by Sand, A. J.
I only allow myself to feel the sting of my bruised feelings for a few minutes, then push them aside and remember why I’m here. That reason is a lot more important than how I feel. I was hoping to meet up with Henry right away, before word got out that I’m back in Glory, and I’m sure that committing assault in a public venue isn’t helping my cause. I drive straight to the Chance family house next, but with a stop sign on nearly every corner, it’s impossible not to be seen by passersby in my gigantic rented SUV. Traffic here is slow but news is fast.
I park across the street from Henry’s place and the house is completely dark—there’s not even a porch light on—but a beautiful, dark-haired woman is standing out front, and as I approach she casts a disgruntled look at me.
“Where’s Henry?” she asks in a thick Spanish accent. “Who are you?” She observes me with suspicion, even backing away. She’s dressed pretty corporate formal for this time of night, in slacks and a pinstripe blouse.
“Uh, I’m…his son…” I blurt out.
“His son? No…he has a little boy. Henry Junior. With the woman. His wife.” Her face contorts in irritation, but the expression dissolves when she walks straight up to me. “Oh, I see it now. In the eyes. You are so handsome,” she coos as she scrapes her fingers down my chest. She cups my chin and taps her thumb softly across my lips. She’s really not so bad herself: thick, long black hair, eyes so dark they’re almost a shade beyond the night sky, and golden-bronze skin.
“Uh—”
“Where is your father?” she asks, her thumb pressing into the corner of my mouth.
“Good question.” She’s one of his women I bet. While he may have developed the ability to give a shit about at least one of his kids, I see that he’s still dead set on making more of them with women who aren’t Barbara.
She tilts her head and her black eyes narrow. “Your mother is not his wife. You are too dark to be her child, and she could never birth anything as beautiful as you. How come Henry has never mentioned you? What is your name?”
“Jesse…”
“Jesse…Chance. Alejandra Bautista.” She doesn’t extend a hand to me; instead, she clings to my shirt and her other arm slides around my back. “Will you help me find your father?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know where he is, Miss Bauti—”
“Alejandra,” she sings out. “To you, just Alejandra.”
The sound of a car engine grows, and headlights behind me illuminate Alejandra until she looks ethereal. “He’s not here. Same as yesterday.” The voice makes my skin warm up more than anything Texas can do. Turning around, I marvel at the most beautiful girl I used to know. Her hair is shorter but still in its usual ponytail, and her nails are bright pink, but there’s an engagement ring on her finger. She’s instantly familiar, yet remarkably foreign.
Alejandra rolls eyes full of contempt at her. “You, again. The mouthy little puta.”
“I like it when you talk dirty to me, Alejandra. I keep wondering when you’ll woman up and just ask me out to dinner,” Drew, unfazed, says with a wink. “Steak, please. I like meat.”
I snicker as Alejandra walks toward Drew’s car. “Just tell Henry he better talk to me soon…or we’ll have very serious problems.” She bends over, rolls up her pant leg, and exposes the revolver she has strapped to her ankle.
“Shit…shit…” I mumble and back away from her with my hands up. Alejandra stands and lets her pant leg fall back into place and then quells my fears of multiple gunshot wounds with an amused look.
“Done. Now get out of here,” Drew says.
“Good-bye, handsome son of Henry Chance.” She wags her fingers at me. Spitting on the ground in front of Drew’s car, she adds, “Good-bye, mouthy whore. Tell him what I said.” Alejandra heads for her black BMW but she stops midway to look back at me. Once she’s walking again, there’s an extra swing to her hips. Really, lady? She drives by Drew with expletives and her middle finger out the window, dust kicking up from the tires.
“Henry’s girlfriend? They just walk up to the door now?” Weapon aside, I get bad vibes from that one, like something maniacal lives in her heart.
“Barbara left him, for now…again. He lives here alone. And that one…” Drew cocks her head like Alejandra’s still there. “She’s harmless.”
“Kittens are harmless. They don’t have guns,” I counter.
