Porter (Dick Dynasty #1) (5 page)

She giggled again, “Douche yacht?”

“Yeah, you know,” I rolled my hand in the air in front of me in explanation, “A douche canoe, but bigger.”

“How the hell do you come up with this stuff, Holly?” She beamed a smile down at me and grew an extra head. I was staring up at two Rebeccas when I finally formed my slurred response.

“Just wine.”

I woke up the next morning still using her thigh as a pillow. Becks had slid down at some point in the night with one of my throw pillows and slept peacefully behind me.

I couldn’t stop myself from groaning as I sat up and waited for the world around me to stop swimming. There was an obnoxious ringing in my ears and my eyeballs felt dehydrated.

“You need to be quiet now,” Becks groaned, “it’s too early for all that noise.”

“I didn’t even—“ she held up a hand to silence me.

“Shh.”

I blinked a few times and squinted against the sunlight reflecting off the polished wood floors. I had never been so glad to have a day off in my life.

I climbed to my feet, using the couch as a crutch. The gentle squeak of the leather beneath my weight infuriated my slumbering best friend.

She lumbered grumpily to her feet and stomped across the room, “You’ll find me in your bed. Unless the building is on fire, leave me there.”

I considered following her for a moment. Spending an entire day horizontal with my eyes closed sounded like a fabulous plan. I gave in to the call of a glass of water instead. My body was begging to be rehydrated and I knew that if I laid down in my bed it would be another eight hours before I put any kind of non-alcoholic fluid inside me.

I downed the first glass in a single breath. When my stomach didn’t recoil to the point of expulsion, I filled a second and sipped at it as I headed for the driveway to retrieve my newspaper.

I said a quick prayer that my neighbors would still be asleep at bright-o’clock on a Sunday morning and dashed out for my weekly dose of the L. A. Times.

I dug my dead cell phone out of my purse and plugged it in before starting the coffee and settling in to read the paper.

I knew I didn’t have more than a couple hours of peace and quiet before Becks woke up and regaled me with every minute detail of my drunken wailings from the night before. I had every intention of savoring each silent moment of blissful peace I could squeeze out of it.

I also hoped that the quiet practice of reading the paper would chase away the lingering images of bare skin and hungry mouths that had haunted my wine-induced sleep.

Porter Hale was an infection and I needed to find a cure. Fast.

“What the fuck do I even say to her?” My head was pressed to my forearms and my eyes squeezed shut in an effort to keep out the glaring lights that seared like a laser beam into my brain, “Hey, Holly. It’s Porter. Sorry I trampled you like an elephant?”

“You’re really dramatic for a straight guy,” Preston’s voice was thick and groggy, but at least he was able to stand up and move around without dying, “Just call her and talk to her. It’s not like she’s going to climb through the phone and shank you with a sharpened toothbrush or something.”

“She might,” I griped, “I probably would if some dickhead plowed into me and spilled my drink then had the balls to call me the next day with some lame excuse.”

“First off,” Preston set his bottle of water down on the bar next to my head, “you shouldn’t be drinking while you’re getting plowed. I’ve tried it and it doesn’t end well. I almost chipped a tooth. Second, don’t give her a lame excuse. Tell her the truth. It’s not like Parker really deserves to have you make excuses for him. He’s an adult, Porter. He can deal with the consequences of getting coked out in front of dozens of people. Not your problem.”

Our mother’s words from the night before echoed through my brain and spurred a tiny worm of guilt for even considering outing his problem to a virtual stranger.

“I’ll figure something out,” I mumbled to the counter, “In the mean time, have you invested in a coffee pot yet? I’ve got a caffeine headache building on top of my hangover and I think my head might split open and spill my brains all over your bar if I don’t get some java in me soon.”

“Tough break, bro. You’ll have to hit a Starbucks or something.”

It took everything I had not to fall to the floor and cry at the thought of leaving the house without coffee.

“Before you crawl out of here like a half-drunk cockroach in search of your glorious caffeine, did you happen to see where Parker ended up last night? I checked both of the spare rooms upstairs on my way down and he wasn’t in either of them. Did he take off with someone?”

I dug through the hazy memories from the night before and tried to remember where I had last seen him. He’d spent a good hour and a half stripping on his makeshift stage and then wandered off with half a dozen women hanging from him like jewelry.

“If I had to guess,” I lifted my head and cracked an eye at the youngest member of our trio, “I’d say he posted up in the guest house.”

“Ugh,” Porter groaned, “He better not have fucked up any of my furniture. If the room is covered in a fine layer of dust, I’m gonna have to kill him.”

I pushed myself to a standing position and waited for my precarious imbalance to pass before I spoke, “Want me to go out there with you?”

He eyed me warily, “You think you can make it?”

I thought about it for a moment before responding, “No, but I can crawl if I need to.”

The genuine smile that split Preston’s face was dazzling. All he had to do was smile and people fell in love with him. He just had one of those personalities that made you want to be around him. That smile was
his
moneymaker.

“Let’s get to it then!” He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and, as much as I hate to admit it, I leaned into him to help steady myself against the almost-nautical sway of the room.

“I’m happy to help, Preston, but can we do this quietly? You hurt my head.”

By the time we made it to the back door, I was feeling a bit better and my brain had begun to clear. I ducked out from under his arm as we passed into the expanse of his back yard and we walked along the edge of his pool side-by-side.

“Why do you think he does it?” Preston asked quietly.

“Does what?” I wasn’t sure if he meant the coke or the extreme public cries for attention in which Parker was prone to participate.

