my napkins on nothing?” Joaquin picked up one of the drawings. “These are expensive, you know?”
Max’s internal reaction to anyone calling anything on the subject of Letty a waste was immediate and violent, but he tamped it down ruthlessly. Everything about him that reminded him of his father had to be subject to the same treatment. Letty was dangerous because she made him feel something. And feelings could go out of control so quickly that he needed to avoid them.
“I was bored.” He unrolled the cutlery next to the plate, covered his lap with the napkin and forked some of the food, relishing his brother’s wince as he fucked up the hoity-toity presentation. “You knew I was going to eat it, yet you still made it pretty.”
“You know that fucking assholes are going to use your sculptures just to show off their money and get laid, yet you still make them pretty.” The bartender brought Joaquin a beer, and he nodded at her. It was kind of like getting a smile from anyone else.
In addition to both being tall, beefy guys, he and Joaquin shared a reputation for being—intense—around Miami. Their sister had laughed her ass off last Christmas telling them about how all the dancers with her company—both male and female—had been trying to fuck one of them. It had amused her to no end that her “surly, asshole brothers” had pulled one over on the entire dance community—they’d all thought that Max and Joaquin were trying to be mysterious, when the reality was that they were damaged.
Because they shared that, the guilt that Max often felt around his brother wasn’t quite as acute as it might have been. Mixed in with his regrets about allowing his brother to take the majority of their father’s abuse was a comfort in the things he didn’t have to say around him.
One night, when they’d shared a whole lot more than one beer, Max had confessed that he felt like he couldn’t get close to having a real relationship with anyone because he was afraid that he would deride them—or worse, totally lose control and hit them. Joaquin hadn’t recoiled in disgust the way anyone else would have. He nodded and told him that he sometimes felt the same way, that he felt like he was as worthless as their father had said he was.
But now that Laura was happily married to a guy who looked at her like their uncle had always looked at their aunt, he knew they were both having doubts about the once-solid fact that they were both unlovable.
“Her name is Letty.”
“How’d you meet her?”
“Lola sent her for me.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah, she hired an assistant for me.” Max took another beer from the bartender, who didn’t try to flirt this time. “All on the pretext of getting my shit organized.”
“Not a bad thing.”
“Yeah, but she’s—”
“Hot?” Joaquin offered one of his rare smirks, more a shift in energy than a facial expression with him. “You could just sleep with her and call it a day.”
“Use Lola as a pimp?”
“She tricked Laura into marrying Charlie. I’d say fucking the girl she’s trying to hitch you with is fair game.”
“Not like I haven’t thought of that.” Max struggled to put his reluctance into words. Sure, his brother knew why he didn’t want to get into a relationship with anyone. But would he understand that doing all the depraved things he wanted to do with Letty would make him want more. She drew him in, and he could so easily be consumed by her.
“You want to do more than fuck her.”
When he’d walked in the door, he’d just thought he was hungry, but now he knew why he’d come here. He’d needed to be understood.
“Yeah.”
“You know, you can have that.”
“Have what?” Max recoiled from his brother’s assertion. He couldn’t possibly be saying that he should have a relationship with Letty. “Marriage? A house in Coral Gables where no one talks about how Mommy takes pills and Daddy yells?”
Joaquin shook his head. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”
Max didn’t know how he could make it any other way. “You know I have his temper.”
His brother leveled him with a hard look that reminded him why they were there having this conversation. “Yes, but you know that you have a temper. Our father has never been that self-aware.”
“So, you’re just going to run out and get into something with someone?” Said temper flared in Max’s belly. He needed Joaquin to back him on his life mission of staying alone. If his older brother—the only person who got him—wasn’t going to back him up on avoiding Lola’s machinations, he was toast. “She got to you, didn’t she?”
“Who?” Another smirk. Something was definitely up.
“Lola.”
Joaquin shrugged. “No. I just think—” His brother struggled for words. “You’ve never come in here talking about a girl before. This is new, and I don’t think there’s any harm in giving in to your impulses.”
“You know what happens when men in this family give into their impulses.”
“Even our grandfather?”
“He cheated on Lola.” Their grandmother had stayed in Cuba when the rest of the family had moved to Miami. She’d preferred repressive communism to staying with a cheater. Now, she was trying to make up for lost time.
And she seemed set on doing it by meddling in her grandchildren’s love lives.
“Thirty-five years ago.” Joaquin took a pull of beer. “Look at them now.”
Grandpa Rogelio and Lola were—for lack of a better term for septuagenarian rabbit sex—dating.
“I try to avoid it, especially when they get handsy.” That elicited a bark of laughter from his brother that had Max wanting to take his temperature.
“Seriously, what’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.” It was about time that his brother realized that there was nothing wrong with him. Max had always looked up to him. It didn’t matter that he was gay, that he was a disagreeable asshole most of the time, or that he was shit at talking to most people. They were brothers, and they needed to stick together.
“That’s right.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you either.” A step too far probably, but his brother couldn’t see inside of his head.
“Letty might not agree.”
“You’re fucked up over this girl.”
“You say that like it’s a good thing.”
“If you give it a chance, it might be.”
“I don’t want to risk it with her.” Max shook his head. “I don’t want to risk—her.”
“I get that, but if you never try. If she sees you wanting her and you never try, isn’t that risking her?”
“How’d you get so smart about women?”
“I listen to them without thinking about them naked.”
“Good point.” Max had a lot to think about, and it would help if he could think about them without picturing all of Letty’s generous curves laid out for him to feast on.
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Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».