“You’ve got way too much Texas in you to flinch at a gun that’s not actually pointed at ya,” she says, laughing. Then silence follows as we take in these unknown versions of each other. I wonder what she thinks of me now. My head is still nearly shaved, and I tend to let the stubble come in for a few days. I’m ripped under this shirt, and I’m a lot more muscular than she remembers, I bet. Even without fighting as one of my hobbies, I became a gym rat after I packed on the pounds when Duke and I used to hoard dining hall food so that we could play video games all weekend, freshman year. I guess Henry’s skinny genes only went so far. I stopped treating my body like a weekend in Vegas and started acting like I wanted to live in it for a long while.
Does she think I look good? Does she find me attractive? It’s dumb to care whether a chick you haven’t seen in ages wants to sleep with you, but it still crosses my mind. Can’t help it. We did a lot of the no-sleep sleeping back in the day. Sometimes in that very front seat she’s in. Why am I thinking about this? Fuck. Fuck. No, not fuck. Fuck is exactly what I don’t want to think about. Even though I have willingly invited the past into my life, it’s better off staying what it is. Except I loved this girl once. A lot. Still do. Damn, she’s beautiful. My eyes fall to the pink triangular pendant sitting at her collarbone. It’s the guitar pick I gave her when we were seventeen. She’s still wearing it. I gulp down as my heart thrums a little faster and my blood rushes to all my extremities.
“Uh, hi, Spark...” What else are you supposed to say to someone you don’t know anymore?
“Hey, Jess.” Her eyes widen like my greeting catches her off guard, but she flashes a casual grin. “You need a ride? Just strolling the streets of Glory? Why are you here, anyway?”
“Looking for Henry. Thought he was at Murphy’s.”
“Yeah, I saw on Facebook that you just beat up Jeremy and Isaac over there.”
“I’ve been home an hour and I’m already on a crime spree. Figures. Have you seen the sperm donor anywhere?”
She chuckles as she fingers her guitar pick necklace. “No, but he hangs out at Tickles now. I’m on my way there, and I bet that’s where he is.” I’ve never heard of the place but it sounds like somewhere Henry would be.
“I can follow you.” I jog to my rental and trail Drew right out of Glory, though we don’t drive very far past the city limits before she turns into the parking lot of a building in Renshaw.
“Give me a hug!” she says when she gets out of the car, and as soon as I wrap my arms around her, I’m swimming in calm. Not all the feelings Glory evokes are bad. She smells like Lilly Armor’s pie shop, like the cherry pie slices she used to bring home for her parents. I know I shouldn’t but I let my lips touch her shoulder, and she shivers for a moment as her body rests against mine. She runs her fingers up my back, leaving a line of heat on my spine. Then my whole body lights up, and I hold her longer than I should, but Drew was my safe place once.
“You look great,” she says in a quivering breath, and I’m disappointed when she pulls away.
“Thanks…so do you.” And she really does. She has gone from very pretty to absolutely gorgeous. Her legs are long and lean, and she’s still got that tiny waist but she’s got an even nicer ass now. “How you been, Hallisay?”
“Good. How about you?”
“Uh…good. You?” Oh, great. We’re having one of those conversations, where every question can be answered with one word. If I had to guess, I’d say Drew and I have spoken a total of twenty words to each other so far, and nothing more significant than the way I talk to my favorite barista. “Shit…you already said how you wer
e. Sorry.” My nerves are vibrating under my skin. I blow out a breath, hoping it’ll crush my jitters. What the fuck am I, ten years old? I can’t talk to a fucking girl? But it’s not just any girl; it’s my favorite girl. Was. Was your favorite girl.
“Yeah…I did.” She laughs nervously, shrugging. “It’s okay. This is super weird. Er, happy belated birthday.” She lifts her guitar case out of the trunk.
“Thanks, I got your message…thanks. Um, thanks…” And now, in person, as I trip all over my tongue, I look like the biggest asshole for never answering.
