by West, Dahlia
“Whew,” he said loudly. “I am some kind of worn out. From mowing your lawn, Miss Daisy,” also reminding her that he’d chauffeured her to the grocery store.
She shot him a withering look then picked up the plate of cookies and handed it to him. “Let’s take them outside.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied happily, practically skipping off with his booty.
Chris was on his fourth cookie when he caught her eyeing him strangely. She didn’t look like she was thinking about making him her Pirate King. She looked…wistful. “What’s up, Slick?” he asked her.
As if startled by being caught out, she covered it by plucking a cookie off the plate. “I…I could make lunch for you,” she said suddenly. “I mean,” she added quickly. “If you really won’t let me mow the lawn. I could make lunch on Sundays. Possibly a really good lunch, if you promise not to mow before 8 am. My mom made us lunch on Sundays.”
“Yeah, that’s a good deal,” he replied and picked up his beer. “So…is she gone? Passed or…?”
“No. She still makes lunch on Sundays for my dad.”
He nodded. “Why’d you leave Phoenix?”
She frowned at her plate. “Um, just, you know, you can’t live at home forever.”
“Well, that’s the truth,” he agreed. “Did you go to college?”
She brushed some crumbs off the table to avoid looking at him. “Yeah. But I didn’t finish. I left my junior year.”
“What’d you study?”
“Nothing.”
He was quiet a moment. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
She looked up at him. “I wasn’t…I mean it’s true. I didn’t study anything. I was…it was a very different time. Very different life. A guy like you wouldn’t understand.”
Chris set down his beer. “I went to college, Slick. I’m not just some dumb army grunt.” It was true. He’d taken classes every spare minute that he wasn’t deployed until he’d earned a four year degree, albeit it took a lot longer than four years, but still.
She gaped at him. “That’s- that’s not what I meant! I- I was not calling you stupid. I was just saying that I was raised differently. That’s all.”
Well, they were definitely raised differently. That much Chris could agree on. Unless she was secretly raised by a one percenter motorcycle club. But Slick didn’t know him, didn’t know he’d escaped the outlaw life by enlisting. He was more than a little irritated that after all he’d done to transform himself, this woman could still see underneath to his white trash underbelly.
“I have a double major in Political Science and Business, Slick,” he informed her in a clipped tone. “Maybe the army paid for it, but I earned it. We aren’t that different,” he bit out.
“But we are different! You were in the army. Now you own your own business! You’re a useful member of society,” she replied. “I didn’t study anything in college because I was only there for my MRS.”
Chris leaned back in his chair and stared at her. Then a slow grin spread across his face. “MRS.”
She rolled her eyes at his obvious enjoyment of the situation. “Shut up. I said it was a different life. So, I can’t start a ground war and analyze it later with my political science degree, or build a car from rubber bands and an erector set, but I can make you lunch on Sundays. And discuss Early American Poets while you eat it.”
“With your MRS degree.”
She glared at him. “If you don’t mow before 8 am like a normal person.” She stood up, grabbed her empty plate, and stalked off toward the kitchen.
Chris remained at the table for a bit, considering what she’d told him. She’d been bred for this, making lunches, baking cookies, keeping a home. He imagined her younger, husband hunting at college. She said she hadn’t finished. That must have been when she’d gotten hurt. Being raped when she was barely out of her teens seemed like a brutal price to pay for her naivete.
Now she wandered alone, taking only what she could carry from place to place. Living inside pages of books because it was safer. She’d opened herself up at least once to a man who repaid that trust by smacking her around and chasing her out of Denver. Chris wanted to kill both of these men. Slowly.
He looked out on the lawn and remembered her advice on Easy. People wanting to pretend the world wasn’t a violent place when it obviously could be. Slick’s parents had wanted her to forget what happened to her. But once she’d been shown a darker, harder world than the one she knew, she couldn’t pretend life was just cookies and PTA meetings. No blaming her for that. But she missed her old life. And she wanted a tiny piece of it back. Lunch on Sundays.
He gathered his own plate and his empty bottle and headed into the little blue house. She was pulling more pepper cookies out of the oven. “So this is what your mom does?” he asked her, putting his plate in the sink and grabbing the dishwashing detergent. “Lunch on Sundays?” She glared at him. He grinned. “I just want to make sure you’re qualified for the position.”
“What do you normally eat for lunch on Sundays?” she challenged.
He thought about this. “Saturday night’s pizza. Or Friday night’s pizza. Or Thursday night’s pizza, if nothing’s growing on it. I eat a lot of pizza.”
She made a face. “So this is a step up for you, either way.”
“Oh, definitely. Especially if Sunday lunch includes cookies. Or some kind of dessert. Feel free to branch out.”
“Not before 8 am,” she insisted.
“We’ll have to renegotiate in the summer. It gets way too hot to put it off, Slick.” He immediately regretted saying it. Because the look on her face said she wasn’t planning on being around that long. “8 am,” he repeated. “Copy that.”
