When We Go Back Again (Mason Brothers Book #1)

Chapter 6

FLETCHER

Damon dropped his cleaning rag on the ground and leans back onto the kitchen countertops with a groan. “Do you think we should get mom a dog or something?”

“What makes you think mom wants a dog?”

“I don’t know if she wants a dog, but it would maybe give her a reason to stay home and at least pretend to be retired. What about a cat? Those are low maintenance.”

“Good luck with that, Dam,” I chuckled.

It’s the last week of August and Mom has Damon and me up to our elbows in degreaser cleaning all of the appliances in the kitchen. It isn’t that we wouldn’t have gotten this done, but we would have hired a company to come to do it. In our famous weekly meetings, Mom almost had a full-on heart attack at the idea of paying somebody to do a task that we could accomplish.

Instead of using store funds to pay a company, Damon and I are spending our Friday morning in the warm kitchen, sweating our asses off.  Somehow Cade and Parker both managed to be busy with other tasks today. Something tells me the two of them used their puppy dog eyes to get out of this task. I just make a mental note to send some flowers to the house later this week so I’ll be off her shit list for whatever crazy job she thinks of before the next meeting.

I drop the rag next to my brother’s and take a break with him. “ I’m all for a dog, but I’m not too sure it would keep mom away. She’d probably just bring it with her. “

Damon laughs, “Isn’t it funny that Dad was the one so passionate about this bar, but Mom is the one that can’t give it up?”

“I think Mom is going through a weird midlife crisis and without the bar, she doesn’t have anything that needs her care or attention.”

“I could see that. Whether it was one of us five of the bar, she’s always been needed. So what you’re saying is that we need to give her a project or something?”

I nudge my brother with my elbow, “That’s not a bad fucking idea at all. Maybe convince her that Cade really needs his apartment reorganized or something. She loves baby-ing him, she’d be all over that.”

Any time we can pawn something off on Cade or Parker, we tend to do it. There is a natural rivalry between the two older brothers and the two young ones. Then of course there is Mel and she was always the favorite. Not only was she the baby, but the only girl. We didn’t even bother trying to mess with her. All she had to do was give dad that little lip quiver of hers and all four of us were in a shit load of trouble. It was safer to try and throw one of the other brothers under the bus about something.

“I think I’m just going to call this good enough,” Damon said, looking over at the stove we were working on cleaning.

“Will it pass inspection?”

“No doubt. I’ll get one of the cooks closing this week to take care of the flat top and the vent. I’m grabbing some waters.” While I pushed the stove back into its position, Damon went to the walk-in to grab us a couple of bottles of cold water. We went out into the bar area where the air conditioning blew cooler to cool down quicker.

By habit, I was scrolling through the bar’s email to see if anything important needed to be addressed today and came upon a catering request, “Did you see that email from the high school?”

“The one about homecoming?”

“Yeah. I know we’ve never done a large order like this before. Do you think you can handle it?”