Let Me: An O'Brien Family Novel (The O'Brien Family Book 2) (9 page)

I unbuckle my seatbelt and swivel in my seat. “When the hell was that?”

“Last semester of senior year during finals week.” She follows suit and removes her seatbelt, turning to face me and getting all into the story. “They claimed they were drunk and stressed from the exams. So they break in through a back window. But an alarm goes off and the police come.” She makes the
raw-oo, raw-oo
sound of a siren for effect, making me laugh. “Well, of course, they panic. And panic and dumbasses don’t mix well. His cousin grabs a case of Sam Adams, screaming something like, ‘if I’m getting caught, I’m getting caught taking beer.’”

I hold out a hand. “Back up a minute. He thinks it’s better to get caught with evidence rather than just taking off with the hopes of not getting caught at all? Nice,” I say, laughing harder.

“I know, right? Like you said, total dumbasses.” She bounces in her seat. “So the cousin runs off, carrying a case of high-end beer in hand. Angelo grabs a six-pack of Schlitz and another of Iron City and takes off like the building is on fire.”

By now I’m laughing so hard my sides are killing me. “What an asshole.”

Sol waves an arm out. “And who gets caught?”

“No way. Tell me it wasn’t Angelo.”

She nods. “His father had to drive up to bail him out. From what I heard he smacked him upside the head on their way out of the precinct, humiliated―not because his drunk son broke into a liquor store―but because of the type of beer he stole. Is it a wonder Angelo is so screwed up?”

I wipe my eyes because yeah, I’m laughing that hard. “Okay. I have a good drunk story for you. You know my brother Seamus?”

“The contractor?”

“No. That’s Angus. Seamus is the carpenter. Anyway, since Seamus never went to college, he never experienced what it was like to hit the parties, join a frat, that sort of thing. He was playing around with the idea of going when Curran enrolled and was pretty much shouting to the world how he was having the time of his life. Seamus felt like he was missing out. Curran, being who he is, invites him up during Greek Week or whatever it’s called. Big mistake.”

She covers her mouth. “On Curran’s part or Seamus’s?”

“Oh. Seamus’s for sure. Curran still thinks the incident is funnier than hell. So Seamus goes up, thinking he’ll check out the campus, maybe go to a few parties and have a few laughs, that sort of thing. And at first, it’s all good.”

“Until it’s not?” she offers when I pause to work things through.

“Until it’s way not,” I say, starting to laugh all over again. “So Curran and Seamus start making their way to all these parties with Curran’s frat brothers. One beer leads to another, a few shots, well, you get what I mean. Curran somehow loses Seamus. Can’t find him. Doesn’t know where he is. He and a few of his frat brothers take off looking for him. His frat brothers locate him first, lying on the front lawn of some sorority house trying to find his girlfriend at the time. FYI, she didn’t even go to the school.”

“Oh, God,” she says.

“It gets better,” I tell her, because it does. “The sorority girls know Curran’s frat brothers and insist they take him home to his girlfriend because ‘the poor guy really misses her’ and ‘if my boyfriend wanted to see me, I’d want someone to bring him home’. So the frat boys do.”

“That was nice of them.”

I huff. “No, they just wanted to get some. Anyway, they shove Seamus’s drunk ass into the car and drive all the way back to Philly. They more or less toss him on her front yard so they can get back to the hot sorority sisters, never suspecting Seamus would try to make out with his girlfriend’s mother, thinking it was her.”

Sol’s mouth pops open. “Are you serious?”

I laugh again. “Totally. Seamus stumbles toward his girlfriend’s front door completely wrecked out of his mind, falling over when Mom opens it. She screams for her daughter. They hook his arms around their shoulders and are dragging him inside, all worried about him, when Seamus pulls the mom to him and he slips her the tongue.”

Sol cracks up. “Oh, my God. Did she break up with him?”

I nod. “Yeah. But he and the mom are still going strong.”

Her eyes whip open before she realizes I’m messing with her and starts laughing again. “That is unbelievable!”

“I know.”

“So what happened?”

“The mom drops him like a pile of wet laundry and the girlfriend kicks him in the face. If that’s not bad enough, they call our mother. Seamus was like twenty-one at the time. Ma shows up and drags him out of their house by the hair, screaming at him that he’s going to hell.”

