“Is that what this is about?” I threw my hands in the air. “Jax is pissed off because he thinks his job is my personal babysitter? Newsflash, Young, it’s not. No one hired you.”
“No one else wants the fucking job!” He whirled and thrust the glass and a pill at me.
I slapped it out of his hand. It hit the cabinet and exploded, a violent burst of water and glass that rained down on the scratched linoleum. “No one fucking needs it!”
“Damn it, Bri! You’ve needed it from day one!” He was still clutching a glass that wasn’t there, its absence clearly not noted.
“So, what? I’m your good deed? Think they’ll let you into heaven when it’s all over? Is that what’s going on? Trying to find salvation?” My voice was cruel and sharpened at the end, designed to cut.
“They’ll let us both in. Because we’ve already lived in hell.” And his reply was so earnest, so fucking heartfelt, that I could feel the weightless knife in my hand, the one I had crafted with my words, slip and cut my own fingers.
We were standing there, glaring at each other, chests heaving, and I could almost feel the blood pouring from my fist, and it felt so real I had to stop myself from glancing down and checking to see if it was pooling at my feet.
The absurdity of it all hit me and before I knew it was coming, I busted out laughing, hard and unrestrained, but even I could detect the edge in it.
Jax struggled to maintain his heated expression and he was still holding that phantom glass, which made me laugh harder. I was howling, tears streaming down my face, and I remembered I was only wearing underwear and the thought of what I must have looked like with my bed head and smudged makeup and my damn panties with the little hearts all over the ass had me doubling over, clutching my sides. It hurt so bad but I couldn’t stop, and Jax apparently couldn’t help but join in. We were gasping for breath, struggling to speak and laughing harder when we couldn’t.
We both sank down to the floor facing each other, folding our legs Indian-style, knees touching as we tried to contain the laughter. Each time one of us managed it, all it took was eye contact to set us off again.
It was minutes, hours, before we finally were able to get ourselves under control, with only the occasional giggle or snort escaping. I lay back and stretched out my legs, careful to avoid the broken glass and puddles, staring up at the fluorescent light in our drop ceiling, noting the years of grease and dust caked on it. A second later Jax crawled over and lay next to me, shoulder pressed against mine. We were both panting, marathon runners who just crossed the finish line.
“You’re a lunatic,” he finally said, but there was no anger lacing his words now.
“Likewise.”
We lay silently for a few, until our breathing evened out and the last of the laughter died off. He turned his head toward me and I looked over at him out of the corner of my eye.
“So, how did it happen, Bri?” This time his voice was cautious, because he wanted to know and I think maybe he didn’t. “Will you tell me?”
“That depends.” I gave him a wary look.
“On?”
“Whether or not you lose your shit again.”
He shot me a crooked grin and held up his first two fingers. “You have my word. Scout’s honor.”
“You were never a Boy Scout,” I pointed out.
“True. But only because they didn’t approve of my over-the-top sex appeal. Made the other little boys uncomfortable.”
I burst out laughing, the cackling laugh I only allowed to escape in front of Jax. His responding smile was devastating in its size and sincerity, and not for the first time I wondered what kind of person I would have been had Jax and I been capable of feeling anything more for each other. If I could be better, if he could make me better. Would he bring me up or would I drag him down?
Even if there ever were something between us, I don’t think I could ever act on it. Jax was the only one in the world who didn’t expect anything from me. Who was my friend just because he was my friend. He was good.
Not that he was too good for me, but I was too much for him.
“So you gonna tell me?” he pressed and I sighed.
“I’m not sure, but Preach was involved.” I frowned, thinking of the wailing once again. “I think.”
“That old fuck!”
“Jax,” I warned.
He rose up on one elbow and leaned toward me. “I told you about them, didn’t I? Damn it. No.” He shook his head when I started to interrupt. “I’m not gonna ‘lose my shit’ but this deserves an I told you so.”
“You liked him too,” I protested.
