Rebel Love

  "How was the birthday party?" he asked before I could get away.

  "It was nice."

  "Can't believe Rebecca is already sixteen." He chortled. "You know, you'll laugh when I tell you this, but when you were younger, I always thought you were more suited to Rebecca than to Emily. Don't know why I thought that. I guess Rebecca is just such a free spirit. Anyway, that's just me rambling on like a madman. Go to bed."

  I stood there and smiled down at him. My mom was a fool for giving him up.

  "Night, Dad."

  Chapter 6

  Rebecca

  There were two women in front of me waiting to be interviewed. One couldn't stop checking her phone, and the other gnawed on a wad of gum as big as an egg. It seemed only women had been asked to come back for the in-person interview, which hadn't really been too shocking. Someone had hung up an extremely short mini skirt in the front of the bar with a sign that noted it would be a required part of the uniform. I could only assume that it was there to warn applicants off. If they weren't comfortable in a short skirt, they could just turn around and leave.

  It seemed the painters and decorators were just putting the final touches on the place. I could hear bottles and glasses clanking in the backroom as if the bar was about to be stocked. Apparently, I was the last interview of the day. I wondered if there would even be an opening by the time I got inside the office door. I wondered even more if it was the asshole, himself, behind that door. Maybe Trent had partners or other lackeys to hire the employees. After torturing myself by reading more about the jerk, artfully avoiding any of the articles that would bring back the whole nightmare, I discovered that he had been born into old money, but the last few generations of Vandermeers had engaged in some questionable business and investment practices. Not too surprising. He looked extra sketchy in his picture with a pathetically fake hair piece and big diamond studs in his ears.

  A deep voice called out the name Heather, and the gum chewer scooted into the office on excessively high heels. She had pretty legs to go with the heels, which meant she'd probably be a shoe in for the job. I smiled at my mental pun. I was amazed at how relaxed I felt, considering that I was applying for a job I didn't want just so I could figure out how to ruin the place. Many diabolical plans had passed through my mind, some good, some a little far-fetched. I'd gone so far as to set out food on my kitchen floor at night hoping to draw cockroaches out from the floorboards. If I had a small army of the disgusting critters, I could slowly start releasing them in the bar. With the place just opening, the rumors of cockroaches would make sure it never made it past its first month. Vandermeer would lose everything he'd put into the place. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that cockroaches were clever. They seemed to figure out my plot and had stayed far away from the food bait.

  "Oh, that's it," the woman with the phone obsession grunted. "Not worth it." She got up and stomped out of the bar. Which meant I was next.

  Seconds later, the office door opened, and the gum chewer skipped out with a wide smile. She had apparently spit out the wad. "I just snagged the last spot, honey, so too bad."

  "Darn." I stood up from the chair and turned to follow her out. This wasn't going to stop me though. I'd figure out something else.

  "Hold on there, princess," a voice said from behind.

  I turned around. He was even creepier in person. And worst of all, it was obvious he thought himself quite the man. His sneering smile made my stomach do that strange lurch that happened on a roller coaster. I had to work hard to not grimace when his gaze dropped to my feet and back up.

  "Thought you said I was the last hire," the gum chewer said.

  "See you tomorrow for training, Zoe." His tone let her know she needed to move on. Which she did.

  "You've been waiting all this time. Besides, I'm rethinking one of my hires from this morning."

  "Thanks," I said it far too curtly and had to silently remind myself that I had to pretend not to hate the man. I was going to have to turn off the disgust and turn on the fake charm. It wouldn't be easy, just like it was nothing short of agony standing in the same space with him.

  I forced a pleasant smile as I walked past him into his office. Naturally, he was interviewing the women all by himself in a secluded office. Just like the mini skirt hanging in the front of the bar, warning off interviewees not to bother if they weren't willing to show some skin, his business practices were already completely wrong.

  He must have forgone the shower and just doused his stink with aftershave because his office was a mixture of body odor and spicy cologne.

  There was no place for me to sit but that didn't stop Trent from walking around to the chair behind his desk. He sat back, and again, took the time to look me up and down with his unsavory gaze. "What's your name?"

  "Rebecca." As I constructed a resume for the position, I'd considered changing the name, but I was sure that would raise red flags since it wouldn't match any of my personal data or my driver's license. I was sure he wouldn't recognize me or my name. There just wasn't any way he could connect me because my last name, Novak, was from my dad.

  I dropped the resume on his desk.

  He scanned through it. "You're not working right now?"

  "I'm in between jobs." The one thing I had firmly decided not to do was list my current day job. I sure as heck didn't need Irene finding out that I was serving cocktails at night. I figured the hours would work out just fine. And I wasn't planning on working at the bar long because I was hoping the place would be shut down before Trent could even start making a profit.

  "You've only got a little experience serving drinks." He sat back and lifted his hands behind his head. "Why do you want to work here?"

  "It looks like a hip new place to work, and I need the money."

  His lip curled up. He was pleased with my answer.

  He lifted one hand from behind his head and stirred his finger around in the air. "Turn around so I can check you out from all angles."

