The TV clicked on, and Marissa toed off her boots with a scowl wrinkling her nose. “No, those choices were made by the drugs, which he influenced you to take.”
Touché. But what seventeen-year-old wasn’t influenced? “Maybe, but if my boyfriend at the time dyed his hair blue and pierced his entire cheek, I might’ve been influenced to do that, too. Peer pressure. It’s inevitable.”
Marissa rolled her eyes as she cued up Netflix. “So why would you want to subject yourself to that again? I’m telling you, calling Jordan isn’t a good idea.”
“People deserve second chances.” The words fell flatter than she’d wanted, like her mouth and her mind weren’t working in sync. It seemed that had been happening a lot ever since things had fallen apart with Ryan. And by the hard set of Marissa’s features, she’d caught the uncertainty, too. “Besides,” she added, “I’m not that same person anymore, so there’s a good chance he’s changed, too.”
Nothing but the sound of crunching popcorn echoed around Sailor’s small living room and settled onto the couch between them. Marissa selected the movie. Why was her cousin reacting this way? It wasn’t like she was planning to marry the guy. Just meet him for lunch like he’d suggested.
Channing Tatum appeared on the screen, and Marissa looked directly at Sailor. That caught Sailor’s attention. Her cousin never missed a chance to stare at Channing Tatum. “Everyone deserves a second chance?” Her entire body faced Sailor, a slow grin stretching her mouth. “Then why don’t you give one to Ryan?”
Because he didn’t want her. Duh.
…
The dank smell of stale alcohol and antiseptic burned Ryan’s nose as he shuffled over the concrete floor and into the holding cell, Officer Steinman a quick step behind him. The wash of the fluorescent lighting highlighted the divots in the cement walls and streaks of God knew what on the benches lining them. It wasn’t the first time he’d been in a holding cell, but the difference between when he was sixteen and running the streets with Micah and now was he knew better.
Officer Steinman—a buffed-out version of Peewee Herman, framed the steel door opening with his arms, narrowed his close-set eyes, and continued the lecture he’d started on the car ride to the police station. “Bars are not anything-goes zones. The criminal laws that apply on the street and everywhere else still apply inside, despite the possibility that a host of beers may have changed everyone’s opinion on the subject.”
“Hmmm.” Ryan settled onto the bench, pressing the curve of his spine into the hard wall. And every sixty seconds in Africa…a minute has passed. Ryan shut his eyes and tuned out the officer’s word barf until he heard the words he was waiting for.
“When I’m done taking the report from the kid you punched, I’ll be back so you can make a call.”
Ryan stiffened. “I told you I was just trying to break up a fight—”
“And your temper got the better of you.”
Jesus. Fuck. He scrubbed his hand over his face. “Yes, but it was because—”
What? Sailor had gone behind his back? Again?
The door to the building slammed with a bang, and another pair of footsteps echoed down the hall. Great, as if being held here wasn’t bad enough, now he was going to have a roomie.
In a matter of a few seconds—just long enough to inhale a long, deep breath and realize his phone call to Micah was going to be far less painful than the one he’d had to make to Marty ten years ago—another officer rounded the corner, his hand swallowing the arm of a very familiar face. A face that made Ryan’s skin itch just by looking at it.
Vinny, Ryan’s former employee, chuckled, a raspy sound worse than a metal chair screeching on the floor. “What’s up, bro?” He sauntered in like he owned the grimy little room and lowered himself onto the bench next to Ryan.
Of all the fucking people…
“What brings you to BPD? I knew you weren’t no saint, but shit, man, didn’t know you were a thug, neither.” He ran a hand through his chin-length stringy hair, the sleeve of his ratty shirt sliding over a skull tattooed to the inside of his thin, pasty arm.
“Don’t come in here acting like we’re friends. You fucked me over and left me short on staff, remember?”
Vinny stared, lines etched into his forehead. “I screwed you over? Bro, you fired me.”
