Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
R arity…
The boys were in rare form today. Just wildin’ . It made for a long one, for sure. My grandparents got home and managed to take them off my hands long enough to talk to the detectives who had come calling, and I stuck to my story like glue .
I couldn’t help but feel like they smelled bullshit, but I guess things were close enough to Gemma’s account that they were willing to overlook a few inconsistencies between us.
Honestly, I’d stuck to the truth as much as possible except for a few slightly fudged details – but bleh, they were going to believe what they were going to believe. There was nothing I could do about it.
When they left, I was vaguely worried, but I had dinner to make and more shit to do where the boys and housework was concerned.
By the time Mom had gotten home and dinner was hitting the table, the boys were in such a foul temper that it was all-hands-on-deck to get them to finish their dinner. It was bedtime early since they didn’t want to behave.
Thankfully, Mom, Grandma, and Grandpa took the boys and left me to clean up the kitchen in some peace.
I was listening to the boys scream, holler, and generally throw tantrums throughout the entire process and really should have seen it for the red flags that it was – but nope .
Boy, would I live to regret that later on, but for now, I just tuned them out as best I could and let my thoughts drift while I rinsed dishes and put them up in the dishwasher.
I let my thoughts drift, and of course, they drifted right on over to Striker. He hadn’t been far from my thoughts all day, and I wondered, vaguely, if I would ever see him again. I also wondered if I should stay at the Iron Horse. There was supposed to be a staff meeting the next day, and I was going. My mom was not thrilled, in the slightest, but we weren’t talking about it. If anything, we’d carefully danced around the subject. Especially considering – “Boys! That is enough! ”
My mother’s stern voice reverberated up the hallway from the hall around the corner where she was in the boys’ room trying to get them to stop whatever it was they were or weren’t doing. I rolled my eyes and sighed.
“Do I need to come in there and bust somebody’s butt!?” I called, which Mom and I almost never did. The mere threat of a spanking usually did the trick.
“No!” I heard a chorus of small boy voices call back.
“I will!” I called back, and waited, but there was no more shouting or fussing.
I finished loading the dishwasher, added a soap tab, and closed it up.
I sighed and hit the buttons on the front to get it going and went around the corner just as Grandma, Grandpa, and Mom filed out of the boys’ room and shut the door behind them.
“We’re going to bed,” my grandmother said and she looked like her patience had been tried – woo boy.
“We go away for a long weekend and just look at things,” Grandpa agreed, and cast a worried look in my direction.
“Hey, I’m the golden child. I ain’t been misbehaving,” I said, my thoughts adding silently, that you know of…
My mother snorted at that and rolled her eyes.
“Goodnight, Mom. Goodnight, Dad. It’s good to have you home,” Mom said and gave hugs and kisses to her parents.
“You keep yourself outta trouble, kiddo,” my granddad told me, and then he and Grandma went through the door at the end of the hall that separated their suite of rooms from the rest of the house.
They had a bedroom with an attached bath and their own little living room space back there.
It had its own door leading from their little living room to the sunroom along the back of the house. It also had an entrance off the back of the dining room next to the kitchen, and then there was a single entrance that went out onto the back patio.
Mom and I spent more than a few evenings on the patio with its strung-up line of Edison bulbs, firepit, and lazily spinning ceiling fan.
All it took was one look from my mom and I said, “I’ll make the drinks.”
“I’ll get the supplies.” We both made for the kitchen area. I went to the cabinet devoted to liquor and started concocting a couple of mixed drinks. One for me and one for Mom while she went around the dining room table and disappeared into her bedroom to grab her rolling tray and joint supplies.
We convened outside, both of us dropping onto the big section patio furniture couch and lounging around the stone firepit table. Mom set down her stuff, and I set down our drinks on their coasters. She opened up the base of the table and twisted the knob to get the gas fire going.
It clicked and whooshed, and she turned the flame in the center of the table among the lava rocks to a steady golden glow.
While she did that, I turned the Edison bulbs to a warm white from the multi colors the boys had them set to.
“So,” she said. “This staff meeting… you’re turning in your resignation, right?” she asked.
I picked up my drink and took a fortifying sip.
“We’ll see,” I said. “Depends on what they have to say.”
“Rarity,” she chastised and I scoffed.
