“Charbroil, long time, brother.” I hug him back, oddly comforted by the familiarity of being around one of my old friends from back home.
Charlie and I grew up together, along with Birdman, Harrison, and Jayden. Drake and I were only a year apart in school, despite our two-year age difference, so we had all the same friends. When I went off to college on a full-ride wrestling scholarship, Drake stayed behind with these guys on the high-school-dropout plan.
“Get your ass in here, man. Drake’s been asking for you since we pulled into town.” He closes the double doors to the penthouse suite, and I’m immediately hit with the stench and smoky haze of chronic along with the rhythmic beats of Sublime.
Fuck, some things never change.
As I move through the Asian-inspired space, the cracking of pool balls and murmured curses of male voices get louder. We round the corner, and the room opens up to sky-high ceilings, glass walls, and furniture draped with the bodies of Santa Cruz’s most notorious surf gang, The Bone Breaker Brotherhood.
“Mayhem! You motherfucker!” Birdman calls the attention of the room, and I’m surrounded in hugs, back pats, shoulder punches, and fist bumps.
“Long time, brother.” Harrison rubs my head, messing up my semi-styled mop that I’d tamed for the wedding. “You clean up nice, little bitch.”
I shove him, but laugh. “Yeah, you’re looking more and more like your brother.” I slap his stomach just as his twin brother Jayden hooks Harrison around the neck. They’re identical twins, and although the joke is old and not even funny, it’s comforting to fall into our childhood ribbings.
“He wishes he looked like me.” Jayden flashes his golden-boy smile that contradicts his edgy look. With a shaved head and tattoos all over his neck, including a small cross on his cheek just below his eye, he carries the hardened look of a criminal.
We continue giving each other shit, and the few guys I’m not familiar with stand off and greet me with chin lifts.
“Well, well, well . . . our UFL all-star has decided to grace us with his presence.”
Just the sound of his voice makes my stomach clench with worry, but I shake off my unease and turn toward my little brother.
Drake struts out of a dark bedroom while pulling on a button-up shirt. He’s ripped in a way that doesn’t look natural, swollen muscles that are definitely bigger than they were the last time I saw him over a year ago. Inked across his chest and up to his shoulders are the scripted words “Bonded by blood, loyal beyond death.”
Fuckin’ A, he’s in deeper than I thought.
What started out as a harmless surf gang has escalated to levels I’m afraid to even imagine. He saunters toward me, smiling and holding his arms out.
“Look at you, bro.” I give him a back-thumping hug. “All grown up.”
He pulls back, and I study the scar that he picked up after a weekend camping with his dad when he was sixteen years old. Our mom was pissed that he didn’t get stitches, but Drake seemed more proud than I’d ever seen him. He said he’d gotten into a fight, and he wore that damn slice through his face like a badge of honor. Crazy little shit. His eyelids are heavy, eyes bloodshot, no doubt from whatever it is he was doing in the hotel bedroom.
“Brother”—he takes me in from top to bottom—“you look like a homeless Michael Bublé.”
“And you look like Tupac’s gay white twin.” My teeth grind together in frustration. My little brother is a gold tooth and a shit load of talent away from that being true.
A warm smile breaks through his tough fa?ade, and he moves in, throwing an arm around my shoulder. “It’s been too long.”
From the looks of it, way too long. “It has.”
He guides me to the sliding glass doors that lead to a large patio complete with fire pit. I turn around to see all the other guys have stayed inside as Drake drops down on a long semi-circular couch. He props his feet up on the fire circle, knee cocked, one sole of his high-top blue Chucks on the edge.
“How’s the UFL-superstar life treating you?” He pulls a joint out of the breast pocket of his Dickies shirt and pinches it between his lips to light it.
“Good, man. I’ve got no complaints.”
“We caught your last fight on TV,” he says between drags. “Made ten grand on that fight.”
“You’re running numbers now?” How does he get himself into this shit? Honest to God, it’s like trouble chases him down; he finds it without even looking.
“Dabbling here and there.” He offers me the joint, but I just stare at it until he shrugs with a “Suit yourself” and continues to puff on it.
I scan the horizon, the Vegas lights practically blinding even from this height. When I first moved here, I thought they were downright mystical. Now they just hurt my damn eyes.
I swing my gaze back to him. “What brings you to Vegas, D?”
He picks something off the tip of his tongue, tilts his head and studies me. “You know what.”