I laughed. “Love you. I’ll call you back. Bye!”
“Vanny has a whale?” Lou asked.
I tugged on his earlobe. “God, you’re nosey. No, she’s having a baby, remember? And I told her she is a whale right now.”
He made a funny face. “That’s not nice.”
“No, it’s not, but she knows I’m playing. Come on then and grab an onion and celery for me.”
“Celery?” He scrunched up his face.
I repeated myself, getting a nod from him before he turned to get what I asked of him.
I had just started slipping my phone back into my pocket when it started ringing again. I had no idea that in about two minutes, I would be calling myself an idiot for not looking at the screen before I hit the answer button without looking. My muscles had the placement memorized, so I didn’t have to. “Did you fall over already?” I joked.
“Diana?” the female voice came over the phone. The voice sounded familiar. “Don’t hang up—”
And just like a slap to the face, I realized why it was familiar. Smiling at Louie, I said in a bright voice, “You have the wrong number.” And I hung up even as my heart started going double-time.
She had called me maybe once over the last two years—once—and this was the second time she’d called in less than two weeks. I wanted to wonder why she would be calling now of all times, but I knew why. The why was probably in the living room setting up his Xbox for a game.
The thing was there were plenty of things in life you couldn’t escape, including the stupidest thing someone you loved very much did.
“Tia, the trash is full.”
Hopefully, my smile didn’t look as fake as it felt and Louie wasn’t paying enough attention to me to notice it was. The second to last person who needed to know who just called was Louie. “I’ll change it real quick then. Wash that for me, would you, Goo?” I asked, already heading toward the trash can as a ball of dread formed in my belly. He wasn’t big enough to lift the bag out of the can; we’d learned that the hard way, so I didn’t mind being the person in charge of taking it out.
I shoved the phone call aside until later when I was in bed, alone without anyone to see me freaking out.
In no time, I took the bag out and replaced it with a new one, carrying the old one out the kitchen door to dump it in the big trash can outside. I had seriously just taken the first step down toward the trash cans when I heard, “—take your ass and go.”
Say what?
I stopped in place, fully aware that my fence was only a four-foot-tall chain-link one that anyone on the street could see through. A female voice hollered, “You’re a piece of fucking shit, Dallas!”
Dallas as in my neighbor? Was it the lady in the red car out there talking?
“You’re not telling me something you haven’t called me a thousand times before,” the male voice drawled in a loose laugh that somehow didn’t really sound very carefree at all. Jesus. How loud were they talking that I could hear their conversation so clearly?
The curse word that exploded through the air had me raising my eyebrows as I stood there with my bag. Carefully, I made my way down the steps from the kitchen door to the yard and paused by the trash cans, mere feet from the fence that would let me look at my neighbor’s house. Setting the bag down, I let my curiosity get the best of me as I tiptoed over the grass to the corner of the fence and tried to take a peek, convincing myself they wouldn’t see me in the shadows.
The man apparently named or nicknamed Dallas was standing on the porch, and the woman was on the sidewalk, leaning forward in a confrontational gesture. I tried to squint to see them better, but it didn’t help.
“I wouldn’t call you that if you didn’t act like one,” the woman shouted.
The man with the short hair seemed to look up at the sky—or the ceiling of his deck, if you wanted to get technical—and shook his head. His hands went up to palm his forehead. “Just tell me what the hell you came all the way here for, would you?”
“I’m trying to!”
“Get to the fucking point then!” he boomed back like an explosion, whatever control he had disappearing.
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t think it was okay for a man to yell at a woman like that, but they were standing far apart and the woman was yelling like a damn crazy person, too. Her pitch was all shrieks and squeaks.
“I’ve been calling you over and over again—”
“Why the fuck would you expect me to answer?” he barked back. “I haven’t heard from you or seen you in three years. We agreed to go through our lawyers, remember that?”
To be fair, I had no idea what was going on and who was really at fault, but he had a point. If I hadn’t spoken to someone in so long, I more than likely wouldn’t answer the phone either.
But lawyers?
Lawyers, yelling at each other, his wedding ring… was this his wife? I’d been in enough relationships to know you didn’t yell at another person with so much hatred unless you’d slept with them at some point.
“Why would you see me? I told you before you left I was done,” the woman yelled back with so much emotion in her voice, I actually started to feel guilty for eavesdropping.
“Trust me, I knew you were done—not like you ever really started anything to begin with,” the man replied.
Yeah. Definitely his wife. Why else would they have lawyers and go so long without talking to each other?
And why would he still be wearing his ring after so long?
“What are you doing?”
I jumped and turned to glance at Louie who was standing on the other side of the screen door, looking at me. “Nothing,” I told him, taking the two steps over to open the trash can and put the bag inside like he hadn’t just caught me eavesdropping.
He waited until I was on the first step to ask, “You were listening to them, huh?”
“Me?” I made my eyes go wide as I opened the door and stepped inside as he backed up to give me room. “No. I’m not nosey.”
Louie scoffed. This five-year-old literally scoffed at me.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “You think I’m nosey?”
