Gen Pop

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  Me, with a look of finality on my face.

  “You don’t need to do…” she started, but I was already shaking my head.

  “I don’t want anything to do with her.”

  She looked… relieved.

  And that made something in my gut loosen that I hadn’t realized had tightened.

  There was an audible hitch in breath behind me, and I knew that Juniper had heard me.

  Then the sound of mad, clicking heels as she all but stomped out of the room.

  That’s when the tightened shoulders loosened.

  “You…” she hesitated. “You ever need to talk, I’m here.”

  I laughed then. “Thanks, babe. But I’m okay. That ship went off track a long damn time ago, I just didn’t realize it.”

  I knew that she wanted more, but I didn’t feel like talking about it right then.

  What I did feel like doing was sewing up her cut, which I did in the next few minutes.

  Seven stitches later, she was all ready to go, and I was cleaning up my shit.

  She was looking at her finger in awe.

  “You’re good at that,” she observed.

  I snorted. “Been stitching up family and friends since I was in high school. So I would hope that I am. My dad taught me to do it when I was a kid. And after surveying him doing all the club’s cuts like I just did for you, I decided that I wanted to learn how to do it myself.”

  “Is your dad a doctor?” she asked.

  “Flight medic,” I answered as I stuffed everything into her trash can. “The guy that comes to your rescue when you’re in really bad shape.”

  She shuddered. “The guy I hope to never meet while he’s on the job.”

  I flashed her a grin.

  “Come on, let’s go try out your food.”

  I gestured to the other room with a jerk of my chin, and she filed out ahead of me, leading the way.

  When we arrived, it was to find everyone waiting on us to eat, and the booze end of the party going strong.

  “Crockett!” Six called out. “Finally! I found you a date for your brother’s wedding.”

  And all that happiness that I’d somehow managed to find after Juniper left fled out the fucking window.

  “Yeah?” Crockett asked, sounding excited at the prospect. “Who?”

  “That would be me.” Laric raised his hand. “But only because after tasting this cake, I realized having another slice might be worth it. And, just sayin’, but I have a dick for a parent, too.”

  The room quieted down slightly as Lynn sighed.

  “Jesus Christ,” Lynn, his father, grumbled.

  “Sorry, Daddy-O.” Laric shrugged. “Wasn’t talking about you. You’re cool… now that I know about you. But back to you, darlin’. Let’s talk business. What time do I need to pick you up on Saturday and are you going to be wearing a dress? Or what? Can we still ride my bike?”

  And, to find my way out of the complicated hellhole that this might end up supplying, I walked over to the food and surveyed it.

  But the details of their upcoming time they would spend together did not go unnoticed. Neither did the offer for a date the Wednesday before to ‘get to know each other’ so that it didn’t look like they were just meeting each other the day of the wedding.

  Which made my stomach knot, and an irrational surge of jealousy shoot through me.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  I needed to get the hell out of here.

  So I did.

  And didn’t look back.

  CHAPTER 8

  I’m glad I have boobs. I don’t want anyone making eye contact with me anyway.

  -Crockett to Zach

  CROCKETT

  I all but marched up to the front door of Armadillo Willy’s.

  “Whoa there,” I heard an amused male voice say from deep in the shadows. “You look pissed. Everything okay?”

  I paused mid-step and turned to stare at Laric, whom I hadn’t seen in the shadows until now. “Ummm, yes. Everything is fine. I’m just… the day was long.”

  The day was more than long.

  I’d had to deal with crisis after crisis at the store, my little sister had texted me saying that she was ‘taking a mental break’ from me because I was ‘exhausting her’ and my other two siblings had gone out on a lunch date without me and also without asking me if I wanted to join them.

  Which, honestly, hurt the worst.

  Why did they always go out without me? I mean, yes, I worked a lot. But if they scheduled it in a time that I could the store was slow, then I would be able to go with them. Instead, they just blamed it on my lack of time and went without me, and that was upsetting.

  To make matters worse, when I’d confronted them about it, they acted like me being upset that they never invited me was new to them.

  It shouldn’t be new. I always, always, always told them that I wanted to go. And that it made me sad that I couldn’t.

  Most morons would see that they should do it at a time and location—even if it was at my damn store—that I could attend so I wouldn’t feel so left out.

  “You look like you could use a drink,” he teased as he stood up.

  My eyes went to the dog at his side, one wearing a service dog camo vest that declared him as such.

  The dog was a mutant.

  He was the biggest chocolate lab that I’d ever seen in my life.

  He was also, might I add, glued to Laric’s side and didn’t look like he wanted to come close to me at all.

  I frowned.

  “I could,” I admitted. “How do you transport them around? And isn’t this a different dog than the one that you had a few weeks ago?”

  Laric nodded as he gestured at me to precede him inside.

  “It is,” he confirmed. “That’s what I do for a living, train dogs. I have a new one sometimes every week.”

  And that was what we spent the majority of our time talking about, up until the point where we got on the subject of Zach.

