Page 31 of A Thirst for Franc

“To you.”

“And to you,” I countered. It was our favorite movie as kids. We even had the tan jumpsuits and proton packs. Brady’s dad couldn’t afford them, so Mom and Dad had bought his as a birthday gift one year. They even replaced his proton pack when his dad destroyed it in a drunken rage.

“We’re one and the same.” Jack nudged my knee, and I scratched his head.

“Can’t argue that.” Brady nodded to a customer and stepped toward them. He got to work making one of the drinks off the menu, and I sipped my whiskey. Brady took his first bartending class when we were twenty-one, and then from there, he would serve drinks to my grandpa who would critique and provide constructive feedback on how to make the drinks better. Grandpa didn’t just have a great palette for wine, and he encouraged Brady as if he was his own.

Brady’s father had been a no-good drunk who mentally abused and sometimes physically abused Brady for years. Some thought it was strange that years of suffering at the hands of a man who was addicted to alcohol, Brady would venture into a business that was based on the same substance that caused him pain.

They didn’t get it, but I did. Brady turned something awful into something beautiful. His drinks weren’t made to get people drunk. They were made to enjoy, to bring people together, and to create good memories. He couldn’t control his dad, but this? He could control.

He finished up with the customer and came back over, crossing his arms across his large chest. Laurent and Rhone might have had an inch on me height wise, but I was the biggest muscle wise. But no matter how much I worked out and bulked up, I’d never be as big as Brady.

I glanced at the Rolex Grandpa gave me before he passed and pushed up from the stool. “I need to get home.”

“Have a nanny to see,” Brady said, and if we didn’t have a bar in between us, I would have punched him in the gut.

“I need to get home to my son.”

“If that’s what you need to tell yourself.”

“Stop acting like my mother.”

“Does Mrs. G know about the nanny?”

“Do you mean did she question me about knowing what’s best for my son and asking if I did a background check on her?”

Brady grabbed my empty glass, adding it to the dirty rack. “Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Do a background check?”

“I interviewed her, and you know I’m a very good judge of character. And besides, she’s great with Gio, and that’s all that matters.”

“Unless she turns out to make lampshades with the flesh of kids she’s nannied before.”

“You need to lay off the Texas Chainsaw movies.”

“Next showing is Friday in the yard. You should bring Gio.” Every Friday starting in the summer, Brady set up a big sheet between two trees and showed movies. Once a month was a horror movie until September, when that’s all he played through October.

“I like sleep, and I don’t need my six-year-old, waking up screaming in the middle of the night because Uncle Brady thought Leatherface was a good movie night option.”

“I watched my first horror movie when I was six.”

I didn’t want to say that his childhood was a horror movie; he was better equipped to handle those types of movies, but it was the truth. Gio lived a more sheltered life where the Incredibles claimed victory and The Last Kids on Earth always defeated the evil zombies.

“You also could put your shoes on the right feet and operate a microwave at six.”

Brady shrugged. “Life skills.”

“And while I’m teaching Gio both, Leatherface is going to have to wait.”

“Fine, but when the day comes, I want to be there.”

“Good and when he’s terrified, it can be your lap he climbs in.”

“Nah. He’ll love it.”

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