Bitter Taffy (4 page)

“My stupid brother,” Finn grumbled. “He’s
out
of school, and he’s all, ‘Love stinks, little bro, come play this game with me and make me forget my troubles.’”

Adam hooted. “Your sister will
not
forgive him for that!”

Finn shook his head. “Mari threatened to wax his back while he slept. Peter’s got more hair on his back than most guys have on their chests—it’s like, if he wants to attract a girl, he needs to wax that thing voluntarily.”

“Oh my God!” Rico gasped between pants of laughter. “Your family is
really
fuckin’ close!”

Finn rolled his eyes and came to a stop on Front Street, with the river to his left and the boardwalk on his right, the cobblestones rough under the wheels of the minivan. “Yeah, well, you’ll meet them yourself after finals. I’ll have Peter wax his back for the occasion.”

“Wait, what?” Rico said hurriedly, because Adam had already kissed Finn briefly on the cheek and thrown open Rico’s door.

“Hurry and get to class,” Adam instructed. “You’re gonna be late as it is.”

“Yeah, okay—you’re off at six?”

Adam nodded as Rico extricated himself from the minivan with his briefcase and charged laptop in tow.

“Yeah,” Adam confirmed to Finn, slamming the door and talking through the window. “But text me when you’re out—if Rico wants to go home then, we’ll let him go home.”

“Yeah. Make sure you go introduce him to my dad, okay?”

Adam nodded, looking stoic and brave. Well, dealing with parents probably wouldn’t be Adam’s strong suit. Dealing with
Finn’s
parents could probably put
anybody
off their feed. “Kk—drive safe. Good luck on your finals, baby.”

Finn nodded and winked, then drove away. Adam watched him go, a fond expression on his face. “Yeah—he’s real smart. He doesn’t really need any luck. He’s fine on his own.”

Rico grunted. “Money, Adam. You didn’t have any money in December.”

“I thought we weren’t talking about this.”

“I mean, I knew you needed a job and a place, but I thought, you know, gas money, right?”

“Wasn’t a great time.” Adam bumped his shoulder to get his attention and then crossed the street, making sure Rico was at his heels. “Come meet Candy Heaven,” he said, trotting up the stairs from the cobblestone street to the boardwalk. “They made it a better time.”

The sign hanging in front of the eight-foot wood-framed doorway was blue with a rainbow pathway and the words Candy Heaven on the front.

The french doors were already open, and Adam walked in, pulling a brown apron from his pocket and putting it on over his button-down shirt and jeans.

“Hey, boss!” he called, cutting through the store to the other
entrance, where the cash registers were. “Darrin, I’d like you to meet—
”

“Hello,” said the
very
tall man at the register. He looked at Rico with the sort of vague recognition Rico’s college professors used to show him when he had them for a second class. “I know you.”

Adam grimaced. “Yeah, uhm, this is my cousin, Rico. I was gonna take him by River Burger and do the intros to Finn’s dad and—”

“Yes, of course. He won’t be there long. The man who’s looking for him will be in… uhm, in about two hours at the most, I think.”

“Oh God,” Adam muttered. “Yeah. Okay. You say so.”

Rico looked at Adam and then back at his boss. The owner of Candy Heaven had long, layer-cut dyed brown hair and wore a flowing tie-dyed tunic over his jeans and cowboy boots. He sported a pair of dangly earrings with series of concentric circles and rainbows in the center of the smallest circles, and the rather smug smile of someone who knew shit that Rico did not.

“Have we met?” Rico asked suspiciously. “You don’t look at all famil—”

Darrin rolled his eyes, reached under the register, and pulled out a small plastic container of chocolate-covered… what were those?

“Chocolate-covered bug?” Darrin asked bluntly.

Rico recoiled. “Hell to the no?”

“Rico, take the bug,” Darrin instructed. “Chew it, swallow it, get it down. It’ll be weird and crunchy, but in the end, all you’ll remember is spiced chocolate.”

For a moment all Rico could do was gape, and this tall guy with the tie-dyed shirt used chopsticks to pop a chocolate-covered cricket in his mouth, and he had no choice but to chew.

It was weird and it was crunchy, and he swallowed it and tasted spiced chocolate. He swallowed again to get the memory of chewing on exoskeleton out of his teeth, and this time only the spiced chocolate remained.