“No, I pitied him. Because you pitied him.”
“I don’t pity him—”
He interrupted me before I could continue.
“Fine. Fine. Any less than negative feelings I had for the old fuck was only because you were so damned fond of him. But you can’t trust a crackhead, Bri. Preach might be your friend or whatever it is you consider him, but he’s a junkie first.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’ve said it all before. I know.”
He lay back again and reached down, taking my hand in his.
“No, you don’t,” he said quietly. “And it’s not even because you see the good in people. You just see the worst in yourself.”
“Going Dr. Phil on me now, Young?” I asked, squeezing his fingers.
He grinned at me, but the edges of it looked a little sad.
“Nah, I’m way too good-looking.”
“And here we are. Back to your good looks and suffocating ego.”
He laughed. “Yeah, well. It needs to be stroked. Speaking of stroked. Luke Turner. How the hell did that happen?”
“Who?” I asked, eyebrows raising in confusion.
He gave me an incredulous look.
“Guy in your bed? Don’t tell me you guys were naked together and you didn’t bother to even get his name.”
“No. I mean, shit, Jax. I got bashed in the head. A few times. Him and his friends helped me out. We didn’t exactly stop for introductions.”
“So, he was just—there? That’s lucky. I guess.”
I didn’t have to be looking at him to pick up the skepticism oozing from his direction. “Apparently. And anyway, how did you know his name?”
“You know Scott? The bar back from Bar 9?” He frowned. “Of course you do. You knew him after a week.”
“It was two weeks actually.”
“Right. I forgot. You’re practically a nun. Anyway. They work out at the same gym. The Coliseum? Over in Old Town? Scott said he’s there all the time. Knows the owner or something.”
“Mmm-hmm,” I commented absently, thinking of his muscles and the way they flexed and rippled with every little movement he had made. Time well spent.
“Is his dick big?”
I looked over at him sharply to see his face poker straight. He shrugged. “What? We like to know that shit too. Sizing up the competition and all that.” He paused and grinned. “Pun unintentional but still fucking brilliant.”
I shook my head, laughing. “I don’t know. You saw as much as I did.”
He gave me a look that told me what he thought of that.
“All right! It’s, from what I could tell, adequate.”
He cocked his head to the side like a puzzled dog. “Adequate? That’s vague. I’m gonna need some comparisons here. Is he bigger than me?”
“For fuck’s sake, Jax, I don’t know.”
“Because,” he continued as though I hadn’t answered him at all, “I’m gonna be super pissed if he is. Motherfucker is built like a damned tank. The least he could do is have a baby dick so whenever I see him I can think, ‘sure, he could probably slaughter me with one finger, probably has the bitches scaling his mountain-sized a
ss begging to have his abnormally large babies, but at least I have a bigger dick so that makes me the clear winner here.’” He gave me a pleading look. “Come on, Bri. Let me have this. Tell me his dick is tiny and looking at it made you want to cry.”
I could barely breathe through my cackling. “I can’t do this with you, Young. I—” Laughter overtook me completely as Jax jutted out his lower lip and batted his eyelashes. “Oh, God, stop! You’re killing me.”
“Just say it,” he whined in a high-pitched voice, reaching over to grasp my forearm with both hands. “Say, ‘Jax, your dick is huge and Luke Turner’s, whose name I didn’t even know, is like a baby’s and seeing it made me weep.’”
“Yes, that,” I said through my uncontrollable giggles. “Whatever you say. Lord, just stop with the eyes! I’m dying!”
“Oh, thank God.” He slumped over to lie next to me again and looked down at his crotch. “We dodged that bullet, Thor. We’re still the champs.” He glanced over at me with a wink. “Oh, yeah. I renamed him Thor. Like the God of Thunder? I don’t think I need to explain why.”
I was still grinning so wide my face threatened to crack, laughter echoing in my chest. “Thank you for keeping me up-to-date on the latest happenings in your pants. I appreciate it.”