Sol says something like, “
Madre de Díos
,” before dropping her hand from her face and shaking her head. “I can honestly say, that’s never happened to me.”

“What? Making out with someone’s mother?”

“That, too,” she says, nodding. “What I mean is, getting so wasted I’m sprawled out on some lawn or breaking into buildings to steal beer.”

I try to sound casual―like I’m not some asshole who’s done stupid shit when wasted―even though I have. “You’ve never been drunk?”

“I have, but I have a sort of a hero complex. When my girlfriends and I went to parties, I’d start to drink, start feeling good, but then I’d see them getting too drunk, guys eyeing them like this is going to help them get laid, or encouraging them to drink more so they can get in their pants.” She shudders. “I couldn’t allow them to get hurt, you know? Girls, young women, they’re such easy targets when they start partying, experimenting with sex, drugs, things they shouldn’t and aren’t ready for.” She smiles thoughtfully. “I couldn’t let anything happen to my besties. I had to keep them safe.”

“So you’d sober up before anything could happen to you or to them.”

She tilts her chin, her stare growing distant as if remembering. “I tried. Ever since I was little, I’ve tried to keep people from getting hurt.”

Her statement gives me one hell of a pause. And even though it sounds stupid, not to mention in-fucking-sane, for a brief second I wonder if I had a friend like Sol, back then when it mattered, back then when I needed someone to tell me I shouldn’t follow that man into that house, if I could have been saved.

My anger, along with that deep-rooted resentment stirs. It doesn’t feel right. Not around Sol―not when we were laughing as hard as we were seconds ago. Fuck. For someone who prides himself on being able to take on anyone―to protect himself and those he loves, why would I think what I’m thinking now?

Because you’re all sorts of screwed up
, I remind myself.
Even with this pretty girl sitting beside you
. In truth, what if Sol was with me that day? What could she have done? She would have been a little kid―just like me. Someone he could have hurt, too. Someone he could have raped―

“Hey,” she says, leaning in. Her fingers skim along my temple, where my hair is cut so short it lays flat. “Where’d you go?”

“Nowhere,” I answer, lying through my teeth.

She tilts her head. “Okay . . . for a minute there, it looked like you checked out.”

I can’t argue, seeing how I did. But lying to her feels wrong. So I tell her as much as I can. “What you said made me think. About things that can go wrong when you get wasted.”

“Have you done things you regret when you were wasted?” The corners of her mouth lift a little when I don’t answer. “I’m not judging you, Finn. I’m only asking. But you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“All the damn time,” I say before she finishes speaking. I could’ve lied. God knows I do it all the time, pretending everything is fine. But I don’t like lying to Sol. Hell, I don’t like lying to anyone. But sometimes it’s like I have to, or need to―to keep people off my back or to at least help them sleep at night.

“Do you think you should stop? Drinking I mean,” she adds.

“I don’t know. I like beer. I like the feel of that cold bottle in my hands when I’m talking to people. It helps me relax.”

“The alcohol, the buzz, or the way that bottle feels?” she questions.

I slip my arm around her shoulders and think things through. She surprises me by leaning her head against my chest as she waits for me to answer. She feels good against me. Comfortable. Like this is something we’ve done a hundred times.

“I think it’s all of it,” I admit. “The bottle itself is cold, soothing. It also gives me something to do with my hands.”

“You need to do something with your hands?” she asks. She laughs when I flash her a sly grin. “It wasn’t an offer,” she says, lightly stroking my pecs.

“I’m not one to keep still,” I admit, chuckling. “Even when I’m lying in bed, I’m texting or something. But yeah, I like the buzz, and the booze itself. I’m okay sometimes. But when I’m not, I’m really not.”

“Have you talked about it with Mason?”

“Not really,” I confess. Unless you count him recommending I don’t drink.

“Why?” she asks.

“It’s easier to talk to you about it.”

Her cheek falls against my shoulder. “But I’m incapable of helping you, Finn. I want to, but I’m not qualified yet.”

“You may not have the degree, or have taken whatever test you need to take, that doesn’t mean you’re not helping.”

She lifts her head. “I’m helping you?” she asks, sounding shocked and maybe a little hopeful.

“Yeah,” I answer, my gut twisting a little when I realize exactly how much.