  I bit my tongue to keep from letting him know that he was breaking every damn protocol in the book. And then it dawned on me—I wouldn't need to catch cockroaches or mice. This slime bag might just give me everything I needed to take him down. Although the cockroaches would probably be faster and way less hassle. If I could only catch the suckers.

  This was it. I either landed this thing and started my plan, or I walked out in disgust and disappointment.

  I gritted my teeth in another fake smile and swung my hips as I turned around. I even swished my ass back and forth a few times before looking back at him over my shoulder. "This angle all right?"

  His beady eyes were glued to my ass. "Hell yeah. You can start training tomorrow at ten in the morning."

  I turned quickly around. "In the morning? But I thought it would be at night."

  "You've got other plans? Change them."

  "Right. No. I don't have other plans. I'll be here."

  Chapter 7

  Joshua

  The bar was closed on Mondays. As much as I wanted to just flop on the couch all day and suck down cold beers while binge watching shows I'd missed, I'd started to remodel the kitchen weeks ago, which meant I was microwaving dinners in the laundry room. If I didn't finish the remodel soon, my diet of frozen pizza and burritos would kill me.

  The last few years of his life, my dad had really let the house go. My brother, Jeremy, and I inherited the house and a tiny savings account. My dad had worked his ass off all his life, right up until the end when his health made it too hard for him to do anything that took energy. But he had little to show for it. He never drove nice cars or bought man toys or big televisions. He just never made enough for those luxuries. But he kept Jeremy and me sheltered, clothed and fed. And loved. He was better at that than making money. Jeremy was eight years older than me. He was off at college before I even reached puberty. The age difference was too big, and we were never close. He and his wife and four kids lived across the country. He told me I could do whatever I
wanted with the house, including living in it. I told him I'd fix it up and once I sold it, I'd send him his cut. But fixing up an old house took a lot more money and time than I had.

  My dad had shoved a small desk into the corner between the refrigerator and broom closet and called it his home office. He'd used it to write bills and lists. I had put off pulling it out and throwing it away because there was something about the desk that left me with good memories. Dad would sit hunched over the desk in his blue uniform shirt and tell me about some funny thing that happened at work while he wrote out bills. And no fail, every time, he'd have to tear up at least two checks because he would be so busy telling me his story, he'd write the wrong amount. I tried to get him to use online banking, but he stubbornly refused, saying he didn't want the entire internet world to know his bank account information.

  I yanked the desk free and heard something slide out of the back. Once I cleared the desk from its tight corner, I turned back to pick up whatever had fallen. Two faded pictures lay in a pile of debris and dust. Trying to keep with an office theme, Dad had always taped pictures to the wall above the desk. He was such a character.

  I picked up the photos and blew them off. One was a picture of a day at the beach. I hadn't expected the pictures and my breath left me for an instant. I rubbed my thumb over Emily. She was standing on the sand in her lemon yellow bikini, proudly showing off the new dragonfly tattoo on her hip to me and Evan, my friend and band mate. Getting a tattoo had been totally out of her comfort zone, but she and her friends had decided to go for it. She had been thrilled about it once it was done. She had an unusually wide smile spread across her pretty face as she pulled the string of her bikini down with her thumb. In the background, Rebecca was learning how to stand on a surfboard. Gregory, the guy she was dating at the time, was standing behind her with his hands wrapped greedily around her waist. Evan's wife, Rhonda, had been taking pictures all day. The second picture was of Rebecca standing on a surfboard on the sand.

  My phone rang. It had been two weeks since Rebecca's call, and for some stupid reason, I was still expecting to hear back from her. It was Dylan.

  "Yeah."

  "Hey, I signed you up for that bar owners’ conference at the convention center. Supposedly, it's a good place to do networking, and they're offering a class on workplace safety. It's next Friday. So I'll cover here at work."

  "And why am I going? Why didn't you sign your own name to the form?"

  "Cuz I hate those fucking conferences, and I can't sit through some boring lecture on safety."

  My business partner still hadn't recovered from my snide remarks about his eyeing the sixteen-year-old. I had really hit a fucking sore spot. "Fine. Whatever. I don't mind them as long as they serve some decent breakfast food. Is that all you needed? I'm dismantling more of the kitchen."

  "Yep, that's it." He hung up.

  I went to put my phone back in my pocket, then a brilliantly stupid idea popped into my head. I placed Rebecca's picture on the desk and snapped a photo of it. It was slightly blurry, but it was easy enough to see her white smile shining through. I sent the picture with a text. "How's the surfing going?"

  I put the phone back in my pocket, convinced she would ignore the text and photo just like she'd ignored my calls. A text buzzed right back.

  "I've given it up for field hockey."

  My fingers slid over the letters. "Good choice. Besides, that Gregory dude was a jerk."

  "No, only you thought he was a jerk. Because you were a big ole butthead back then."

  "I guess I was." I had been one of those guys able to get along with everyone, but I somehow always managed to find something wrong with any guy Rebecca dated. At the time, I had no idea that I was doing it. Now I understood why.

  "Hey, Rebel, how are you doing? Are you happy?" I couldn't find the courage to ask if there was someone in her life, but I'd left the question pretty open ended. I braced myself for the return text, hoping she wouldn't send a couple picture with some guy holding her in his arms.

