Chapter Two
Thick and Thin
Rock Chick Rewind
Some time ago…
“I wanna go on record as saying this is not
a good idea,” my friend Toni proclaimed.
“Yeah, you told me on the phone when I asked you to come
with me tonight,” I replied, navigating Colfax in my car on our way to the bar.
“And again when I picked you up. And when we turned onto Colfax. And just now.”
“The last one was official,” Toni sniffed.
I glanced her way, thinking I really should have reconnected
with Ally and/or Indy for this operation. First, because they wouldn’t go on
the record telling me something I already knew: this was a fool idea. They’d be
all for it. Second, they’d probably be able to form a better plan as to how to
go about doing what I intended to do, considering they had a lot of experience
with implementing fool ideas.
But I couldn’t reconnect with Ally and Indy.
It had been years, for one.
I’d taken off without a word of explanation, for another.
The explanation I had I couldn’t tell them, not yet, since
the person who most should know still didn’t (yet), for another.
Too much was at stake, for the last.
I turned into the parking lot of the bar, and even not
having entered it, I could see this place was somewhere I didn’t want to be.
Nope.
Somewhere I shouldn’t be.
One could stretch this further and say I should never have
moved us from living in the apartment over the stables at my aunt and uncle’s
place in Fort Collins back to Denver.
Sure, on occasion, you could smell horse manure.
But it was quiet, a lot bigger than my current apartment,
safe, and it had a funky vibe I liked.
That said, it wasn’t home.
It wasn’t Denver.
I was a young mother. I’d gotten my training to be a court
reporter and scored a job. I was taking courses to become a paralegal, which
was a step down from what my plans had been before I’d gotten pregnant and my
baby’s father’s dad had been murdered, sending him so far off the rails, I
didn’t recognize him anymore. But it didn’t matter I didn’t, he’d cut me out of
his life.
I’d wanted to be a lawyer.
But life was tough with a curious two-year-old, even if my
mom and dad and sister and all the aunties and uncles and cousins pitched in to
help me out.
I needed to keep my nose clean.
And I needed to stay away from Darius Tucker.
Everyone told me he’d turned to the dark side.
However, I thought it was time. It was time he shook himself
out of this garbage.
It was time he learned he had a child and had to step up.
It was time three years ago, but I’d been young and scared
and hurt, so I’d made an emotional decision and my parents had stepped in to
support and protect me.
Off I went to Fort Collins.
Now I was back.
So, yeah.
It was time.
While I was thinking these things, Toni was doing something
else. I knew this when I turned to her and saw her tying the silk scarf under
her chin. It covered her hair and the sides of her face. She complemented this
by sliding on a massive pair of black-framed glasses.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She turned to me, more than likely unable to see me through
her opaque lenses.
“Donning my disguise.”
“It’s night.”
“Yeah.”
“We’re going into a bar, not traveling through time back to
the fifties to take a ride in a convertible.”
“I don’t want anyone seeing me here.”
“That much is clear,” I muttered.
“You shouldn’t want anyone to see you either, including
someone in particular,” she pointed out.
I let my gaze drift through the busy parking lot before I
returned it to her. “It’s obviously going to be crowded. I’m going to blend
in.”
She lifted a hand to the arm of her sunglasses, dipped them
low on her nose and looked over them at me.
“Girl, this place is trashy. You are not trash. No way
you’re gonna blend in.” She slid her glasses back and crossed her arms on her
chest before she demanded, “Tell me again why we’re here.”
“I just want to see him.”
“I told you the scuttlebutt about him.”
“I still want to see him.”
She shook her head, and I couldn’t be certain, because it
was dark and so much of her face was covered, but I could swear I saw her
expression get soft with worry.
“The him you knew is long gone, sis,” she informed me
gently.
“I want to see for myself.”
My eyes clashed with her shades for a long time before she
blew out a breath, murmured, “Let’s just do this,” and turned to her door to
push out.
I got out too, and after I’d closed my door and locked the
car, I realized my hands were trembling.
I put my keys in my purse, then shook my hands to get the
trembles out.
Really, I should have reconnected with Ally or Indy. They’d
know what to do and they’d give me the strength to do it.
“It’s now or never, Malia,” Toni called over the roof.
“Right. Do this. Okay,” I mumbled to myself and rounded the
car.
We went in and I was relieved I was correct. The place was
packed. If you wanted to see someone, you had to be looking.
I was, however, concerned that Toni was also correct.
This place was rough.
