Thinking she needed to have my cell phone number so we could get in touch, I ran back to my house, found an old receipt, and scribbled my number down with a Sharpie before finding a tack and pinning it to her door.
Text me. Sorry I missed carrying your bags. 665-0021 –K.
Two weeks later
Texts between Adeline and Kettle
Addy- I had a good time last night. Even if that kid did puke on me.
Kettle- Sorry about that. Probably shouldn’t have given him so much ice cream.
Addy- That’s okay. I live next door to you. It was an easy fix.
Kettle- Still gross as hell. Dinner Friday?
Addy- Absolutely.
Two days later
Addy- I can’t make it. I was volunteered to chaperone the homecoming dance. Rain check?
Kettle- :P
Addy- Very mature.
Two hours later
Kettle- How’s the dance?
Addy- I broke up a drug deal in the boy’s bathroom. Then they threatened to ‘fuck me up’ and they were arrested. Fun stuff.
Kettle-Are you okay?
Three hours later
Kettle- You never answered me.
Addy- Fine. Pissed. I don’t like talking to the cops. Saw Trance though. :)
Kettle- He told me. Said they had to bring Radar up there to sniff some lockers.
Addy- The Dog? He was the shit. He also ate my cake.
Kettle- Yeah, Trance told me that, too. I’ll buy you some more next time I see you.
A week and a half later
Addy- I could really use that cake today.
Kettle- Why? What’s wrong?
Addy- They had some layoffs today. Luckily, I’m the one with the highest education here. Otherwise, it would’ve been sayonara Adeline. The seniority bitches are giving me the evil eye.
Kettle- Tell them you have a boyfriend that’ll kick their ass.
Addy- Do I?
Kettle- Do you want to?
Three weeks later
Addy- I’ve been thinking, and the answer is yes.
Kettle- To what?
Addy- To that question you asked me a few weeks ago.
Kettle- If you were a virgin?
Addy- No.
Kettle- No, you’re not, or no, that’s not the question you had in mind?
Addy- Yes and no.
Kettle- I’m confused.
Addy- You should be.
Finally getting frustrated, I picked up my phone and hit Adeline’s number.
It rang all of two times before she answered in a flurry.
“Hello?” She said breathily.
“Hey,” I said. “What are you doing?”
Why was she panting?
“Hey!” She said excitedly. “I was just about to go on a walk. Do you want to go with me?”
Looking over at the clock to gauge how much time I had left before work, I decided to take her up on her offer. I had nearly an hour and a half, and if I put my uniform on, all I would have to do was get on my bike and leave within fifteen minutes to the start of my shift.
“Yeah, I’d love to.” I rumbled. “Just give me ten minutes to get my shit together, and I’ll meet you downstairs. Or you can come over to me. That okay?”
“Yes, I’ll be there in just a few minutes. Just have to put Monty up.” She said before hanging up.
I was just putting my uniform in my duffel bag and zipping it up when a knock sounded on my front door.
“Hey,” I said brightly when I found her on my front porch.
She smiled exuberantly at me before coming inside and closing the door behind her. “You want a water?” I asked, trying not to notice the shortness of her shorts.
She was wearing really short, and by really short, I mean, I could see her ass cheeks short, gray knit shorts. Her top resembled what used to be a t-shirt that had the sleeves cut off with what resembled a butcher knife. The shirt said “Lone Star Saturday Night” on it with a bear smoking a cigar underneath it. The armholes of the shirt weren’t actually armholes, but more like large...slits. I could see the black sports bra she was wearing, as well as the tattoo’s that ran down both of her sides.
She nodded. “Yes please.”
A couple of minutes later we were walking up the sidewalk that ran along the road beside our apartment. We lived in what amounted to a large circular subdivision of apartments. It was a large loop about a mile and a half all the way around.
We took a left once we reached the end of the parking lot, and I finally scrounged up the nerve to ask about something I’d wanted to know for a while now.
“So, tell me about your...pets.” I said hesitantly.
She looked at me sharply and smiled a little hesitantly.
“I thought you guessed. I wasn’t really trying to keep it secret.” She said dryly.
I shrugged. “I can guess for the most part, but I would love some confirmation. My imagination runs away from me sometimes.”
She giggled. Fucking giggled, bringing my attention from the road in front of us to her mouth.
“There’s not really much to say. It’s exactly like what you heard on the news I’m sure. I worked at Evan’s Pharmaceuticals for a little over seven months. There were quite a few things that were bothering me while I worked there, but the ‘testing on animals’ thing really took the cake. I broke them out, loaded them into a rented UHAUL trailer and then came back home. That’s why I had to move from my old place in the Hills.” She explained.
I nodded. “You didn’t want them to know where you lived.”
She nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly. I just couldn’t live with myself if I allowed that. But I’d been having problems with them before that. It was weird. One time I’d stayed a little late, and I ran into a man coming into my lab that I’d never seen before. We were assigned small labs of our own where we tested the products to make sure we abided by the state regulations. He’d been surprised to see me there so late, and I never saw him again, but I knew instantly he wasn’t supposed to be there. The next day was when I started keeping count on all my supplies. The weird thing was, was that I started losing my tools, not the drugs. Beakers here. Large glass vials there. I’d started getting suspicious right along the time I left.”
