Crazy (The Gibson Boys 4)

It’s the best redirection I can come up with.

“Cool. Vine Street, right?” he asks.

“Yup,” I say, trying to hide how impressed I am that he remembered that. “Just passed that house with the big balcony on the second floor. Man, I’d love to have one of those one day. It reminds me of Gone with the Wind or something. So romantic. Anyway, it’s perfect timing because my stuff is coming tomorrow too. Finally, something is working out.”

I slice a corner of meatball and shove it in my mouth to keep from talking. Peck doesn’t fill the void, though. He sits in his chair and watches me chew.

“What?” I say through a mouthful of meatball.

“Nothing.”

“Come on.” I squeeze the bite that’s still too big to swallow healthfully down my throat. “What?”

“Does it ever occur to you to breathe when you’re talking? Or do you just worry about that if you pass out from oxygen deprivation?”

I take the napkin beside my plate and throw it at him. He laughs as he easily dodges the flimsy paper product.

“I have a lot to say. A lot of passion,” I joke.

“Do you?”

“I do.”

He takes a sip of the ice water on the table, and I realize I had beer in the fridge.

“Hey! Don’t drink that.” I scoot my chair back and jump up.

“Did you poison it, and now feel bad?”

“You’re so funny,” I say, the words mixed with both sarcasm and a laugh.

I grab a bottle of beer that Navie said he’d drink and open it. As I carry it to the table, I narrow my eyes. “Now I regret being this nice to you.”

“Now I regret teasing you,” he says as he takes it. “Thanks, Dylan.”

“You’re welcome, Peck.” I get seated again. Spinning a forkful of pasta around, I feel him watching me across the table. “What’s the story behind your name, anyway? Surely, your parents didn’t just love the name Peck.”

“What’s not to love about my name?”

I drop my fork. “Come on. Were you never teased? No one ever called you peckerhead?”

He laughs, setting the bottle on the table. “A few times, I guess. Mostly by Machlan, come to think of it.” He grins. “But the name Peck is actually a nickname.”

“Aha! I knew it.”

“Want a cupcake?”

“I always want a cupcake.”

He shakes his head.

“What’s it mean?” I ask. “Is it short for peckerhead then?”

“Uh, no. My grandfather gave it to me. Legend has it that I was four years old, and we were in Crank. Crank was Pop’s shop originally. He left it to my Uncle Ed—Walker, Machlan, Lance, and Blaire’s dad. He was my mom’s brother. And then when he died, it went to Walker.”

I’ve only had a few conversations with Peck over the past couple of days, but I’ve never seen him this serious. The joke that’s always right there, waiting to come out is nowhere to be found.

My instinct is to reach out and put my hand on his or touch him on the shoulder because there’s pain there. Or emotion. Or something. But I don’t know him well enough to do that, and it feels like it would be intrusive somehow.

So I intrude a different way. Because I can’t help myself.

“Does that bother you?” I ask.

“What?”

“That your Pop’s shop is Walker’s?”

He shakes his head. “No. It’s how things go. What was Pop gonna do? Leave it to my mom?” The end of that sentence gets scoffed with sarcasm, the final words halting. It’s as if he has to spit them out. “Anyway,” he says, swallowing hard, “it doesn’t bother me. But I do like working there. Sometimes, I’ll see something that reminds me of Pop or even Uncle Ed. And Walker and I have had some damn good times in there.”

A grin splits his cheeks as he takes another long swig of his beer.

“So the nickname …?” I push.

“Oh, yeah. So Pop had me in the shop because I loved anything with an engine. Still do. I’d beg him to take me. Nana says I used to call up there and tell him she needed him so he’d come home, and then I could get him to take me back with him.”

I laugh. The picture in my mind is so sweet—a cherub-faced blond baby crying for his grandpa. “That’s awesome and very manipulative of you.”

“Right? And apparently one of those days, he was working on a truck. He couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it or whatever, and I kept saying ‘peck, peck, peck.’ I kept doing it and leaning toward the truck and finally Pop heard what I was getting at. There was a knock in the engine,” he says with a shit-eating grin. “I didn’t know how to say that, so I just replicated the pecking sound I heard.”

“Oh, my gosh. That’s so adorable.”

The apples of his cheeks turn red. His brows pull together, and he slides his phone out of his pocket. With a finger hovered over the screen, he looks up at me. “I need to answer this. I know it’s really rude, but this is the only call I have to take.”