I scanned the crowd as Toni latched onto my elbow and pulled
me through bodies to the bar.
I doubted it was gentlemanly manners that had the two men
skedaddling from their stools as Toni barreled us their way so we could assume
them, and more that Toni looked mildly insane in her getup, and they might be
tough customers, but they wanted nothing to do with her.
She deposited me on my stool, sat on hers, and after a
nanosecond of glaring at the bartender, she wrapped her knuckles impatiently on
the bar.
He turned his attention to her, did a double take, then
wandered down to us.
“Well, you were there. Was it a lone gunman?” he asked Toni.
It was part my nerves, part the guy was funny, which was why
I burst out laughing.
Toni ignored his comment and ordered, “Two vodka martinis.”
The guy’s eyes narrowed on her, and he asked, “Got ID?”
“Sure,” she said, opened her purse and fished out her fake
ID.
“Both of you,” he said to me even as he held his hand out
for Toni’s.
The nerves came back.
In preparation for this operation, Toni had procured the
same for me. She’d had hers for years. Considering I was nurturing, then
birthing, then again nurturing a baby, partying wasn’t my top priority (or any
priority), and as such, I had no need to score a fake ID.
We were both only a year away from legal, but that year was
still a year.
I pulled mine out and gave it to him.
He studied them, then handed them back, saying, “Those are
good. So good, we get busted, it’ll be on your asses, not mine.”
He then grabbed two low-alcohol-content wine coolers from a
refrigerator, snapped off the caps, put them in front of us and moved away.
“Huh,” Toni said as she picked up the bottle and stared at
the label with so much distaste, I could see it from around her disguise.
“We didn’t come here to imbibe,” I reminded her.
She turned her dark shades to me. “Oh, so you intend to
blend in at a bar by wandering around, not drinking, and being obvious about
looking for somebody? Being obvious about doing that in a bar where not one of
these people wants to be found? That sounds like a good plan. Wish I’d thought
of that. Let’s go do that.”
Totally should have brought Ally or Indy. They wouldn’t
point out I was an idiot.
They might think it, but they wouldn’t point it out.
She threw back a sip, made a face, then put the bottle to
the bar, and very clearly pretending not to be obvious, which made it totally
obvious, she scanned the bar.
“Can you see anything through those glasses?” I asked under
my breath.
“I can see the pull of the bad boy,” she replied. “Look at
that man. He is fine.”
I peered over my shoulder in the direction her shades were
aimed.
A man with close-cropped hair, handsome face and beautiful
dark skin wearing a loose-fitting button down up top, and criminally
well-fitting faded jeans on the bottom was staring our way.
He tipped his beer at us when I caught his eyes.
I turned back.
“We’re not on the make,” I told Toni and took a sip of my
cooler.
I also made a face.
Yikes. Who drank this stuff? It was awful.
“You might not be, but I just changed my objective for the
night,” she replied.
“You might want to lose the glasses and scarf, then,” I
suggested.
“Ladies.”
I looked over my shoulder again.
Not wasting time, the man had made his approach, now he was
eyeing me, but when Toni made a move, he turned his attention to her.
“Incognito?” he asked like he saw women in Toni’s getup in
that bar every night.
And who knew? Maybe he did.
“Damn straight,” she replied, throwing back more wine
cooler.
“Cheating boyfriend?” he asked.
She tipped her bottle my way. “Baby daddy.”
I closed my eyes and sighed as his attention shifted again
to me, but he’d shut down.
Men had no interest in women with children. They could go
around making them and moving on and not many women would blink in taking them
on.
But a guy found out you had a kid, he was out.
It shouldn’t be surprising. If they didn’t take care of
their own children, they wouldn’t be in to take care of yours.
Not that I’d gone out and looked, just that I was a young
mother, but I still had a life, and I wasn’t hard to look at, so I’d learned.
I’d decided it was good. It kept them at bay so I could focus on Liam…
And pining for my high school boyfriend.
“Maybe I can help,” he offered. “Got a name?”
“Not one I’ll share with just anyone,” I said quickly so
Toni wouldn’t pipe up.
“Just trying to help,” he murmured, visibly looking for his
out.
Toni really should have taken off the scarf and sunglasses.
She was way prettier than me with her round cheeks and button nose and almond
eyes.
“You can help by buying a girl a martini. The bartender got
our order wrong,” Toni put in.
He and I both looked at her, and incognito was a memory.
Gone was the disguise and she was blasting out her Hollywood good looks,
because she had the base elements in spades, but even in high school, Toni