“Hey, Mikey, speaking of the unimaginative,” Dean said. “I was at the butcher’s this morning.”
Dad snickered.
“Don’t,” I warned him. To Lyssa, I explained, “Charlie, our local butcher, flirts with me outrageously. The number of sausage puns I get when I go in there is unreal.”
“I love Charlie,” Dad said. “I still think you two would be a good couple.”
No we wouldn’t. We were both hot heads and outrageous flirts. Two left shoes.
“Carry on with your story, Dean,” I said.
“Not much of a story,” he replied.
Of course it wasn’t.
“But I ran into Henry Wilson. His wife wanted to hire me to redo their house.”
My jaw dropped. “Did you tell him to get wrecked?”
“No—”
I growled, but Dean held up a palm. “I told him I was booked. Don’t worry mate, I know how you feel about Henry.”
“Who’s Henry?” Lyssa looked from me to Dean.
I muttered something about Satan’s rim and Henry’s tongue.
Dad answered more politely. “Henry was the guidance counselor at Tararua High School when Mikey and Caroline were there. Let’s just say, he wasn’t very good at his job.”
I scowled into my empty bottle. “Wilson blamed everything on the fact we didn’t have a mum. Anytime I got in trouble, he’d click his tongue and look smug, like a bookie who’d called a race.”
“Tell her what happened when he called Caroline a motherless hussy,” Jason prompted, sliding another round across the bar.
I growled, and Jason immediately put up his hands. “Sorry, sorry. I shouldn’t have repeated it. I was trying to help. Tell us.”
“I hit the guy and got set down for three days.”
My dad heaved a sigh, like what are you going to do, but I knew for a fact he’d never felt particularly bad for Mr. Wilson.
“Henry Wilson is a prick,” Jason said. “Everyone knows that.”
I saluted the bartender with my beer. “You got it. That noxious fart was determined to write me off as a troubled boy with mommy issues and anger problems. The truth is, I just don’t let shitty behavior go. Not toward me, or to my sister, or my cousins.”
“Or the neighbors,” Dad added.
“Or random girls at the pub,” was Dean’s contribution.
“Strangers on the street,” added Jason.
“If Wilson had half a fucking brain, he would have realized Hollidays are all like that. You”—I pointed at Dad—“me, Caroline, Tessa, and Han.” Dean nodded. “All of us are scrappy little shits with an overdeveloped sense of justice.”
Especially me. I was a hot-head with impulse control issues. Caroline said this was my Big Aries Energy; and it was why I didn’t want her to know it took less than a week for me to get under her friend’s skirt.
So much for NEW MIKE.
“You most of all though, Mike,” Jase chipped in. “You’re pure of heart”—I was about to thank him for the compliment when he added—“and dumb of ass.”
And wasn’t that the truth. I had no willpower, no restraint, and now maybe no future. I’d end up working at Dad’s café for the rest of my life, bouncing different party princesses on my dick, always looking for more. For something I didn’t deserve.
