Chapter 28 It
TWENTY-EIGHT
IT
In the time before IT happens …
Cheeseburgers with the girls was not going according to protocol.
This was partially because Duane was there.
Who invited him, I didn’t know.
It wasn’t that we didn’t make it clear he was one of ours so that seal had been broken.
It was that he was ruining fantastic greasy diner cheeseburgers and thick shakes with an argument with Lotus over paint chips.
Uh, yeah.
Color me stunned, but the dude was actually going to paint his house.
And he was going to use the extra money to put in a new IKEA kitchen.
I was happy that he was seeing that he was someone who deserved nice things, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to be around when the kitchen discussion came up, considering what was happening right now.
“You have to give it some zing,” Lotus snapped. “A yellow door. Or a red door. Or a blue door.”
“You already made me do two colors,” Duane complained.
“You can’t paint an entire house one color,” Lotus shot back. “You have to have a complementary trim color.”
“So I’ll just paint the door that trim color,” Duane returned.
“That doesn’t offer any zing!” Lotus spat.
“This is boring,” Persia interjected into their argument and turned to Jinx. “So let’s talk about what’s got your panties in a twist.”
And that was the second part of how cheeseburgers and shakes weren’t going according to protocol.
Jinx was sulking.
“Noah and I are fighting,” Jinx said.
There was a collective eye roll because Noah and Jinx were always fighting. This usually was about Jinx being stubborn, protecting her corner when she hadn’t been pushed into one, eventually realizing that, then they’d have a sex-a-thon to make up.
No, they hadn’t been officially together for very long.
Yes, this was still the rhythm that had become their lives.
“What’s it about this time?” Gemma asked.
“He says he’s gonna pay my tuition for college,” Jinx answered (oh yeah, another update: she was sending in applications—yippee!). “I said, since I rented my house, I could pay for my own damned college.”
Another yeah: she had fully moved in with Noah in his mansion with a pool and a view of the mountains.
Her place was cute, but I wasn’t surprised she jumped feet first into that.
I further wasn’t surprised to learn Noah liked Jinx making toast in his kitchen with “ratty hair.” I knew this because she shared during another cheeseburger extravaganza that Noah did her on the kitchen floor the first time he walked in on her doing that.
Also, other times besides.
Btw: her house was the one she’d grown up in. It was paid off. It was one of the only things she had left of memories of good times with her family, before her dad got sick and the rest of it went off the rails. So she said she was keeping it forever.
“And I can get a part-time job or something,” Jinx went on. “I don’t know what I could do that’s legit, but I’d find something so I can buy groceries and pay for my schooling, and he can stop being all ‘save my woman.’”
Another btw: after much discussion and drama, Noah and Jinx had settled on her providing groceries for their household, along with paying for their streaming services, until she’d landed whatever employment she was going to land, and then they’d renegotiate.
In other words, Noah had used their brief separation to get his shit tight when Jinx made her approach so she could be in his life in a way that she could live with when she finally got her head out of her ass about living with him.
So in case there were any doubts, yet another yeah.
He so totally loved the crap out of her.
“He’s not saving you, you idiot,” Genesis (another one of our working-girl crew) said.
“He’s supporting you.” When Jinx screwed up her face, Genesis amended, “The good kind of support. You know, like helping you make your dreams come true. It’s not like he’s giving you your dream, you gotta do all the studying and earn your degree.
It’s just that he’s helping you to pave the way. ”
“Yeah,” Persia said. “I don’t know, because I didn’t get as lucky as you, but from what I’ve heard, that’s what partners do.
I mean, you saved him from a boring life of golf and shit sex with brainless, gold-digging bimbos.
Now, on the flipside, he’s gonna help you get a degree.
Big whoop. It’s called evening things out. ”
While Persia was talking, I caught Duane and Lotus exchanging a look.
Um.
Hang on.
What was that?
“It doesn’t make me comfortable,” Jinx retorted to Persia.
“Okay, pay your own tuition,” Divinity put in (yeah, another one of our sex worker posse). “Take a part-time job. Make going back to school after a decade harder than it needs to be. It’s your life.”
I knew Jinx saw her point when she shot her an acid look.
“I think you just fight so you can make up,” Harlow suggested.
Jinx gave up on the acid and sucked back some of her malt.
“She totally just fights so they can make up,” Jessie stated.
While they were all involved in their chat, I leaned to Shanti and whispered, “Did you see that between D and L?”
“You bet,” she whispered back. “I think something happened that night we did the Dex/Dimitri thing.”