“Good,” she says.

By the way she’s looking at me, I know she wants me to kiss her again. And the way her heart is pounding against mine, I know it’s going to be one damn fine kiss. Well, at least it would have been if it weren’t for the scowling face peering at us from the passenger side window. “Sol . . . Is that your dad?”

She turns, jumping when she sees him. “Yes, that’s him,” she says, her cute face scrunching. “Sorry, I better go before he shoots you between the eyes.”

By the way his glare cuts my way, I don’t think she’s kidding.

She slips out of my truck, shutting the door behind her. I’m supposed to speed away now, seeing how that’s what any reasonable, non-wanting-to-die kind of guy does when an angry Latino father catches him trying to make-out with his daughter. So what do I do? Jump out of the truck, of course, and jog around to the other side.

I hop onto the sidewalk as Sol and her
papasito
start speaking rapidly in Spanish. “Hey,” I say, causing them both to freeze.

Sol shoots me an apprehensive glance before sighing and turning to face me. Her father faces me, too, albeit in that same looming “What are you doing with my daughter” way he’s supposed to.

“Finn,” Sol says, pinching the bridge of her nose. “This is my father, Lino Marieles. Papi, this is Finn. Sofia’s brother in law.”

I hold out my hand. “
Hola, Señor Marieles. Como le va la noche
?”

Having grown up with Sofia and her family across the street from us, I picked up on enough Spanish to ace it in school and usually charm. Yeah . . . my “Hi, Mr. Marieles. How’s your night going?” does jack to impress Sol’s father.

He scowls at my hand as Sol mutters in Spanish, “Papi, behave.”

Not only does he not behave, he crosses his thick arms and resumes his glare. I keep my grin. “He’s going to hunt me down and chop me into hamburger with his machete, isn’t he?” I ask Sol.

“And make it look like an accident,” Lino answers for me.

It’s then I lose my smile. Funny thing, Sol just laughs. She strolls up to me, clasping my elbow as she stands on her toes to give me a kiss. “Goodnight, Finn,” she says.

It’s just an innocent kiss, likely no big deal around most other dads with grown daughters. But this is a very traditional Latino father so I pretty much think I’m about to die.

“Let’s go, Papi,” she says, hooking his arm with hers when he takes a step toward me.

He surprises me by following, and not dicing me to chunks, muttering something in Spanish about making sure “they never find the body”.

Her father just threatened me. I should just get in my truck and haul ass. But I can’t. I watch her cross the street, grinning when she tosses me one last smile before slipping inside her house. It’s that smile I hang onto. That, and her last kiss.

CHAPTER 10

Sol

I shut the door behind me. Finn can’t see me, not anymore. But that doesn’t stop my smile. I shrug out of my jacket, a thick one I could probably use to trek through the South Pole. It’s not flattering, and it’s definitely not cute. But Finn didn’t seem to mind it. In fact, he thinks I’m pretty.

“Pretty.” It’s a sweet little word I haven’t heard in a long time, and probably haven’t felt in even longer. But I did tonight because
Finn
makes me feel it. The way he looks at me is something I could really get used to. So is the way he holds me.

“Your mother’s upstairs,” my father says, instantly erasing my smile.

“She’s here?” I ask, my hands slipping away from my jacket.

“She was discharged a few hours ago.”

“Oh,” I respond, well aware of the disappointment lowering my tone. This is supposed to be good news. But I don’t take it that way, worried she was discharged prematurely.

“How is she?” I ask.

“Stable,” he answers.

He means so drugged she can’t hurt us. So numb, there’s nothing left of her. God, I
hate
that word.

“Do you think it’s a good idea? To get involved with a boy like that?” he asks.

I turn away from the small closet and face my father. He’s leaning against the staircase wearing his uniform of choice: a white collared dress shirt and tan slacks. Sometimes his slacks are brown, olive, or even black. But the shirt is always white, ironed to precision and perfection.

As stupid as it sounds, it’s seeing him in that shirt that causes the happiness Finn gave me to fade even further. My father is the foreman at the local canning factory. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a big deal to us. As an immigrant from Cuba, his first job at the factory was as a canner, barely making enough to give us a home, and food on the table. But he worked hard, stayed extra, and proved his worth until he was promoted to line supervisor, and then ultimately to his position now.