One Big Mistake: a friends to lovers rom-com Read online

“What’s your fake ID name?”

  “Jessica Butterfield.”

  It was such a random name—though, I supposed most fake IDs were. After getting the rest of the information from her, I purchased the ticket. “I emailed it to myself. What email do you want me to send it to?”

  “Don’t!” It was the loudest she’d been the entire call. “Don’t email it. That would… that would ruin everything.”

  “Violet.”

  “What?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I-I’ll tell you when I get there, okay? Just, don’t email it. They give you an option of giving me a code or something, so that I can pick it up at the station.”

  “I’ll text it to you.”

  “No!”

  “I can’t text you, either? You said your phone isn’t broken, right?

  “No. I don’t… I can’t talk about it right now. Just don’t—do not—call or text my number, okay?” I heard a whisper of a cry—no tears, but the thickness in her voice told me she was close. Closing my eyes, I resolved to accept that she could only tell me so much. “Just tell me what the code is, Navy. I can remember.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ll remember it,” she insisted.

  I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, at war with not pushing her but also ensuring that there were no hiccups. “Can you at least write it down?”

  “Give me a sec.” I could hear her walking and then sensed from the sudden lack of sound that she’d walked into a business.

  “Can I borrow a pen?” I heard her ask, confirming my thoughts.

  I read off the code and she said, “Got it. Thanks.”

  “Hey, Lets,” I said, a nod to our childhood nickname for Violet. “I love you.”

  There was a pause, and I nearly repeated myself, thinking she hadn’t heard me, until I heard a soft, “Love you too. Thanks. See you soon.”

  3

  KEANE

  “Aren’t you going to ask me if I’m sure I’m okay building my cabin from the ground up while you get the one that is already built?”

  I looked sideways at Asa as we faced the lake we’d practically grown up beside.

  “Thought about it.”

  “Yeah?” Asa asked.

  “But nah.” I smiled and Asa gave me one of his rare smiles back.

  “The cabin’s always been yours.”

  “Yeah, it has. And besides, it’s too late anyway. We already signed the paperwork. In fact…” I nudged his boot with my own. “You’re on my property sir, kindly get off of it.”

  “I’m still your big brother.”

  “You are,” I said and playfully shoved him to his side. “But now I’m bigger than you.”

  “You try jumping out of trucks with a hundred pounds on your back for years. See how tall you are then.” My brother completed three deployments while in the Army before he was medically retired after suffering a traumatic brain injury the year before, when the vehicle he was operating ran over an IED in the road, tossing the truck—with him inside—forty yards down the road. He’d suffered several broken bones—including a broken jaw that forced him to eat through a straw for weeks—but the TBI was the most profound of all his injuries, and it would affect him for the rest of his life.

  “I’m sure I’ll lose a few inches working on our cabins.” I walked to the back of Gramps’s cabin and cocked my head. “Hey, you see that?”

  Asa joined me and studied the roof. “You lost some shingles. Probably in a windstorm.”

  “Add that to the list of shit to buy.” I pulled out the notebook I’d tucked in the back pocket of my jeans.

  “At least you’re not starting from scratch.”

  “Yeah, but at least Dad gets us discounts.”

  “I wonder when he’s coming back into town,” Asa commented. I looked at him for a moment before I realized he didn’t remember having this conversation weeks ago.

  “He’s in Montana,” I said. “Overseeing a project until July.” Dad’s construction firm was one of the most reputable around, but it meant he was gone about half of the year—especially in the warm months when the ground wasn’t frozen anymore.

  “It’s fucking loud today,” Asa said, nodding at the boat that sped by. Which reminded me of a conversation I’d had with one of my closest friends.

  “Adam gave me some tips on sound-proofing,” I told Asa. “We could buy some expensive ass damped drywall or do it ourselves with damping compound between two layers of drywall. He said it’s cheaper just to do it yourself. Since we’re not in a hurry, it makes sense to go the cheaper route.”

