“Yes, sir,” I answered, pinching the bridge of my nose.
“Is there anything more top-of-the-line than the mahogany casket pictured on your website?” the man asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, sir. We don’t usually place those on the website, though. If you’re interested in seeing different brands and pricing options, I can fax you over a comprehensive list of everything that we carry. However, the ones that are super top-of-the-line take two to three weeks to arrive.”
Which most people didn’t want to wait for seeing as they were trying to get the funeral over with. It wasn’t good to make dead people wait to be put to rest.
At least not in my honest opinion.
“Wonderful,” he sniffed. “My fax number is…”
Five minutes later, faxes sent, I turned to stare at Turner.
“You did remarkably well,” I teased.
She shrugged and leaned back in her chair, her hand hitting the computer monitor to reveal our newest client.
It was a woman that’d been in a car wreck. Her face was awful, and there was no doubt in my mind that she’d be a tough case.
“This the one where the fiancé wants to have an open casket and the parents don’t?” I questioned.
“One and the same,” she confirmed. “This is also the one in the news yesterday because her fiancé’s brother was the one who caused the accident. The parents have custody of the girl’s kid, and the fiancé’s trying to get visitation rights even though it’s not his kid.”
I groaned. “That sounds like a mess, and I’m sure it’s going to get ugly here. That’s always fun.”
It wasn’t. Not at all. Drama followed death everywhere.
In the time that I’d owned the funeral home, I’d had more than my fair share of problems arising from the fact that families couldn’t agree even to disagree.
I wanted drama like I wanted a hole in my head, but unfortunately, I didn’t have much say in the matter. It wasn’t my job to deal with their crap, but it was my job to fix the girl up. And I would. I’d make her pretty again, no matter what I had to do.
“Your aunt called as well,” Turner pushed a Post-it note toward me. “She said that she was hoping she could borrow you for a couple of days for a funeral for a family. She tried your mother and she was too busy with a family of her own. She asked you to please call her back as soon as possible.”
I took the note from Turner’s fingers and glanced at the name and number.
Brittany—404-4088.
I sighed and picked the phone back up, dialing the number by heart.
“Hello?” my aunt Brittany answered, sounding out of breath.
“Hey,” I paused. “Why do you sound like you’ve been running?”
My aunt didn’t run.
She also didn’t work out, had a gorgeous body, and her husband loved the shit out of her.
I wanted her life—and her boobs.
“Because I had to heft two hundred and fifty pounds of dead man from the gurney to the table.” She paused. “Please tell me you can come down for a day or two.”
I looked at the woman on the computer screen.
“I have one I have to do before I go.” I paused and glanced at my watch. “I can get my dad to ride with me halfway. He’ll think it’s fun.”
“Oh, thank God,” she breathed. “I was really worrying here. The father wants to have the viewings next week while their family is in town so they don’t all have to go home then turn around and come back. I have three kids, parents, and a grandmother. All that needs to be done by Monday morning.”
I mentally calculated how long it’d take me to do the one in my cooler, and then said, “I can be there tomorrow morning as long as I have someone that’ll ride with me. Can Uncle Cabe take me back?”
“He should be able to,” she answered. “If not, I’ll hire a cab. Thank you.”
After hanging up, I dialed my dad’s phone and said, “Hey. Change of plans. I have to work today. Aunt Brittany needs my help with a few of her clients, and I have to get one done before I go in the morning.”
My dad made a few grumbles but didn’t argue because my aunt had done that for my mother quite a few times.
You could say being a mortician was the family business.
My mom ran her own funeral home in Arkansas where she lived with my dad. My aunt also ran one in Benton, Louisiana.
My grandmother and grandfather had also run their business in Tuscaloosa for fifty years.
“I can’t drive you, though.” He paused. “We need to see if we can find you someone else.”
I groaned. “Why can’t you?”
I drove, but I didn’t drive long distances.
I had a problem staying awake when I was in the car for any longer than fifteen minutes since I’d been struck by lightning. Long car rides were practically torture for me.
I took daily naps for one to two hours to try to circumvent my need to fall asleep in random places, and sometimes I even needed two.
Oh, and let’s not forget still going to bed at or before ten in the evening.
“Because they ran into a snag here for the system,” he answered. “I’m going to hang here for another day or two, and if you still need me, I can ride there when I’m done.”
I frowned. “What kind of snag?”
“The kind of snag that pisses me off, and now I feel like I need to make sure I stay and take care of it,” he answered, without really answering my question.
I groaned. “Fine. I’ll see if Turner can take me.”
She was already shaking her head. “No can do. You need me here. I can’t be driving you there and be here at the same time.”
She had a point.
“Well,” I paused. “Brittany did say that she could call me a cab.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Dad mumbled. “I’ll figure something out.”
And he did.
It just wasn’t something that I liked.
Chapter 9
Italians don’t measure seasonings. We just sprinkle and shake until the spirits of our ancestors say, ‘enough child.’
