by Huss, JA
We don’t go to my place. If I actually have a place I don’t know where it is and even though Danny asks me over and over again to try to remember, there’s nothing there. It’s just dark. Just black and empty.
But I feel like my name is Christine. The pill bottle in my hoodie pocket says so. And Danny says so. And even though I don’t know who Danny is, I feel him to be Danny just as much as I feel me to be Christine.
He’s driving an old Willy’s wagon that’s outfitted like a tank. Four-inch lift kit, thirty-five-inch tires, and glass thick enough in the windows that surround me to be bullet-resistant.
We end up across town in some dumpy garage filled with custom motorcycles. The sign on battered metal door says Fortnight’s with a picture of a skeleton riding a chopper through flames underneath the name. Mad toothy grin on his skull face like he’s about to challenge Satan for control of Hell.
It’s cold inside. Empty too, except for the bikes. There are seven workstations but today must be Sunday because it all looks very much put away.
He closes the door behind us, locks it, then arms an alarm system that looks way too state-of-the-art for this dump. Then he leads me across the large space to a beat-up old metal staircase and we go up to a door, deal with another alarm system, and enter what must be his apartment.
We didn’t ditch the guns. Turns out the sniper rifle was all packed up in a convenient carrying case, the shotgun was sawed off, and the pistol was a suppressor-ready CZ in urban gray that just looked pretty. We placed them on the cheap coffee table and looked them over with the same expression.
Nice.
That’s what our silent voices said in our heads.
Too nice to ditch and too difficult to replace.
So I took the rifle and pistol, he stuck the sawed-off into his leather jacket, and that was the end of it. Old habits dying and all that shit, right? It’s hard to let go of a nice piece of equipment, even if it could be your downfall.
His apartment is warm.
That’s the first thing I notice. It’s fuckin’ freezing outside and I’m only wearing a dark gray hoodie over the threadbare t-shirt I woke up in.
So I breathe in the heat as he tucks the shotgun away in the coat closet—I think that’s where all shotguns live—and then takes the sniper rifle from me and goes in the bedroom to put it somewhere safe.
I keep the pistol and it jabs me in the back when I sink down into the soft couch cushions, aware that my body is bruised and achy and the gun isn’t helping matters, but the pressure of a gun against my lower back is something that makes me feel better. So I don’t care.
He comes out of the bedroom sans rifle, taking his heavy leather jacket off as he crosses the room, my eyes tracking him the whole way. It jingles from all the zippers and that’s all I concentrate on until he hangs it over the back of a chair at the small table next to the kitchenette and things go silent.
I look at him.
He’s nice to look at.
Dark blond hair, blue eyes, thick, muscular body, and a square jaw with at least a week’s worth of golden stubble on it. His arms are bare now but full-sleeved with tattoos. Skulls and skeletons, mostly. Which makes me think of the logo on the garage door.
“Danny Fortnight,” I say, putting two and two together.
He smiles, which almost changes him into a different person. “Christine Keene.”
“So now what?”
He sighs, shrugs, then walks over to the couch and sinks down into the cushion next to mine.
There is some deep desire hiding inside me. Something that makes me want to sink into him. Rest my head on his shoulder, wrap my hands around his upper arm, and just… forget about everything else but us.
But I don’t do that. I want to, but I don’t.
“I’d make small talk,” he says. “Ask you what you’ve been up to these past few years, but I’m gonna assume you don’t know. So…”
He lets the word dangle there. Waiting for me to pick it up.
“So…” I say, thinking. Thinking about what’s missing between us. Because clearly there’s a lot.
“So I got this place,” he says, saving me from myself. “It’s going pretty good.”
“You make bikes?” I say, staring straight ahead. Because something tells me if I look at him I’ll do something stupid. Like hug him. Or kiss him. Or something worse. Or better, depending on how you see things.
“I make bikes.” He sighs. And then he sorta chuckles. Which—I’m so fucking weak—makes me turn my head involuntarily so I can see him. “I sold one last week for a hundred and fifteen grand so I got money.”
That last part reverberates in my head for a few seconds. It implies whatever history we have between us didn’t involve a lot of money. “I don’t need money.” It’s true too. According to the text on the phone I’m rich in virtual currency. And the thing inside me says if I think hard enough about that little fact, I’ll know how to liquidate it into something real pretty quick.
“Maybe not,” he says. “But I got some.”
“Now what?”
“We wait, I guess.”
“For?”
He huffs out something that isn’t quite a laugh. “For fuckin’ Alec to call. Just like old times, right?”
“Is it?” I ask, still looking at him.
“Look,” he says, reaching for my hand. He folds his fingers over mine and squeezes. “Whatever it is he’s got you into, I’ll get you out. OK?” His blue eyes do that searching thing again. They scan me like a laser that knows how to read my barcode. “Don’t worry about what happens next. I got you.”
I want to pull away and make him squeeze me tighter at the same time. Both urges running deep. Both desires simultaneously confusing and comforting. His hand is so warm, his whole body radiating heat that calls my name.
He lets go of my hand and puts his arm around me and pulls me close.
I sink.