Louie had already gone through his lying phase as a toddler, and even if he hadn’t, he knew I didn’t like it, and he didn’t like to hurt anyone’s feelings. Especially mine. But what he said next left me trying to figure out whether I should high-five him or be scared at how manipulative and sneaky he could be. He walked over to me and leaned against my leg with that beaming smile of his. “Wanna hug?”
Chapter Four
It was a sign of how much my life had changed over the course of the last few years that “going out” now consisted of me changing into skinny jeans and a cute top. Years ago—a damn lifetime ago—back when I was younger and dumber and had very few worries in the world, “going out” consisted of taking an hour or two to put makeup on, do my hair, and get dressed in something that would have had my mom asking herself where she’d gone wrong raising me. I’d even seen her doing the sign of the cross once or twice. “Going out” meant heading to some loud bar or club with overpriced drinks to get hit on by guys who manscaped religiously. It hadn’t been every night or weekend, but it had been enough.
Now…
Now, half my adult social experiences revolved around birthday parties and baseball practices. The only time my hair was done was when I had to work and that was only because that was my work. I’d mastered doing my makeup in five minutes. Time really was more valuable than money.
Well, now, looking at my boss, Ginny, who was dressed almost identical to me in jeans and a short-sleeved blouse, priorities had obviously changed.
We had agreed days ago that we should go out to celebrate the reopening of the salon. Saturday, we had promised each other because the salon was closed every Sunday. We’ll go out on Saturday. Her kids were with their dad, and Josh and Louie were with my parents this weekend. It had seemed like the perfect time to spend some quality time together.
&nb
sp; What we hadn’t taken into consideration was how tired we were going to be after working a full day following a week of painting and moving furniture from one location to the next.
I had taken a chair at Shear Dialogue a little more than two years ago. Ginny and I had met through a mutual hair stylist friend, who knew she needed help and knew I was looking for somewhere else to work. We’d hit it off immediately. She had three kids, was a single parent in her early forties with a boyfriend, and had this no-bullshit attitude that sang to my own take-no-shit attitude, and the next thing I knew, I was moving the boys and myself from San Antonio to Austin. The rest was history.
But now that the day was here, we’d faced each other that afternoon and said the same thing, “I’m tired.” Which meant we both would rather go home and relax but weren’t going to because we were so busy we didn’t spend enough time together. Kids and relationships—hers, at least, she was getting married in a few months on top of everything—consumed a lot of energy. It was our unspoken agreement that we’d get a couple of drinks and head home before the nightly news came on.
“Where do you want to go?” I asked her as I reapplied deodorant in the middle of the salon. We’d locked up half an hour ago, cleaned the place, and took turns changing in the bathroom. It didn’t escape me that neither one of us bothered trying to fix up our hair after a long day of work. Some days I thought that if I had to touch more hair, I would vomit. I’d settled on more lipstick, and Gin had slapped on a little more blush and ran a brush through her shoulder-length, blood-red hair that I colored for her monthly.
She had her back to me as she… yep, adjusted her boobs, and said, “Are you fine with staying close to here?”
The look I sent her through the reflection of the mirror conveyed how stupid I thought her question was.
“Let’s go to the bar down the street then. It isn’t the fanciest place, but their drinks are cheap and my uncle owns it.”
“Deal,” I told Ginny. I was no snob. Close and cheap sounded like a plan.
Her uncle also supposedly owned the new building we had moved into. Located in a high-foot traffic side of town, across the street from a real estate company, popular tattoo parlor, and a deli, she couldn’t have gotten a better space for the salon. The dog grooming business two doors down from us had got me seeing money signs; I had tons of clients with dogs. Plus, it worked out even more in my favor because my new house was a short drive away.
And that was how we found ourselves, ten minutes later, standing in front of a bar walking distance from the salon. We’d been able to leave our cars in the same lot we left them for work, next to a big mechanic shop that her uncle also supposedly owned.
To be fair, Ginny had told me the truth. It wasn’t a fancy place. What she hadn’t warned me of was the fact it was a biker bar, if the row after row of motorcycles parked along the front of the street meant anything.
All right.
If she noticed my apprehension about going inside, Gin didn’t make a comment as she waved me toward the door. Fuck it. I only partially ignored the three men standing outside smoking and watching us a little too closely, but when I opened the heavy door to go inside, the simultaneous smell of cigarettes, cigars, and weed brutally assaulted my nose. My sinuses immediately started going crazy, and I had to blink a lot as the smoke made them burn.
The place was exactly what I’d picture a biker bar to look like. I’d been to a lot of bars in my life pre-Josh-and-Louie, and some had been way sketchier than this. From behind, Ginny pointed in the direction of rows of liquor along the wall, and I headed over, taking in the loose crowd of men and women in leather and T-shirts alike. They were all ages, all looks. Despite the heavy smell of smoke that I knew was illegal indoors… well, it didn’t seem so bad. Most people were talking to one another.
Snagging two chairs in the middle of the counter, Ginny slipped in to the chair beside me. I leaned forward and looked up and down the bar for the bartender, waving when the older man caught my eye. He simply tipped his chin up for our order.
