His words hit me a lot harder than I thought they would. I smiled and opened my arms for a bro hug, and Mason accepted, slapping me hard on the back before I turned back around to the other two. They briefly glanced at one another before looking back to me.
“This is what family is for,” Mason said, coming up beside me and leaning over the bar toward the others. “We support each other. You both know if there was something you wanted to do, the other three of us, and Tom out in Cali, would support you. All Tyler is asking is for that same consideration.”
“Well, I know I’m sad to hear you’re going to be going, too, but like Mason, I just want you to be happy,” Matt said.
“Yeah, happiness first. The bar will always be around. You figure out what you want,” Jordan agreed. “Do you have any idea when you’re leaving?”
“No, I don’t really,” I said. “I’ve really just started thinking about it seriously recently. I might be able to do some classes and work part-time here, but one way or the other, when I get out of school I’d want to find a job doing something with the degree.”
“That makes total sense,” Jordan said. “Any idea of what you want to do specifically?”
“I have a few ideas, but nothing concrete,” I said. “I didn’t want to let myself get too involved with even thinking about it until I talked to you guys and made sure you wouldn’t hate me for it.”
“Hate you?” Matt asked. “You’re our big brother. We love you, man. And we all want to see you happy. So if that means we need to find someone else to sling drinks out here, then that’s what we need to do.”
“I appreciate it, guys,” I said. “This means a lot to me.”
“Alright, enough lovey-dovey,” Mason said behind me. “We have a dinner rush coming in soon. But before we get to that, a drink.”
He poured a couple of shots for us, and Ava came over to join us when I waved her down. She elected for a shot of clear soda, but the spirit was there.
“To our brother,” Mason said, holding up his shot in the air until we joined him, “may he find happiness and satisfaction in whatever he does.”
“Salut,” Matt said.
“Salut,” Jordan, Mason, Ava and I all said in unison. We downed the shots, and I took a deep breath before shaking the willies out. I hadn’t seen him pour it and had no idea it was that cinnamon fire stuff.
“Good God, Mason,” I said. “Warn me next time.”
“I don’t know how many times I’ve got left to prank you at the bar,” he said, laughing as he went back into the back. “Have to make use of them!”
I got home around ten, exhausted as the dinner rush was much heavier than expected, but happy to get out before the midnight run. I was also starving and had already pulled up my phone to check the local pizza joints for specials and make sure they still delivered after ten. When I opened the door to the house, though, a smell hit me that made me forget about pizza. No easy feat.
“Becca?” I asked as I got in.
“Hey,” she said excitedly from the kitchen. “I’m almost done. Go wash up and meet me in the dining room.”
“Almost done?” I asked, still confused and still standing in the open doorframe.
“With dinner,” she said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Something deep inside me stirred. I couldn’t remember a time when a woman that wasn’t related to me already or who I was paying at a restaurant had cooked for me. It smelled delicious, too. As I shut the door and hung my jacket, I walked by the kitchen and saw her dancing as she finished cooking what looked like a whole roast chicken, gravy, mashed potatoes, and more. Whatever was stirring inside me was joined by the hunger in my stomach in a loud chorus that was telling me all kinds of things about how I felt at that moment.
I tried to ignore them all and went into the bedroom to change as fast as I could. I was excited, so much so that I felt damn near giddy. She looked so cute in my kitchen dancing and cooking, and for a split second, I saw a future. A future I didn’t dare think about again, and one I never would have imagined. But just seeing it for that fleeting second put me in a mood even better than the one I had when my brothers seemed to accept my choice to go back to school.
I got out of my work clothes, opting for a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, and headed back out into the dining room. The table was already set, and there were glasses with a dark red wine already in place. I sat down at one of them, and she entered a moment later from the kitchen, carrying the bird.