“Hey, Drew!” A tall, thin woman with cascading blonde hair steps out of Tickles in cutoffs and a low cut tank top, dragging a medium-sized rolling suitcase behind her. “Aw, I hate when I miss your shift. Anna’s here. She’s in one of her moods and annoying the other girls.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Drew says. “Get home safe, okay?” She waves as the blonde nods and hurries to her car.
“You work here?” I ask.
“Are you judging me?” I see the fire I know in her eyes. It turns me on a little.
“No, I just thought you’d…nothing.”
“I manage the place. Job market is pretty merciless right now, so after I graduated I came back home. It’s not my only job but it’s my favorite one. Joe almost didn’t hire me because he was afraid my dad would deny him service at the clinic if I got on the pole. I’ve only been on there a few times before we open.” She giggles and holds the door for me, letting loud rock music waft out.
Calling Tickles rundown would be an insult to rickety shacks. It’s dark and my sneakers stick to the floor with every step. Drew shakes down her ponytail and undoes two buttons on her top so that a hint of cleavage is showing. I discover then that there are things I’m more interested in than tits—like the ring on her finger and who put it there. Now that I know about it, I can’t stop staring. I have no claim over her, but I do feel nostalgic all of a sudden as my heart squeezes. Drew was my first love, so knowing that someone else is going to make her their last, shows how much things have really changed.
“You’re done with school already?”
“Yup. All those AP courses I took in high school. Anyway, I gotta work.” She points at the stage, where a brunette woman is twirling upside down on the pole for a group of bored-looking men. “Henry’s up front, probably. Let’s talk later. I’m here till two a.m.”
“Wait…I want to ask you something…” My mind is still on her ring, but I can’t bring myself to raise that topic just yet. “Are you still following the fights?”
Drew frowns. “Why? You didn’t come all the way here for the excitement of Southern barn fights, did you?”
I smirk, then tick up a corner of my mouth, trying hard not to break out into a full smile. “That’s not a no. You do.”
“It wasn’t a yes, either. It was just a why. Is that why you’re here?” She puts her hands on her hips.
“Sort of,” I admit.
She turns a dark look to the stage. “I don’t know anything about the fights anymore.”
“What about Perry and Bucky?”
“Perry died a year ago…and I made Buck stop having them once he and his brothers took over the farm. Barn fights are done here…”
What? Pause. Rewind. “You made him? Is that who…you and Bucky? You and Bucky Webber?” My voice goes up really high at the end. Some of it is amusement but most of it is shock. And when I say shock, it really feels like the finger in a socket, insides-frying shit.
She bites her lip to control a growing smile. “Buck.”
I can’t even process that info right now. “And you said Perry died? Damn. Good guy. Sorry for your loss.” I feel obligated to say so because he is her deceased almost father-in-law. Father-in-law. A nervous chuckle is bubbling in my stomach. Because she’s engaged to Bucky Webber. Laughter pushes up into my throat. It’s inappropriate and I suppress it, but maybe it won’t be so offensive in this nightmarish version of Glory I ended up in. “I’m sure he would’ve loved having you in the family.” I mean it—I really did like Perry—but the shit is still not clicking upstairs; my brain is completely rejecting it as truth. Bucky Webber is banging your ex. I can’t even sympathize properly. On a scale of aliens to government chip implantations, a Buck and Drew relationship is coming in pretty high on the scale of really un-fucking-believable shit.
“Thanks. Now go talk to Henry. I gotta work.” She shoves me away, but my eyes stay on her until she disappears behind a door on the other side of the room. My disbelief keeps me standing right where she, Bucky Webber’s future wife, left me. Ha, ha. The shit is still funny to me.
Eventually, I go find Henry, and he’s sitting with two other men I don’t recognize. “Jesse…you’re here…” he says, standing to embrace me, and I stiffen in his arms. The man has never hugged me before. Things are really bad for him.
“I’ve been trying to reach you.” There’s a bluish ring around his eye and a bruise at his jawline. Henry’s starring as a punching bag in a very angry person’s life.
“Concrete walls. Spotty signal and management gets antsy when they see you with your phone out. The girls don’t want photos of them out there.” He doesn’t introduce me to the men but whisks me to a dark corner for us to speak alone. There is a limp in his steps. “You want a drink or something?” he asks.