“Who
are
you?” he asked, a little bit terrified.

“I’m Adam’s boss. I’m special.”

“You’re telling me!”

“Yes, I
am
telling you. You should listen to me. I’m special. And this icky feeling in your heart? It’s not going to last long. He was sweet, Rico, but he wasn’t the end of the world. Not
your
world, anyway.”

Rico’s eyes bugged out so hard his vision blurred. “I… uh… wha….”

Adam grunted. “C’mon, Rico. You can recover on the way to River Burger. Thanks a lot, boss. You blew his teeny-tiny brain.”

Darrin looked Rico up and down. “Yeah, I would have thought he would have been the smarter of the two of you. Apparently not.”

Adam bristled. “Rico’s plenty smart—he got in real late last night. Let’s get him some more coffee and some time in the café and he’ll be more coherent.”

Adam hustled him out of the store while Rico still sputtered for breath. “You promise chocolate truffles that would give me a boner and your boss
feeds me a bug
?”

“Oh hell,” Adam muttered. “Here. Stay right here.” He parked Rico on the bench outside the door and trotted back inside.

“You are
not
feeding him those chocolates!” Darrin protested. “He’s not ready for them, Adam. Do you
know
what’s wrong with your cousin?”

“He got his heart broken,” Adam replied obstinately. “And he needs something that will make him happy. I promised him your special truffles—”

“Two months,” Darrin replied in a tone that brooked no argument. “Give him the ones on the right, the ones with coconut and almonds—he’s not allergic, is he?”

“No.”

“Then those. They’re not what he wants, but they might be what he needs.”

Adam’s low, irritated growl actually warmed Rico to his toes. God, at least he was still
the same Adam that Rico remembered from high school. “You are a piece of work, do you know that? I was trying to impress him—”

“Well, I bet he’s
very
impressed. Hurry back, Adam. You have”—Rico could imagine the vague hand waving—“
networking
to do.”

Oh
that
was it! Rico stood up, fully prepared to stomp back inside and
bully
the nice candymaker into telling him how in the holy hell he knew all this shit, when Adam scurried out, a little confection bag in his hand.

“How—but—I—”

Adam shook his head. “Don’t ask,” he muttered. “C’mon. After Darrin, Finn’s dad should be a cakewalk.”

Finn’s dad turned out to be a nice middle-aged man with graying ginger hair and his son’s sweet smile. Sure, Rico could sit down and use one of his boardwalk café tables to work. Yeah, no problem, if he got tired, Mr. Stewart would be
thrilled
to let him use the bed upstairs. Would Adam’s cousin like a coffee? Some beignets? Absolutely—on the house!

Adam tried to protest, of course, but Finn’s dad laughed directly in his face and sent him on his way with a hearty slap on the back and a reminder of some sort of get-together after finals.

Adam left, and Rico sat down at a table near the outside wall, unfolded his laptop, and got ready for some peace.

And was surprised when he got it—at least twenty minutes of it—while Finn’s dad and a younger woman who looked a lot like Finn worked behind the counter. Together, they got breakfast sandwiches, hash browns, and coffee not only for people who were shopping in the Old Sacramento tourist trap but for people who had come through the tunnel from K Street before they started their office jobs.

Rico spent the time finding Wi-Fi and hitting up the want ads and headhunters in the area, looking for some job leads. Until he’d taken his plane tickets out for the trip home, he hadn’t realized Old Man Kellerman had also sent him some top-flight references—and the inclusion of those three letters on company letterhead sent an unmistakable message. Kellerman wouldn’t keep him from getting another job—as long as it was elsewhere.

Which, as Rico breathed in the flowers from the open green areas across the street (and exhaust from the freeway overhead) on what was an admittedly beautiful mild spring day in Sacramento, was actually both generous
and
smart.

Rico was on the other side of the country, and he wasn’t desperate. He
could
get another job. Why would he make trouble for Ezra and Kellerman’s Fine Fabrics if he wasn’t trapped like a rat in a cage?

So he got his résumé in order and started looking for likely fits and job interviews, and was actually really pleased when Finn’s dad came and sat down across from him, offering a large mocha and beignets.

