Page 114 of Necessary Time

I ignored Hendrix while our drinks were being made, and even after we found a table, I eyed him reluctantly over the brim of my mug.

“What did you want to talk about?” I asked.

“A few things,” he said, pulling loose the knot on his own tie.

“Colin.”

“One of them,” he agreed.

“I honestly don’t care what you think about it, Henny.” There was no point in even entertaining the conversation because there wasn’t a single thing he could say that would change the way I felt about Colin or my opinion of him. In fact, anything Hendrix had to say would only change my opinion ofhim, and I loved my brother. I really did, so I didn’t want him to shove a wedge between us anymore than he already had.

“We can come back to Colin,” he said, lips pursed. “We can start with David.”

“Not much better,” I grumbled. “I really don’t want to talk about what happened with him.”

“I wasn’t going to ask you to.”

My head snapped up. “What?”

Henny shook his head, lips still down-turned in a frown so deep it looked like it was going to be stuck on his face forever. I wondered if that was what Mom had meant all the times she warned that our faces would stick that way if she didn’t like our expression.

“I wanted to apologize,” Hendrix said, each syllable slow and measured, like he’d rehearsed it. My mind gave me a hilarious visual of him and Miles at the table, Hendrix reading through a script of what he wanted to say and Miles correcting him for going out of bounds with a smack of a ruler or something equally outlandish and stern.

“Why?”

“I shouldn’t have brought him out here without talking to you about it. I thought…I thought it would be a nice surprise for your birthday. The two of you have always been so close.” The frown abated long enough for Hendrix to take a drink of his coffee. “But I wasn’t paying attention, or I wasn’t asking you the right questions. I don’t know. I missed something.”

“I could have just told you,” I offered, because listening to Hendrix stumble through an apology was painful.

“And maybe you would have if I’d been a safe place for that,” he countered with a shrug. “But I…I’ve been trying to be a parent and…”

“Just a boring uncle.”

His frown twitched into a smirk before settling into a tight line. “I was so worried talking to you about 401k’s and college grades and…”

“Grayson actually is the one who told me about 401k’s,” I said. “Or pensions rather.”

Hendrix exhaled loudly. “The point is, I should have been more of a brother to you than I ever have been.”

“It’s hard, Henny.” I had to cut him some slack. He looked like his face was going to explode. “It’s not like we really grew up together. You’re a lot older than I am.”

“That’s a great segue into Colin.”

Now it was my turn to exhale. As my breath left me, every muscle in my body tightened, ready for a fight. I was still a little on edge from Rob’s bizarre line of questioning and the assumption that Grayson and I were together. I didn’t want to have to justify my actions to my brother next.

“Henny—” I started, but he cut me off.

“I don’t care.” He raised a hand to stop me. “I mean Icare, but I’m not going to make a big deal of it.”

“You…you’re not?”

“I like Colin,” he said, each word again carefully chosen. “He’s smart and he has a good work ethic.”

I groaned, dropping my head into my hands. There was literally no escaping my boring brother/uncle when he decided to dig into the role.

“And…I hear that he treats you well. That he makes you happy.”

“You hear.”