3. Kali
3
KALI
T here was a disco ball in our living room. I glimpsed it as soon as I came in through the garage door.
What.
The.
Awesomest?
I stared at it in confusion, sparkly and rotating, sending pink, purple, blue, and all sorts of colors around the room. Once the door shut behind me, the music started.
Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” filled the room, and on the beat, my roommate, Harper, slid across the floor from the hallway and past the kitchen doorway. His arms were up, his head back, sunglasses on. He wore a white dress shirt, underwear, and socks. That’s it.
He turned to face me and struck a pose. He brought a bottle of bourbon to his lips, as if it were a microphone. Then, with his entire body bobbing to the music, he lip-synced the entire first section of the greetings.
Black hair. Dark eyes. Gangly form. Seriously pale skin. This was roommate number one. Like my mom, he enjoyed hiding from the sun.
When the second verse started, our other roommate moved past the doorway and reappeared holding a wine bottle for her microphone. Aly was doing the robot, and also wearing sunglasses, but she hadn’t gone with the full Tom Cruise look from Risky Business . She’d gone ’80s glam, with hair and bangs high up in the air. She had multicolored slap-on bracelets, pink leggings, and a black top that was off one shoulder with a neon-green bra underneath.
They did a full rendition.
Their moves were choreographed.
Harper went left, Aly went right.
Harper bent low, Aly jumped high.
The chorus had two moves—a hair primp and a hair flip.
At the end, both jumped in the air, and it was impressive. They finished as if they were Saturday Night Live cheerleaders.
“Hey!” Harper chirped, his smile wide.
“Hey.” My greeting was a lot less chipper, and his smile dimmed.
Instant regret.
I flashed a grin, trying to ease some of the shittiness I felt. “That was amazing, you guys.”
In perfect sync, they turned to each other. They pulled their shades down an inch and shared a look. Then, they moved.
Harper took my purse and keys and maneuvered me into a chair. “Sit.”
Aly’s eyes narrowed behind her sunglasses. She gave a firm nod. “You need alcohol.”
I loved my roommates, a lot . The three of us had been friends since high school.
Harper had gone to design school and came back to start his own business. His schooling had been for clothing design, but he had a niche now where he designed specialty costumes and that was for anyone. People ordered for high school plays, community productions, or even a really amazing Halloween party. Aly did dispatch for our local fire station—and live cooking segments on her social media, which Harper co-hosted at times.
I was the sampler of everything—food, liquor, whatever they needed. We all had our sacrifices to make.
When Foley (my ex) cheated on me, Harper and Aly had both showed up on my doorstep that night. And when I say cheat , he was really cheating. He had three women in the bed when I walked in.
And if that’s what I found, I shuddered to think how long it had been happening. Surely he hadn’t just gone right into a foursome? Was he the cheating overachiever? Had there been a single cheat partner to start with? Just one lady?
But back to the scene I’d walked in on.
Two were going down on each other, and he was in the other, his hands gripping the backs of her thighs, watching as she did something else, which I didn’t see because my mind had snapped at that point. I was looking for a weapon. There was a lot of yelling and threats, but I didn’t leave. That was important to me. I’d held my ground and sent them all packing—Foley literally. I’d been giving my house the sage of all saging when my doorbell rang. I’d assumed it was Foley, but nope.
I broke down when I saw how much they’d packed. Harper had three rolling suitcases.
Aly said she had plenty of vacation time from the fire station, and could do her segments anywhere. Once I made the decision to move back—at least until I got my feet back under me—they hadn’t given me a choice. They moved me into their basement room. Harper had the top floor. Aly had the main floor. It was a big enough house that all of us had our own space.
We’d had a fourth roommate for a while, Harper’s boyfriend, but they’d ended things a week ago, so now it was back to the three of us.
“What happened?” Harper asked, eyeing me in my spot on the chair.
Just one question from him in that knowing voice of his, and I told them everything.
The fight.
