The Bust

by Jamie Bennett

  “Huh.” Was she trying to tell me something? Yeah, I already knew that my career was over. My life was over.

  “Biology is so weird,” she continued. “I remember reading about addiction in high school and it was very interesting to me. Isn’t it funny how some people can snort a line and never want to touch it again, and some people do more and more and more, and they can’t stop? They need that high so much!”

  I started to sweat again. “Weird,” I said and swallowed, but my mouth was totally dry. I looked over and her eyes were locked on me.

  “I’m sorry,” she told me quietly. “I shouldn’t have said all that.”

  “It’s ok.” I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, back and forth, back and forth, one after the other.

  “Do you want me to get out?” she asked, but I shook my head. I didn’t want her to have to stand outside here, not with the snow coming down even harder. Shit, it was only November. I was going to die by spring.

  “We could play a game to kill time. Oh!” Kyle suddenly started scrabbling at her back.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I asked, alarmed. Fleas? I could believe it after seeing her house.

  “Nothing, but I remembered something.” She twisted in the seat and yanked a backpack from beneath her garbage bag-coat. “I used to read to my mom and it really helped her,” she explained as she pulled out a book. “Today we have The Luckless Lord LaCroix. It’s not a great title but it’s a really good story, about a baron who has a ton of problems but falls in love…”

  She went on, talking excitedly about Lord what’s-his-name until she seemed to notice that I didn’t give a shit.

  “You know, I’ll just start! You’re going to love it,” she assured me, and I stared, amazed, as she cracked open the old paperback with a half-naked dude on the cover and read to me. She did have a nice voice, and even though I wasn’t really listening to the words, I enjoyed hearing it. Now that she was warmer, her nose wasn’t like a cherry and tears weren’t streaming down her cheeks, so she was nicer to look at, too. It was funny—her big eyes almost exactly matched her hair, that same dark, rich brown. Chocolate.

  “Don’t you love it?” Kylie nodded at me encouragingly, blinking long lashes as she looked up from the page. “Isn’t it good so far? Pretty gripping, right?”

  “Gripping,” I repeated. What was she talking about?

  “I’m not going to give away the end, but Lord LaCroix doesn’t always have such bad luck,” she told me seriously. “Things really turn around for him.”

  “Great. Glad to hear it.”

  She nodded again, as if I hadn’t been sarcastic, like I had a lot of interest in Lord Perrier and how his life turned out. “Do you want to borrow this from me? Here,” she said, and put it on the dashboard without waiting for an answer. “You can leave it at the door of the tavern when you’re done and Roy will probably give it to me. He gets pretty mad when he sees me with a book during my breaks. The problem is actually that he doesn’t want me to take a break, but I told him that he has to let me.”

  “No, I don’t…” I started to say, but she turned and looked at me with her chocolate-brown eyes, and I stopped. “Ok,” I told her instead. Then I remembered to add, “Thanks.”

  She got a huge smile. “You’re welcome. Anytime, ok? I have a little collection if you want to borrow another one. Or, maybe you’d just want to hang out or something. I don’t know that many people here.”

  “Yeah, maybe. I’m pretty busy.”

  It must not have been the answer she was looking for because she lost the smile. A pea green Olds the size of a tank turned into the parking lot and we both swiveled to look. “That’s Roy,” she announced. “I can get in now. Can you open the trunk for my scooter?”

  The wind whipped around us, making eddies with the fresh snow. I started to hand her the scooter but then hesitated. “Is that Roy giving you a ride home?” I asked.

  “Sure, he can.” She tugged her transportation from my hand. “Bye, Kayden.”

  “Bye.” I watched her skid over a frozen mud puddle as she walked over to the famous Roy, who looked like a pissed-off elf. Then I watched them both walk into the bar, with her smiling, still skidding, and him smoking furiously. They disappeared behind the battered door and Kylie hadn’t looked back once.

