Page 3 of Nash
"Go sit down, Trouble."
My jaw locks a beat too late. It lands. Her lips part, and her weight shifts forward, a millimeter. Then she catches herself.
"Sir, yes, sir." She mock-salutes, already turning, already gone.
My jaw clenches. Something low in my gut pulls tight and stays there.
I watch her cut back through the group until bodies fill the gap.
Two full perimeter cycles missed along with the motion alert on my phone I dismissed without checking. A stolen fry and red lips I'd like to see wrapped around me.
I ball my hand into a fist. Fence, gate, trees.
The yard settles as the sun drops. Conversations shift from loud to low. East and Darla lean into each other, his arm around her shoulders, his thumb running a line across her skin. Kyle puts on music from a speaker propped on the cooler lid. Knox and Sloane clean the grill, working around each other in silence with the rhythm of people who've already mapped each other's movements. James catches Maggie's hand when she passesbehind his chair. The string lights come on, bathing everything in warm amber.
Ruby outlasts all of them. She's telling a story that has the whole table locked in. I catch pieces from the wall.
"—and then she goes, 'Ma'am, that's a service animal.' And I'm standing there looking at this woman, then I'm looking at the quote-unquote service animal, which is a ferret in a vest that says Emotional Support in rhinestones." Ruby stands up from the bench, shoulders back, fully committing. "So I go, 'Ma'am, your emotional support ferret just shit in aisle nine.'" She puts on the woman's voice, chin high, offended as hell. "'He has anxiety.'" Ruby drops back to her own register. "So does everyone in this Walgreens now, Susan."
Kyle has his head on the picnic table. East is wheezing. Candace is doubled over. Darla's wiping her eyes. Knox turns away from the grill, and his shoulders shake once. Even Arden, at the edge of the yard, has turned his head.
"Was the ferret's name Malfoy?" Frankie asks, grinning.
Ruby points at her. "That is an incredible question, and I love you for asking it."
She glances back toward the wall. Toward me. Looking for it. The smile she's been trying to crack out of me for over a year.
I bite the inside of my cheek. Hard.
Her eyes narrow. She caught it. The corner of my mouth, whatever fraction of movement I didn't kill fast enough. Her whole face lights up and she points at me across twenty feet of yard.
I shake my head once.
She mouths something I don't need to hear to read.Knew it.
Then the grin loosens. Her hand drops to her side. The string lights hum in the silence between one song ending and another starting. The table keeps talking around her. She doesn't hearthem. Her chin is tipped up and her hands are still for once in her goddamn life.
Five seconds. Then Candace grabs her arm and pulls her back into the conversation, and the gap fills with noise.
I stay on the wall until the last bike pulls out of the lot and Ruby's red convertible disappears down the road. Later, when the clubhouse has gone dark and quiet, I ride back to my apartment. I sit on the edge of the bed. There's a dresser, a single lamp. Bare walls. The cut hanging on the back of the door.
I look at the faded red headband knotted on my left wrist. A few strands of dark hair still caught in the weave. The skin underneath is paler than the rest of my wrist.
Copper hair in dying sun. Red lips around a stolen fry.
I press my thumb into the headband until the weave bites bone.
Fuck.
The crack in the plaster runs from the corner to the window frame. I trace its path until the light outside shifts from black to gray.
An hour before dawn, I dress in the dark, shrug into my cut, and head for the parking lot.
The predawn air is sharp and clean. The complex sleeps. My boots hit asphalt as I approach the Harley and run a hand over the handlebars. Pre-ride ritual.
Something stiff catches. Paper, wedged tight between the right grip and the brake lever.
I hold still.
