Page 53 of The Wild Card
He frowns. “A white rabbit?”
“You know—Alice in Wonderland. She follows a white rabbit down the—you know what. Never mind.” I pause, taking in our surroundings. “This is nice. When did you do all this?”
James flops down into a folding chair on the little patio. Last time I was here, this exit door led to an alley between the brewery and a crumbling building next door. Now, there are lights crisscrossing overhead, five folding chairs, and one of those blue bug zappers, which greets us by electrocuting some kind of bug. There’s no fence, but the area is set apart by a row of tall potted shrubs on either side.
I guess this is James’s answer to not always beingonat his brewery.
“Winnie did this. Drink?” James asks, opening a cooler beside him as I drop into my own chair.
I expect beer, but he holds out a cream soda—my favorite sugary indulgence. One I rarely allow myself to have. I take the can and pop the top.
“What?” James asks, and I guess my expression is doing something weird.
“You stock my favorite kind of soda,” I say. “That’s surprisingly thoughtful. Especially foryou.”
James rolls his eyes and takes a swig of water. “Again—that was Winnie.”
“Glad at least one of you is thoughtful.”
James kicks my chair, which almost folds up with me inside it. “So. You wanna talk about your big mess?”
I debate kicking his chair right back. But James is bigger than me, so instead, I just glare.
I hadn’t planned on telling James about selling the gym and my issues with my ex, though talking to Tank pretty much opened the floodgates. Sounds like Dad alerted the family on my behalf. My family is entirely too close for its own good sometimes.
“Guess keeping this from y’all was too much to hope for,” I say with a sigh.
James narrows his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
Uh oh. “What areyoutalking about?”
“Molly. Our not-so sister-in-law.”
I shudder. “Please don’t ever put the wordsisterin any sentences regarding Molly again. Ibegof you.”
“What other mess did you make, little brother? I thought we were in agreement that mess-making was Pat’s job.”
“Seems like now that he’s all married and about to have a new baby, he’s passed on the torch to me.”
“You didn’t have to take it.”
“Thanks,Dad.”
James kicks my chair again, and this time, the legs do fold, making me into a Collin-chair taco and spilling my cream soda. Winnie walks out as I’m trying to extricate myself from the chair and James is wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.
It’s good to see him laugh, even if it’s at my expense. My too-serious older brother could do with a little more levity.
Hands on her hips, she says, “Collin, you know that’s not how folding chairs work, right?”
I grumble something about James while setting up my chair out of his reach. Winnie grabs a replacement cream soda from the cooler, handing it to me before she plops herself in James’s lap. She pokes him in the ribs, which makes him squirm under her arched brow.
She’s the only one who can give the eyebrow to James as well as he gives it to everyone else.
“Sorry,” he says to me.
“No you’re not.”
“No. I’m not. Now tell us about your big mess.”