  “Adam,” Asa said, thinking a minute. “Your friend. Dark hair. Plays keyboard.”

  “Yeah. From school.”

  “So he knows about sound-proofing then?”

  “Yeah, thanks to his band. He sound-proofed his garage when he insulated it.”

  “Is he going to come out and help us? I feel like I haven’t seen him in a while.”

  “Probably not. With summer coming, he’s been gone a bunch doing shows and he’ll have festivals too.” Adam was a musician and spent a ton of time on the road this time of year. His girlfriend, Hollis, held down the fort while he was gone but I missed having him to hang out with, to sit and drink beers on his porch late into the night.

  “Is it going to just be us, then?”

  “Maybe Dad will help when he’s back in town. And Navy will help. But not for the next few weeks; she’s running her aunt’s music store while she’s on vacation.”

  “I haven’t seen Navy in a while.”

  “She’ll be up here. I’ll talk her into coming out to see the cabin next week.” She was excited for me, excited by the opportunity I had here. Since I mostly worked seasonal jobs, it was good to have the cabin to keep me busy this summer. I had enough socked away from my jobs and my inheritance from my Gramps’s estate to live through the summer. But living with my parents sure helped my daily expenses.

  “That’s good that she’ll be here to help. She can help us with the design, I bet. Your taste is shit.”

  I playfully elbowed him. “So’s yours.”

  “I might see if I can round up some friends to help once the framing is solid.”

  I glanced back at the slab of concrete that sat squat on Asa’s side of the property. It looked so out of place to me, having spent all my summers up here and knowing that patch of land as just another place I’d run to catch footballs or baseballs with Gramps. But the ground had been leveled and tested and then the footings and concrete had been installed and soon my view out of my cabin would contain my brother’s similar one.

  “Is it ready for us to start the framing next week?”

  “I think so. Inspector is coming out on Friday. I’ve gotta figure out the landscaping too, before I get the walkway poured. He stomped his foot on the ground. “Soil’s soft, which is good. This time of year, it’s hard to tell up in these mountains if the ground will be ready for landscaping in May or not. Should be easy to dig for some trees and fence posts.”

  “Are we going to put a fence between us?” I frowned. “I know we joked about boundaries, but I don’t think we need a permanent reminder of them.”

  “They’re not for between us. They’re to separate the house from the road. I don’t want anyone parking on the front lawn. They’ll just sink and fuck up all the grass when they try to get out.”

  That made sense. Since Asa’s house would be on what was originally our grandparents’ property, there wasn’t a real road that went out to it yet. It was a couple dozen feet down from where the road stopped, past my driveway. He’d need the road extended to his property, and without a real barrier like I had with the line of trees that separated my lawn from the road, I could see people parking all over the damn place, especially if we ever had any parties out here.

  “We gotta figure out the dock,” I said, leading him down to the water’s edge. “You got the better bit of land, but it’s all marshy there down to
the water. Do we want to share?”

  “I have no need for a dock. I’m not planning on fishing or boating out here anyway.”

  It seemed crazy to me to have a lake house but no means to enjoy the lake except through the window. But my brother knew what he liked, so I didn’t push the issue with him. “Okay.” I scratched my scruff. “I think next week, I’m going to start on the interior before I work on the exterior of my cabin. So, I can help you with yours in the morning, before it’s hot as fuck. And then work inside mine starting around noon.”

  “That works for me. I’m an early riser.”

  “I know.” And so did our mom, who’d taken to waking up an hour earlier than normal to offer him breakfast—which most of the time he declined. “Mom packed us a lunch, by the way, so we don’t have to rush back to town.”

  Asa laughed, but the humor wasn’t really there. “Of course she did.”

  We may have been brothers, but I didn’t like him laughing about our mom. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re her precious baby. I’m not surprised she made you a spread.”

  “Us a spread,” I corrected. “You were her first baby. Don’t be a dick.”