I looked over at her face before returning my attention to the bike rider who was headed our way before replying. “That’s weird. But a lot of people that make their own drugs steal things like that so they don’t draw attention from the feds. Did you ever do a full inventory?”
“No,” she shook her head. “I was going to, but then when I wandered out of my area of the building and found the animals; well, let’s just say I didn’t take it very well.”
I rolled my eyes. “No, I probably wouldn’t have either.”
We walked in silence, watching the neighborhood kids play a bout of kick the can, laughing at their antics as they pushed and shoved to get the runner out.
“I used to play that when I was little. Gosh, I didn’t think kids got out to play like that anymore.” Adeline observed.
“I never got to do anything like that. I would’ve killed for a neighborhood like this when I was growing up. Well, when I wasn’t sick, that is.” I said.
“You were sick when you were a kid?” She asked sharply, startling me out of my observation of the kids.
That’s when I realized what I’d just said. Fuck. Would she look at me differently when she knew how sick I once was? I didn’t really want to ruin what was left of our walk on things that neither she, nor I, could change.
“When did you get your first tattoo?” I asked, changing the subject, and hoping that she went along with that subject change.
I saw her eye me speculatively out my peripheral vision for long moments before deciding to answer me. “When I was sixteen. My sister bet me thirty dollars to do it, banking on me chickening out. Thirty dollars was a lot of money to a teenage
r whose father refused to give them money because he thought they’d spend it on frivolous stuff. So I got this one.” She said, pointing at her wrist. “Walked up the tattoo parlor and asked for a sugar skull on my wrist, and the woman gave it to me that day, not even asking me if I was eighteen. Little did I know that the woman was an apprentice and was super excited to get anyone to work on besides fake skin. Should have found out how much it was beforehand, though, because otherwise I would’ve never done it. Cost me two hundred bucks, and I had to call my dad down to the shop to pay for it.”
I burst out laughing. I could just see her dad storming down to that tattoo parlor in his colors, ripping the apprentice a new one for tattooing a minor. “And what did he have to say about that?”
She smiled wistfully. “He didn’t, really. At first, he was kind of miffed, but eventually he got over it. He was the one that took me for the next couple of them. This one,” she said, indicating a line of script I’d read a million times before. “I got the day he died.”
The writing was simple and said, ‘Squeeze you to pieces.’
“What does that mean?” I asked, realizing that it meant a lot to her.
“My mom and dad always said it to each other when they hugged and said goodbye. She’d say, ‘Squeeze you to pieces’ and he’d reply with, ‘Squeeze you back together.’ They said it to us every chance they got. And when he died, Viddy and I got it tattooed on us. Mine on my wrist, and hers on her ribs. Her tattoo says ‘Squeeze you back together.’ It was her first and only tattoo.” She said wistfully.
“My mom used to have a saying similar to that. ‘I love you, you who.’” I said just as we arrived at the entrance to our complex.
She smiled widely at me, grabbed my arm, and walked with me hand in hand until we arrived at my bike.
“Do you want to do this again tomorrow night when you get home?” She asked hopefully.
My hand came up involuntarily until it rested just under the line of her jaw. I could feel the fluttering of her pulse, as it beat wildly against my palm, and I barely squashed the urge to jeer in acceptance.
“Sure.” I replied as flippantly as I could manage.
Leaning forward, she went up to her tippy toes before giving me a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Be careful at work, do you hear?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I acknowledged as I watched her climb the steps to her apartment.
“Good boy,” she teased as she disappeared inside her apartment.
Oh, if only she knew the thoughts that were pouring through my mind right now, then she wouldn’t be thinking of me as a ‘good’ anything.
***
One month later
Kettle
“What’s up with you today?” Sebastian asked from the station’s kitchen table.
I shut the refrigerator and turned with a bottle of water in my hand. “Nothing.”
It wasn’t nothing, and he and I both fuckin’ knew it.
I was sexually frustrated.
I hadn’t fucked anyone in well over two and a half months now, and everyone kept telling me that I needed to get laid.
Well my fucking dick didn’t want to get laid by just anyone.
It wanted to get laid by the hot as hell chemistry teacher next door.
Except one thing after another kept coming up whether it be my job, or her job, or my club, or her sister.
It was as if the universe was conspiring against us.
We hung out, but it was never alone.
Her sister was there. Or my sister. Or someone in the club.
In fact, the last person to interrupt us was the asshole staring at me right that very moment.
“You’re acting like a rabid porcupine. Your temper is legendary and all, but this is an all-new high. Dad wanted me to make sure you got your shit straightened before this weekend when we went on the Toys for Tots ride.”
My jaw clenched. Yet another weekend off I couldn’t spend fucking Adeline.
Not that the charity wasn’t a good reason, but my dick needed some relief, and my hand was getting tired; that was if it even did the job that day. There were times I’d work myself to the brink of coming, and then nothing. Nothing at all happened. It was as if my dick knew what it wanted, and my rough palm just wasn’t getting it done.