When he was finished with the dishes, he realized she’d packed a tupperware container full of cookies for him. “Try to make these last until next Sunday.”
He eyed the box. “Yeah, I’m not gonna lie. That’s not a possibility, Slick.”
Chapter 10
It was Thursday night, Poker Night, and while Hawk opened the cold pizza box sitting on Chris’s kitchen island, Tex managed to find the tupperware container that Chris had stupidly left out.
“Don’t touch that,” he demanded.
“What is it?” Tex asked, prying open the lid against orders.
Chris tried to reach for the box, but Tex moved out of the way, taking the box with him.
“What is it?” Hawk repeated.
“Cookies,” Tex declared, peering into the box. “Where’d you get cookies?”
“Those are mine. They’re special cookies,” Chris said, again trying to snag the box.
Hawk looked up from the pizza. “You put weed in cookies?”
Tex frowned at Hawk. “You don’t put weed in cookies. You put weed in the butter and then make the cookies.”
Doc came into the kitchen from the living room, scowling. “Are we really gonna eat weed butter cookies? What are we, 16?”
“There’s no weed. It’s pepper,” Chris informed him.
Tex reared back from the box. “Do what now?”
“There’s pepper in the cookies. And they’re mine.”
“Who puts pepper in cookies?” Doc asked, eyeing the cookies like he was certain ‘pepper’ was the new street word for weed.
“Slick does. They’re…” he paused to remember, “Mexican chocolate.”
“Holy Shit!” Tex yelled. “You found a chick who can make Spicy Mexican Chocolate cookies! You bastard!” And he unceremoniously shoved a whole cookie in his mouth. Then he muttered something about “Texas” and “Just like home,” and other things that were hard to understand because his mouth was full. But the obvious gist was that he loved the cookies. He offered Doc one and threw one at Hawk from across the kitchen.
Doc and Hawk both sniffed their cookies then took a bite. “Damn,” Hawk said. “Viva la Mexico.”
“Why’s she making you cookies?” Tex asked pointedly.
“Because I mowed her
lawn,” Chris replied.
Tex looked at Hawk and Doc and they all grinned.
Chris rolled his eyes. “With my lawn mower.”
“That’s what we’re calling it now?” Tex teased.
“Jesus. I mowed her lawn and then I took her to the store to get groceries and she made me lunch.” He finally managed to get the last cookie out of the box. “She’s gonna make me lunch next Sunday, too.”
“What happened to off limits?” Doc asked.
“It’s just lunch,” Chris insisted. “She doesn’t even like me before noon.”
“No one likes you before noon,” Hawk pointed out.
“And she’s not off limits to me,” Chris declared. “Even though it’s just lunch.”
“I don’t know,” Tex said. “Maybe I want the girl who can make Spicy Mexican Chocolate cookies.”
Chris crossed his arms in front of his chest. “She’s not your type. Plus, she reads romance novels.” Tex paused mid-chew. “By the dozen,” Chris added.
“I’ll take the cookies,” Tex announced. “You take the constant comparisons to Duke Poofy Pants.”
“Pirates,” Chris amended. “She likes Pirates. But I don’t have the hair. So it’s a good thing it’s just lunch.”
Hawk picked up a cold slice. “I have hair. I could be a pirate.”
“You can’t use a sword,” Tex pointed out. “And since when do pirates ride horses?”
“Forget it,” Chris snapped. “You wouldn’t want her,” he told Hawk. “She went to college to get her MRS.”
Hawk frowned. “What’s that?”
Tex and Doc laughed hysterically. “Man trap,” Doc said.
“Oh,” Hawk said. Then, “Ohhh. Mrs. I get it. Yikes. No woman’s cookies are that good. You marry her. I’ll snag some cookies on the side.”
“It’s just lunch!” Chris yelled, feeling a little like Slick in the checkout line.
************************
Hayley sat on her back deck with her dinner when she heard Chris’s sliding glass door open. “Hey,” came a voice. “Hey, Slick.”
“Leave her alone!” Chris called from the open door.
She turned to see Tex leaning against the railing of Chris’s deck. “Hey, you got any more of those Mexican chocolate cookies, honey?”
She smiled at Tex. “No, I gave the last of them to Chris.”
Tex’s face darkened. “Damn. All we got is day old pizza and we worked through lunch.”
He moved to go back inside and she called out, “Wait.” He turned back. “I have pie.”
Tex grinned. “Oh, sweet Jesus boys. The woman has pie!”
“Tell her to get her ass over here,” Hawk yelled.
Hayley carried a brown paper bag and a plastic sack up the steps of Chris’s back deck. Caleb saw her making her way to the door and opened it for her. “Thanks,” she said to him and he nodded at her. Hayley stared at the man sitting in front of her. Sure. She'd seen Hawk, and all the other guys, at Maria’s. And somehow, in that space, Hawk Red Cloud, while still standing out due to his size, had seemed to belong there. Where he did not belong was in someone's living room. Sitting at someone's dinner table, playing cards that were dwarfed in his large hands. Hawk Red Cloud didn't take up a lot of space. Hawk Red Cloud was the space.