“I’m not trying to be a rebellious pain in the ass about this, I promise,” I said. “Trust me, I know how bad it was. I was there and spent a big chunk of my day with detectives going over it all again. It scared the shit out of me , but even they said that when something like this happens, generally the place it happens is the safest it’ll ever be in the months right after.”
My mom snorted like she didn’t know about that, as she worked on rolling us a joint to split between us.
My mom wasn’t a hippy, but she partook of the herb on the regular. Had all my life. Wouldn’t let me touch it until I was twenty-one, though.
I was one of those weirdos that had spent her twenty-first at home, getting drunk and high with her mom, falling out in fits of giggles over stupid shit and crying over Dad, wishing he could be there with us.
Honestly, there had been no place I would have rather been. It was a hell of a lot safer than going out.
For as much of an attitude as I had, I was your trademarked “good girl” and I didn’t give a fuck what anyone had to say or think about it, because to me it was all made-up bullshit anyway. Nothing was really ever that black or white. My dad and mom taught me better than that.
My mom sparked up and took a hit, holding the slim joint out to me. I took it, and a hit of my own and held the green smoke in my lungs as long as possible. I coughed. I was never very good at smoking. Generally, I preferred edibles, but edibles were wild .
I handed her back the joint as she cackled at my coughing and I shook my head grinning, taking another slurp of my cocktail. She tried hers.
“Ooo! Good job, baby girl,” she declared.
“I know, right? It’s like it’s my job or something.” I rolled my eyes and we both dissolved in a fit of giggling.
“Not for long, I hope,” she said with a gusty sigh.
“Mom, if I do decide to stay, I don’t want you to nag me to death, okay?”
“I’m your mother,” she said flatly. “You’re my first born and my only daughter. I reserve the right to nag you to death when I’m worried you’re going to get hurt or worse, die ,” she said.
“Alright, alright,” I grumbled. “You have valid points, but at the same time, I’m not going to find a waitressing or bartending job anywhere around here that pays better, especially by way of tips. And in case you hadn’t noticed, even with Grams and Gramps’ help, we’re barely making it without Dad and we still have what? Five or six years to go on the mortgage for you?”
“Six,” she confessed with a sigh.
“There you go,” I said. “Let alone saving for the boys’ future. That shit can’t wait. The fucking insurance going up, up, and up with the hurricanes, medical insurance, groceries to feed all of us and three growing little monsters – we don’t have the luxury to be snooty about where I’m earning my keep from.”
She stuck out her bottom lip and pouted.
“When did you get so grown up?” she demanded.
“When the fuckwit on the back of that crotch rocket slammed into Dad out on the boulevard,” I said unhappily.
She sighed and nodded, took a drink and then another hit, and passed the joint back to me.
“I don’t want to be sad tonight,” she said around her held breath. “I feel like all we are is sad anymore, you and me.”
I nodded, holding my toke in, and let it out without coughing this time. “We have a lot to be sad about,” I said. “The struggle is fucking real and shit just keeps getting tighter. But at the same time, we have a lot to be happy about too.”
“Yeah…” she sounded like she was struggling to come up with shit to be happy about so I helped her along.
“The boys are all healthy and happy,” I said. “I’m doing just fine. Dad taught me well, and you did too,” I reminded her. “I got out before shit had the chance to get too real and came right home. Fool me once, shame on you – fool me twice, shame on me ,” I reminded her. “There was no way I was sticking around for round two. Just my luck that I saw how it started and I’m stuck being a stupid witness.”
“I’m proud of you for that,” she said.
“For what?”
“Talking to the cops and telling them what really happened.”
I shrugged. “All I can tell them is what I saw,” I said. “I’m sure they’d be a lot happier if I told them what they wanted to hear. seems like they really have a hard-on for anyone wearing a cut, but for real – the Royal Bastards didn’t do anything. It was all those other guys, the Scorpions.”
My mom stared at me and shook her head. “I can’t believe the bar didn’t do anything to keep you safe,” she said.
“I mean, yeah, that’s part of it – but the other part is what were they supposed to do? ” I asked. “When the ‘customer is always right’ and the customers outnumber managerial and security staff two to one, I don’t think they thought they could do anything.” I, of course, put “the customer is always right” in air bunnies with my fingers, because honestly, as someone who worked both retail and hospitality industries, whoever had come up with that little quip deserved a swift kick in the balls with steel-toed boots, as much as the sort of customer who liked to abuse the phrase.
“The manager should have called the cops and had them fucking trespassed the first night after one of them clocked you,” she said.