“After you failed to show up to work.” Ryan’s head pounded, and he shook the pain away, along with the anger he had brewing toward Vinny. He didn’t have the energy for this. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter now.”
Spreading his legs wide, Vinny clasped his hands behind his head and reclined against the wall. “So? What brings you in here?”
Ryan glanced at the painted steel door. A yellower light shone in from the small window in its center. “Fight broke out in the bar. I tried to break it up.”
“And you were arrested for that?”
“No, I was arrested for punching the douche bag who started the fight.” Ryan shifted his weight from one ass cheek to the other. Goddamn cell benches. “Cops walked in right when I did, so there wasn’t really any way to argue it.” He turned to Vinny. A hint of the cream-colored walls reflected onto his face, giving his skin a sickly, washed-out look. “What about you? You don’t seem belligerently drunk, so why’re you in here?”
Vinny ran his hand over his arm, settling over his wrist where it looked like a watch used to be. “Got caught walking out on my bill at Rudy’s.”
Eating and running? Seriously, did he think he was back in high school? Ryan shoved his tongue against the roof of his mouth, his next words already tasting bitter. “So you bail on your job and then start stealing food from local restaurants that are barely keeping their businesses alive?”
“Gotta eat somehow.”
Seeing Vinny, with his ratted, dirty clothes and that stupid smirk on his face… Shit, Ryan was glad he wasn’t working at the bar anymore. The guy was a tool with an obvious disregard for everyone around him. But what he’d said had him wondering… “So tell me, Vinny. How many times did you steal from the Alibi?”
A few beers most likely, when nights were slow. Some shots, too.
Vinny stood, paced to the other side of the room and leaned against the wall, one leg kicked back. “Well,” he sighed out, “typically, I’d never admit to this, but tonight was my third bust, which means it’s time I start turning over a new leaf. So I’m going to be honest with you.” He folded his arms across his stomach, shadows from his eyes forming dark circles beneath them. “A few weeks ago, I stopped by the Alibi to ask you for my job back. I was coming down from an all-nighter and was feeling pretty guilty about”—he chuckled—“you know, life in general.”
Ryan’s mind skipped through his memories of the past month. A few weeks ago would have been right about the time he left Sailor standing in that flower shop.
“Anyway,” Vinny continued, “you weren’t there—no one was, actually, but the door had been left unlocked.”
Every cell inside Ryan’s body constricted. No.
“The office was, too.”
No, no, no. Ryan jumped to his feet, his insides suddenly burning like they’d been set on fire with a douse of gasoline. The tightening of his fists grounded him just long enough to say, “What the fuck did you steal from me?” Though it was a useless question. Ryan knew exactly what Vinny had stolen.
Vinny tucked his scrawny body into the corner, gaze skipping to the small window, and lifted his hands in front of him. “No need to get upset, bro. I can probably get some of it back, like the watch and knife. I’ll just need some cash.”
Ryan was moving before his mind told him to. “You low-life sonofabitch.” He clamped his hand around Vinny’s throat. “I give you a job, and this is how you repay me?” Beneath the fury, another kind of emotion was brewing. One that twisted his stomach so hard it felt like it would gag him.
Sailor.
She hadn’t touched his things.
Hadn’t betrayed him.
He squ
eezed harder, his thumb and middle finger finding that spot just below the ear that would turn this shitbag’s face a beet-red color. “Do you know who I lost because of what you did to me?” He tightened his grip. “Do you know what I’m going to do to you because of that?”
Vinny parted his thin lips, a tiny bit of air slipping in. “I—”
The lock on the door behind him clicked. Ryan let go as fast as he could and spun around to face the officer opening it.
“Edwards,” he blurted. “Time to make your call. You have five minutes.”
Ryan didn’t look back—surely, he would have punched Vinny in the face if he had—and rushed to follow Officer Steinman down the hall and into another room, empty except for the desk in the center and the phone sitting atop it.
“Your record is pretty clean,” the officer said, holding the door open wide, “unlike the guy you punched, so you won’t be charged with battery and assault. Call someone to pick you up.”
