She raises her brows to say she would.
Cindy? Sandra? Cersei? I wish she was wearing a nametag.
“Stella?” I offer, wincing because I know it’s wrong.
“Stella is the name of the other waitress you fucked over here,” she seethes. The tray wiggles. I shut my eyes. “It’s Magdalene.”
You think I would have remembered that. “Like the biblical hooker?”
Her eyes narrow. The tray tilts. The pint glasses slant toward me.
Crash!
Beer goes everywhere, over my head, over my shoulders, my lap, my legs.
I’m legit sitting in a beer shower.
“Oh my god, I am so sorry,” she cries out in a string of lies.
She pretends to fuss over me while I sit there, soaked from head to toe, the beer pints rolling on the table. She’s lucky none of them broke and I’m lucky one didn’t knock me on the head. The last thing I need right now is a concussion, though with everyone on the patio, plus onlookers, staring at me, losing consciousness would be preferable.
“Oh dear, I’m so clumsy,” she adds, bringing her washcloth to my crotch and patting it there —hard. It’s like she’s playing Whack-A-Mole with my dick.
“Jesus,” I hiss, trying to protect my balls. “Do you want me to report you for manhandling the customer?”
“I’ll get Stella, the manager, to clean this up,” she says smartly before turning and storming into the pub.
Stella too? Fuck me. I get up, absolutely dripping pale ale and porter, and yell after her, “Luckily beer is good for my hair too!”
I throw a few twenties on the table and get out of there before something worse happens.
“Dude!” Heath yells at me, laughing, as I pass by him and the blondes. “It’s Karma, dude.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I growl at him as the blondes giggle and quickly head home to shower.
***
After the bar antics, I play it safe for the rest of the weekend. Last I texted Amanda she was still down for our meeting on Sunday night, so Sunday morning when my dad says he needs someone to watch Kevin while he and Angelica go to a friend’s for lunch, I volunteer.
When I pull up to the house, I’m not surprised to see Kevin sitting glumly on the front stoop, plastic sword in hand that he’s whacking against the steps. With his glasses and cape sprawled around him, he looks like a nerdy and bored warrior waiting between battles.
I grew up in a small house in the woods on the Saanich Peninsula. It was up on a small crest, didn’t get a lot of sun, though you could kind of see the ocean through the giant cedars if you squinted hard enough. It was an upscale neighborhood though, with lots of whitewashed mansions and groomed acreages, many waterfront with their own docks. Our house was this tiny little ugly dot, like a tick amongst everything fresh and healthy, but even though my mother was glad to get out of there when she took me to England, I was heartbroken. I didn’t want to leave my dad and I loved that small, dark place with the mossy roof and the rain collection barrel where I’d watch bugs drown.
The minute my dad met Angelica though, he sold the house. Now they live in one of those sprawling houses my mother had envied and my dad is living the charmed life.
But I also know that not everything is as it seems. With Crawford’s Books losing money, they’re a single income family. They may have this giant house with the brick driveway and fruit trees in the garden, but Angelica has no choice but to work around the clock to keep it.
“Hey bud,” I tell Kevin as I lock the car and stroll over. “Where are the rents?”
He shrugs lazily. He doesn’t look at me. “I don’t know. Getting ready.”
“Feeling pissed off they didn’t invite you?”
“No,” he grumbles, then stabs the sword between bricks. “I hate the Chaunceys.”
“That’s a strong word,” I tell him, sitting beside him. I practically have to shove him over to make room.
“Yeah well they’re a bunch of turdburgulars,” he says.
I can’t help but smile. It reminds me of the insults Amanda lets loose every now and then.
“Turdburgulars are the worst,” I tell him.
I totally get it though. In the time I’ve been here, I’ve met the Chaunceys on a few occasions and they’re straight out of the Lord and Lady Douchebag sketch from SNL. The funny thing is, I lived in England all my life and I know just the kind of people they’re trying to be. Sometimes when I look at Amanda I wonder if she was brought up by people like this, ones who think they own the land because they were part of the British stock who arrived here at the turn of the century. What they need to be told is that Canadian history is so short and minute compared to the centuries we have going on overseas. If you have an important bloodline in England it’s because you can trace your family back to the bloody Dark Ages and beyond. Here it’s if someone’s lived in the same house for a few decades.
“Ah, you’re here,” my dad says as he and Angelica open the door, stepping out behind us. “Thought I would have heard your car from a mile away.”
“I still don’t know what you were thinking letting him buy that thing from Uncle Mike,” Angelica says derisively, flicking her long dark ponytail over her shoulder. Angelica looks like a lesser version of Kate Beckinsdale and she’s still out of his league. Come to think of it, so was my mom. There must be something to the Crawford charm.
I let her comment about the car slide. So does my dad. His face goes red briefly but he keeps his mouth shut. “We’ll see you in a few hours,” he says tersely and the two of them slip past us, heading for their Lexus. I wonder if my dad knows how silly it is to be driving a car like that while on the verge of bankruptcy. With how crabby he is lately, I’m assuming he does.