Absolutely sink into him.
And we just sit there in silence. For long, drawn-out moments. For eternity.
“I’m glad you’re back,” he finally says. “I don’t care what you did or how you got here, I’m just glad you’re back.”
“Me too,” I say. And I mean it. I don’t know who I really am. I don’t know who Alec is. I don’t know why I love this man holding me right now.
I just know I do.
CHAPTER FIVE - DANNY
We almost did it once. Almost stepped over that imaginary line and changed our relationship from friends to lovers. But I stopped it.
Her fingers were already dealing with the button on my jeans. Our mouths heading in the direction of a desperate kiss. My hands wanted to touch her everywhere all at once. It felt so inevitable in that moment and then like a dumbass I let myself imagine what things would be like tomorrow. Not tomorrow tomorrow. It might take weeks or months. Hell, years. People go years blinded by that one mistake they made, refusing to see it for what it was.
But even though I want one—desperately—there’s no way Christine and I could have a relationship. Not after all we’ve done together. Not after all we’ve been through. There’s too much sadness there. So much anger. And blame.
Blame for all the things that went wrong. For all the reasons why we’re here right now. Dealing with whatever the fuck she’s into. Sitting in this stupid one-bedroom apartment above a dingy garage that has become my whole life.
She got down on her knees and I don’t know why, but that scared me. And then her fingertips were about to wrap around my cock and pull it out. Her lips puckered up against my swollen head were just moments away.
But I got a glimpse of the future and it was not pretty.
She wasn’t even eighteen. After all that time together, after all those jobs, after all that killing… she wasn’t even old enough to vote yet.
She would’ve blamed me when it all went to shit. And then I’d have lost her. For good.
She blamed me anyway. She left me anyway. And I lost h
er anyway.
What was my point again?
“You have a nice security system.”
“What?” I turn my head slowly to look at her. God. I shouldn’t even fucking look at her because those hazy green-brown eyes are staring back at me. I could get lost in them. So easily.
“I mean,” she stammers. “You seem to take your security seriously. Two alarms. And it’s a good company. I don’t know how I know that, but… forget it.”
I let out a breath and a smile comes with it. “You know how you know that?”
“How?” she asks, leaning into me a little.
“Because that’s the only company we never got past.”
She squints those beautiful eyes. Searching for the memories, maybe.
“That’s why I use them. They’re the best and we never got past them.”
“Oh,” she whispers. “I only meant… I just meant I feel kinda… safe with you. That’s all.”
And that sets off a cyclone of what-ifs and coulda-shoulda-wouldas in my head. How I could’ve done things different. How I should’ve been there for her, even after she walked away. How I would’ve been so much better off if she was in my life these past few years.
But that’s the thing, right? What’s good for me was never good for her.
“I used you,” I say. “For a very long time. And one day you just said, ‘Fuck you, Fortnight.’ And we were done.”
She takes a deep breath and holds it. I count to five in my head and she lets it out.
I know her so well. Even when she has no idea who she is or why she does things. I know her.
“Maybe,” she says, turning her back to me. Turning her body. Stretching out on the couch. Reaching for a pillow and laying her head on it as she tucks her hands underneath. Her legs find their comfort zone across the top of my lap.
Like old times.
“Now what?” she says.
I shrug. “We wait for Alec, I guess.”
“Why?”
“Because… I guess… he’s the one who knows things.”
“Should we care what he knows?”
I press my lips together and reluctantly nod my head. “We should.”
There’s ten minutes of silence after that. I feel very exposed for some reason. And I don’t know why. Is it because she’s back and she brought him with her? Is it because I still want her and can’t have her? Is it because there’s an opportunity here? One that ends the way I always thought it would?
I think back on the day I first met her. We were in a foster home. She’d been there a while, but it was my first day. I’d gotten busted for stealing food from a local grocery store and just finished a few months of juvie time. Most kids like me have no hope of getting placed with a family, but it was my lucky day. The family had a baby on the way and needed some quick cash. So they took as many kids as the system would let them and packed us all into this big, old house down on Second.
Christine was ten years old. I was fourteen and those four years seemed like an eternity between us. She was sitting on the grass in the ratty backyard poking a beetle with a stick. I remember this because the beetle was blue, and it shouldn’t have been.
“It’s a mutant,” she said, still poking at it. “That’s why it’s blue.”
I remember thinking she was a mind reader when she said that.
But she turned those hazy green eyes up at me and said, “Do you ever feel like crushing pretty things?”
And it stopped my heart, I swear to God.
I said, “No,” because I thought she was pretty and if I told the truth and said yes, then that would mean I’d want to crush her.
“I do,” she said. She poked the bug again. Not hard or anything. And it scrambled up a tall, weedy stalk of grass to get away. “But only because I want to see what’s inside. I need to know what makes it so pretty.”
I remember thinking, Damn, this little girl is fucked up.
But I didn’t say that. I just took that stick and tossed it over a fence. Then I reached for her hand, pulled her to her feet, and said, “I got a couple bucks. Wanna blow this place and get some ice cream?”