An hour later, the yellow glow of streetlamps washed across Ryan’s lap as he rode with Micah back to his apartment. He flipped his phone again in his hand. It felt heavier and heavier with each rotation.
Vinny had stolen from him. Not Sailor. The thought pissed him the fuck off and made his head spin at the same time.
“Clearly,” Micah’s low voice echoed, “you’re contemplating calling someone. I’m guessing it’s Sailor.”
He stilled the phone. Ryan pressed his shoulder blades into the leathery seat cushion and said nothing.
Micah grinned like a fucker. “You should do it.”
“I accused her of stealing from me. Then I told her I never wanted to see her face again. Pretty sure that qualifies me as the world’s biggest asshole that she’ll never want to talk to again.”
Micah glanced at him, the lack of light in the night sky darkening his already dark eyes. “Not sure I ever told you this, but I did the same to Laurel that night I got jumped.”
Ryan remembered that night clearly. Micah had been closing up the bar alone when a group of lowlifes attacked him and landed him in the hospital. After Ryan had found him, he’d called Laurel to help, but when she’d shown up, Micah had lost it, upset because the woman in charge of watching his daughter had left her in the care of an elderly neighbor.
Micah continued. “I blamed her for leaving Shae alone. Took my fears out on her.”
If any other person had tried to talk to him like this, Ryan would’ve rolled his eyes and tuned out. But he and Micah had been through so much together. Plus, his friend was basically saving his ass at the moment. He stared out the windshield as the freeway whizzed by. “Your fears?”
“Shae is my life, you know that. And at the time, she was the only one I had.” He gripped the steering wheel harder. “I was afraid something would happen to her. So much so that I pushed everyone else away. Including Laurel.”
“But you guys are together. And doing fine.” A perfect family living the perfect life.
“Now, yeah,” Micah said. “But only after I realized Laurel loved Shae, Shae loved Laurel. I loved Laurel.”
“So much love. How did you cope?”
“Shut up, ass. My point is your fear is getting in the way of telling her you’re sorry.” Ryan opened his mouth, ready to call Micah out. He was inching closer and closer to the whole sounding-like-a-shrink act, and that was where Ryan drew the line. No shrinks allowed in this alliance. Micah continued. “Please don’t make me explain your fears.”
Ryan threw his hands in the air, palms forward. “Promise I won’t beg you to.”
Micah glanced over the center console, a look that might come across as nondescript to others but screamed all-too-knowing to Ryan, flattening out his features. “You’re scared to get too close to her. Not because of who her father is, but because you don’t want to lose her.”
The urge to scoff bubbled in Ryan’s gut, though deep down he knew there was truth to what Micah was saying. Connections were like that long-ass word Mary Poppins sang about—noise exited the mouth when spoken, but there was no meaning to it whatsoever. “Not your fault,” Micah went on, “Shit, after your mom left you and then Marty, I’d be afraid of losing anyone, too. But the thing is…she brings out a side of you I’ve never seen before. And I don’t think that’s something you should let slip through your fingers just because it makes you uncomfortable.”
“This conversation is making me uncomfortable.” The corner of Ryan’s mouth twitched up as Micah sighed.
“And I’m going to make you all sorts of other things if you don’t pick up that fucking phone and call her right now.”
Ryan lifted the phone, the screen still black and reflecting the top half of his face. “Five bucks she doesn’t answer.”
“Ten she hangs up on you.”
“Wow.” Ryan laughed. “So much faith you have, my friend.”
“Who better to call it like it is than the person who’s known you the longest?” He turned the car onto Ryan’s street.
Ryan pressed his finger to the screen, the glow from it now lit up the inside of Micah’s car, changing it from tan to a murder-scene red. He found Sailor’s name and number and clicked on it.
A picture of her filled the screen—one he’d taken the last night he’d spent with her. Messed hair hung in waves around her face, a single strand caught at the edge of her lip as she reclined against the headboard of her bed. Everything about her was perfectly flawed, from her silly laugh to the tiny freckles that spattered her nose when her makeup was off.