  I picked up the book from my dashboard, The Luckless Lord LaCroix. The shirtless guy on the cover stared back at me, his lips pursed up like he might be whistling. Well, I wasn’t going into Roy’s, and I wasn’t doing anything else tonight. I put it in my coat pocket and drove off, but a little more slowly than I usually did. Like Kylie had said, I wasn’t in a rush. I found myself thinking about the other things she’d said as I drove back to my apartment.

  Chapter 3

  Kylie

  “No thanks. No, no thanks!” I took the customer’s hand from where it rested on my butt and placed it back around his beer bottle. “No touching.”

  “You’re beautiful,” he slurred, and reached for me again. I looked over at Roy but he was busy arguing with another guy about an unpaid tab, so I leaned in closer toward the groper so he could hear me over the music from the old jukebox.

  “If you put one more finger on me, I’m going to break one of those bottles over your head. Then I’ll use the glass to cut you,” I told him. “No touching!”

  He seemed to understand that my butt was off-limits, and I really hoped I wouldn’t have to break a bottle. That never turned out well. Away from his table and hiding a little in a dark corner, I stretched my legs, raising up on my toes and lowering a few times to loosen my aching calf muscles. They were sore even though I’d started taking the bus to work. It dropped me in town a few hours before my shift started and I waited around for Roy to pull up in his big green car with the keys to let us in.

  The weather had improved slightly (as in, it wasn’t actively snowing today) but wow, it had been cold. I shivered a little, still feeling it, and rubbed my arms as I stretched my calves again. The bus was better than the scooter, but all the time standing around and waiting for Roy to arrive, and then being on my feet in the bar for the night—it made me so tired. It didn’t seem to matter that I was wearing the comfortable yet ugly shoes that Roy hated and said drove away business. Like any of the customers had their eyes below my knees! I glanced down at my chest, where the black “O” of “Roys” on my bright-pink, skintight shirt circled my breast, marking it as the clear target. No, eyes were not on my feet, not in this getup.

  “Kylie!” my boss yapped over the noise of the bar. Now that I’d already put the groper in his place and had slacked for just one, single moment, this was when Roy was paying attention to me? I walked over, avoiding the butt-toucher table. “What did Crawley do now? Grab you?” he demanded.

  “Yeah, but I told him I’d slice him with broken glass if he kept it up.”

  Roy nodded approvingly. “We’re closed tomorrow,” he mentioned.

  I nodded, having figured that even he would want the day off on Thanksgiving. “Are you seeing family?”

  He looked at me like I’d grown another head. “I’ll watch the Woodsmen and smoke cigars. That’s a holiday.”

  I waited, but when he didn’t ask, I announced, “No, I don’t have plans, either. Emma and I will hang out and I’ll make sandwiches. It’s silly to have a whole turkey for just the two of us and anyway, she’s not supposed to eat anything that isn’t on the special diet list the vet gave to me.”

  “Fascinating.” He tilted his chin across the room. “If Crawley goes after your ass again, let me know.”

  “Sure.” I walked away to clear some empties, still thinking about the whole Thanksgiving deal. My mom and I had done holidays, some, but since I’d left California, I had let them slide completely. Emma never cared and I guessed that I didn’t, either. Maybe I’d have a cigar and watch the Woodsmen, too. Although, that would have involved me buying cigars. And also a TV.

  It was a busy night at Roy’s because Thanksgi
ving eve always was, in my experience in bars. Our regulars had brought friends and family and college kids were home so there were lots of new faces and on top of that, everyone was off work the next day. This was good for me in terms of tips. It was not so good for my feet, since I wasn’t able to take even the tiny break that I’d told Roy was a federal law, and not so good for my butt, which always had attracted a lot of attention and did tonight as well. It wasn’t what you’d call huge, but it had a definite curve. I’d never minded this, because I didn’t spend a lot of time looking over my shoulder at it. But in the tight pants that Roy had insisted were the regular uniform of his establishment, it did seem to stand out. Literally. Attention at Roy’s Tavern meant the drinkers getting handsy, and it got bad enough that Roy had to make an appearance with his baseball bat and show a few customers to the door.