Me snapping at Noah.
Me commiserating about the soup that was damaged.
Me talking with Macy.
I did some venting about Otis, because who wouldn’t?
Then the finale, Shane’s visit, and when I was done, both of them sat in total silence.
I’d told them almost everything.
“There were…” Harper began.
“Bikers?” Aly asked. “Like motorcycle bikers? Like—”
“Sons of Anarchy and Mayans?” Harper said.
“His name is Ghost?” Aly started fanning herself.
“Was he hot?” Harper raised an eyebrow.
Ping pong to Aly. “Of course he was hot, look at her,” she said. “She’s still worked up. Or maybe that was our routine. We were amazing.”
He nodded. “You’re right. But also, Kali never gets heated like this. A foursome had her like this one time in a different way, though those were extenuating circumstances. This dude just talked to her.”
“You’re right.” They nodded at each other.
“Cool and calm Kali,” Aly added. “That’s what we call her.”
“Guys!” I held a hand up. My head was starting to hurt. “I still need a drink.”
Aly needed to be the bartender, always. She could be ferocious if we got inventive with our own mixology. It wasn’t allowed.
Her eyes got big, and she stood. “Right! I’m on it. We’ve been drinking since four today.”
I frowned. “Four?”
Harper’s eyes got hard.
Harper’s eyes barely ever got hard.
Now I was alarmed. I leaned forward. “What happened at four today?”
“It was more like three when it happened.” Aly went to the bar.
Yes, we had a whole bar. It was a counter set up on the far side of the kitchen. Wine glasses, shot glasses, and glass mugs lined the bottom and the top was shelved with all the hard liquor a regular bar would have. Wine had its own shelf. Next to the counter was a smaller fridge that housed the chilled wine and beer. Harper enjoyed beer. He liked his Coronas, but recently he’d been on a dark beer kick. We did a brewery tour last weekend. He’d been enthralled the whole time.
Anyway…
“What happened at three?” I looked between the two.
They were looking at each other.
Harper pursed his lips and looked at his lap.
Aly pressed her lips firmly together and turned to the bar, giving us her back.
I zeroed in on Harper. “Harp. What happened?” I didn’t have a good feeling.
Please let it be a good thing that happened. Please, please, please.
“My manufacturer called me. They’re shutting down, like forever.”
“What?!” No! No way.
He dipped his head down in a quick nod. “Yeah. I know. I can try to find another one, but this one was perfect. They did all my products. I never had an issue with them. Now…”
“We’ve already come up with a plan.” Aly came over, setting a drink in front of me before taking her seat. “My views always double when he’s with me, and today we did one in costume. It tripled, and the shares have been amazing. It’s not much, but we’re going to try to be smarter about branding. Though without a manufacturer…”
She swallowed, and I reached for my drink. My arms felt like lead.
I didn’t know what was in the drink, but it burned, and that’s all I needed at that moment.
“Wait.” Harper held up a hand, blinking a few times. “You didn’t actually tell us why that biker came to see you.”
“Yeah.” It was my turn to swallow, and I took another drink. “This is good stuff, Aly. Real good.”
She pulled her sunglasses all the way off and leaned forward, crossing her arms over her chest. “Spill it, woman. Also, I’m blaming the fact that we’ve been drinking since four that we didn’t think to ask why he came to find her. I mean, that’s Basic Interrogation 101.”
“I know.” Harper bobbed his head. “We’re slacking in our skills.”
“ Totally slacking.”
Two more large gulps, and then I gave them the CliffsNotes.
There was a beat of silence.
Then, explosion .
“You knew him before?!”
“Wait! That guy that Connor was friends with?”
“What guy? Why am I not remembering? I need to remember too. Help me remember!”
“The guy that beat up Hank and Miller and that whole group. You know. Connor’s friend. Sophomore year. He wasn’t back the next year, but that guy.” Aly slammed her hand on the table. “I had no idea you had the hots for him! You totally iced me out. We were best friends. Best friends tell each other everything!”
