In the Beginning (Volkov Bratva #1)(10)

He stretched out , one booted foot kicked up onto the table, and began focusing his attention on his lap, whistling below his breath as he played an imaginary tune with his fingers curled slightly.

“Do you play piano?” Lauren asked, indicating his hands with a tilt of her head.

His eyebrows shot up in surprise, gazing at her appreciatively as he scratched at the slight scruff below his jaw. “Yea. Do you?”

She shrugged. “I took a piano elective in high school. One thing I always remembered was the way she made us hold our fingers as we played.”

“Oh God, don’t get him started,” Piper interjected as Tristan opened his mouth to respond, cutting off Matt as he was speaking to her. “Once he starts, he’ll never stop.”

Matt looked a bit crestfallen as he lost Piper’s attention, making Lauren think that maybe Matt had a thing for her, but his expression cleared when a scowling Tristan lobbed a pillow at her, nailing her in the face before she could catch it. She threw it back with a smirk, starting a pillow war.

Lauren tried to scramble out of the way without becoming a casualty, but Matt grabbed her, using her as a shield as the pillows began flying at him. It took Amber ringing a bell to make them stop. Everyone froze as they were: Tristan straddling Piper with a pillow in his fist, and Lauren holding one over Matt’s face,

“If everyone is done,” she said amused as she looked to all of them, “the food is ready.”

They scrambled up from their various perches, falling into their duties as they had done this plenty of times. One person grabbed plates, another silverware, glasses, and paper towels. Lauren fell in easily, the guys making it easy on her. Forming an assembly line of sorts, they loaded their plates full of food, then traveled back to the couch to start the movie that Rob had picked, though they hardly paid any attention to it as they started getting to know each other, or at least talking about themselves so Lauren could learn about them.

It was easy talking to them, learning more about their individual personalities. They were quite an eclectic bunch, but their love for each other was clear.

Rob—short for Robin, named by his grandmother who thought he was going to be a girl—and Amber had been together for a little over a year and a half. Rob attended law school for his final year, in hopes of becoming a district attorney one day. Not only that, but he was interning at a local firm forty hours out of the week as well. Despite the time constraint, he and Amber made time for each other.

Piper and Amber’s fathers were twin brothers from Scotland, where Piper had inherited her red hair. Amber had had trace of red in hers before she took to changing the color with treatments at the salon. Piper was studying Journalism at the Art Institute, and was interning at a major magazine—thanks to her mother’s connections in the industry. As she spoke, Tristan had a habit of mocking, much to her irritation as she glared at him.

Matt was the quiet throughout the meal, only speaking up when someone asked him a question directly. After a bit of prodding on Lauren’s part, she got him to divulge that he too was at Columbia—he shared an apartment with Rob—but he was hoping to transfer to MIT to study computer engineering since he was currently at the top of his class. That didn’t seem too surprising, judging by his shirt’s logo and the way his eyes gleamed with excitement when he talked about his new gaming system.

Then, of course, there was Tristan who had to be the most laid-back member of the group, and the youngest at nineteen. And despite his predilection not to continue his education and with zero serious goal in his future, he and Matt were best friends. Whenever one or the other spoke, they had a habit of completing each other’s sentences, or understanding a joke that no one else understood.

“I’m in a band,” he protested, taking a bite of his fourth enchilada, after Lauren asked what he planned to do with his life. “Me and three other guys. We play a few shows around the city, nothing major.”

Piper coughed, like she was covering a laugh, but Tristan shot her a bird and continued.

“When I’m not doing that, I work at my father’s shop over in Yorkville.” Unlike his father that drove an old school Harley Davidson with all the works, Tristan actually owned a car, though according to Matt, it was one crank away from being a dune buggy in Iraq. “I figure once I can’t do either of those anymore, I’ll work a boring ass nine-to-five in a cubicle next Matt.”

Matt chuckled. “We can be cube buddies.”

“Kill me now,” Tristan complained, throwing a piece of bread at his head.

Lauren found the attention on her after they had all finished. She didn’t know what to say really, but she did choose to tell them that her father had died when she was young—sparing them the details. When they asked what her major was, she said she was undeclared.

“Then why are you in school?” Piper asked and Lauren could almost hear the condescension in her tone.

Amber rolled her eyes, glaring at her cousin. “Not everyone has every single aspect of their life figured out at twenty, Piper.”

“Next time,” Tristan said speaking to Lauren alone. “Tell her, ‘you do what the f*ck you want.’”

A little while later, after everyone had finished eating and were heading out the door, Lauren watched in bemusement as Piper and Tristan argued more though it seemed Tristan was just trying to get away from her as he flipped her off and brushed by her out the door.