I’d gone out with Ginny enough over the years to know we started off our evenings with Coronas or Guinness, and this place didn’t seem like the type to carry my favorite nectar from the mother country. “Two Guinness, please,” I mouthed to him.
I wasn’t sure he understood what I said, but he nodded and filled two glasses from one of the taps, sliding both over to us, yelling the amount we owed. Before Ginny could get it, I slid two bills across the bar.
“Woo,” Ginny cheered, clinking her glass against mine.
I nodded in agreement, taking the first sip.
I’d barely finished swallowing when two forearms came from behind to cage my boss in, a blond head of hair making an appearance right by her ear. Who the hell was this?
As if wondering the same thing, she started to say, “Who…?” before glancing over her shoulder, her body tight and reeling back. It was her laugh a moment later that told me everything was okay. “You son of a bitch! I was wondering who the hell was coming up to me!” She reached up with the arm furthest away from me to pat the strange man, who was wearing a leather vest over a white T-shirt.
“What a fuckin’ mouth,” the man’s low voice claimed just loud enough for me to hear. He pulled back, his attention casually sliding in my direction. The grin that had been on his face as he spoke to my friend brightened a little more as he took me in.
God help me, he was hot.
The dark blond of his longish hair matched the same color crossing his mouth and cheeks in a rough five o’clock shadow. Mostly though it was his easy smile that electrified his handsome face. He had to be a few years older than me at least. All I could do was sit there and smile at the man who was more than likely a biker based on the fact he had a vest on… and that we were at a biker bar. A biker bar on a Saturday. You really never knew where life would take you, did you?
The longer I looked at the blond’s face… I realized I recognized those blue eyes of his. That particular shade was pointed in my direction from another face, a face I knew well. That blue was Ginny’s blue.
“Trip, this is my friend Diana. She works with me at the salon. She’s the one I told you about who has the boy who plays baseball. Di, this is my cousin Trip,” Ginny explained as my gaze trailed back over to my friend, shaking off the fuzz that had come over my brain from looking at him.
Trip. Baseball. She had mentioned her cousin who had a son around Josh’s age who played competitive baseball a couple of times. I remembered now.
“Nice to meet you,” I greeted, one hand curled around my stout, the other extending out in his direction.
“Hey,” the grinning blond said as he took my hand in a shake.
“He works at the garage by the parking lot,” Ginny explained.
I nodded, watching as the guy named Trip turned back toward his cousin and elbowed her. “Where’s your man at?”
“He’s at home,” she explained, referring to her fiancé.
He gave her a funny look and shrugged. “The old man is back there if you wanna drop by and say hi,” he said to her, his gaze straying back to me for a moment as a small, sly smile crossed his mouth.
She nodded, turning to look over his shoulder briefly, as if searching for whoever “the old man” was. Her uncle?
“Go say hi,” I offered when she continued looking around the floor of the half-full bar.
Her nose scrunched for a moment as she hesitated. “You sure?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, as long as you don’t leave me here all night.”
With that, she grinned. “Okay, it’s my uncle. It’d be rude of me to not go say hi. Want to come?”
If there was one thing I understood and was all too well acquainted with, it was the politics that went behind big, close families. In mine, you had to tell everyone hi. There was no such thing as a group wave unless you wanted your mom hissing in your ear about how much of an embarrassment you were.
“Nah,” I answ
ered and tipped my head toward the back. “Go say hi. I’ll be here.”
My boss smiled and stood up, patting her cousin on the cheek. “Show me where he is,” she stated… which was kind of weird. The bar was a good size but not that big. It wouldn’t have taken her longer than a couple of minutes to find her uncle, but whatever. The blond man nodded and led her through the small group directly behind us. She carried her stout with her.
I sat there and took a couple of sips, looking up and down the counter at the people sitting there. Really, they almost looked like normal, everyday people, except for all the leather and Harley T-shirts. I had just pulled my phone out of my pocket to check my e-mail—not that there was anything important in there—when I caught sight of a familiar-looking buzz cut and brown hair at the far edge of the bar. It wasn’t until the man turned to face forward that I realized it was my neighbor.
Dallas with the asshole brother. Dallas who may or may not be in a marriage with a woman in a red car. Dallas with a giant tattoo across his body. Dallas who was chuckling as he said something to the person who had been sitting beside him.
What were the fucking chances he would be here?
I hadn’t seen a motorcycle at his place in the days since I’d first started paying attention to his house after his brother got beat up. I’d only seen his pickup truck. Was he a biker too?
Taking him in, sitting there with his elbows on the counter, a smile lingering on his sharp face, his attention focused on the television mounted on the wall… I couldn’t really picture him in this kind of place. With the way his hair was cut short and from his posture, all straight back and strong shoulders, I would have thought military, not motorcycle club.
Really?
For one shameful moment, I wondered what the hell I had gotten myself into by moving to my neighborhood and living across from someone like him. Him with his marital problems that took place outside and his brother who got the shit beat out of him for who knows what. Him who hung out at a biker bar of all places.
Just as quickly as that thought filled my head, I accepted how dumb and hypocritical I was being. What mattered was what was on the inside, right?
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