The last two months was the definition of deprivation.
My phone buzzed, drawing me out of my wallowing thoughts.
The message flashing on the screen had me seeing red.
Addy- A kid just grabbed my ass.
“I gotta go somewhere real quick. I’ll be back in twenty.” I gritted through clenched teeth as I headed to my room to grab my keys.
“Where’re you going?” Dallas asked from the recliner in the living room.
“The high school,” I replied as I stopped by the back door for my jacket.
“Mind if I tag along? I need to run by the grocery store for some dinner tonight and pick up a prescription for Baylee.” Sebastian asked from the doorway.
I shrugged. “Sure.”
“We’ll take the engine. Anyone else want to come?” Sebastian asked as I shrugged on my jacket.
“Sure,” Dillon said, as he stood from the recliner and walked with us out the door.
“Where we going first?” Sebastian asked, as he hopped into the passenger seat of the engine.
I hauled myself into the driver’s seat of the engine and started the big beast up.
Our newest acquisition was a 24 foot long by 12-foot wide mammoth monster that was powered by a 600 horsepower 2013 Cummins Diesel engine. The lovely brute was paid for by the citizens of Benton for a cool six hundred thousand dollars. It purred like a kitten and made my heart sing.
And it was worth every fucking penny.
“High school.” I said simply.
They didn’t ask questions, which was the norm for them. They didn’t need to know why, and they trusted me implicitly.
Which had to be done if you were going to put your life on the line with them day in and day out.
The ride to the high school was short.
I parked the engine at the curb along the fire lane of the school, hopped out, and locked the doors behind us.
I didn’t bother to ask if Sebastian and Dillon were going with me. I knew they were. They didn’t miss an opportunity for gossip if they could help it.
Walking into the school made me frown.
I’d gone to Benton High sixteen years ago; it hadn’t changed one single bit.
The doors were still shitty, and a stiff wind could probably blow them down.
The office was beyond the large foyer, being blocked by just one wooden door and surrounded by glass.
“Jesus, it hasn’t changed a bit.” Dillon said, eyeing the colorful green and black banners hanging from the ceiling.
“Go Benton Bengals.” I said dryly and raised my fist.
“Bengals, fight, fight, fight,” Dillon sang loudly, becoming even louder as the sound of his voice echoed off the stone walls.
I rolled my eyes at the imbecile and walked through the office door, closing it firmly behind me.
“Can I help you?”
The woman asking it was the same woman who’d been there all those years ago when I’d attended.
The evil Mrs.Threadgill.
Mrs. Threadgill was the foul biddy who used to write me tardies, and send me home if my shirts had anything ‘provocative’ on them, regardless if they did or not. Hell, I’d been sent home my senior year for a Coke shirt because she’d thought it was promoting drugs.
I’d hated her guts, and I damn well knew she remembered me as soon as she saw me. It was kind of hard to forget a kid that was 6’4 and 200 pounds with the face of an Italian Stallion in my freshman year of high school.
Now I was two forty, but who was counting.
“Mr. Spada, what can I help you with?” Mrs. Threadgill asked coldly after I�
�d taken too long to answer.
“We’re here for Ms. Sheffield’s chemistry class. Can you tell us where to go?” I asked nicely.
Mrs. Threadgill looked at me as if he’d grown a second head. “You’re,” she sneered. “With the fire department now?”
I smiled widely at her. “For ten years now.” I informed her brightly.
She sniffed and then stood stiffly before walking to the door and opening it.
“I’ll take you. I have to escort Mr. Fairway back to Ms. Sheffield’s class anyway.” She said gesturing to a young boy that was sitting outside the principal’s office.
Of course, the first thing the woman heard was Dillon singing the Benton fight son at the top of his lungs to a crowd of young girls.
“Dallas Berry, that is quite enough.” Mrs. Threadgill reprimanded. “Mr. Fairway, please follow me.”
Dallas, not one to stop when he was told, finished the song despite the old woman’s glare, drawing chuckles from his underage fan club.
“This way,” Mrs. Threadgill snapped before shuffling down the back hall towards the science labs.
The young boy who looked like a little punk dressed in designer clothing seemed like a real winner.
His clothes were about three sizes too big, and he was holding his pants up by the buckle of the belt.
I wanted to pants him.
“Michelle, please tie your hair back or get out of my lab. You probably wouldn’t look so good bald.” Adeline’s voice scolded from behind the chemistry lab’s door.
“But Ms. Sheffield, if I tie it back it gets creases and looks like shit...”
Mrs. Threadgill opened the door so quick I barely saw her move. “Ms. Cox, I suggest you follow Ms. Sheffield’s direction or you won’t get to see the fireman do their demonstration, and if I hear you curse on the school grounds again, I’ll be speaking with your parents.”
Yep, the old goat still had it. She used to use the same line on me sixteen years ago. Worked every time.
“Firemen?” Michelle and Adeline asked in unison.
I smiled widely as I followed Mrs. Threadgill into the room that also hadn’t changed in sixteen years. Jesus, it was like being in a time warp.
Halligan To My Axe (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC Book 2) Page 6