Henry’s in such bad shape that I feel sorry for him. In the few days he’s been back in my life, I’ve experienced a smorgasbord of emotions over him, more than ever before. “No drink, thanks,” I say, shaking my head. “What happened to your face and your leg? They did that to you, too? I thought you said—”
“It’s nothing.”
“Did they come after you again?”
“My boy’s safe and that’s all that matters.”
“Where is he?”
“We sent him to my in-laws in Fort Worth. He’s safe…for now.” I’ve spoken to both Barbara and HJ, who verified that someone went to HJ’s school and threatened him. Barbara said he won’t sleep alone anymore and he has been wetting the bed occasionally. Henry wrings his hands. “I’m sorry for all this, Jess…is it interfering with school?”
No shit, Sherlock. “There’s not much left for me to do to graduate.”
“You’re going to be the first one in the family with a college degree, you know. People around here think you’re just out there doing God knows what.” He loses fingers…I gain a father and a family. Shit is really bad. “You got big plans afterward?”
“Alabama with Lydia and her brother. Got a job and an apartment.”
“Good for you. Carla would have been proud,” he says. This is the most I’ve talked to my father about anything substantial my entire life; I don’t like it but, admittedly, I don’t hate it, either.
I tick my head at the men in dark suits Henry’s with. “Are those guys part of it?” They aren’t even trying to pretend they’re not watching us.
“They’re keeping an eye on me,” he says with a bitter smile, and I stare at them just as blatantly in return. I doubt they’re just here to make sure Henry doesn’t run. They seem more like guys who gouge eyes and keep them as trophies.
“How much time do you have to pay the money back?” I ask.
“If I put down a good faith payment, I might be able to hold them off for a while. At least satisfy them enough to not sniff out HJ. Before I got locked up, I started putting some money aside for a rainy day—”
“I think this more than qualifies. As a hurricane, Henry.”
He nods. “Yeah…Barbara’s dad might let me borrow a couple hundred, if I get on her good side. Total, I can raise a couple thousand.” I want to tell him that’s a laughable dent in what he owes, but the situation is distressing enough without my grim commentary.
“I can’t promise anything, but I might be able to lend you some. I’ll pay myself back from my winnings.” I wasn’t exactly truthful with Lydia when I said our trip wouldn’t be affected. We’ve paid for it in f
ull, but I have been saving money for several months to spend while we’re there, and now that’ll have to serve as spending money to get me through the next few weeks. “But HJ will stay off their radar if you pay something? You’re sure about that?”
“I’m not sure…I’ll just have to try.”
“And can you put me in contact with Francisco Acevedo? Do you still know him?” I ask, even though my suspicion is that he’s the one who did this to Henry.
“The fighter sponsor? Yeah. Maybe. I haven’t talked to him in ages. So, you’ll really get back in the ring?”
“Is there some other option now?” I ask with a shitload of sarcasm.
“No, but for what it’s worth, you were really good in there. Strong. Capable. I was…I was always proud of you.” He grips my shoulder and unleashes a torrent of conflicting feelings in me, leaving me unsure of which one I want to feel the most. “Gonna head home and get a few hours of sleep in. Thank you again, Jesse. I don’t know what I’d do if you hadn’t agreed.”
“This isn’t about you.” I can’t reiterate it enough, even if it means Henry’s face falls every time I do. When he and his friends leave, I step outside and call Duke on my burner cell to let him know I’m okay. After that, I try to convince myself that I’m not in over my head. Is there still time to turn back? But who will help HJ if I leave? My hope is that once this is over, Barbara will realize her son’s safety and future outweigh being Henry Chance’s wife, and she gets Henry the fuck out of her life. I can’t say that it hasn’t screwed me up in a lot of ways, but it’s possible to get through life without a father.
I still think Drew knows more than she’s letting on about fighting, so when the crowd thins around one a.m., I walk through the Employees Only door and find her in an office, with her feet up on the desk, strumming her guitar.