Page 6 of Badd Ass
“So…you got shot down.”
I threw my fork at him, nailing him the chest, spattering eggs all over him. “Yes, goddammit,” I snapped. “I got shot down.”
Not much fazed Xavier except being touched, so he just picked up my fork from where it had fallen on his lap, and handed it back to me, brushing the egg off his chest. “You seem vexed.”
I gaped at him. “You’re a regular Sherlock, ain’t ya, kid? What gave it away?”
“Throwing the fork was a pretty obvious signifier,” he started, and then stopped, eying me warily. “Oh. You were being sarcastic.”
“Yes, I was being sarcastic.” I resumed eating, but angrily this time.
“I don’t understand,” Xavier said, after a while. “You’ve had a lot of sex, with a lot of different women, and rarely the same one twice. What makes her so different? And why are you so upset?”
“That’s part of what has me wigging out,” I answered. “I don’t know. I mean, yeah, Mara was fuckin’ gorgeous, man. Those tits? Thatass? The way she moved, the sounds she made? She was tight, but she knew what she was doing, and knew what she liked…and then there was just…fuck, I don’t know. Something about the way we were together that was just…different. Something about…her,I guess.”
“So why don’t you try to convince her to go out with you, then? Like, try to…I don’t know what you’d call it. Get to know her, or something.”
“You make it sound so simple, but that’s not how…it’s not—I don’t…” I trailed off, hunting for an explanation. “That’s called starting a relationship, and I just don’t know how that shit works. Besides, I don’t do relationships.”
“You have relationships with all of us,” Xavier responded, head tilted to one side.
I laughed. “That’s you guys. You’re my brothers.”
“Is it really so different?”
I laughed all the harder. “Spoken like someone with less of a clue about women than me. Yes, Xavier, it is exactly that different. You guys are my brothers, my family. I’ve known you my whole life. Plus, you’re dudes. Women are…different. They’re tricky. Complicated.”
Xavier chewed on that for a while as he finished eating. When he was done, he cleared our plates and poured us more coffee, then sat down again, having come to some kind of conclusion.
He eyed me over the rim of his mug. “You’re chicken.”
I choked on my coffee. “Excuse me?”
“I said…you’rechicken.”
I stood up slowly. “You do realize I can, and will, break every bone in your body, right?”
“You might punch me a few times, but you wouldn’t break my bones,” he answered smoothly, ever the logical one.
I sat back down. “Yeah, well, you ever been punched?”
He traced a fingertip around the rim. “Yes. Quite frequently, once upon a time.”
I frowned. “You have? When?”
“High school. I got picked on a lot. I was beat up like once a week, minimum.”
I set my mug down. “You’re shitting me.”
He stared at me, genuinely baffled. “Why would I jest with you about this?”
“I never knew.”
He snorted. “Well, duh, of course you didn’t. You were gone.”
“Yeah, but the others—”
He kept going as if I hadn’t spoken. “By the time I got to high school, you, Bax, and Brock were all gone, the twins had graduated already and were playing gigs, which only left Lucian, and he dropped out to get his GED and work on the boat. And Sebastian? He had his hands full keeping the bar afloat. Dad’s death came as a shock to all of you because you were gone, but I’d seen it coming. He was…sick. He’d been sick for a long time, he just…finally couldn’t take it any longer. He’d been pretty much absent for like…two or three years by the time he died. Like, he wasaround, physically, but he wasn’t…there. So Bast had to step up, work the bar, make sure I got to school, all that. Who was going to do anything about the bullies at school?” Xavier shrugged like it was irrelevant. “The school wasn’t going to stop it. I’ve never really had any friends, and all my brothers were gone or busy, and my father was a mental case.”