  “You run at the track a lot?” he asked. “Zach does, too. I can’t stand running in circles, though.”

  I tilted my head slightly to the side, wondering if I could get some information out of Laric about his club brother.

  Likely, I couldn’t.

  But I was just so curious about Zach that I wanted to at least try.

  “I do,” I confirmed. “Zach’s there a lot. He garners a lot of… attention.”

  Laric laughed. “Women feel safer at a track. It’s in the middle of town. There are bathrooms. You can park close. And when you walk, you don’t wind up miles from your car. And Zach’s an attractive, unattainable young man. Women love that bad boy that they can’t have.”

  My brows rose. “You’re not that?”

  “I’m a bad boy, sure.” He shrugged. “But I never said I didn’t want a woman. Just don’t want one that’s sweet on one of my club brothers.”

  My mouth fell open.

  “Thought you were hiding that, didn’t you?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I… no, not really. I just… it’s complicated. And before you ask why I didn’t bring him with me to the wedding, I asked. He said no. Like, straight-up no. And then left. So I don’t think he feels the same things for me that I feel for him.”

  Laric’s eyes lit with amusement.

  “How much do you know about Juniper?” he asked curiously.

  I shrugged. “I saw her at the store the other day when Zach gave me stitches in my hand,” I held up said hand for him to see. “And I know that he killed someone because of her. But that’s all.”

  Killing someone for another person meant deep feelings to me. And likely, Zach still felt those deep feelings, despite him telling the woman that he didn’t.

  You didn’t just do something like that for another person and all of a sudden decide that you no longer had feelings like that anymore.

  “Juniper is a bitch,” Laric started. “In the six months that Zach has been here, I haven’t heard a dam
n thing about her from him. He doesn’t talk about her at all, and I’ve seen him drunk plenty. When you get drunk, that’s when you talk about the shit that bothers you. And I’m telling you, Juniper isn’t one of the things that left his mouth. His career? Yeah, that’s been spoken about. How he misses it. Did you know that he used to be elbow deep in vaginas all day? Old vagina. New vagina. Clean vagina. Dirty vagina. Babies coming out of vaginas. He misses it. But seriously, Juniper never once was mentioned.”

  I felt a smile curl at the ends of my lips.

  “But I’m not going to talk about my brother like that without his permission. Just, safe to say, the man isn’t hung up on that girl anymore. But when I mentioned the date? He got pissed,” he said.

  When I mentioned the date, he got pissed.

  • • •

  It was now Wednesday. I was back from my semi-date with Laric, who ended up being kind of a great guy, and I was starving.

  Not because Laric didn’t feed me, mind you—he did—but because my training was ramping up this week and my calorie intake had fallen to the wayside thanks to my nervousness.

  I shouldn’t have been nervous. Laric was a great guy.

  He was funny, attentive, and sweet.

  Oh, and he was hot as hell.

  But what he wasn’t was who I truly wanted.

  And that was the surly, pissed off doctor that’d given me my stitches that wouldn’t give me the time of day anymore.

  I wasn’t sure if it was because of what had happened on the day of the impromptu party with his ex-girlfriend, or because he was mad about something else. But I’d seriously missed seeing him this week.

  After texting my sister and brother that I was home, and that if they needed me, they could call, I went to my office and started sorting through bills.

  Once I paid a few, there was a knock on the door that had me frowning.

  When I opened the door, it was to find a bag of takeout on my porch and nothing else.

  I looked at the car that was now driving away, then at the bag, and then bent down to peer inside.

  That’s when excitement hit me hard.

  Tacos!

  Oh, my sister was seriously the best.

  I’d texted her on the way home and told her how hungry I was, and she’d laughed.

  But obviously she’d realized that my bad day needed a pick-me-up and had sent me a surprise.

  Grinning like the fool that I was, I picked up the bag and headed for my steps. After depositing my ass onto the top step, I watched as Zach’s front door opened, and then he came outside, looking pissed.

  I took my first bite of the taco in front of me and moaned.

  His eyes lifted from the porch step where he was looking around it for something, then moved up to meet mine.

  Then they narrowed even more when he saw what I was doing.

  Which was taking another bite of taco.

  Tacos that were a little on the bland side, but still pretty good.

  He put his hands on his hips and stared at me, his eyes going from the taco in my hand, to the bag resting beside my hip.

  I dropped my hand and stared at him.

  “What?”

  That’s when he exploded. “You stole my order!”

  Anger surged through me. After the day I had…

  My eyes lifted to the sky, and I studied all the stars before answering.

  “I didn’t steal shit,” I declared before taking another vicious bite of taco.

  He started marching across the road. “Those are my tacos. I just ordered them twenty minutes ago from a place in town.”

  I shook my head. “No, they’re not. They’re mine.”

  He studied the taco that I was almost finished consuming.

  “Yes, they are,” he declared. “They’re barbocoa and salsa. No cheese. Right?”

  I finished chewing, tasting the meat that he spoke about—something that I usually didn’t order because I preferred taco meat, as did my sister.

