Chapter 7: The Fictitious O'Brien Family

Jenna was about to order for herself but Bryce shook his head. "I technically did the asking even if you chose the time and place. This is my treat. Bartender, we'll have an appletini and a beer."

The bartender nodded and got to work on those drinks. She found herself subtly studying her drinking buddy. She didn't know anything about him except the fact that he worked an office job and seemed to have a crush on her.

"So, tell me about yourself, Bryce. What brings a guy like you to a humble smoothie establishment?" she asked.

"…a guy like me?"

"A professional adult. We're rather casual if you haven't noticed."

He cracked a smile. "Oh, I've noticed. That's the charm of Juice Jubilee. The slackers who work there."

Jenna could tell he was teasing so she wasn't offended. "To be fair, it's mostly Josh and Del. I try to keep the peace between them as best I can but they seriously crack me up so it's hard not to succumb to their antics. Anyway, you know my exotic workplace so what about you?"

"I work at Digby International. It's a bit of a misnomer considering we're an office supply company, even if we do sell said office supplies all over the world. I'm in the accounting department. Not very exciting."

There was nothing wrong with being an accountant. Colton was one until he got bored of crunching numbers all the time and realized he preferred building new businesses to keeping other people's running. He baked cookies as a side gig at first until it became lucrative enough that he was able to open a storefront. Then he quit his job and focused on it full time.

Alison was an interior decorator and she designed the layout of the store to make it more customer friendly. It was only him and a few of their siblings who didn't have jobs at the time at first but now he had about a dozen employees and wasn't related to any of them.

Jenna had worked there for a while her senior year of high school until she got to college and found something that better fit her schedule. She wished more than anything that she would have stayed working for her brother because then she wouldn't be on the other side of the country from her family right now.

"My brother was an accountant," she told him. "I don't think it's that boring."

"Was?" Bryce asked with a raised eyebrow.

Jenna belatedly realized how that sounded. "He's not dead! But he isn't an accountant anymore. He has his own business."

She wasn't supposed to talk about her family much. It always tripped her up. Tessa O'Brien had three brothers instead of five and both of her parents were still alive. In reality her father had died when she was six from a brain aneurysm.

It had been a great shock to all of them but now she hardly remembered him. Adam, her oldest brother who was now thirty-two, stepped up and helped their mom keep it together by going out and getting an after-school job.

Colton and Evan did the same thing once they were old enough but by the time Peter was sixteen they didn't need the extra income anymore because their mother had been promoted and got a salary increase to go with it. He ended up working anyway though because he wanted to buy a car.

Her fake parents were named Mark and Jill and her fake brothers were Tim, Paul, and Donny. It was easier to say "my brother" than use the fake names for them. Those three fake brothers had bits and pieces of all five of her real ones.

Another difference between Tessa O'Brien and Jenna Mitchell was that Tessa was not the youngest. She was the middle child.

"What kind of business?" Bryce asked with interest.

She realized her mind had been wandering and focused on the conversation again. She needed to continue speaking in generalities. "A bakery. He's amazing considering he never went to culinary school.

"He took over making all the Christmas goodies from my mom by the time he was fourteen. Someone suggested he open a bakery then but he wanted a high-paying job so he didn't. It allowed him to save up for his storefront though so I guess his education wasn't a waste."

"Interesting! I've never baked anything in my life. Are you much of a baker?"

Jenna laughed. "Are you kidding? He used to drag me into the kitchen to bake with him since I was four. I worked in his bakery for a little while too in high school so I know my way around a kitchen."

Bryce smiled. "It sounds like the two of you are close. Is he your only sibling?"

"No. I have three brothers. Two older, one younger. What about you?"

It felt like a horrible betrayal to leave two of her brothers out of that count. And none of them were younger! Jonas might be her twin but he was thirteen minutes older than her and never let her forget it.

"I'm an only child. It must have been fun growing up with a bunch of siblings," he mused.

Jenna smiled but it was full of sadness. It was. She missed them so much, especially today when she was supposed to be with them. "Yeah. They live in Colorado though so I don't see them much. I miss them a lot."

The fictitious O'Brien family was from Colorado rather than Florida because it was pretty far away from there. That had been Killian's idea.

Aside from the fact that she was still the only girl in a family of boys, pretty much everything about her alias was a lie. She couldn't change that though; it was hard enough lying as is. When talking about her family she couldn't possibly pretend to be an only child or have sisters. She didn't know what that was like!

"What are their names?" Bryce asked.

Adam. Colton. Evan. Peter. Jonas. The words were on the tip of Jenna's tongue but she couldn't tell the truth. "Tim, Paul, and Donny."

"Come to think of it, what's your last name? We never properly introduced ourselves. I'm Bryce Fitzgerald."

"Tessa O'Brien." Yet another lie.

"Is Tessa short for anything?"

"No. My mother didn't like the name Theresa but did like the nickname for it so here I am."

Ha. That hadn't been her mother; that had been her. She wanted her fake name to be as similar to her real one as possible without calling herself Jennifer. People asked if her name was a nickname for Jennifer all the time and she hated it!

Or she used to. Now she wasn't sure if she was ever going to hear that again.

She shook her head as if to shake those thoughts away. She wasn't allowed to think about depressing things right now. Not on her birthday when she had someone to spend it with. She could be depressed again tomorrow.

The drinks arrived then and she threw her head back and chugged it before nearly choking. She hadn't been expecting her mouth to burn! It was delicious though; Bryce had been right about that.

He snorted. "You aren't supposed to drink it all at once. Take little sips to have the best experience."

"Noted," she replied flatly.

Jenna took plenty of little sips but it was still gone too quickly. Bryce ordered her another and smiled at her. "Try to actually savor this one, okay?"

She stuck her tongue out at him like she would any of her brothers. She had spent way too much time being 'one of the boys' growing up. She wasn't ladylike at all, even with this makeup and dress on. Why did he like her, anyway?

"Sorry, that was childish," she said penitently.

"I don't mind. It shows you're comfortable with me," he replied with a shrug. "That's a good thing."

Huh. Bryce was an awfully chill person, wasn't he? The mystery of why he was interested deepened. Chill people tended to dislike her because she was too intense. He didn't know how intense she could be though since they had hardly talked.

Jenna found herself more curious about him. "Are you from here?"

He shook his head. "No, I grew up further north. Came down here because I had a partial scholarship and stuck around after graduation since I got a good job."

"Well, what do you do when you aren't at work or hanging out at dysfunctional juice bars?"

"I usually come here on Fridays but most of my free time is spent reading or playing video games."

Jenna's eyes lit up with interest. Finally, something they might have in common! "What kind of video games? Are you more of a first-person shooter person or a story person? I prefer story or puzzle games personally but I've played a few first-person shooter games with my brothers as well."

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