  No picture. Just a text. "I'm surviving. How about you?"

  "Surviving."

  "I'm kind of disappointed you ended up starting a business with Dylan."

  The sports bar had been the first successful thing I'd done since graduating high school with a shitty C minus average. "You are? Why?"

  There was a long hesitation before her response. "It's just that you were my only hope for knowing a mega rock star."

  "Yeah, well, maybe I can still get discovered. In the meantime, I've found that food and shelter and clothing are kind of nice to have."

  "I've got to go. I'm at work."

  "K, I'll let you go."

  "Hey, Josh, I never minded that you hated my boyfriends."

  "Sorry for being too overprotective."

  "I never minded that either. XO" I looked at her texts for another minute before putting the phone away.

  Remodeling had made me thirsty. I grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and headed out to the living room with the two pictures. I plopped down on the couch and chugged back the drink as I stared at the picture of Emily showing off her tattoo. She had the whole world wrapped around her finger. She was smart and beautiful and so damn confident.

  My eyes swept around away from the focal point of the picture, the beauty in the yellow bikini. The picture had faded a lot, but I could still clearly see Rebecca out in the water. I was sitting in the foreground in a beach chair. My head was turned away from my picture perfect girlfriend showing off her sexy new tattoo. Even though only the side of my face was showing, it was easy to see what had my attention. I was watching the girl on the surfboard.

  Chapter 8

  Joshua

  Five years earlier

  "Well, that's fucking it. We're short one drummer." Evan dropped his phone on top of the ice chest. "Sasha is having twins."

  "Twins, shit. Double whammy." I kept my gaze locked on the scene in the water as I spoke to him. "Guess Derek won't have time for practice or tours or fucking wiping his ass, for that matter."

  "Yeah, he's finally agreed to work for Sasha's dad at the lumberyard. He's going to need to make better money than we're pulling in with our spotty gigs. Fuck. We were so close. If only that record deal hadn't fallen through."

  I still hadn't pulled my eyes from the water. "Let's not go down that 'if only' road again, Evan. I don't even want to think about it. Life sucks and we plod along." I lifted my can to my mouth and took a sip of soda. It had grown warm from my hand. The aluminum crumpled slightly in my firm grip.

  Rebecca's squeal circled up from the shore and coasted around me like a smooth, silky ribbon. Squeals weren't generally a soothing sound, but somehow, hers always made me smile. But her boyfriend's big, grubby hands holding her hips so tightly they left fingerprints on her suntanned skin wiped the smile away fast. Rebecca gripped his arms to keep from falling off the surfboard as they balanced in the frothy water near shore.

  "Josh, there's a thin line between being overprotective and being obsessive."

  Evan's strange statement helped pull my attention away from the surf lesson. "What are you rambling on about?"

  "I'm not rambling. I'm just letting you know that you haven't finished that soda yet, but you've already crushed the can with your tight grip." He glanced down to the shoreline where Emily and his wife, Rhonda, were playing Frisbee. Then he leaned over on his beach chair to get closer and lower his voice. "Don't get fucking mad, all right? I'm just going to say the shit that needs to be said. You do whatever you want with it."

  I looked at him. "I'm already mad and you haven't even said much."

  He sat back hard enough to tip the front legs of the chair off the sand. "Fine. But I think it's something you need to hear."

  "Yeah? Well knowing how it'll just eat you up if you don't get to shovel out one of your important opinions, lay it on me." I had no real idea which way the conversation was headed.

  "Nah, I've changed my mind. I think you'll fi
gure it out on your own."

  I nodded and returned my focus to the water.

  "See, and there you go again," Evan laughed.

  "Fuck, asshole, spit out what's in your craw."

  "Just going to say it then. We've been fucking sitting here for twenty minutes staring out at the navy blue Pacific."

  "That's it? That's your fucking chunk of wisdom?"

  "No, idiot. We're sitting here. Our two women, who both look so damn fine in their bikinis, especially bouncing around in the sand like two beach bunnies chasing that damn Frisbee, are right there but I haven't seen you look their direction once. And that's because you can't keep your eyes off of Rebecca. And yes, I know she's eighteen now and she's not a little kid anymore and she grew up to be a fucking heartbreaker, but she's Emily's sister. You were always super protective of the kid like she was your sister too, but that's not what this is anymore."

  I kept my face like stone, pretending as if his words were so stupid they weren't even worth reacting too. But I was absorbing every fucking syllable like a sharp needle.

  Evan sat back, apparently satisfied that he'd said what needed to be said. I sure as fuck wished he'd kept his mouth shut. My only response was to reach over and turn up the music on the radio.

  Emily and Rhonda had tired of their game. They hiked back to the beach chairs, both one shade darker with tan.

  "Hey, Sasha's having twins," Evan called to them before they reach us.

  Rhonda shook her head. "Lucky Sasha. Two babies but only one round of morning sickness, stretch marks and swollen ankles." She sat down on the towel in front of Evan's chair and leaned back against his legs. "I hope I get that lucky when I get pregnant."

  "Bite your tongue, woman." Evan picked up the lotion and started rubbing it into her shoulders.