Chapter 16 Multitask #2
Javi owned a townhouse, and they were back and forth all the time too (sans cat, though, they were in pet discussions, not sure whether to adopt a cat or a dog—Javi wanted a cat, Harlow wanted a dog, I suspected, in the end, they’d get both).
They were a newer couple, but she loved his place.
They were decorating it together. The writing was on the wall.
It didn’t occur to me that someone (and I was so happy it was Shanti) would get a windfall with that bet, and it would mean good things.
Shanti had a new model, but used, baby-blue Ford Bronco.
She’d bought it two years ago because she fell in love with it.
I wouldn’t have said it was very her, until I saw her behind the wheel of it.
But she’d hadn’t had enough to buy it outright and keep her savings healthy and her trajectory to owning her own home true, and that chafed.
Now it would be fully her baby.
Because I jumped Gabe last night.
I hugged her again.
“Did you do that on purpose?”
I turned at Luna’s question to see her eyes narrowed on me.
“She knew Shanti’s timeslot,” Raye shared. “Shanti told her last night.”
“Ohmigod, you fixed it!” Jessie crowed. “That is so rad!”
“I didn’t fix it,” I refuted. “It just happened.”
Jessie ignored me and turned to Luna. “When we do your pool, you need to fix it. I call fixing it for me because Henny needs a new cat tree.”
“Henny barely leaves your couch,” Harlow said. “He’s the laziest kitty I know.”
“He’s had a rough life,” Jessie retorted. “He’s earned his lazy.”
“There’s not going to be a pool for me,” Luna snapped, her voice harsh, and we all knew why.
Because she was into Knox, and he was now into someone else.
“I don’t know,” Harlow put in. “Now that Knox is…” she trailed off when everyone gave her a look, but even so, persevered, “Brady seems to be sniffing around.”
Hang on.
What?
“He is?” I asked.
“They went out for drinks the other night,” Raye informed us.
We all turned to a pink-cheeked Luna who was glaring at Raye.
“Bitch! Uncool!” she bit at Raye.
“What? You didn’t?” Raye asked.
Luna didn’t deny it.
“Bet Knox, even if he’s with someone else, didn’t like that much,” Jessie drawled.
“We were just friends out for drinks,” Luna said.
“Methinks Knox is gonna hear about this,” Raye replied. “Methinks Knox might be with someone else, but he isn’t gonna like it. Methinks—”
“Oh my God, stop it with the ‘methinks’ shit,” Luna groused.
Jessie was nodding sagely toward Luna. “Well played, my friend. Well played.”
Hang on.
What?
“What’s well played mean?” I asked.
“Nothing makes a man realize he wants something and it’s time for him to make his move more than that man seeing someone else having what he wants,” Shanti explained.
I was still confused.
“But you could have had Knox,” I said to Luna.
“Really?” Luna fired back. “Maybe you all don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe it wasn’t me who was holding back. You ever think of that?”
“Holy shit,” Jessie whispered everyone’s thoughts.
“Dude! They’re called artichoke agave and they’re the shit!” we heard shouted from the coffee cubby area, this interjection ending our chat, something that was probably good because Luna looked like she needed us to back off.
Though, we’d need to circle around to it again, for sure.
But that shout was Annette.
Annette was Rock Chick adjacent. Not a full Rock Chick because she’d already found her man before the others had their romantic adventures, so the “adjacent” part was a technicality.
She’d come down from Denver on a visit a few months ago with some of the RCs, fell in love with Phoenix, and now she was adding to her head shop empire (she had one in Chicago called Head East, one in Denver called Head West, and she was opening one here, and she was calling it Head Southwest).
She’d also assigned herself as the landscape architect for Tex and Nancy’s new home.
Tex just hadn’t accepted that assignment.
Nope, that wasn’t right.
