Chapter 5 Annie #2
His friend recovers first. “Hey, man,” he says, low and conciliatory, fingers catching Belt Buckle’s elbow. “Let’s go outside. We got a shift in the morning.”
Belt Buckle stares another second, trying to decide if he’s the kind of guy who backs down or the kind who doesn’t.
Survival instinct wins. “Psycho,” he mutters, but his hand is already off my table, his body already backing away, his ego already crafting a version of this where he was very polite and I overreacted.
As they peel off, Jaden reappears at the end of the booth, clapping slow with a grin stretched ear to ear. “Dr. Pearl, paging Dr. Pearl to the Badass Department.”
I slide the knife out of the wood and lay it neatly beside my plate. There’s an indentation, shallow and clean. The table has seen worse. “I didn’t even nick him. I should get points for restraint.”
“Ten out of ten. No notes.” He glances toward the door where the men reassemble with two more of their friends. “You wanna dip?”
“God, yes.”
We settle the bill. The bartender gives me a little salute with her chin that says she saw and approved.
Outside, the night is thicker than it should be, the heat trapped between buildings and buzzing with whatever bars do to oxygen.
Streetlights dangle halos over parked trucks.
Tires crackle on gravel in the lot behind the building.
Jaden hooks a thumb toward my block. “I’ll walk you. It’s not far.”
“I can make it.”
“I know. I’m still walking you.”
“I’m fine,” I say again, stubborn and stupid, and I hear it as I say it. The tired in my bones is not the kind that wants company. It’s the kind that wants to shut the door and lean on it, forehead against cool wood, and breathe until the ghosts get bored and wander off.
Jaden reads my face like a chart. He nods. “Text me when you’re inside.”
“Promise.”
He pats my shoulder once and heads toward the rideshare line.
I take the alley that backs the bar, a shortcut I’ve walked a hundred times in daylight and a few at night.
Music from the bar seeps out through the propped-open back door, a drumbeat burring against the concrete.
The lot opens to the road, white paint on the asphalt chewed to confetti by too many trucks.
I see them before they see me—Belt Buckle and his cluster, perched near a pair of lifted pickups, one boot heel grinding gravel like a pestle. When I step out, Belt Buckle straightens and points like he bought a star and spotted it. “Hey!” he shouts. “Psycho bitch!”
A couple heads turn from the patio. One of his buddies hisses, “Let it go.”
I stop right where the bar’s lights don’t quite reach and let the dark do me the favor of cooling my face.
Then I laugh. Not loud. Not big. Just enough for the sound to carry and lodge under his skin.
I walk closer, slow and unhurried, until I’m at the line where men like him mistake approach for retreat.
I look him in the eyes. “Tomorrow, when you’re competing in the rodeo, I’m the doctor you’ll see when you fall off your horse. ”
He opens his mouth. I talk over him, soft.
“And you will fall. Mark my words. Horses don’t trust men like you. And the bulls? They will love stomping your ass into the dirt.”
His friend gives a nervous laugh, the kind that’s trying to be a joke and a life raft at once.
“So here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to mind your manners.
And I’m going to do my best to patch you up when the dirt finishes what your ego started.
I might have to stitch you up, or worse—have to save your life when one of those poor animals tries to get even.
” I step closer and lock eyes with him. “So, you keep calling me a psycho bitch, and you’ll find out how right you are. ”
We stand in it a second—the heat, the streetlight buzz, the yard of air between my mouth and his pride.
His friend claps him on the back like a cattle prod. “Come on, man. Leave it alone.”
Belt Buckle does the math and finds me more trouble than story.
He spits near the tire of his truck and climbs in, slamming the door harder than it needs to be slammed.
The engine’s roar is performative. The peel-out is worse.
Gravel sprays, dust blooms, and they rattle off into the stitch of night that holds this part of town together.
I laugh, shaking my head at his overreaction.
My apartment building is one of those honest bricks with mailboxes that stick and stairs that creak in two specific places, third step and seventh, no matter who stomps them.
Inside my door, I kick my shoes off so hard one bounces against the mat and snorts dust. I don’t bother with lights.
I text Jaden that I’m home safe, and get a thumbs-up in return.
The glow from my phone and the street is enough to find the couch.
I fall into it like a small surrender and stare at the ceiling until the fan makes the room a slow carousel.
I’m not angry. I’m not anything loud. I’m just tired to the bones. Tired of the smell of dirt in my hair. Tired of stitching other people while my own seams fray. Tired of my body vibrating like it’s braced for something that isn’t coming.
And under all that, humming under the professional and the practical like bass through a wall, is something simpler. I’m restless. I’m keyed up and unspooled and it’s been too long since I let anyone take that edge off me.
I need to get laid.
I press the heel of my hand against my forehead and laugh once at how blunt that is. Woe to the woman who says it out loud in her own head and then has to decide what to do next.
Reno is in town. Reno knows my switches and the order they prefer to be flipped. He also carries a thousand reasons to run in the other direction. But he’s here, and my body is louder than my qualms tonight, and I’m not applying for a mortgage with this decision. I’m choosing relief.
My phone is on the coffee table where I dropped it.
I pick it up, stare at the lock screen until my thumb decides for me, and open messages.
His name is still in there, buried deep, attached to a number that never changed.
I tell myself ten different times how stupid this is while my fingers move and none of the warnings stick to the screen.
I don’t overthink the words. I don’t have the energy to dress them in anything they don’t already wear.
Hey. It’s Annie. I shouldn’t, but I want you.
I hover a second, then add a line before I can talk myself out of it.
Been a long time. I’m wound tight. Thought of your hands the whole walk home.
It’s not poetry. It’s not coy. I hit send before I can see my face in the reflection of my own bad ideas.
The screen stays blank. Of course it does. It’s late. He might be asleep or drunk or both or neither or with another woman. I set the phone down and try to talk myself back into a body that doesn’t hum. The fan hums. The streetlight hums. The blood in my neck hums.
I pick the phone back up to check that the message really went. It did. The little blue bubble sits there, traitorous and serene. I put the phone face down again. Pick it up. Face down. Up. I hate myself and also respect my commitment to impatience.
It pings.
My stomach drops and tries to climb into my throat at the same time. I flip it over with a thumb that suddenly forgot how to work.
The message is short. Well now. You sure you meant to send that to me?
For a second, my brain can’t process the words. Then a name flashes at the top of the thread that is not the name I thought I was texting, not the name that keeps a drawer nailed shut in my head.
Brick.
I picked the wrong Wyatt. What the hell do I do now?