Hmm.
“Whatever,” Jinx snapped. “Dios mio, I should never have told you bitches.”
These days, Jinx said that a lot.
But she also always told us bitches.
“Now she’s having a tantrum because she knows we’re right,” Skyla said.
“Okay, fuck, whatever,” Duane groused. “I’ll do the blue.”
Lotus beamed.
I picked up my burger and took a bite as cheeseburgers with the girls (and Duane) veered back to protocol.
And because I agreed on the blue.
Also because I knew Jinx would cave.
We’d learned.
Noah wanted something?
She’d kick up a fuss.
And then she’d be all in.
It was when cheeseburgers with the girls was over, and we were walking to our cars, that I felt something odd.
I looked through the cars in the parking lot to see Duane standing in the door of his junker Honda Accord.
He was looking at me, and it wasn’t creepy.
He then pounded his fist to his chest over his heart once.
With that, he quickly got in his car.
Okay, maybe he was a skeeve.
But yeah.
He was our skeeve.
And I hoped he and Lotus were a thing.
Because there were all sorts of dreams.
We just had to open our hearts so they could come true.
After cheeseburgers with the girls, I was using Gabe’s kitchen as a test kitchen for some new cookies I wanted to try in the coffee cubby case of The Surf Club, when Gabe came home.
I was scraping cookies off the baking trays and onto the cooling racks when he appeared.
I smiled at him.
He said, “Jesus Christ, what’s that fucking amazing smell?”
I smiled harder.
God, yes.
I loved this man.
I put down the tray, flicked off the oven mitt, nabbed a still-warm, but not-hot cookie and walked to him.
“Test cookie, and you’re my taster.” I handed it to him. “Molasses and date. Tell me what you think.”
He didn’t nibble.
He bit down on half of it, then his head tipped to the side, his lips tipped up, and after he swallowed, he said, “Winner.”
I reached up and tugged on his beard, and Gabe didn’t resist my invitation.
He dropped his head and kissed me.
Then he hooked an arm around me and pulled me closer.
Mm.
“Story isn’t long, so I can make it quick, and we can move past it,” he stated.
Cancel that mm.
He’d been working a case that day.
Did something happen at work?
“Christian Darvill,” he began.
Oh.
Him.
I didn’t really care, but even so, I was mildly curious what they found out about him.
Gabe told me.
“Married, one daughter already, another on the way,” he said.
“He’s an ER nurse. Deep dives into his cell, computer use, social media and personnel records share he’s a dedicated family man and a dependable medical professional.
The man doesn’t so much as follow some pop singer’s Instagram page for an opportunity to perv.
His wife and him are in a pickleball league.
He shares drop-off and pickup with her at daycare.
And he has only cursory contact with high school buds, many of whom have not kept their noses as clean as Darvill.
Then again, they didn’t learn the lesson he learned. ”
“Interesting,” I mumbled.
“Considering Darvill did get his hand slapped about shit like this,” Gabe continued, “Brody went deeper. But he didn’t find any secret social media accounts or anything uncool in his deleted caches, because the man doesn’t even delete his caches since he has nothing to hide, and phone and car GPS show nothing but work, home, gym, daycare, family life and social travel.
He could be a mastermind at hiding he’s still a dick.
But it seems like he’s just no longer a dick. ”
“Well, I have to admit, I’m surprised, but I’m also glad he made his way off the path of being a dick,” I replied.
“Yeah.”
“I’m also glad he’s given you no reason to find him and hand his ass to him,” I remarked. “It’ll cut into your cookie tester duties.”
Gabe grinned and repeated, “Yeah.”
I stroked his beard and asked softly, “Feel better about that?”
“More important question, do you?”
“It’s good to know someone who did something so heinous in his youth was able figure it out and not repeat the pattern,” I noted.
“’Spect having a wife, a daughter and another one on the way might have helped him to understand that.”
“’Spect so,” I agreed. “Can we be done with him?”
“Absolutely.”
I rolled up to my toes to give him another kiss.
The timer for the cookies sounded.
Gabe moved to the fridge to grab a beer.
And I went to the oven to grab the cookies.
“He’s just so awesome.”
I turned to see what Shanti was looking at and watched Gabe strolling our way.
She was so right.
He was so awesome.
She and I were on a besties date.
And so we could tie one on, Gabe dropped us off at Trevor’s, and since (as per his instructions) I texted him that we were ready to come home, now he was back.
Unh-hunh.
Totally awesome.