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Not that there was anything wrong with it.
“Really?” Kyle hedged as he twisted in the seat so he could give me his full attention. “What are you capable of?”
I plastered on my best smile as I looked at my brother. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“That’s enough.” Dad finally got sick of our back and forth. “It’s pretty clear that you two couldn’t work in the same section of the dealership.” He shook his head. “Being in sales may be something that’ll be too much to begin with. That’s strictly commission-based.”
“Don’t put her in the garage,” Kyle spoke up and for a hot second, I was sure he was going to say something about me going through his friends. He must’ve felt my scrutiny because he rolled his eyes. “I doubt she knows how to change her oil, much less her tires.”
“I don’t have a car,” I pointed out. “I never learned how to do all of that. I didn’t have a car handed to me when I graduated.”
That made both of them go silent. Kyle looked away, shifting so he wasn’t facing me anymore. Dad was the first to break. “Is that why you’re needing a second job?”
“I need it to buy a car,” I confirmed. “I don’t have to work in the garage. I don’t mind starting off detailing cars. I get it if you don’t trust me to put me out in sales, but the least you can do is give me a chance,” I nodded toward Kyle as I looked down at our father, “make it look like there’s no favoritism here.”
“If you need a car, all you have to do is say so,” Dad said, pulling a folder from his desk. “I’ve got some decent used vehicles I can write off,” he continued as he leafed through a ledger.
“I’m not looking for a handout,” I objected. That was before I realized the implications of demanding a job from him. “Just put me to work.” I gestured to the ledger he was flipping through. “Take a step in this century. Why isn’t your inventory on your computer?”
“I’m working on it,” Kyle grumbled, slouching down in his seat. “It’s a lot. It took us a year to get the parts department inventory in a computer system. We have the new cars on the computer. It’s just keeping up with the used inventory.” He shrugged. “If you’re gonna give her a car, please pick out something that hasn’t been logged.”
“I want to make sure she gets something that’s reliable,” Dad said without hesitation. “Not just that, it would need to be on par with the car you got when you graduated.”
“Stop,” I said forcefully. “I will handle what I get. I will buy it when I’m ready to. You don’t get a say in what I drive.” I looked hard at Dad. “If you have a problem with that, then don’t hire me. I’ll go somewhere else.”
“No,” Dad said, putting down the ledger. “I could use a part timer to help detail the cars coming off the trucks. It’s hard work.”
“You start off at minimum wage,” Kyle said without looking at me. “If it’s part-time, then you don’t get insurance.” He sounded reluctant, and I was almost surprised he didn’t put up more of a fight. He said nothing nasty, didn’t blurt out to Dad how I went through his friends. He kept quiet about it. “You don’t get any special treatment, and if you’re not doing what you’re supposed to do, you get fired.”
“Yeah, sure.” I smirked at him. “No special treatment.”
He shot a glare at me, but Dad got up and moved around the desk. “I can probably afford something a little more than what’s minimum,” he said as he put a hand on my shoulder. “Though we’ll have to keep that between us. Assuming I can negotiate some visits.” He opened his office door for me. “Your mother would appreciate that.”
“I plan on keeping my bar job,” I said as I let him guide me outside, toward the back of the lot. “Working two jobs, I don’t have the availability to be at every little event.”
He paused beside me, letting me get ahead of him by a few feet. “Is it a lack of availability?” he asked. “Or is your excuse of working too much just that? An excuse?” He closed the distance, his hands shoved into his slack pockets. “It seemed like this was more of a punishment. We don’t get to know where you live. See you once a year.” He cleared his throat. “I understand that your high school years weren’t what you would have hoped, but you have to understand where your mother and I were coming from. Punishing us by keeping your distance doesn’t seem fair.”
“I’ll do what I can,” I said, voice raising as I tried to resist the urge to chuck this half-formed plan, “but I can’t make any promises. I didn’t have a job handed to me when I turned sixteen. I didn’t have any of the hand outs he had.” I couldn’t keep the resentment out of my voice. “Or his friends. I got to go from shit job to shit job figuring things out on my own,” I huffedout. “It leaves me in a position where I don’t have the time that Kyle does. Time is money.”
“It is,” he murmured in agreement. “I’ll take what I can get. Your mother will too.” He motioned to an eighteen-wheeler. There were two guys from the garage helping a driver back cars off it. He cleared his throat. “This is where we unload the new merchandise. Usually you’ll have me or Kyle back here to sign off on the bill of sale.”
I nodded along as he went over what I would do, all business now. I’d have to figure out how I would balance this out with the bar. If I didn’t have Cam, Darius, and Adam to get hung up on, more work would be an excellent distraction.
Chapter 5
Cameron
Icame into the apartment only to find Adam sprawled out on the sofa. There was a pizza box beside him, beer bottles, and cans all over the coffee table. The television was on, the only source of light in the room.
At first glance, I thought he was asleep. But after I twisted the lock, he perked up immediately. “Have you heard from her?” It had been a week, and he hadn’t moved far from the sofa.
“From what I gathered, it’s over,” I said as I eyed him. I leaned back against the door. The last few days felt heavy on my shoulders. “I only caught the tail end of that shit. You blamed her for everything, told her to fuck off, and she left.” I shrugged helplessly. “Solid reason for her to be hounding me,” I offered sarcastically.
“Just means she got what she wanted, so she doesn’t need us anymore,” he said, voice hollow. He nodded and waved it off dismissively, as if he were unaffected. “She said she didn’t want to bring him into this and she did it anyway.” He picked up his phone, and the screen lit up his face, causing the stubble on his cheeks to stand out more. “All that shit was for nothing.”
“I didn’t expect you to get so invested,” I admitted. “I thought this was just supposed to be for fun.” I stepped closer to the couch to see if there was anything left in the pizza box. “I mean, without Kyle getting involved. It wasn’t supposed to be serious, nothing more than sex.” I grimaced at the empty box. “You couldn’t save me some?”
“It was fun,” he objected. “I didn’t think it was gonna be serious until she called me, asked me to come pick her up in the middle of the night.” He looked away, his attention going to the television. Credits rolled up the screen, and it gave a clue what he has been doing all day. “And then it all came crashing down.”
