Page 9 of Best Served Cold

After giving them an ironic wave, he shifts his attention back to me. “That wasn’t nothing.”

My first instinct is to hold my tongue, but it occurs to me I’ll have no reason to interact with him ever again after this morning. Maybe my thinking is addled by my slight beer buzz, but why not be honest? “I was just thinking that I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if you were out carousing last night, too.”

His lips twitch. “Carousing, huh? Don’t you work at a brewery?”

“You know I do. The taproom always closes at ten, and I never drink on the job.”

“Sure,” he concedes, rubbing his chin.

We reach the brewery, and he parallel parks in a tight spot with enviable precision and no obvious anxiety. Ineverwould have attempted that.

He glances at me as he activates the emergency brake. “I had a show. So, yeah, I was up late. Working. I don’t drink on the job either. Not even when the nerves hit.”

“Youget nervous?”

He snorts. “I know, radical, isn’t it? It feels good, playing for an audience, and it also feels like shit. Life’s like that sometimes.”

I knowallabout Rob’s band. They’re called Garbage Fire, and they were voted best of Asheville twice in a row. Honestly, I haven’t ever felt the need to listen to them, partly because of the name, and partly because Jonah told me they sound like a bunch of stoner teenagers. They’ve played at Buchanan Brewery before but never during one of my shifts.

“I haven’t heard your band play. I guess I probably never will now,” I say, and he raises a brow at me.

“Sorry,” I apologize automatically.

“Are you?” he asks as he cocks his head, watching me. There’s a challenge in his eyes, and it occurs to me that he’s purposefully revving me up.

“I’m not sure,” I admit. “It’s what I was taught to say when I upset someone.”

“Do I look upset?”

“No,” I admit.

“I’m not. Doesn’t bother me if you think I’m a loser. I know my brother does, and I couldn’t care less.”

“Why don’t you like each other?” I ask. It’s a stupid question—I know it, he knows it, the man dancing on the street corner probably would know it too, should we describe the situation to him. But I need to say something. I have to distract myself from what I’m about to do.

Rob smiles sadly and looks at the low-slung ceiling of the car as if he might find the answers written there. He seems enormous in the car, a giant stuck in a box. “I’m guessing he’s told you why he doesn’t like me. You’re one of the people who knows him best. Can you guess why I might not like him?”

“Yes.” I pause. “But why don’t you likeme?”

He glances at me, eyes wide. “I’m surprised you went there.”

“Well?”

He turns up the air conditioner, which is a welcome distraction from the dancing man, who is now urinating againstthe side of a brick building in broad daylight. “I wouldn’t say I dislike you.”

“But you don’t like me.”

“Jonah doesn’t need another person telling him how good he is at everything. He already thinks that.”

“But heisgood at a lot of things. And I try to focus on the positive. No one wants to be around people who keep pointing out everything they’re bad at.”

“No, but then they’ll keep being bad at them. He thinks he’s a god because his father’s rich and he’s a successful distributor, but?—”

“You have the same father,” I point out.

He laughs bitterly. “Now you tell me. It’s my dad’s money. It’s never been mine. Never will be.”

I’m not sure what he means by that, or how his situation is different from Jonah’s. Their father is a wealthy financial planner, from a wealthy family. I know Jonah gained access to a small trust fund when he reached eighteen, and I’d assumed the same was true for Rob but that he’d blown it all on booze, blunts, and women, or whatever eighteen-year-old boys like to spend money on.

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