  Asa held up his hands in mock surrender. “I’m not being a dick. I’m just making a comment.”

  “And what comment is that?” I turned, not really giving a shit what he was going to say as I headed for my truck, where the cooler was waiting.

  “That you’re a mama’s boy. I find it hard to believe that you’re actually going to live out here, even part-time.”

  I paused with my hand on the handle of the cooler. It took everything in me not to turn around and say what I wanted, which was—in no particular order:

  I’m only a mama’s boy because her original mama’s boy isn’t the same.

  You hurt her all the time when you ignore her, even when it’s not your fault.

  When you push her love away, someone has to be there to make up for it.

  You’re breaking her heart and you don’t even see it yourself.

  It wasn’t fair to him, though, and would only cause more tension between us. He couldn’t help his brain injury, and I genuinely believed he was often unaware of the affect his indifference had on our mother. I’d doubled down on being a mama’s boy the first time I’d walked by her bedroom and heard her crying in her bathroom, after Asa had blown off her efforts for dinner. The psychologist had explained it all to us in very plain terms, but I think my mom secretly hoped that once he was back home in familiar territory, he’d be the same little boy she raised.

  And he wasn’t. I could mourn the brother I’d lost, but he was still there. That’s why we were doing this whole neighboring cabin project. Maybe after a summer of doing something that would very likely test both of our patience, we’d find common ground as brothers again.

  Unfortunately, that meant taking us further from our mom. So, I would do what I could in the meantime, to give her the meaning she found in mothering us even as we were adults.

  “PB and J or cold cuts?” I asked him as I sorted through the sandwiches—all six of them.

  “PB.”

  I tossed the wrapped sandwich his way and a water, too. We sat on the tailgate in the sunshine, eating our lunch in silence.

  It was strange to be up here without my grandfather. I would be forever grateful that he’d chosen to bestow this land upon me and my brother after he passed, but it would always be Gramps’s cabin. Even after I replaced some siding and installed some new sheetrock inside. Even when the appliances were all newer and the floors were stained a color that they’d never been in his heyday, they’d still be Gramps’s.

  “Inspector comes Friday,” Asa said, interrupting my thoughts.

  “I know,” I told him around a mouthful of turkey and cheese. “We discussed this.”

  “No, we didn’t.”

  “Yeah, just a few minutes ago.”

  Asa shook his head. “No. I only got the email this morning.” He wasn’t angry, but he was defiant in his belief that we hadn’t discussed this.

  I swallowed, opened my mouth to argue, and stopped. This was one of the things his doctor had explained to us. He was experiencing short-term memory loss as a result of his injury, but this was the first time I’d actively noticed it in a conversation.

  “What are you going to do about the landscaping?” I asked, picking the crust off my bread and tossing it toward a few birds that had collected nearby.

  “I’m not sure. But I need to figure that out before I have the walkway poured going up to the house. I should probably go look at trees and shrubs later.”

  “Probably.” The sandwich went down like a lump.

  “I have to order the fencing too.”

  “Yep.” I took a long pull of my water, knowing we’d already had this conversation and not sure I wanted to continue it. It was a reminder that not all battle scars were visible to the naked eye. I didn’t know how to navigate conversations with my brother anymore. Was it better to engage, to act like we hadn’t discussed it already? What if he forgot again a few minutes later and repeated himself? Would we be stuck on this endless loop? “Where are you going to put the fence?” I asked.

  “Along the front. That’s why I need to figure out the walkway, too. So, I know how much fencing to order. And then I have to get ahold of someone to pave more road.”

  “Where are you going to put the mailbox?” I asked. Maybe this was one way to break the loop, to deepen a conversation we’d already had. Though mailboxes weren’t exactly on the same emotional level as, say, the meaning of life.

  “Probably right next to yours. We should put them in concrete, by the way. With summer coming, kids might come around and take bats to them like they did a few years ago. Little shits.”