“Not a problem.” He took my hand once more. “I know how you like to stay informed.”
We spent another half hour or so like that, laughing and teasing and generally just being us, something I don’t think we ever really got to do away from each other. At least I didn’t. After a while, when my mind started to wander, Jax squeezed the hand still in his grasp to get my attention. I pulled myself from my thoughts, which kept straying back to Preach and the newly named Turner, to look over at him.
“Think you ought to go to the hospital?”
I shook my head firmly and didn’t have to elaborate further because Jax, of all people, knew. Servers don’t have insurance and they sure as hell don’t have the money to pay a hefty E.R. bill and still pay the rest of their bills. He didn’t offer me the money he didn’t have or say we could skip out on the electricity, and I was grateful because, to me, that was a real friend. One who accepted the situation and your decision and didn’t try to argue it. Even if they did have a misguided notion that it was their job to keep you out of trouble.
“Well, kid, I have to be at work soon. Unless you’d rather...?”
“No. Go,” I told him firmly. “I’m good. I’ll probably go back to sleep.”
“Okay. Well, if you need anything—”
“I’ll call.”
He looked mildly satisfied as he stood, then helped me up. I let him just to humor him and not because I felt as if I’d been hit by a freight train.
“Take your pill,” he instructed once I was fully upright. “Hell, take two. I can always get more from Fury.”
I gave him a mock salute and he strolled off toward his room. I found the fallen Vicodin in the mess of glass and water. It was slightly dissolved, but I stooped to pick it up anyway, ignoring the rest. I grabbed another for the road from the bottle next to the sink, then shuffled back to my own room, vowing to curl up around my bottle of Jäger and sleep the aches away.
Chapter Six
I ended up calling off Saturday, which I couldn’t really afford to do. I told Jax it was because I was still sore. The reality was I just didn’t want to face Preach. Cowardly, maybe, but junkie or not, I kinda cared about the old fucker.
I forced myself to go Sunday. I’d never avoided anything in my life and I sure as hell wasn’t going to start now. I was nervous and it was a foreign feeling to me. What if he was there? What if he was waiting for me and he had an explanation, a good explanation, for what had happened? What if he didn’t have one at all? I wasn’t sure which would have been worse.
Until I pulled into the lot and parked in my usual spot, despite Jax’s warnings about sticking near Duke’s. I knew then which was worse. Preach not being around at all.
My mind was instantly on overdrive and I was considering every possible scenario. He was avoiding me. He was high somewhere and had lost track of the days. He was hiding out. He had overdosed.
Brooding Turner had killed him.
Shit.
I climbed out of the car, clutching my shoes and backup purse, the one I’d moved everything into. I was shaking but I wasn’t sure if it was out of anger or worry. If Preach was guilty, I wanted to be his judge and jury. I didn’t want someone else playing executioner. It didn’t take much to picture Turner in that role, even having just met him. If you could even call what had happened meeting someone.
By the time I slipped into the back door of Duke’s, the night was already in full swing. Jax and Aaron, our Sunday night bartender, were mixing drinks with the kind of gusto only Sunday nights could bring. Suzy and Miranda were doing their intricate tangos in that graceful, practiced way of theirs. On the platform, however, it wasn’t Chase belting out Elton’s “Rocket Man,” but the smooth voice of Louis, our backup piano player.
I frowned and gestured to Suzy as she swayed past me.
“Where’s Chase?” I asked. Louis moved on to Dylan’s “Hurricane” and I did have to admit, he sounded a hell of a lot better than Chase ever did.
Suzy’s brow furrowed in response.
“That’s the thing, isn’t it? Didn’t show back up. King never commented on it. No idea,” she replied in that breathless, shorthand way of hers.
“But he wasn’t hurt that bad, was he?”
“No. Thanks to you.” She gave me a wan smile. “Still hasn’t been back. Not since then. Weird.”
“Yeah. Weird,” I echoed as she flitted away, back to the floor and her tables.