  By the end of the night, both of us were nearly done in. “If business keeps up like this, you’re going to need to hire someone else,” I warned him. “We can’t keep up.”

  “No, I don’t have to do anything,” he snarled back at me. “If you can’t handle the pace, I’ll just hire someone to replace you.”

  “Right. You’re going to find another woman who’s interested in bruised butt cheeks for Christmas?”

  “Smart ass,” he told me, but I did see him smile slightly. And no, my ass didn’t feel at all smart. Sore was more the word for it.

  “Well, I’m not putting up with another night like this one!” I told Roy. “On Friday, I get my federally required fifteen minutes of relaxation and if another guy touches me, I’m going to give it to him.”

  “That’s fine by me,” he announced, and was starting to say something else as he yanked open the door—but he broke off and took a leap backwards. “What in the hell?” he yelled, and I ran from behind the bar top to see what had freaked him out.

  Kayden Matthews?

  Yes, there he was, standing right there in the slight glow of the “Roy” sign. “I’m dropping this off for Kylie,” he told my boss, and then looked into the darkness of the room and waved to me with a whiteish rectangle. He must have had eyes like a tarsier to see me in the murk.

  “Oh!” I said, recognizing what he held, and I hurried closer. A gust of icy wind met me and I shivered in my thin, tiny shirt. “You brought my book back.”

  “Kayden Matthews?” my boss said skeptically. He didn’t move out of the doorway, not letting me pass. “You know him?” he asked me, then turned to Kayden. “We’re closed.” Roy shut the door in his face.

  “What did you do that for?” I demanded, and reached around him for the handle, but Roy blocked me with his hip. “I do know him. He has my book!”

  “Get your shit and go, then. I’m not opening back up to that moron.”

  “Don’t be a jerk,” I called over my shoulder as I ran again, this time to grab my coat. By the time I made it out into the parking lot and into that whipping wind, Kayden was pulling away. I ran faster and jumped in front of his bumper. “Wait!”

  The car crunched to a stop pretty close to where I stood and then his door flew open. “What in the hell?” he echoed Roy. “I almost ran you over! You want your book back enough to risk death? Do you know how hard it is to stop on ice?”

  “I didn’t mean to risk my life.” I went to his side of the car. “I wanted to talk to you! I’m so surprised that you’re here.” It had been a while, and I had given up on seeing The Luckless Lord LaCroix and Kayden ever again. “It’s really late,” I noted.

  “Yeah, I couldn’t sleep. Here.” He held out my book.

  “Thanks.” I hugged it to my chest. “What did you think of it? Wasn’t it great?”

  “I didn’t actually read it.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad. Maybe you found Lord LaCroix’s bad luck annoying? Do you want to borrow a different one instead?”

  The lights from Roy’s car flashed on and he suddenly accelerated out of the dark. I got one look at his scowl as he passed by us and sped down the street.

  “Oh,” I said again, disappointed. “I guess he didn’t want to wait for me.”

  “Was he your ride?”

  “He was supposed to be,” I admitted. And it was a long, long walk home. Also, I was already freezing and I’d only been outside for about two minutes.

  Kayden looked at me and then jerked his head over toward the other side of his car. “Get in. I’ll drive you.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t have anything else to do,” he told me.

  Well, he could have slept—that was what most people were up to at this time of night, not driving around in the pitch-blackness to drop off books at bars. “I would appreciate a ride a lot,” I said, and got in fast before he could change his mind, because he actually wasn’t looking too cheerful about helping me. Frowning, in fact, just like Roy had been when he’d left me standing in front of the bar.

  No, Kayden didn’t seem very cheerful at all. He barely responded to any of my questions about how he was and what he’d been doing in his volunteer job and we were a few miles out of town before he did anything more than grunt, a little like a chimp. “What were you going to do if I hadn’t driven you?” he finally asked me.

  “I probably would have tried to get a car.”

  “Probably? You can’t think you’d scooter home at this time of the night. Morning,” he corrected. “You’d freeze to death.”

