CHAPTER THREE - QUINN
The park was already starting to fill up with booths and people by the time we got there. It was a warmer than usual fall for us, and it still felt like summer during the day – especially with all the damn humidity in the South. But, warm or not, the leaves were changing and there were already big red and orange piles of them all over the ground.
“South Carolina apparently didn't get the memo that it's October,” I muttered to myself.
I wiped the sweat from my brow as we finished setting up the grill behind the food truck Bennett brought over. Most of the cooking happened out back, on the massive grill we brought out for special occasions. Good BBQ couldn't be made inside a piddly little food truck.
Cason and I were working the grill, and I wasn't too thrilled about the idea of standing outside in the damn sun all day. Bennett would be in the nice, cold air conditioning of the truck – taking orders, handling the cash and doing whatever else needed to be done.
As soon as we were done with the hard stuff, Ben drove up in his truck and parked alongside ours. Climbing out, I noticed he was dressed nicer than the two of us. He was in dress slacks and a button-up shirt. His hair, darker than ours – a chestnut brown opposed to the reddish-brown color most of the McCormicks are born with – was neatly combed and styled. He took after our mother in the face, but his build was all McCormick. Clocking in at six-foot-three, he had the same wide shoulders and chest that we all had.
“Where the hell have you been?” Cason called out.
“As usual, he waits until the hard stuff is over to show up,” I teased. “Probably had to get his hair done.”
Bennett McCormick was the brother who cared most about appearances – specifically, his appearance. He always took care to make sure he looked his best, right down to his freshly shaven babyface and meticulously trimmed hair.
“Business isn't all about what goes on behind the grill, boys” he said. “Someone has to make sure the bills get paid.”
And that was Bennett. Cason was the chef, Bennett was the numbers guy. I still wasn't sure where I fit in, but I helped where needed. Sometimes marketing and advertising, other times alongside Cason on the grill. I was the more jack-of-all trades type.
“And those bills just had to be paid this morning, huh?” Cason teased, wiping sweat from his forehead with his t-shirt, which was covered in charcoal and dust.
Ben shook his head, an almost condescending look on his face – an expression that never failed to make me want to smack him right in the mouth.
“Not like you'll understand it,” he said, his tone matching his smug expression, “but I was meeting with the banker this morning to discuss our expansion.”
“Explains the suit,” I said.
“And the haircut,” Cason added. “But still not why it had to be done this morning when we could have used another set of hands to put this all together.”
“Hey now, I'm not the one sleeping with my ex still,” Ben said, turning the attention back on me.
I shrugged. “At least I'm getting laid these days. One of us has to keep the genes alive.”
“And besides,” Carson said, “Quinn got up and busted his ass this morning.”
While I gave them shit right back, the mention of Shelly reminded me of what happened the night before. For the first time since we started hooking up, starting way back in high school, I knew it was the end. Hell, we hadn't even slept together last night. At least not in the sexual sense. We shared a bed one last time before she left for the bright lights of the big city.
And this morning, when I asked her again ifshe was sure she wanted to end this, she made it perfectly clear that we were over.
She also called me a selfish prick in the process.
And while her words stung, being outside with my brothers made me almost forget about her and that whole scene entirely. Almost. I tried to remind myself that it wasn't like we were ever going to settle down and get married or some shit like that. I knew it, she knew it. But, most of the time, I liked spending time with her. My brothers didn't like Shelly for a lot of reasons. And while it was hard for me to fully understand why they hated her so much, deep down, I knew they were right in some of the things they'd said. I was too close to the situation, obviously, and didn't see some of what they saw.
Both Cason and Ben still enjoyed playing the field a bit, and since I was officially free from Shelly, I thought that maybe I'd join them. It'd be like old times – the McCormick brothers back out on the prowl together.
Except for the fact that we knew most of the women in Black Oak – and very few of them seemed enticing. Everyone knew everyone else, and at times, the whole town felt almost incestuous. A lot of people were distantly related to others by marriage. Not to mention the fact that, in a graduating class of sixty-five students that you pretty much grew up with from day one, many of them felt like family.
If the brothers McCormick were going to go out and conquer women together, we were going to need to find a new fishing hole to dip our poles into.
CHAPTER FOUR - BENNETT
My brothers just don't understand what it actually takes to run a business. To them, it's all about grilling up the food and serving it. And yeah, that's a big part of it. But there's so much that goes on behind the scenes – payroll, the bills that have to be paid to keep us afloat, licenses, and all. There's a million things I do that they don't see, that if I didn't do them, the Driftwood would have closed down long ago.
But, I think that's what makes us strong; we all have our defined roles within the business.
Cason is the grill master. He's the one old man Dierks passed the recipe down to, and it was his idea to buy the Driftwood in the first place. I'm the brains behind the operation – I keep the books and do most of the advertising. I'm the face of the Driftwood. And Quinn is kind of our Jack-of-all-trades. He does a little bit of everything, helping out here and there.