Swink (Landry Family 5)

He nods again, this time looking up as the waitress slips between him and his sister. “What can I get y’all?”

“I’ll have a water, please, Lola,” Ford says. “No lemon.”

Cam takes the menus from the raven-haired waitress with a smile and passes them around the table. “Me, too.”

“What about you, Linc?”

“Water.”

“Make it four,” I chime in, watching Lola’s eyes glitter as they meet mine.

My stomach twists and turns as I feel the Landry eyes peering at me, waiting for me to fuck up. Lola is attractive. There’s no doubt about that. But she’s not what’s sitting next to me, and anything compared to Cam loses.

“You aren’t a Landry,” Lola grins.

“No, he isn’t,” Camilla says with a little more force than necessary. “Lola, this is Dominic. Dom, this is Lola.”

We exchange hellos, cut brief by Cam’s grabbing my hand under the table and locking our fingers together. I smile at the touch as I watch her place them next to our silverware with a pointed glance Lola’s way.

If we were alone and I wasn’t trying to keep my head about me, I’d find it incredibly hard not to give her hell about this. My lips would be on her as soon as Lola walks away, the demonstration more of a turn-on than I can muster.

Satisfied that I’m taken, Lola traipses towards the kitchen. Lincoln snickers.

“Is this Swink’s version of going caveman?” he cracks. “I think you were almost hateful with that. I kind of like it.”

“Hush,” she glares at him. Her cheeks go rosy, her hand slowly slipping from mine. “Don’t be an ass, Linc.”

“That’s like asking the sky not to be blue,” Ford scoffs.

“Well, fuck you too,” Lincoln says, continuing on with some inside joke the three of them laugh at that I don’t understand.

Instead, I sit back in my chair in wonderment. It’s like being at a table in a foreign land full of customs and exchanges you haven’t seen before. It’s like Nate and I, but on a whole other level, like what Nate and I and Joey could’ve been if Joey hadn’t been run over, our mother wasn’t weak, and our father not a useless son of a bitch.

Cam elbows me in the side, making me jump. “What?” I ask.

“I was just asking you what you do for a living,” Ford says.

“Oh, sorry,” I say, clearing my throat. “I work for Monstone Repair.”

“That’s heating and cooling, right?” Ford asks.

“Yeah. That’s my nine-to-five,” I say, wondering if they even know what that truly is. “I also bartend some at my brother’s bar.”

Lincoln leans forward, his athletic reflexes on full display. “The Gold Room?”

“Yeah.”

“You resemble the guy we met down there. What was his name?” he asks, turning to Ford. “You know who I mean? The guy behind the bar.”

“Nate,” Ford and I say at the same time.

“That’s my brother,” I continue. “He said you were in a while back.”

Lincoln reclines in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. He twists his lips before smacking them open. “Dominic, your brother is kind of a dick.”

“He can be. But, funnily enough,” I say, looking him right in the eye, “he said the same thing about you.”

Ford laughs as Lola places glasses of ice water in front of each of us. She then scribbles down our order and leaves again—this time with no ogling.