  “It reminds me of when we lived in Montana,” I agreed. “I’m not sure if many people are aware of how thin the walls of a yurt can be.”

  “You left California to live in a yurt?”

  “No, first I lived in a motel in Nevada, then I was in a tent in Washington, then an apartment in Portland with six other roommates, then Idaho in an outbuilding on the farm where I worked, then Montana. After that, I decided to head back south. I didn’t want to deal with my eyelashes freezing together again. And poor Emma! She’s really needs a more comfortable lifestyle. She’s much better with a warm home with real walls, like what we have now.”

  “I thought you said you’d be leaving your house here,” Kayden said, and I shrugged in the dark. You just never knew what was going to happen, which was why it was a better idea not to plan too far out into the future.

  “I don’t know about that,” I answered him vaguely. We kept driving in silence, but it was warm silence with the heat pouring out of the vents in his car. They worked much better than in Roy’s Olds and it made me feel so comfortable. Sleepy, too, and my eyes started to feel heavy.

  “I actually did read your book about Lord LaCroix.” The sudden sound of his deep voice made me jump. “A few times.”

  “And? What did you think?”

  It sounded like the words were dragged out of him when he answered, “I kind of liked it. I didn’t expect that I would.”

  “I’m really glad you did! I love rereading it, myself. I couldn’t take too many books with me when I left San Francisco but I have some that were our personal favorites and I just couldn’t give those up. Although, I should say that sometimes I wanted to! You’d be surprised how much paperbacks start to weigh after you’ve been walking for a few miles. They feel like they’re made of wood instead of paper. I guess paper really is wood, so maybe they feel like rocks.” I looked over at the outline of his body in the darkness. Maybe they wouldn’t feel so heavy to him—he was thinner than the pictures I’d been looking at on Roy’s old computer, but he still looked very large and very strong. Tough. Definitely like a few romance novels wouldn’t affect him too much. “I’ll grab another book for you when we get to my house. I know right where they are.”

  “You mean you won’t have to dig to find them? It’s cleaner now?”

  “It’s clean.” It was as clean as it was going to get with all the stuff still piled around, anyway. “I’m still going through everything and it takes a while,” I explained.

  “I don’t know how you can live in that. I don’t like it when bread is out on the counter after I make to
ast.” He made a funny noise, which I interpreted as something between a snort and a laugh. “I used to get all my meals delivered or go out. I’m eating a lot of toast, now. I didn’t know how much a bread bag would bother me.” He made the laugh/huff sound again.

  He was fastidity. No, I meant that he was fastilious. I’d have to look that word up, but anyway, I bet that he was used to someone cleaning up after him, a maid service or full-time housekeeper. “What are you going to do tomorrow for Thanksgiving? More toast while you watch the Woodsmen game?” I asked.

  “No, I won’t be watching that.” All the humor in his voice was gone. “I’m not keeping up with football anymore.”

  “Not even the team where your brother is an assistant coach?”

  “I guess you must follow the Woodsmen pretty closely yourself if you know that Ben Matthews is working there,” he answered. The car was suddenly moving faster, its engine roaring through the darkness. I swallowed as I remembered the car accident that Emma and I had been in, the screaming and confusion, and then the pain.

  “Slow down,” I said sharply, and almost immediately, I felt the forward motion decrease and the engine calm. I took a breath to calm myself too before talking again. “I don’t follow football, not really. I hear people talk about it at the bar sometimes, but I know about your brother because I was curious about you so I used Roy’s computer to find out more.”

  “That makes sense. I’d want to know all about the guy who terrorized me, too.”

  “You didn’t! Not really, not after I saw you,” I told him.

  “You said that before, but…no. You should have been more scared. I’m so much bigger than you—”

  “I’m quite tall,” I informed him. “And I’m not a wilting flower, I’m what you’d call indomifisible.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” Kayden said.

  “It means that I can’t be defeated. I’m not sure I’m saying it right,” I explained.