“I’m going to have to take over dog-walking duty,” Rico laughed after biting into a beignet. “Your family is trying to make me fat and you barely even know me.”

Mr. Stewart laughed, the lines at his eyes crinkling, which meant he did that a lot. “Yeah, but we know Adam, and he’s a top-notch guy. He can’t say enough good things about you, so, you know, welcome to the family.”

Rico’s breath caught and a sudden ache opened up in his chest, like an infection had been festering there and he hadn’t known until just now. “Thanks,” he said quietly. “That’s… that’s really nice of you.”

“I, uhm, take it this isn’t the sort of welcome you’d expect from your own family?”

Rico looked at this nice man and thought of his own father, who worked long days and came home at eight at night in suit and tie and read the paper until nine. His mother waited on him—brought him dinner, sat at the table quietly, waiting for him to feed her crumbs of conversation—and Rico tiptoed by the kitchen, hoping the old man would ignore him completely, much like he’d done when Rico was a child.

His mother, Lydia, had eaten in the kitchen with Rico when he was a kid, which sounded cozy, like it should have been the two of them, and often it was. Except Rico had spent most of his time begging her to let Adam come over, and she’d told him no, because Adam wasn’t their family’s type of relative.

Rico had gotten to be a teenager and realized that his father didn’t approve of Adam because Adam’s mother was a fuckup.

Rico couldn’t argue with that—Adam’s mom wasn’t the nicest of people. Rico had heard that woman tear down Adam’s soul since he’d been a little kid, and he’d heard their grandmother do the same thing.

But that didn’t mean Adam shouldn’t have been able to eat in their kitchen. Although just because Rico’s father said he couldn’t didn’t mean Rico hadn’t snuck him food in the garage.

“Mine and Adam’s family—we, uhm, don’t do warm,” he said, thinking it was an understatement. “I think Finn must feel like a miracle to him.”

Mr. Stewart’s face lit up, and Rico wondered if it did that for all his children or just Finn. “Yeah, well, Finn is special. Of course, all my kids are special—but it’s nice to hear he’s appreciated. So, we’re having this big family shindig in about two weeks—Adam’s going to bring you, of course. We’re kicking off a new location, right? A franchise? My older two sons are going to run it. They actually
had
office jobs, and one of them has a law degree, but it was like they ran out into the world and then came back and said, ‘Waah, waah, we miss our family!’ so whateryagonnado?”

Rico laughed, because how could you not? He could totally see how sons might want to come back to this particular father. “I guess you’re going to open another business. That’s awesome!”

“Yeah, right? We’re looking into advertising right now—”

“I could help!” Rico said, jumping in with both feet. Then he blushed, because, hello, desperate. “I mean, I’m in marketing—I’ve got my degree. I’m looking for a job here in the city. I could, uhm….”

“Great!” Finn’s dad held out his hand. “It’s a deal. Come up with a fee that works for you; we’ll engage your services.”

Rico gaped. “You haven’t even seen my portfolio!”

“Well, yeah. But you’re family! Just tell me you’ll use Adam to do your art design—we got him a computer so he can do graphics as well as hand drawn, and we like his work too. This way we can, you know, keep it in the family, okay?”

“But—I mean, I need a budget and—”

Mr. Stewart looked embarrassed. “Oh—yeah. See? This is why I need Finn. He’s better with this stuff than I am. I’ll—”

“Dad!” The woman who looked just like Finn was waving frantically as a line of customers backed up behind the counter, and Finn’s father (who must have a first name!) smiled apologetically and ran up to help her, leaving Rico gaping like a fish.

But gaping like a fish for too long would have let his beignets get cold and his chocolate get melty. He couldn’t let that happen, so he grounded himself with coffee, fat, and sugar, and got back to work. After he’d sent his résumé out to a couple of places, he started doing some research for how to market one small café franchise and about how many billable hours that would take. He was pretty sure he could maintain one modest client and find himself a slightly larger job at the same time.

H
E
WORKED
steadily for another two hours, looking up occasionally to thank Mr. Stewart profusely for the refills on coffee and, once, to ask if he could use the restroom. When he got back, the woman who looked like Finn was sitting in his place, and across from her was a guy in a suit. The girl got up as soon as he drew near.