Tex was vehemently opposed to that assignment and all the assignments the RCs and AAs had given themselves to revamp their seventies home that had been designed by an award-winning architect, but it hadn’t been all that well taken care of in, oh, the last forty years.
“We’re gonna have dirt and rocks,” Tex retorted as we all made our way from behind the bar to the coffee cubby so we could watch the show. “Not anything I gotta maintain or water. And my Nancy isn’t gonna be out in the hot sun doin’ that shit either.”
When we got there, we saw Annette standing, holding a big tub filled with a full-grown artichoke agave. And there was a bucket at her feet in which was a healthy agave victoriae-reginae (my favorite, btw, they were gorgeous).
I wasn’t certain why she had to bring the actual plants into SC, considering they were rather large, outside of presentation purposes. But it seemed an unwieldy presentation.
Then again, to get through to a man like Tex when he was being stubborn about something, you used every tool in your arsenal.
“It’s a desert plant, my man,” Annette assured him. She swooped an arm to the bucket on the floor. “They all are. You only gotta water them for a year, two, at most three before they find purchase and thrive on their own. And you don’t have to water ’em much because they’re desert plants.”
“You can set up drip systems, Tex,” Harlow chimed in. “So you and Nancy don’t have to water at all.”
“We’re gonna have dirt and rocks,” Tex retorted.
“Tex—” Annette started.
“We’re gonna have dirt and rocks!” Tex boomed.
As one, the crowd in front of the coffee cubby surged back half a step at Tex’s boomier-than-usual boom.
But it was only half a step.
Nothing scared them away from Tex’s coffee. Not even Tex.
And he tried.
“I’m talking to Roxie about this,” Annette threatened.
Roxie was an RC. She was also Tex’s niece. And since Tex was all about his girls, even while pretending he wasn’t, pulling in his beloved niece was pulling out the big guns.
“Do your worst,” Tex retorted, then took a portafilter, flicked fresh-ground coffee into it in a way most of the coffee sprayed all over the place, then he tamped it down with such force, I was surprised it didn’t become one with the portafilter.
Annette bent, hefted up the other agave tub and announced to Tex, “You’re on!” she turned to us and her expression changed from stubborn to congenial. “Yo, bitches.”
She got some yos, heys and waves before her expression morphed right back to annoyed when she glared at Tex before she stomped out.
“For Nancy, don’t you want to—?” Raye started in on Tex.
With practice, Otis casually swayed back to be out of the line of fire as Tex pointed another portafilter at her, this one used, and there it was.
No matter how tight he packed it, the grounds would come out. I knew this because we all had to jump away when they went flying in our direction and plopped on the ground five inches in front of Luna’s cute wedges.
“Shut it!” he thundered.
“What’s your problem with plants?” Jessie demanded to know.
“My woman had a stroke in her fifties,” Tex bit back. “And she isn’t gonna have another one under the baking sun, and I sure as fuck ain’t gonna be out in it.”
I refrained from sharing, if he didn’t wear jeans and long-sleeved flannels, he might be more comfortable, and that no one in Phoenix wanted to be out in the baking sun, that was why there were drip systems.
But it was too sweet why he wanted dirt and rocks only, so I kept my mouth shut.
The rest of the Angels felt the same because we all wandered away from the cubby, with Harlow running to grab a rag to clean up the grounds.
“We need a new pool as to whether Annette and Roxie are going to win, or Tex is gonna win,” Shanti, feeling herself after her windfall, said.
“I’m not betting against Tex,” Luna replied. “But I’ll take that action.”
We all got our heads together and laid down the money (and since it was only ten dollars, I bought in).
Luna, Harlow and Jessie said Tex would win.
Raye, Shanti and I picked Annette and Roxie.
The reasoning behind my pick?
Tex was all bark and no bite. He loved his girls and took care of them. That included Nancy, all the Rock Chicks, all the Angels, also Annette.
He even liked Dream in a bad-tempered way.
So he might bluster.
But in the end, he was going down.