Jax was scrutinizing me as he fixed a drink. I jerked my head in Louis’s direction and Jax shrugged. Scrunching up my nose, I glared at him. It was my stink face, my “Don’t fuck around with me” warning expression, and Jax, noting it, shook his head. He was telling me he didn’t know, hadn’t thought to mention it and wasn’t trying to keep anything from me. I nodded, taking his word for it, not failing to note the irony that we hadn’t actually spoken a single word. The ability to communicate without speaking and the courtesy of taking what wasn’t said at face value were courtesies I extended only to Jax.
The night slipped by in spurts and drags, as Sundays so often did. They were my shortest day of the week, but they inevitably always ended up feeling like the longest. Maybe it was the subdued crowd we got in on those nights, the souls that threw up a finger to the pearly gates and came down to have a drink with the sinners. Maybe it was the knowledge that we only had one night to go in our work week. Whatever the reason, time stretched on and on. Then, out of nowhere, the lights were coming up, Louis was singing Semisonic’s “Closing Time,” and Duke’s was suddenly no longer a dangerous speakeasy where the cops were able to come bursting in at any minute. It was just a basement, the bare concrete walls a little depressing, the mismatched tables and chairs kinda shabby. The magic was gone in a blink of an eye, and the last of the stragglers shook themselves awake, no longer under a spell, and headed toward the stairs.
We rushed through cleanup, laughing as Louis provided us with background music, songs he wasn’t allowed to play during the night. We were dancing around to his renditions of Creedence Clearwater Revival, singing along to “Bad Moon Rising” and “Run Through the Jungle,” wiping down tables, and pausing for shots Jax or Aaron poured us in between their own cleanup. We were seduced by our own youth, the infiniteness that came with it, charged with excitement. It was twirling behind us, the seducing excitement, dancing along with us.
When we were through, we shut out the lights and filed out the back door, pausing only long enough for Jax to lock up. Our animated chattering and laughs were their own kind of music as we headed up the stairs to the street, a soundtrack of anticipation.
Suzy and Mike were the only ones to separate from our little group, waving their goodbyes as they walked toward the employee lot and their cars. The rest of us—Jax, Miranda, Louis, Jared, Aaron and I—made our way out front, where people were still lingering on the street. Their night was over, even if they didn’t want to admit it. Ours had just started.
We attracted attention as we walked across the street to the Tap Room, located directly opposite Bar 9 and Duke’s. We always did. It was the sight of Miranda and I in our red flapper dresses, elaborately curled hair and bright lipstick, Jared in his mobster suit, Aaron and Jax in their tweed pants and suspenders, Louis in his Old Hollywood tux. We were a blast from the past, a faded photo in a history book come to life and transported to the present day. It was one thing to see us in Duke’s, where they were the outsiders in our world. It was another thing to see us in theirs.
We went around the back of the building, gravel crunching under our feet, arms laced through each other’s. There a rusted staircase waited for us, beckoning us up to a row of apartments situated above the bars below. Our destination was the first door, the one with music and voices already spilling out into the night.
When we entered, we were hit with another blast from the past, but it was the 70s we stepped into. Shag carpet, vinyl furniture, lava lamps and psychedelic music playing from the large speakers in the living room. Every bad acid-dropping cliché you could imagine, it was all there. And standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by people, was Fury, owner of said clichés as well as our gracious host for the evening. Dressed in all black, only a shade or two darker than his skin, a matching golf cap perched on his bald head, he spotted us just as we cleared the threshold, and pushed aside his guests to greet us.
“Motherfuckers!” he exclaimed, grasping Jax’s hand and pulling him forward to pound him on the back. “How fucking good it is to see you.”
“How’s it going, man?” Jax grinned at him, used to Fury’s over-the-top personality after years of attending his weekly get-togethers for the working side of the Lane. No one knew exactly how they got started, but they were tradition now, and we never missed one.
Wild Ones (The Lane) Page 5