-Truth of Life
Zee
I couldn’t believe I’d agreed to this.
“I don’t see why I have to do this,” I muttered darkly, staring at my father and Pete like they’d grown a second head.
“You saw the state of her porch,” Pete said. “It’s a death trap. If we don’t fix it, it’s gonna fall straight off the back of the house.”
I had seen it, in fact. And I agreed. Even her landlord agreed after a little persuasion. What I didn’t agree to, however, was needing to take her all the way to Benton, Louisiana. Honestly, if it were my decision, she wouldn’t be going at all.
But, it wasn’t my decision. And despite the fact that I was a grown ass man, I still did what my father wanted me to do, and this time it was taking the little she-devil all the way to Benton—three hours away—on the back of my bike.
I’d have taken her in my truck, making sure that she didn’t have to be plastered up against me, but apparently my father and Pete needed my truck to haul the wood needed for Jubilee’s back porch. Meaning I had no other choice.
Just the thought of having her pressed up against me for hours on end was enough to send not only my dick into hyperdrive but also my mind.
I wasn’t sure that I could handle having to deal with her ass for that long.
Nor was I sure that I could stand to have her hands on me without making a move that I shouldn’t be making.
“I did,” I admitted. “Are you scrapping the entire thing?”
Pete nodded once. “Yeah. There’s no way to salvage it. It’s fucked.”
I agreed to that, too.
I’d been the one to nearly fall straight through it when I stepped out onto the piece of crap to see where it would be best to place a camera. When the entire thing had shifted underneath of me, I’d im
mediately stepped back into the house and had called my father and Pete to come around to see the damage from underneath.
Needless to say, I hadn’t been surprised to hear that the porch was only being held on by just a few boards.
“Shit,” I sighed. “What do you think that’ll take? Three? Four days?”
“Three.” Pete rubbed his face. “If you bring her home Sunday, that’ll give us enough time to get started on it, and by the time she gets back, it’ll be most of the way completed and she won’t have any other recourse but to allow us to finish.”
I had a feeling that it wouldn’t be that easy but chose to keep my truths to myself.
If Pete thought he could get Jubilee to get over it, then I was going to hope for the best.
I was going to plan for the worst, though. Just in case.
“Gotta call into the station and tell them I’ll probably need Monday off,” I muttered. “You do realize that this is my only weekend off for the entire month of October, correct?”
Dad grinned. “You do realize, correct, that I don’t give a flying fuck?”
I grunted out a ‘go fuck yourself’ and walked away from both of the grinning idiots.
The next five minutes I spent rescheduling appointments for tattoos—most of them for my club brothers—and calling into the sheriff’s department and explaining that I wouldn’t be there on Monday.
No matter what they said, I had no doubt in my mind that I’d be there at least an extra day.
One, because I knew how Jubilee worked. And two, because I knew how I worked.
Jubilee and I separately? We were fairly normal, well-adjusted human beings. Together? We turned into teenagers again that hated each other and couldn’t miss a chance to make the other one’s life a living hell.
“Do your best to get along, too,” Dad suddenly ordered.
“As long as you’re the one to tell her that she’s riding with me,” I suggested. “That way she can get all her bitching out before I get there.”
Rolling my eyes, I turned back around and hit ‘end call’ on my phone before shoving it into my pocket.
***
Turns out, her bitching wasn’t over by the time I got there…or by the time she got where I was at the diner.
We’d decided to meet there for one last meal before we headed out—at least Pete and Gordon did anyway. There I was, already sitting in the booth, a glass of chocolate milk in front of me as well as a sketchpad, when I heard Jubilee’s arguing.
“I don’t want to ride with him,” Jubilee growled. “I’d rather drive myself.”
I snorted, causing her attention to come to me.
Her eyes went to my face, first, and then to the sketchbook that was in front of me, before a sneer settled onto her face.
“How about you just go back to your drawings, Picasso? The adults are busy,” she snapped.
I grinned and went back to my sketch, not because she told me to, but because I was almost finished with it and I wanted to show it to Rome before we left so he could keep it and think about whether he wanted to have it permanently etched onto his skin or not.
Rome’s son, Matias, had died of leukemia. The sketch I was working on was a memorial piece for his son, and also resembled the coffin that I’d also painted. One scene flowed into the other, and by the time I was finished, it would be taking up Rome’s entire arm and snaking onto his back.
I studiously ignored Jubilee’s definite annoyance at the situation and finished up a few last-minute changes before Rome was set to arrive. At least, that was what I’d intended.
Rome was never one to follow directions, though and ended up arriving about five seconds after that thought had entered my mind.
The door to the diner dinged, and as usual, I looked up just to make sure that nobody nefarious was entering without my awareness.
Rome stood tall and proud in the doorway, his eyes on the crowd at the diner, taking everyone in at once.
I lifted my hand at him to show him where I was, and he nodded his head in acknowledgment.
Grinning like a fool, he headed our way and didn’t stop or nod at anyone on his trek over.
