Enemies With Benefits (Loveless Brothers 1)

“So far, so good,” I say, in response to Silas’s question about my new job. “Well, except Violet Tulane works there.”

“Who?” Levi asks.

“Oh, Jesus,” Daniel mutters.

“You know Violet,” Silas says to Levi. “She organized that charity auction for the firehouse a few years ago, the one where Kim Fortner and Mavis Bresley got into a bidding war over your mom’s blackberry pie?”

“Oh, Violet,” Levi says. “What’s wrong with Violet?”

“Nothing,” says Daniel.

I take a good sip of my beer.

“We don’t get along,” I say, as diplomatically as possible.

“You don’t remember?” Daniel asks him. “Every time Eli had a test in school, we’d have to hear for a week about how he wanted to get a better grade than her, and then God forbid she got a ninety-seven and he got a ninety-six, we’d hear for another week about how awful she was for that one point.”

“That’s because she was always awful about it,” I say, starting to feel defensive. “You’d think that the difference between an A and an A-plus was equivalent to rescuing a bus full of orphans —”

“Oh no,” Daniel says, holding up one hand. “Not today you don’t.”

“She’s always seemed perfectly nice to me,” Levi muses. “Smart, too. We had a very stimulating conversation about moss one time.”

I frown into my beer and take another sip. Something about Levi calling Violet stimulating really rubs me the wrong way.

“Well, yeah, she’s smart,” I say, because I think that much is obvious. “I’m not denying that. She’s just also the worst.”

“Because you were perfectly nice to her at all times,” Daniel says sarcastically. “You, Eli, were certainly never a dick.”

“I was a dick in self-defense,” I say.

Daniel just snorts. He’s only a year younger than me, so he got the full brunt of my high school angst. Levi, on the other hand, is two years older and apparently wasn’t paying us much attention.

“Is she the girl who got into the National Junior Honor Society when you didn’t?” Levi asks.

I swear I have a full-blown flashback to eighth grade when every day for at least two weeks, Violet waved around her National Junior Honor Society invitation letter and asked if mine had come yet. It hadn’t, because it never did, because I didn’t score quite highly enough on a test.

“Yes,” I say tersely. I drink some more beer.

“I do remember that,” Levi says, still sounding contemplative. “How odd. She’s always been very nice to me.”

“And me,” Silas volunteers.

“That’s because Violet’s nice,” Daniel says.

“You’re all wrong,” I mutter into my beer.

We’re all quiet for a minute, the low buzz of the brewery filling the silence. It’s not crowded, but the main room is about three-quarters full of people sitting at long communal tables, drinking beer, some playing board games. Along one wall, there’s shuffleboard and pool tables. Outside there’s cornhole and croquet.

Basically, it’s a chill place to spend a Saturday and have a beer, and plenty of people from Sprucevale and the surrounding areas take advantage.

“Question,” Silas says, after a bit. “Is that Violet playing darts over there? My contacts are kinda dry.”

My heart stomps at my chest. I hold my beer glass a little tighter, scanning the opposite wall as I half hope that it’s her and half hope that it’s not her.

It’s her. She’s laughing, her hair in a high, messy bun. She’s with a redhead who I’m fairly certain is Adeline Mathers, another girl from our high school class.

Violet’s got a beer in one hand as she grabs darts out of the dart board with the other, saying something over her shoulder to Adeline.

Then she bends down to grab a dart off the floor. It takes a split second but I swear my mouth goes dry, and then she’s upright again, strolling back to where Adeline’s standing.

Everything about her is entirely familiar and entirely alien, all at once. She’s still Violet. She still looks like Violet and sounds like Violet and God knows she still acts like Violet, but in some indefinable way, she’s different.

I never wanted her before, even a little, but now the same movements as ever have me wondering what it would be like to take her by the hip and push her against the wall. She looks at me the same way as always but now there’s a challenge in it, like she’s daring me not to wonder what her skin tastes like.

“…entered some sort of angst-fueled fugue state — oh, he’s back,” Daniel is saying.

I shoot him a glare. He gives me a perfectly neutral look. I don’t like it.

“Yeah, that’s her,” I say, and shrug. My knuckles are still pale around my glass.

“That’s already been established,” Levi says. “The conversation has moved on, Eli.”

“To what?”

“I was asking after Silas’s sister, June,” he says. “Apparently she’s doing well for herself, down in Raleigh.”

“I can’t stand her boyfriend, though,” Silas says.