“All the drugs and partying. I mean, we have it made, Porter. Look at this place,” he waved an encompassing hand indicating his perfectly manicured property, “He could have all this too if he’d just stop being a dumb ass.”

“Are you calling
me
a dumb ass?” I asked with a wink.

“No. I get why
you
don’t go for this. It’s not your style. I mean, your place is nice, but it’s also very
you
. Sleek, modern, minimal. But Parker
wants
this lifestyle, he just can’t afford it because he’s constantly snorting his money and taking his glorified whores out to elite clubs. I guess I just don’t get it. When does responsibility set in? When is he going to realize how much work and planning goes into having a place like this?”

“Honestly,” I hooked my arm around his neck and pulled him into my side, “I don’t know, kid. I’ve asked myself the same question for the last ten years. It’s common sense stuff to most of us, but to him, he’s just having a little bit of fun. He sees nothing wrong with it. After all, you and I get to have fun
and
have the nice things. Why can’t he? He doesn’t see the difference between once or twice a year and once or twice a week. I can’t help but wonder where the hell I went wrong with him.”

“
No
!” Preston stopped dead in his tracks, causing me to list dangerously to one side as I turned to face him, “You can’t blame yourself for the bad decisions that asshole makes. I turned out just fine and you had to compete with
him
for the title of role model. If anything, I should have turned out more fucked up than he is by that reasoning. Let him take the blame for being a fuck-up. He’s a big boy now.”

“That’s a lot easier said than done, Preston.”

He sighed, clearly frustrated with me, then quirked his head to the side as if listening to a far-off voice. He groaned a few seconds later.

“If he’s in there, I
really
hope he’s alone and fully clothed.”

The sudden change in topic threw me for a loop and I had to double-time it to catch up to him. His hand was already on the doorknob when I came up behind him and heard what he’d been listening to.

“Oh, gross…” I braced myself for the worst and hoped for the best. He turned the knob and the door swung open.

I was glad I had prepared myself for the worst.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Preston screamed into the dim, sweaty air.

Arms and legs jolted to life and I counted at least six bodies, both male and female, scatter in every direction. Only one person remained in the center of the room as the rest of the party hurriedly poured themselves back into their clothes and slinked past us through the door.

The debut film that had given occasion to the party still played on the wall.

The prone figure of our middle brother groaned from his place on the floor. One of his hands reached out to the side, groping blindly as if it had a mind of its own.

“Your friends are all gone, fool,” Preston spat as he made his way into the room, carefully picking his way over the debris and abandoned pieces of clothing.

“Well that explains why it’s so cold in here,” Parker mumbled as he rolled over onto his side.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Preston was dangerously close to Parker’s head and his hands were on his hips, indicating he was going to flip out. I was about to bear witness to yet another brawl between my younger brothers. I knew I should step in and intercede, but Parker deserved what he had coming.

I crossed my arms and leaned against the doorframe, fighting off the grin that kept creeping onto my face.

“Outside of the raging hangover that you’re not helping, I seem to be perfectly fine, if not a little bit nude.”

“You just had an orgy to the soundtrack of your baby brother fucking his way through an entire cast! You are
not
perfectly fine! You’re fucked up! I’m not sure which one of us needs a shower more at this point! What the hell made you think it was okay to fuck your friends while watching me?”

Parker groaned as he returned to his position on his back and flung an arm over his eyes, “Can you try to leave quietly and close the blinds before you go shower? My head hurts.”

That was the nudge Preston needed to send him over the edge. He swung his leg back and brought it down hard into Parker’s ribs. The breath was still wheezing out of the drunk one when the shoe dropped again. I listened hard for the sound of cracking ribs with each blow. I’d step in at that point, of course. Until then, Parker was on his own.

I’d seen this play out more times than I could count. It never failed: Parker would overstep a line, Preston would finally snap and throw the first punch, then Parker would pounce like a tiger knowing that as long as he didn’t swing first, neither of them would get in any real trouble for it. He would pound the ever-living snot out of our youngest brother until I finally stepped in and pried them apart.

Since Preston was the baby, he didn’t get in trouble for starting it.

Since Parker didn’t start it, he didn’t get in trouble for defending himself.

Since nobody ever got seriously hurt, I was off the hook for not stopping them before it got physical.

Something about this fight was different though. Some sixth sense was buzzing in the back of my head and I didn’t like it.

Preston’s shoe was about to crash into Parker’s chest for the fifth or sixth time when he froze. His foot hung there, suspended in the air a few inches from Parker, for several tense moments before he lowered it to the floor and narrowed his eyes.

“Get out,” Preston hissed, “Get off my fucking property and don’t bother coming back. I can’t watch you do this to yourself anymore.” He spun on his heel and stormed by me back into the yard.

As I stood there staring into the room, I finally realized why the familiar scene had bothered me so much: Parker hadn’t even
tried
to fight back.

I pushed off the doorframe with my shoulder and strode toward him as he rolled back and forth on the floor clutching his ribs. Bruises were already forming on his naked skin. I could make them out even in the tenebrous light of the luxuriously large living room of the guesthouse.

When he finally caught his breath and stopped writhing at my feet, he let fly a string of curses that even I couldn’t keep up with.

When he finished, I asked the question that had been burning in the back of my mind, “Why didn’t you take him down?”

He stared at me with equal parts pain and anger shining through the tears that threatened to spill from his eyes.

“I know you could’ve,” I pressed when he turned away to stare at the ceiling in silence, “I’ve seen you do it a hundred times before. Why not this time?”