“Still got that pretty boy smile, I see,” I joked as he strolled up.
He offered me his hand, and I took it, giving him a good back slap before letting him go.
“Still drawing like a little kid, I see,” Rome teased right back. “Did you break one of your crayons?” He gestured toward the piece of charcoal I’d been using to sketch with. “I can go ask the hostess for another pack.”
Jubilee burst out laughing.
I flipped her off.
My father sighed.
Rome grinned.
“I just don’t understand,” Pete grumbled. “What’s it going to take for y’all to get past this?”
What it would take for us to ‘get past this’ was a whole lot of time and likely death for both of us. There was no ‘getting past this.’
It was just who we were at this point. I wasn’t sure that it would be possible not to at least say that we hated each other. At this point, it was a habit – without a lot of force behind it. And it was getting harder to say the expected dialogue.
“You’re asking a question that has no answer,” Rome offered his two cents. “It’s easier to just ignore.”
“Yeah,” Pete grumbled. “Like that’s been something we’ve been able to do over the last twenty plus years.”
I shrugged and gestured toward the table that was directly beside our booth. “Have a seat. I’m not quite done yet.” I paused. “Have you eaten yet?”
He nodded and pulled up the chair to the right of me, but paused before he sat.
“You gonna sit, darlin’?” Rome asked cheerfully.
It was weird seeing Rome happy. After his son died—or hell, even for the year that I’d known him while his son had lived—he hadn’t been a happy person. Not that I blamed him for being unhappy. It wasn’t every day that you had to live with the knowledge that your child would die and there wasn’t a thing you could do to save him.
Jubilee sighed and walked up to my side, gesturing for me to move over. “Move.”
I shook my head. “No. Crawl over.”
She glared. “Well get out, then.”
I already shook my head before she could even finish the sentence. “No.”
She growled in frustration, then crossed her arms over her chest as if to say, ‘I’ll stand here all damn day if I have to.’
And I would’ve let her.
“Listen, Emo Queen,” I told her tiredly. “My leg hurts and I don’t want to get up. I hit my shin on something today as I was walking out of the house, and it sends a shooting pain up to my balls when I walk on it. Just crawl the fuck over.”
She narrowed her eyes and gritted her teeth, then shoved her hand into my face and pushed backward as she used it for leverage to crawl over me.
I allowed it to happen.
One, because she smelled good.
Two, because I knew if I allowed myself to think too hard, I might very well pull her down into my lap and kiss the living shit out of her instead of letting her move to the other side of me.
Three, because I’d get her back later where there were no witnesses to play referee.
By the time she made her way to her seat at my side, Rome was laughing.
Our fathers were not.
I reached forward to snag my chocolate milk only to find it gone.
Turning my head accusingly in Jubilee’s direction, I was unsurprised to find her sucking my drink down with little to no care in the world.
“What the absolute fuck, Jubilee?” I growled. “Boundaries.”
She finished the delicacy off with a loud, mostly empty air burp, and then placed the glass back onto the tabletop in front of me.
“Shit happens,” she told me.
Shit did, indeed, happen.
More so for me whe
n it came to her.
“Show me what you have,” Rome ordered. “I have to be at work in an hour, and I have to go by the laundromat and pick up my uniforms before I go.”
That explained the lack of uniform when I knew he needed to go to work.
“Where do you work?” my father asked.
“Rome works at the prison like a real man,” Jubilee said, her nose stuck in the menu. “He doesn’t play at being eight different things.”
I rolled my eyes, then playfully reached up and flicked her nose.
She swatted my hand away but didn’t stop reading her menu to retaliate.
I turned back to my drawing, grinning like a loon at the smudge of dark that I left on the tip of her nose.
She looked cute.
“I work at the prison,” Rome confirmed, grinning at Jubilee.
She didn’t pay him any attention as she carefully made her selection, studiously ignoring everyone else at the table as she did.
She wasn’t a happy camper, that I could tell right off the bat.
But she wouldn’t argue with Rome here, which was a relief.
My head had been pounding since the skunk debacle, and for some reason Jubilee’s particular octave that she hit when she argued made it throb.
“Nice,” my father said. “I’m Gordon, that one’s father.” He pointed to me. “And this is Pete. He’s responsible for that one.” He pointed at Jubilee, who flipped my father off without looking away from her menu.
Rome’s smile widened even further.
I loathed showing him what I was working on and see that smile wiped off his face, but I didn’t have a choice. It needed to be done, and I, unfortunately, had to drive Wednesday Addams hours away on the back of my bike shortly.
“All right.” I set the charcoal down and pushed the paper in Rome’s direction. “What do you think?”
I felt Jubilee’s breasts press up against my arm as she leaned over and studied my work, but the words that I thought might leave her mouth didn’t.
I was glad.
This wasn’t a joking moment, and she seemed to sense that.
Rome’s smile did, indeed, wipe off his face as he stared at what I had for him.
“This’ll take up my whole arm?” he asked.
It Happens Page 7