Ryan remembered every moment of that night, down to the second he’d taken that picture. He’d never wanted to store a picture of a girl in his phone before. Never cared about them at all, past the fake see you arounds. But Sailor was different. And that night he’d known he was falling for her.
Micah reached a gigantic hand over and smacked the call button, stealing away the image of Sailor. “Friends don’t let friends become pussies.”
Ringing echoed over the soft hum of the tires. Ryan quickly lifted the phone to his ear, the inside of his chest suddenly feeling like he was walking through a smoky room. “Jesus, Crane, I’m going to kill you.”
“Nah, you’ll thank me.”
As Micah maneuvered closer to Ryan’s apartment, Ryan ticked off the rings one by one on his fingers. After the fifth one, Sailor’s voicemail switched on. He lowered the phone, turning it off at the same time, and then held out his hand. “No answer. Pay up.”
Micah frowned. “This is the difference between someone you wouldn’t mind seeing again and one you can’t live another fucking minute without.” He gestured to the phone. “Try again. And if she doesn’t answer, leave a message.”
Ryan fully expected to be groveling into a recording when he hit call again. That was why, with his head pressed into the headrest and eyes focused on the rows of apartments creeping past his window, he choked when he heard Sailor say his name.
He sat up straight, holding the phone harder to his ear. “Sailor.” It was the first time he’d said her name in weeks, and it rolled off his tongue as if he were saying the very thing that up until this moment had mattered to him most. His bar.
She spoke softly, a tone that sounded nothing like the quirky, unpredictable woman he’d fallen for. “Stop calling me. I don’t have anything to say to you.”
He gripped the phone harder, as if he could hold on to her longer. “Wait. Please don’t hang up. The whole thing was a misunderstanding.”
“A misunderstanding that you thought I stole from you?”
Hearing it come out of her mouth? It sounded even more pathetic. Not to mention a little prickish. “Listen,” he started but was cut off by the sound of nothingness.
“Damnit.” Lowering the phone, he looked to Micah. “I might need that ten bucks for flowers.”
Micah shook his head, a knowing smirk twisting his lips. “I’m afraid flowers won’t cut it for this one.”
Chapter Ten
Truth #30: Stubble makes t
he world go round.
Sailor stopped in front of the glass door and straightened her denim skirt. The dang thing was worse than the collar of her work shirt that refused to stay down. Next time she’d just wear jeans.
She yanked open the door to the rich scent of fried corn and onions biting through the air, accompanied by the sound of laughter and sizzling and everything else Mexican restaurant-ish. It was as if the place were smiling with its bright colors and lively music, something that instantly scraped at her, just like the material of her skirt.
Not the restaurant’s fault, though. No, she blamed the phone calls she’d received last night for the uncomfortable way her body was squirming. The way every cell in her body wanted to believe what Ryan had said—that the whole thing had been a misunderstanding. Even more maddening, the way that part of her just below her collarbone ached and wished it were him she was meeting instead of Jordan.
Her brain had been battling with her chest for weeks now, enough to know it was useless. So she swallowed against the tightness, sucked in a deep breath, and approached the hostess.
The woman greeted her with a ruby-lipped smile. “How many?”
“Two,” Sailor said, “but I’m pretty sure he’s already at the bar. Guy about this high.” She lifted her hand slightly above her head and, as if her own muscles refused to go with the lie, then lowered to her level. “Brown hair and skin the color of…um, skin?”
Black hair fell over the hostess’s shoulders as she cocked her head to the side.
“I mean, he’s probably wearing a gray shirt because that’s all he wears—or wore. I don’t really know anymore, but a few years ago it was all he wore. Someone told him it made his coloring look less pale, and he stuck with it.”
Geez, what was she saying? She bit her lip and scanned the room behind the woman. Every table occupied, it took a minute, but she eventually spotted a gray shirt and brown hair at the edge of the bar.
A Moment of Madness (Boston Alibi) Page 19