“I dunno,” I admit, letting out a sigh. “I’m just fucking over it, ya know? Sick of the one and dones, over the drama queens who don’t even know me but think they want more. I want something, but I don’t know what.”
“Mate, when you meet that person, your person. . . when that happens, you’ll know, believe me. That first time you look at her, something will just click, and it’ll be like, ‘now that’s what I’m talking about,’ and that’s when you’ll be fucked,” Zac says.
Cooper nudges me. “It’s the best, the worst, and the most terrifying thing you’ll ever experience next to becoming a father.” I watch as he takes a chug from his beer bottle before turning to me and saying, “It sucks you didn’t have that with Lena, there’s nothing better than creating a new life with that person, your person.”
“I don’t think it’ll ever happen for me. My head and my heart have been too fucked up by my past.”
“No, they haven’t. You just think that because you still haven’t met the one, when you do, nothing will stop ya. You won’t let anything get in the way,” Zac adds.
“You’ll have no say in the fucking matter, dude. It’ll be totally out of your control,” Coop adds with a chuckle.
My gut clenches, terrified that I might never get to experience all of that, terrified that I will.
“Right, enough of the brotherly advice. Your round, dude, I’ll have bourbon please, this beer is making me piss like a racehorse.” Cooper places his empty bottle on the bar before disappearing in the direction of the toilets.
Pulling my wallet from my back pocket, I remove my card. Resting my elbow on the bar top, my bank card between my fingers, I attempt to make eye contact with one of the staff.
“You sure that’s all that’s wrong?” Zac asks from beside me.
“I’m sure,” I say without looking at him.
“It’s not because of Lena and the new baby?”
“Absolutely, most definitely not. I’m glad she’s finally found what makes her happy. Maybe she’ll stop being such a bitch now.”
“I doubt that.” Zac laughs from beside me, just as the barmaid approaches.
I add a shot for each of us to the order, the barmaid pouring them at the same time Cooper arrives back.
“Jo Myer just walked in. My balls are never sure if they wanna explode or shrivel up and disappear when that woman’s around. If I weren’t a married man, I would so go there. If you ever tell Jess I said that, I’ll drown you in the fucking bay.”
Zac and I laugh while shaking our heads. Comments like that usually come from me and him, not Coop. I totally get it though. Jo is gorgeous but fucking fierce. She owns the accountancy firm that looks after our tax affairs. She’s smoking hot, but sadly for both of us, she’s never fallen for my charms. Reaffirming she didn’t mix business with pleasure, every single time I’d asked her out for a drink.
“Who’s she with?” Zac enquires.
“No clue, a bunch of women equally as hot as she is.” Coop replies. At around five-ten in her heels, Jo is pretty tall for a woman, and with her long, honey-blonde hair, when I look over Zac’s shoulder, it isn’t hard to spot her standing at the other end of the bar.
She’s holding the hands of a little redhead, leaning in, frowning, and talking animatedly. The redhead has her back to me, but because of her lack of height, I can’t get a clear view.
The two women standing at the bar in front of them turn around and say something that makes them all laugh. They knock back shots and order another round before making their way over to a table at the side of the dance floor.
“Gabe?”
“What?” I turn back to see my brothers both staring at me, along with Jack Cole, a carpenter who’s done some great work for our company, and who we’ve attempted to talk into taking a full-time position with us, but he’s decided to start developing on his own. I give Jack a chin lift and get a nod in return before he carries on his conversation with Cooper.
“What the fuck dude, are you on something tonight?” Zac asks.
“Get fucked,” I snap back at my brother.
“Jack’s just saying Frank Carroll owes him seven grand,” Cooper turns our way and states.
“Does he now?” asks Zac. “You wanna come with us tomorrow morning and pay him a visit? He has a holiday home further down the peninsula, and we’ve been given the tip he’ll be there this weekend.”
“I’m in. What time you going?”
“Early,” I reply. “We’ll catch him in his jocks, make him feel vulnerable. I’ve had enough of his excuses. He either comes up with the cash tomorrow, or we take his fucking car.”
“Is his car worth what he owes?” Jack asks.
“He drives a Maserati, so yeah, I’d say so,” Cooper states.
“And if it isn’t, at the very least it’ll inconvenience the cunt,” Zac adds.
Frank Carroll is a client we’d built a shopping complex for at the beginning of the year. He’d added a few extras to the build that weren’t in the original drawings. They’d added an extra thirty-thousand dollars to the project, which we were still waiting to be paid for.
“What work did you do for him?” I ask Jack.
“I built a custom kitchen at a day care centre in Brighton for him last year.”
“See, that’s why you should only work for us. We always pay our trades,” Coop tells him with a wink.
“Yeah, rookie mistake. I’d only been living over this side of the city a short while; I hadn’t heard about his reputation.”
“Well, we were born and raised here, knew all about his reputation, but because we’ve done work for him before, and he’s always paid, we mistakenly thought we could trust him. Never again,” Zac states.
“Our dad didn’t work his arse off to turn his small building firm into the successful development company it is by doing things the conventional way, and that’s not the way we operate either. We’ll knock on his door, help him find his ATM card, escort him to a bank, and instruct him how much he needs to withdraw to cover his debt. It’s either that or we take the fuckers car. You still in?” Zac asks.
Jack shrugs and nods, and while my brothers arrange a time to pick him up in the morning, I find my eyes searching out Jo and her little redheaded mate.
I’ve no clue what’s got me so intrigued. All I’ve seen is her long auburn hair, I’ve still not been able to catch a look at her face, but as the band starts up with ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go,’ the redhead pulls off her jacket and starts singing into an empty beer bottle.
I have this strange sensation in my chest and wonder if the Parma I scoffed down earlier has somehow lodged there, giving me indigestion. While rubbing at it with my knuckles, I tilt my head from one side to the other in my attempt at getting a clear look at her through the crowd.
A brunette hooks her arms over the redhead’s shoulder, but they both still have their backs to me. Some random dude moves from the dance floor and squeezes in between them, and that’s when the three of them turn and face me.
Knocking back the last of my drink, I watch her as she moves the bottle in front of the dude’s mouth, and he sings into it.