Because it wasn’t fair. She wasn’t a kid anymore. She was old and someone did that to her. Someone stole her childhood. Maybe she’d never been a kid and it just wasn’t fair.
“Do you have a bathtub?” Christine says in the here and now.
We were a team after that.
I look at her without turning my head. “Yeah.”
“Can I take a bath? I’m so fucking sore. I just want to soak.”
I swallow down the opportunity. Tell myself I don’t want to kiss her right now. Tell myself I don’t love her that way. Tell myself—
“Please?”
“Sure,” I say. And then I push her legs off my lap, stand up, walk over to the little dining table, put on my leather jacket, and say, “I’ll be back in a couple hours. There are towels in the hall closet.”
Brasil is my Alec these days. He’s a tall guy with reddish hair and beard—both going gray at vastly different rates—who lives on the west side of the city near the waterfront on the top floor of one of those newly renovated old buildings that spent its youth as a rubber factory or some shit.
He’s only like twelve years older than me but the guy has been around the fuckin’ block and he’s got the scars and lines to prove it.
We chop cars.
High-end motherfuckin’ cars.
We don’t do it here. This city is way too industrial for the legitimate über-rich. Not enough sun, not enough sand, not enough glam.
We got an operation out west. About thirty-five up-and-comers do the dirty, put them on a train, ship them to another city down south, and then we have ’em picked up and spread out to about two dozen different shops to be chopped. We sell that shit online through a website hosted in Mexico.
Like me he learned to keep his distance from the product the hard way. Like me he’s got a business and like mine, it’s not a front. I make custom bikes because I love the work, and he breeds and sells racehorses because he likes the smell of premium alfalfa hay and the sound of that bugle on race day.
He told me that. I’m not just talking out my ass.
But it feels like we’re at the tail-end of closing up shop. Ready to retire. At least I am. I’ve got money socked away in various offshore accounts. When I told Christine I got money I wasn’t lying. When I said I sold a bike, I did, and that’s how I got it. I don’t touch the dirty money. Not one fuckin’ cent. Everything I spend comes from bikes. All that other green is locked up tight in faraway banks.
But if she needed piles of money I’d get it for her. If she wanted it, I’d hand it all over.
I owe her.
Brasil has even more security than I do. He’s one paranoid motherfucker. But we’re partners so I got a special biometrically-coded app to open his garage door, which lets me pull the Jeep right onto a lift that will take me up to his personal parking spaces. When I get up there I ease the Jeep out, take a reserved spot next to his Escalade, and make my way to the door where his security pats me down (no one gets past this door without a pat-down), finds my gun, takes the magazine out, empties the chamber, and then hands it back with nothing more than a nod.
No one gets past this door locked and loaded either.
“Be careful,” the door-thug warns me.
“Why?”
“He’s pissed off today.”
“Noted.”
Brasil isn’t one of those Zen guys. He throws a fit about pretty much everything. But the second I open the solid-steel door I can hear him yelling. It’s his I’m-about-to-off-one-of-you-stupid-motherfuckers yell.
When I walk the hallway leading into the vast, open loft space I see a line of men—tough men—standing up against the wall like they’re about to get hit by a firing squad. My age. Hard men. Experienced men. You get the point. They’re not fresh-faced babies.
And Brasil is pacing in front of them, screaming, his
face red with anger, his yelling so loud it makes my throat hurt. I can practically see the vein throbbing in the side of his neck as he points to the guy with the gun.
It really might be a firing squad.
“What the fuck?” I ask.
Brasil stops mid-stride to stare at me. It takes a lot of self-control and a few seconds to halt the threats he was about to hurl at me, but he does it.
“We have a fucking problem.”
“OK,” I breathe out.
“Get the fuck out of here. And you do not come back until you know who the fuck is responsible for this.”
The line of men scatters instantly. They don’t look back. They don’t make faces or throw each other sidelong glances as if to say, What the fuck is up his ass?
They just leave.
Brasil pours himself a whiskey, downs it in one gulp, and then slams the glass down on the concrete kitchen counter so hard it shatters.
“I… am going to assume something went horribly wrong with that last order.”
“You assume correctly.” He’s calm now. Like that whiskey was the golden ticket to peace. And he walks over to the office section of the loft, takes a seat in the absurdly large leather chair, and leans back with a creak. “Our last shipment is gone.”
“Gone? Like never got here? Or someone got to the freight cars before our guys did?”
“What’s the difference?”
I shrug. “Well, if it never arrived then you don’t need to yell at our men. It’s not their fault. But if they fucked up and let it get away, then yeah, we got a problem because that means we got a rat.”
“We got a rat,” he says, his Irish accent thick. He was born in the U.S., but he’s spent a lot of time in Ireland over the course of his lifetime. Just got back a week ago and the accent is always thicker when he comes home than it was when he left. “And we’ve got competition.”
“Who?” I ask.
“If I knew that do you think I’d waste my time yelling at those dumb fucks?”
I shrug and take a seat in another smaller leather chair in front of his desk, just kinda waiting for him to get over his anger. I’m not afraid of Brasil, but I give him his space and he gives me mine. It works well for us.