  I then pulled back and stared at the last bite and a half of taco that didn’t have cheese on it.

  Guilt and doubt started to creep in.

  “My sister delivered them,” I tried.

  I couldn’t finish the last bite.

  Not when I knew that they were his.

  “Why would she deliver that specifically?” he asked.

  I licked the taco juice off my lips and said, “Because I had a really bad day, and she was trying to make it better with tacos.”

  Except, then my sister’s ‘question mark’ Bitmoji started to make more sense.

  I’d thanked her for the food before sitting down, and I’d received her reply on my watch just as Zach had been walking toward me with purpose in his steps.

  “I…” I started, but then my shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry, Zach. They were delivered to my front door and I just assumed.”

  He held out his hand for the bag, and I gave it to him, along with offering him the last bite of taco.

  He shook his head.

  “Keep it,” he grumbled, then paused just as he was half-turned away. “Why did you have a bad day now?”

  I was tired of telling him my life story.

  Honestly, I just wanted to pretend that my parents and family weren’t as bad as they actually were.

  So instead of answering honestly, I shrugged and said, “Just was.”

  He studied me, then looked at the taco still in his hand, and then the way I was dressed for my not-so-date tonight, and his eyes narrowed.

  “How did your date go?” he asked, sounding surly.

  And, just because I was still pissed that he’d turned me down for a date to my brother’s wedding, I decided that he didn’t need to know anything about my night with Laric.

  Except, I couldn’t stop my mouth from working.

  From spewing lies.

  “It was great,” I chirped, feeling like a lying McLiarson. “We went out to eat, we had a great time, but the butterflies make it almost impossible to eat when you’re on a date with a great guy. So I was hungry.”

  The lies just flowed so easily.

  “We’re going out again after Saturday. He said something about taking me on a bike run next week.” I said.

  That’s what made his eyes narrow dangerously.

  Laric had mentioned a run that he and his friends were going on with their girls next week, but I hadn’t been invited.

  He hadn’t even hinted at inviting me.

  But something wicked had come over me. Something that told me I should say it just to see his reaction.

  And oh… my... God. What a reaction it was.

  He stiffened hard at my words, his body turning woodenly so that he could stare at me with his full field of view.

  Then he said, “Excuse me?”

  “Uhh,” I hesitated. “What?”

  “You’re going on a run?” he asked carefully.

  “If that’s the thing y’all are doing next weekend, he mentioned it, yes,” I told him the truth.

  Stick to the truth, and hopefully he wouldn’t spot the lie.

  I’d expected a reaction out of him. But not that kind of reaction.

  Not the kind of reaction where I was thinking he was going to go up to Laric and punch his daylights out.

  Jesus.

  “Is he now?” he asked carefully. “You ever been on a bike before that wasn’t mine?”

  Why was he asking?

  “Ummm,” I hesitated. “No.”

  Which was kind of the truth.

  When I was sixteen, I got on a kid’s dirt bike with him. But that kid had been eleven, so I didn’t think that was what Zach was asking.

  He slowly shifted his bag of food, his hands clenching in the plastic instead of holding onto the little handles.

  “You have feelings for Laric?” he asked carefully.

  I thought about Laric. About how sexy he was, and how he’d made me laugh more than a couple of times tonight.

  “He’s attrac
tive.” I shrugged, wondering what he would say to that.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised to find him saying nothing.

  Of course.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because Laric is looking for permanent,” Zach said. “Something that’ll help keep his head above water.”

  I frowned. “What’s that mean?”

  “That means that you have enough on your plate. You really shouldn’t be adding Laric’s helping to yours,” he replied.

  I had no clue what the hell that meant.

  What I did know was that I didn’t like that Zach was telling me who I could and couldn’t date.

  I mean, if he wasn’t going to make a move, then why shouldn’t I find someone that was willing to?

  Then again, as Murphy would say, maybe I should take the bull by the horns.

  But I did, didn’t I? I invited him to the wedding, and he’d said no.

  I mean, what more could I say or do to make it obvious that I wanted something to do with him?

  I wasn’t the most outgoing of people.

  I’d literally had sex with one person, and that was kind of an experimental thing, anyway.

  A childhood friend and I had made the mutual decision to see what sex was all about.

  And, let me tell you, it wasn’t about all that much.

  From that point forward, I hadn’t really wanted to explore anything more in the sex department.

  At least, not until a certain inmate had walked into my corner store and made me want things I’d never wanted before in my life.

  “Well, you have fun at that wedding,” he said, looking as if he’d swallowed a bottle of lemon juice. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  And with his abrupt exit came an irrational surge of anger on my end.

  Why had he even asked?

  And he damn well knew that I wouldn’t be having a good time.

  Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t. I couldn’t have a good time when there were people like my father and stepmother attending.

  CHAPTER 9

  I love my curves. My tattoos. My imperfections, and my jiggly thighs. No one said you had to.

  -Crockett to a customer

  CROCKETT

  I was running so damn late.

  The sad thing was, I didn’t even have a good excuse for why I was running late.