The corner of his mouth almost quirked up as he notice her looking at him. "What?"
Hayley looked at Chris. "I'd have gone with Bear."
Everyone in the room laughed and the sound reverberated off the walls.
Tex grinned a lopsided grin, which might have seemed goofy if he didn't have all that slightly wavy blond hair and just-becoming-noticeable stubble on his jaw. "We didn't name him, darlin'," he informed her. "No, no. Hawk was Hawk from the moment I met him in basic. He didn't want his hair cut. He didn't want to be in the Army. And he for damn sure didn't want anyone calling him anything other than Hawk. And I may be a lot of things, darlin', but I'm not dumb enough to piss off a man built like a linebacker. So Hawk was Hawk, even if, behind his back I did call him a bunch of other choice names."
"You guys weren't friends?"
"Oh, hell no. When I say Hawk didn't want to be in the Army, I mean, Hawk...did not want to be in the Army. And he pretty much made it his mission in life to let everybody know from sun up to sun down. He was the biggest, whiniest, most foul tempered sonofabitch."
Hayley looked from Tex to Hawk. "If you didn't want to be in the Army, why'd you enlist?"
Hawk gave her a piercing look. Maybe that's why he's called Hawk, she thought to herself. Those eyes didn't seem to miss much. "It was suggested to me by a judge."
Hayley's eyes went wide. "Oh," she managed to squeak out. Under the weight of Hawk's menacing look, she almost shriveled.
Tex burst out laughing and pounded the table so hard the chips rattled. "Oh. Oh, Christ. He's messing with you, darlin'!"
Hayley looked to Chris who grinned and shrugged. She looked back to Tex. "Really?"
"Well, no, not really," Tex said through his laughter. "He was ordered by a judge to enlist or go to jail."
She looked at Hawk who was now glaring intently at Tex. "Shut it, Cowboy," he growled, which made Tex laugh even harder.
"Oh, Lord," Tex gasped. "He and his buddies spray painted all the road signs between here and the Rez. Hawk here was the only one who got busted and wouldn't squeal on his partners in crime. The judge was trying to strong arm him into talking, thinking that Hawk'd never go for enlisting. But Hawk showed up at the recruitment office the very next day."
She smiled at Hawk, who glared back at her. "Vandalism? You didn't knock over a liquor store or hot wire someone's truck?"
Hawk tried desperately to maintain his stolid composure. "I'm a bad, dangerous man, Slick. Trust that."
Tex guffawed.
Hayley grinned. "I'll keep it mind."
"See that you do."
Tex sighed his contentment at having outed Hawk's pink cotton candy center. "So he's Hawk, called Hawk by his Mama, for strange and mysterious reasons known only to people who smoke peace pipes and take peyote."
Hayley's mouth dropped open in shock, but neither Hawk nor Chris seemed to mind. When she looked at Chris he just smirked and shook his head, indicating that this was not quite the racist jab it appeared to be.
"And I'm Tex, 'cause I'm from West Texas. And apparently I had the misfortune of enlisting with some insecure and not terribly creative assholes who weren't man enough to highlight my other stunning attributes by christening me ‘Adonis’ or ‘Horsecock.’ ”
Hayley let out a surprised yelp of laughter. But Chris scowled. "Tex," he warned.
Tex threw up his hands. "I am just lamenting my lot in life. He's Hawk, you're Shooter, and Easy’s Easy. Doc is Doc for obvious reasons and I'm just Tex," he said, doing his best to sound forlorn.
"Who's Easy?" she asked. Tex and Hawk immediately looked down at their cards, not answering.
Chris caught her eye. "That's Jimmy."
"Oh."
Tex's head came up. "You told her about Jimmy?" Chris nodded and sipped his beer. Tex turned to look at Hayley. "Jimmy's a good guy. He’s Easy because he’s from New Orleans. Also uncreative. He's just taking extra time to get his shit together. He'll show up at Burnout here soon one of these days. And he'll pick up a wrench and that'll be that." Tex said it confidently, like he was making a prediction. Hayley smiled, but the look on Chris's face said he wasn't convinced.
In an effort to change the subject, Hayley said, “You’re a doctor, too?” to Caleb.
“Medic,” he replied.
“Why didn’t you stay in the medical field when you got out of the army?”
He shrugged. “Saw enough of it.”
Hayley thought about that and nodded. "And you're Shooter."
Chris's mouth twitched. "Because I shoot people at stoplights."
Hayley's face instantly turned red and she half-groaned. "Sorry about that. But Milo did go out of his way to make it sound like
you were...." She waved her hand to indicate that he knew what she was saying.
Hawk grinned. "Milo's a joker. Always has been. Even when he lost his finger, he got a little box, cut a hole in the bottom and stuck his middle finger in it and showed Maria when he got out of the hospital. Guess that was his way of dealing with it. 'Course his real finger was so chewed up there were only little bits and pieces of it left and-"