smiling about? This financial knot is going to take me weeks to undo. Hope Daddy doesn’t fire you from the firm. Your services are needed at the bar, my friend.”
“No way.” Levi shakes his head at me. “You get back to the courtroom where your ass belongs. I’ll just tell Low that I need to spend more time at the bar.”
“Dude.” I laugh at the thought. “Your wedding is weeks away. There’s no way I’m having it. Do what you need to do and don’t worry. I’m covering your honeymoon, too. Take a couple of weeks. Take a couple of months. I gifted my workload to Chip and Shep. They love it. Believe it or not, people enjoy being busy. Everyone’s happy.”
Levi and Brody exchange a brief glance.
“What?” I take a long swig of my drink—and swear to God, on a hot day, iced coffee tastes just as good as an ice-cold beer.
Levi folds his hands onto the table. That obnoxious grin he gets when he thinks he’s got something over you takes up precious real estate on his face. “You seem happy. Especially now that Lexy is waiting tables for us. Coincidence?”
“Maybe I hate law. You ever think of that? I like the bar.”
Both Levi and Brody light up with a laugh.
Brody wipes a tear from his eye as if it were too much to handle. “Dude—we know you’re loving it. We know you’re loving her in your airspace. But seriously, Lex is one brutal lady. You sure you want to ride that crazy train again?”
“I’m already onboard. Never left.” I didn’t even need a second to think about it because I’ve spent the last six years thinking of Lex. If it came right down to it, I’d swear it was one long continuous stream of consciousness. I’ve thought of her so much she’s become a part of me, encoded in my DNA, ingrained on a cellular level.
“Dude”—Levi leans in hard—“the chick is psychotic.”
“Say it again and I’ll bash your head through the window.” I give a sly smile because we both know it’s true. “Same goes for you.” I kick Brody’s foot from under the table. “She’s”—my voice pitches with emotion—“she’s the love of my life.” I press out a peaceable smile at the two of them, hoping they’ll go easy on my sudden urge to share my affection for Lex.
“Okay.” Levi nods just once as if I put out a war plan and he were grimly going along with it because there were no other alternatives.
“It’s fine by me.” Brody practically gouges his eye out with his palm and the action alone makes him look all of twelve. Brody is the same age as the rest of us, but for some reason I’ve always thought of him as being much younger. I know it’s not fair to say, but I pegged him for having a lack of direction in his life up until we embarked on The Pelican endeavor. In a way, I guess I’ve always envied him in that respect. I hauled ass getting my law degree, passing the bar—making partner at my father’s firm may sound like nepotism, but my father doesn’t adhere to archaic standards of climbing the corporate ladder. I had to prove myself. And it was tough as hell.
“Tell me something”—Brody cocks his head to the side, those narrowed eyes let me know he’s already come to a conclusion about whatever it is he’s about to inquire—“what attracted you to Lex—I mean, other than the obvious. Sure, she’s hot. She’s smoking. Anyone with eyes can see that, but once she opens that mouth—”
Levi cuts him off, “Once she looks at you—”
“Glares at you,” Brody adds. “You realize she’s got a chip on her shoulder the size of the Rock of Gibraltar.”
“The moon,” Levi counters. “She’s about as stable as plutonium. The girl is pissed at life. How’d you manage to see past that? She must have opened up to you, but was she ever—you know, nice?”
My gaze settles somewhere between the two of them, straight through the wall, straight through Hollow Brook, into the nebulous past where I try to decipher this for myself.
“Yes,” I say, lacking the confidence something of this magnitude requires. “She was great. It’s true we had our ups and downs, and unfortunately toward the end it was all downhill—but that sweet spot we shared…” I drift right back into the memories we built, her at my place, in my bed. Those nights where we attacked one another