I thought about that for a second and said, “You know what? Cheers to that.” I held up my glass, she clicked hers against mine, and we both took a drink.
“This is what you get when the world is run by men,” she said, her tone snarky, and I busted up laughing.
My mom only seemed to turn into raging feminist when she was drunk or high. It was funny as hell every time, especially coming from her, who had absolutely adored being a trad wife until I got into school and she started getting bored .
Boredom and my mom hadn’t mixed. It’d led to an unhealthy amount of retail therapy that’d put my parents into a scary amount of credit card debt for a while. She’d gone to work, and that had both seemed to balance her out and helped by way of paying down said debt. She’d been careful ever since.
Now, we didn’t have a choice. It was stay frugal or die .
My mom and I talked, sitting on the porch under the fan, the warm, sultry night full of insect and frog song as we mellowed out from the day. Still, my thoughts kept drifting to Striker.
The more I sat with and understood my mom’s point of view, the more I realized I didn’t want to return to the Iron Horse after what happened. I mean, I loved it there when the times were good, and the times were mostly good – but the last two nights had definitely dinged my confidence in feeling safe going to work. I mean, shit – I had the bruises to look at every time I caught my reflection, reminding me every time that I had just barely begun to gaslight myself into thinking things were or would be fine.
No, the only reason I even considered for a moment keeping my job, was the hope that I might see Striker again. Something about spending time with him had been… nice. It’d been comfortable, and it felt safe .
He hadn’t let anything happen to me, and yeah, he made me feel proud of myself for helping him, too.
I sighed and leaned back in my seat, staring out into the dark as something zipped low to the ground on the other side of the chain link fence that we had around our backyard.
“Oh, did you see that?” my mom asked.
“Yeah, what was it?” I frowned.
“Coyote. Do you know if the cats are inside?”
I shook my head. “No, I haven’t seen Sir Didymus or Jareth in a minute,” I said.
Didymus was our fat orange cat and a coward. Jareth was a tuxedo who was long and lanky and not just in body. His legs were almost too long, and his ears too. He was one of the weirdest-looking cats that you’d ever lay eyes on, but I hadn’t seen either all day. Didn’t mean anything, though. They roved in and out at their leisure and sometimes would abscond for a day or two at a time.
I think Didymus had one or two other part-time families he hung out with in the neighborhood. He certainly was round enough to be eating in more than one place.
“Well, may the odds be in their favor if they aren’t in the house,” my mom said with a gusty sigh. “Nothing we can really do about it.”
Yeah, it sounded callous, but it wasn’t. It was just the reality of things. Knowing Mom, she would be awake worrying all night.
We went inside and found Didymus on the couch. He sauntered into the kitchen, waddling into Mom’s room to go to bed. She let out a relieved sigh and let me know Jareth was in her room before she closed the door.
I put our glasses in the sink and went to bed, closing my bedroom door behind me.
I found the ruin of Striker’s shirt in the corner on the floor. I picked it up and thought it was a shame. It was a good Black Rebels Motorcycle Club tee. It was a band, and I liked them enough that I had a few of their songs on my playlist. The shirt was in a size large. So, my size but only because of my chest. If my boobs had been just a little less, a medium would have suited me just fine for the rest of me, but my bazongas were just like my mother’s and would not be contained.
I swallowed and self-indulgently brought the tee shirt to my nose, closing my eyes and breathing it in.
It smelled like booze, sure, but underneath, it smelled like him. Like whatever cologne or aftershave or whatever he used, but even below that, it smelled like him. I found the scent… nice. Comforting in a strange way.
I looked at the shirt in my hands, at the blood stain across the front where it’d been slashed, and thought about it.
I bet I could save it.
I mean, not for him – but I bet I could make it work for me. A few clever cuts, a knot or two, and it’d fit right in at the Iron Horse.
If nothing else, I had it to remember him by, even if I never saw him again.
I took a shower and went to bed, only to be startled awake at some ungodly hour by one of my little brothers hiccup sobbing by my bed.
“Baby, what’s wrong?” I asked, sitting up, unsure which one of the triplets it was.
“Rarity,” he said. “I frew up.”
Ohhhh nooo… I should have known.
“Okay, bud, let’s get you cleaned up.”
I put my feet down and made a face. He’d failed to mention he’d thrown up in his room, and up the hallway, and through the kitchen, and in my room. I guess I was closer than Mom.
Fuck a duck.