Page 38 of My Brother's Bad Best Friend

“Can you finish up here?” I ask.

“Yeah, I’m good.” She frowns a little bit. “Sorry I came at you. I’m just tired.”

“I get it. Take a long break later today before the mid-afternoon rush.”

“Will do.”

I turn and head back into my office, slumping down in my chair and leaning forward onto the desk.

What an asshole. I should’ve realized that Lizzie has no car or any other way of getting here, but of course I’m just thinking about myself, like always. I’m too busy worrying about trying to stick my dick in her tight little ass and not thinking enough about how she’s getting along day to day.

Hopefully having a job now’s going to help out a lot. I get busy with her paperwork, setting up her payroll stuff and basically making the whole thing official. She’ll have some stuff to sign and fill out so I can actually pay her and do the tax shit, but by the time the café is filling up around six, she’s pretty much a real employee of Half Pipe.

I finish her paperwork around six thirty, and I plan on having her sign everything as soon as it’s ready, but the door to my office pushes open without so much as a knock. I don’t need to look up to know who’s flopping down in the chair across from my desk.

“Long night?” I ask him.

“Not over yet,” Ezra answers.

I finally look up, eyeing him carefully. He’s sweating slightly, his shirt collar open wide, his eyes both exhausted and wired at the same time. He looks like a guy that’s been doing coke all night, and I’m betting that’s exactly what he did.

“You said you wanted to talk earlier. So let’s talk.”

I shake my head. “I have work to do, E. You know that.”

He laughs a little bit. “What happened to you, man? You used to be fucking special, going out all night, bringing home club sluts to fuck until the wee hours of the morning. We used to sell weed and have fucking fun. What happened?”

“We grew up.” I lean back in my chair, watching him carefully. He’s not meeting my gaze, his eyes twitching around the room. He has his own office back in the grow room, but it’s interesting he chose to come here instead.

I know he wants something from me, it’s just not clear what exactly he thinks he needs. I know the guy needs help, probably needs fucking rehab, but I really doubt that’s why he’s sitting here.

Before I can ask, he takes a stack of cash from his back pocket and tosses it onto the desk.

“Consider that a down payment on my bet,” he says.

I look at the cash for a second before picking it up. “Where’d you get this?”

“You know where.” His smile is sly but unfocused. “You’re not the only one that learned how to push weight, Jonas.”

“You’re a regular old Scarface now, huh?”

“Making more money than this shithole and having more fun doing it.”

“Probably.” I don’t touch the cash. I lean forward to stare at him. “But what happens when you run out? You gonna buy more, keep selling? You gonna risk going to jail or maybe even pissing off those smugglers and getting yourself killed?”

He laughs lightly, as if none of that ever occurred to him before. “I’ll get out way before that.”

“Everyone says that, but I thought you knew better.”

“I don’t know shit about shit, but then again, you did teach me.” He stands up and stretches a little bit. “I’m starting to crash. I’ll see you later, maybe tomorrow. I’ll have the rest soon, and we’ll be square.”

“Just don’t snort it all first.”

“Sure, whatever.” He leaves my office and I stare at the wad of cash sitting on my desk.

He’s right, I did teach him everything I know. That’s the fucking problem. The guy I was even just a year ago wasn’t thinking about the future. I was thinking about the next score, the next sale, the next pussy. I wasn’t trying to build anything. I wasn’t trying to have a life.

I think I was trying to bury myself in partying, drugs, and fucking. Now Ezra’s doing the same thing and I don’t know how to help him.

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