was mad at me. It might have been in high school when we fought over hours at the same part-time job, but other than some friction, it wasn’t a real fight. There was that other time when my dad fought his dad and we both felt like shit about it, so we stopped talking for a few days. Still hung out, though. Even the war between our brothers never made us fight because they bred that feud all on their own. But this? This was something new, and I had no idea where it was coming from. Short of him finding a semi-nudie of him that I sort of saved on my phone, I couldn’t come up with anything. Pretty sure he knew about the nudie, anyway.
“Where are your smokes?” he shouted from the apartment.
“You hate smoking!”
“Nathan Neegan!”
Oh.The misspelled middle name didn’t come out often. I smiled at that, grabbed my pack of smokes off the reception desk, and followed him through the apartment. I swapped my pants for swim shorts on the way through, made myself a drink, and headed out back.
It was devil’s taint hot out, so I found Xavi on the edge of the dock, shirtless, tanned and marred, with his feet dangling in the water and his drink to his lips. I held out the cigarettes as a peace offering, and he ripped them from my hand, angrily trying to light one. But my lighter was mostly dead, and the wind was fucking with his brood. I cupped my hands around the tip to help him out.
I laughed again.
“What?” He glared.
“I’m just… what the hell is this, Xav?”
“Take me seriously,” he begged quietly. “I know I don’t get mad much, but don’t treat me like a joke the same way everyone else does.”
That sobered me. I’d never want to treat him like a joke. “Okay. Sorry. Tell me what’s up. I’m listening.”
He huffed, taking a drag and hating himself for it. He wasn’t a smoker, but it must have fit his rage vibe. “I forget how to be mad at you. Give me a minute to get into character.”
“Take your time.” I took a sip and slid on my sunglasses to hide my eyes. My mom used to say all my thoughts showed through my eyes, and since I barely knew what I was thinking most of the time, I wore the sunglasses so no one else clued in before I did. “Tell me what I did to piss you off. Might help you get into the role.”
“I ran into Andrea at the store.”
“And?” I hadn’t said shit to Andrea about anything to do with Xavi lately, so what sort of thoughts did she put in his head?
“She said…” He took a long drag and coughed, handing it to me. “She said you needed to tell me something.”
Shit. My face got hot and I snugged up the sunglasses to keep my secrets locked in. When Xavi looked at me, there was betrayal in his eyes. Guilt weighed my stomach down, but how the hell was I supposed to tell him what she meant?
“What’d she mean, Nate? Since when do we have secrets?” He shook his head. “I wanted to punch her in the tit for knowing something about you that I didn’t.”
“Don’t hit her.”
“I couldn’t. She’s too nice.” He bumped his knee to mine. “What’d she mean?”
I looked at our thighs. His were thicker and more tanned. Guy had the nicest thighs, and my legs had always been my biggest physical insecurity. No matter how many lunges and squats and fuck-thrusts I did, they never bulked up. “It was probably just about the life phases thing.”
“You suck at lying. Even with shades on.”
“You suck at being ragey.”
“I know. But let me have it for a minute.”
I looked up at the blue sky. “She thought she caught something about me. That maybe I didn’t wanna hook up with her that night.”
Xavi hit me. It wasn’t a punch, but it was a firm smack right upside my head. “What the actual fuck, Nate? You let me lead that mess of a night in my drunken state and didn’t even chime in to say you didn’t want it?”
“I told you she was our mother figure! Then when she made us talk about life, I let her go for it because I thought it was what you needed. The whole kid chat.”