“ That guy?!” It seemed Harper had just remembered.
Both their voices went shrill.
I told them about Gloves, about the prison favor. I kept out the help they were going to give to Ruby and Claudia, but I loved my friends. They were still stuck on who Shane King was from high school.
Aly fanned herself. “Too bad he’s not a farmer. I’d totally do him then.”
That was another thing Aly liked. Farmers. She’d been burned by a guy out of high school, and after that, she started a quest for a millionaire farmer. She kept hoping to meet one, but so far, she’d not been successful. She met a lot of guys. A few of them had met Harper afterwards, but that was pre-Harper’s boyfriend.
I wasn’t sure if we were saying his name yet. I took my cues from Harper on that. Sometimes he needed to vent for days. Sometimes it was a while until he started talking. In high school, there’d been an incident he didn’t talk about for six months. That was the hardest for me to handle, because it’d been a really bad situation.
Also, once I found out all the details, I’d told Connor. On the down-low, he’d beaten the shit out of the guy who did the bad thing to Harper. I had no clue if Harper ever found out.
“Wait. So he’s helping you with something? Why you?”
Aly answered that with a knowing snort. “Because she’s Connor’s favorite. Duh.”
I gave Harper a small smile.
His eyes narrowed, and he dropped his shades on the table. “They’re helping out the Demon and Spawn?” His names for Claudia and Ruby. He wasn’t real original with his naming.
“Yeah.”
Aly frowned. “How are they helping them?”
I told them, and immediately Harper rolled his eyes. “Why is Connor so nice? I know your sister never visits him, and he’s always emailing you and asking you to handle something for your mom, so that’s her interaction—she asks him to do shit, knowing he can’t because he’s in prison, but he’ll still want to help and so he turns to you. And you do it, because you love your brother, not for that Demon.”
Have I mentioned how much Harper enjoys my mama and sister?
He shoved back in his seat. “Ridiculous, if you ask me.”
“So you’re going to think of something?” Aly asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. They’re one percenters. Like, the real kind of one percenters. That’s terrifying, you know?”
“But you know Shane.” Aly was being all gentle with me, speaking in a soft tone.
“Does that matter? I mean, look what happened to Gloves.”
I should also clarify here that I interchanged calling my brother both Connor and Gloves, but Aly and Harper did not. They didn’t know the reason he had that nickname, and both had known him as Connor before he went to prison, so it was out of respect that they continued to call him Connor. I asked my brother once if that was okay with him, and he said he liked it.
“ It makes me feel like a person ,” he’d said. “ In here, it’s not always like that. I’m still Connor to someone, you know? It’s like someone remembers me for me .” That sealed the deal. He’d always be Connor to them.
After my reminder about Gloves’ fate, they both made the same hmm sound, nodding in unison.
They got my point.
My brother had seriously bad luck. And once Connor went inside, his same luck kept striking—a fight here, a fight there. His time kept being extended, not that it mattered because he was in for life, but now he had a motorcycle club doing favors for him. I wanted to scream when I thought about what he must’ve done for that to happen.
I did know one thing.
No way was any of this going to end well.
Not going to happen.
It wasn’t in our DNA.
I had a feeling we were well and truly fucked, and no matter how I tried to shrug it off, I couldn’t.
What did I do instead?
I finished my drink, and Aly made me another.
Then another and another until I stopped counting.
And then I was doing a dance routine with them. It was going to go on one of Aly’s lives.
I hit call on my phone.
“Daughter!”
It was late, super late, but he still answered and he made me smile. “Hi, Dad. I’m drunk.”
“Oh, no.”
“And we did dance routines tonight.”
“Ooh. Tell me more. With Harper and Aly?”
“Yep. It was fun.”
“You know,” his voice dropped, getting serious. “I could do dance routines with you, too. Might not be moving as fast as those two, but your pops has some skill .”