I shook myself out of the fog and made a weak attempt to join the conversation.
“Lou, how’s the golf game?” I asked.
On my right, Amanda kicked me under the table. Naomi choked on her dinner coffee.
Lou pointed his fork at me from the foot of the table. “Lemme tell you. There’s no way Hole Nine is a par three.”
“And now we all have to suffer,” Amanda whispered as her husband broke into a discourse on his trials and tribulations on the green.
I made an effort to drag my attention away from Lina while Lou gave us all his top ten reasons why Hole Nine was mislabeled.
Piper was snoring that strangely loud nose whistle that had startled me awake twice the night before. The tip of her tail flicked out a beat or two as if her dreams were happy ones. At least it beat waking to the other noise, the one that lived only in my head.
Naomi’s eyes sparkled as Knox slid his hand to the back of her neck and whispered something in her ear. Waylay waited until she was sure her guardians were occupied before slipping two green beans into her napkin. She caught me looking and feigned innocence.
Night had fallen on the other side of the glass, making the woods and creek vanish. Inside, the lights were low and the flicker of candles made it even cozier.
“Pass the chicken, Nash,” Liza J called from the head of the table. I picked up the platter and shifted to my left. Lina’s fingers got tangled up with mine, and we nearly dropped the dish.
Our eyes met. There was a spark of temper in those cool brown eyes, most likely carried over from our run-in that morning. But in the overall tally, I had more reasons to be pissed than she did.
She’d added makeup and styled her hair differently. Edgy pixie was what it made me think of. Her earrings were tiny bells that dangled flirtatiously from her lobes. They jingled every time she laughed. But she wasn’t laughing now.
“Any day now would be nice,” Liza J said pointedly.
I managed to hand off the plate without sending the chicken to the floor. My fingers felt warm from her touch and I balled my hand into a fist in my lap to hold on to the heat.
“Your face looks like shit,” Knox announced to me.
“Knox!” Naomi said, exasperated.
“What? If you’re gonna grow a beard, grow a damn beard or have the decency to make an appointment and sit in my fuckin’ chair. Either way, commit. Don’t go walking around town with a half-assed stubble farm all over your face. It’s bad advertising for Whiskey Clipper,” my brother complained.
Waylay put her head in her hands and muttered something about a jar and vegetables.
I rubbed my hand over my jaw. I’d forgotten to shave again.
“Have some more green beans, Nash,” Amanda insisted on my right, dumping a scoop on top of the one I hadn’t touched yet.
Waylay caught my eye from across the table. “This family is obsessed with green things.”
My mouth quirked. The kid was still getting used to the whole “family” thing after a short lifetime with a bad influence.
“Waylay, isn’t there something you want to ask Knox and Nash?” Naomi prompted.
Waylay looked down at her plate for a second before shrugging in preteen annoyance. “It’s just something dumb. You guys don’t have to do it.” She made a show of spearing a green bean with her fork and scrunching up her face when she took the tiniest bite possible.
“You might be surprised. We like dumb stuff,” I told her.
“Well, there’s this Girl Dad challenge on TikTok where dads let their daughters put makeup on them. And paint their nails. And some of them do their hair too,” she began.
Knox and I shared a frozen look of terror.
We’d do it.
We’d hate every single second of it. But we’d do it if Waylay wanted us to.
Knox swallowed. “Okay. And?” He sounded like he was being strangled.
Naomi sighed. “Waylay Witt!”
The girl’s grin was diabolical. “What? I was just priming them with something worse so they’d say yes to what I really wanted them to do.”
I relaxed as the threat of lipstick and fake eyelashes dissipated.
Knox rocked back in his chair, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. “What the fuck am I gonna do with her at sixteen?”
“Oh man!” Waylay groaned.
“Jar!” Stef said.
“If you would stop f-bombing every sentence, maybe we could be eatin’ potato chips and pepperoni bites instead of dang green beans,” Waylay groused.
Lina’s earrings jingled as she tried to hold in her laughter.
“What do you really want us to do?” I asked.
“Okay. So my school is doing this dumb Career Day thing and I guess I thought maybe it wouldn’t be the most horrible thing if you and Knox came and told my class about your jobs and stuff. You can say no,” she added quickly.
“You want me and your uncle Nash to talk to your class?” Knox asked her.
I rubbed my forehead and tried to chase away all the “hell nos” that were echoing in my head. Community relations was a big part of my job, but I’d avoided all public events since…before.
“Yeah. But only if you’re gonna do a good job, because Ellison Frako’s mom is a district court judge and she’s going to do like a mock trial thing. So don’t, like, show up and talk about paperwork and bank statements.”
I smirked. Paperwork and bank statements were ninety percent of my brother’s job.
Waylay looked at me. “I thought maybe you could do something cool like shoot one of the annoying boys with a Taser.”
Lina choked out a laugh and some of her beer next to me. Wordlessly, I handed her a napkin.
Naomi shot a pleading look my way.
Like I didn’t know how much it cost Waylay to ask for what she wanted.
“I might not deploy any weapons in the classroom, but I could probably come up with something,” I said. A cold bead of sweat snaked its way down my back. But the happily stunned expression on Waylay’s face made it worthwhile.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Really. Fair warning though, my job’s way cooler than Knox’s.”
Knox snorted. “Oh, it’s on.”
“What are you gonna do? Reenact a lottery win?” I joked.
He threw a chunk of red-skinned potato across the table at me.
I volleyed back with a scoop of green beans.
“Boys,” Amanda warned.
Waylay gave me one of those small smiles that I prized. It was one thing to make a happy kid smile, but to pry one out of the girl who had a lot of reasons not to was like winning a gold medal.
“So seriously. Who wants to take Piper home with them?” I asked again.
“Oh, now, Nash. You know that wouldn’t be fair to that sweet little girl. She’s already obviously bonded with you,” Amanda pointed out.
After pie and coffee, the party broke up to a Patsy Cline song, one of my mom’s favorites.
Knox started on the dishes while Naomi went upstairs to supervise Waylay’s homework. Lou and Amanda volunteered to walk Liza J home. Piper whined pitifully at the front door as Kitty disappeared into the night.
I wanted to disappear too, but good manners wouldn’t let me leave without at least lending a hand. I headed back into the dining room and found Lina collecting empty dessert plates.