Quinn peeked out from under his squinted eyes and he groaned when he saw me. But instead of fighting me, like he used to do in high school, he instead, immediately swung his legs over the side of his bed. Running a hand through his long hair, he sat there, certainly not in any hurry to actually get out of bed.
“Come on, Shells,” he said, not turning to the girl in his bed. “I have to get to work.”
His voice sounded more detached than usual; distant and there was a tension in the air I hadn't noticed before. Groaning, Shelly got up, and quickly threw on her shoes. I looked at Quinn with a question in my eyes, but he merely shrugged. The silence in the room was as awkward as it was painful to witness.
“I'm going to be outside,” I said, excusing myself from an obviously awkward situation.
Quinn and Shelly had been together on and off since high school. Everyone always assumed they were soul mates, but living under the same roof as my brother, I knew the pain Shelly brought to him. I knew the way she turned his heart and mind upside down and inside out. But he kept going back, like a loyal lap dog to its owner. Every single time. Whenever Shelly called, Quinn was right there, wagging his tail, begging for a little love and
attention.
With a sigh and a shake of my head, I left them to work out their latest issues in peace.
Walking out front, I moved my pickup truck to the garage where we stored everything for the business that wasn't in the restaurant itself. As I opened the garage door, Shelly slammed the front door behind her, and walked down the steps, huffing and puffing her way to her car, parked on the street in front of the house.
“Mornin'” I said to her as she passed.
She didn't say a word to me. Typical. But, what wasn't typical was how she slammed the door of her car and sped off, like a bat out of hell. Or the red, puffy eyes she'd had.
Quinn peeked out the front door, a nervous look on his face.
“Don't worry,” I said, glancing into the garage as I took inventory of everything we'd have to move. “She's gone.”
Dressed in jeans and a Notre Dame t-shirt, my middle brother was by far, the largest of the three of us. Not that any of us were small. We came from strong, Irish stock as my mama used to say. But Quinn took his workouts very seriously and was bulkier than either Bennett or me.
When he stepped outside and joined me at the garage, Quinn didn't say anything about Shelly's grand exit, so I took it upon myself to play counselor.
“So what was that all about?” I asked.
“With Shelly?” he asked.
“No, with the other girl who stormed out of here,” I teased.
Quinn helped me lift one of our larger grills into the back of the truck, not answering my question. I wasn't going to grill the guy – no pun intended – but I could tell that whatever had gone down between them was bothering him. He wouldn't make eye contact, at all.
“I dunno, man,” he said with a sigh. “She's been offered a job in New York City.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You're not –”
“No,” he scoffed, shaking his head. “No fucking way I'd move to New York. Besides, she doesn't want me to anyway.”
“Good,” I said. “Because she's not worth it.”
Quinn flinched like I'd slapped him in the face when I said it, and I could see that what I'd said bothered him. But I wasn't one to coddle my brother. Sugarcoating things wasn't going to help him, he needed to hear the truth.
“Seriously,” I said, loading a few smaller items into the truck bed. “She's not. She twists you all up and makes you feel like shit half the time, man.”
“I know,” he sighed.
“Man, you can do so much better than her,” I said, leaning against the truck. “She's done nothing but play you since the beginning. And you just keep going back for more and more abuse. Do you even love her?”
Quinn shrugged. “I don't know. Which I guess should tell me a lot. I mean hell, if I loved her, I'd know it, right?”
“Yeah, I think you would.”
It was a relief to know Quinn wasn't in love with Shelly and wasn't planning on moving away to New York City on a whim. We might have our differences, but the three of us owned a business together now, and we needed him.
“Come on, let's get this stuff over to the park,” I said, shutting the truck bed. “Ben should be meeting us over there soon.”