  “Not a bad idea. We used to be those little shits,” I reminded him.

  He was quiet for a moment and when I looked at his face, I could see him trying to make out the memory.

  “Remember, in the back of that old purple Ford? It belonged to that one guy, with the unusual spelling of Cody.”

  Asa’s lips moved like he was sounding out the name Cody. “C-O-T-E?” he asked, like this was a spelling test.

  I blew out a relieved breath. “Yeah. Cote.” Thank fuck he got that. We spent damn near every single summer with the kid growing up, until he’d gone off to some posh school on the east coast and his parents had sold their lake house.

  “His eyes were blue.”

  “Yeah, they were.”

  “He pushed you off the dock when you were ten. You hit your head on a rock.”

  The relief in my gut grew so that it nearly swamped me. “He did. And you—”

  “—told him in front of his friends that he was hung like a mouse.”

  We both cracked up laughing at that. “And then you jumped in and pushed my ass back up onto the dock. And made me spend the rest of the summer grappling with you so that Cote couldn’t do it again.”

  “He had fifty pounds on you. You were scrawny.”

  I flexed my left bicep. “Not anymore. And I’ve probably got fifty pounds and four inches on you now.”

  “Yeah, well, spend three months in and out of hospitals and you’d lose weight too.”

  “The food really is shit, isn’t it?”

  “Eh.” He shrugged, brushed crumbs off his lap, and jumped off the tailgate. “No worse than MREs. Come on, let’s get a sample of your shingles and measure for the drywall so we can head back to town.”

  I hopped off the truck with a lot less grace than he possessed. I supposed three deployments and countless days jumping in and out of vehicles had made him practically an Olympian at it.

  I had only managed a few steps before Asa hooked an arm around me and tripped me. “Fifty pounds and four inches, but I can still tackle your ass,” he said on a laugh. God, it was good to see him laugh. I would happily let me toss me into mud on repeat for the next six months, if it meant seeing him smile
the way I remembered.

  But that didn’t mean I’d let him get too far before he was in the mud with me, which he was, three-point-five seconds later.

  “You’re taking it easy on me?” he asked when he landed easily, making a much less dramatic splatter than the one I’d made.

  “No. I’m just looking out for Mom. She’s gonna have to scrub this shit off of our jeans when we get home.” She’d cluck and make noises like it bothered her, but I knew her well enough that she’d be grateful for a task that gave her purpose again.

  “You could also be a grown ass adult and do it yourself.” Though he said it intended with humor, there was an edge to his voice.

  My big brother had gone off to the desert and his truck had gotten blown up, landing him in the hospital and some of his battle buddies in the ground. Coming home and seeing his younger brother still being catered to by his mom had to burn in a way I couldn’t wholly understand, so I didn’t let the sting affect my reply. “I’m never gonna grow up; I like being an idiot too much,” which earned me a laugh, even though only I knew it wasn’t true.

  It was unnerving how easy it was for me to be the Keane that people needed me to be, instead of the Keane that I was. I was my brother’s sidekick (though I was capable of figuring all of this out by myself), my girlfriends’ mr-right-now (even when I didn’t care enough to be a good right-now), my mother’s messy and spoiled son (when I knew how to do laundry, cook, and clean), and my friends’ perpetual wingman (when all I wanted was a night alone). I just wanted to be me, without upsetting the balance of everything else. But it was easier to be the man who served a purpose for others than the man who sought to find his own. And with the complications of my life at the moment, easy was the way to go.

  “What are you doing tonight?” I asked him as we put the tools back in my truck, along with the remnants from lunch.

  “I have a meeting,” he said. “Couple of guys from the unit are getting together to talk.”

  It was hard to imagine my stoic, non-chatty big brother going to a group of any kind. Since he’d returned home, he actively avoided groups especially. That’s why this cabin thing appealed so much to him. While the cabin wouldn’t be my permanent home, it would be my seasonal one and rented out when I wasn’t here. “In town?”