Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Waverly
Adam’s still in my home. Hisstupid beamer, which he calls “Light Beam”, is in his parking spot. I don’t want to go in there. Not alone at least. And the problem hasn’t changed—who can I call for help? Fortunately this time I’m not in a rage-stupor and in emotional overload. When I’m in a potentially dangerous situation, I know exactly who to call.
Ten minutes later, an armored SUV pulls into the parking spot next to me and Izzy slides out of the passenger seat. She’s got her hair in a messy bun that contrasts the blazer and leggings. It’s a mix of hot mess and professional only she can pull off.
When she was gone, I thought about her every day. I hated missing out on watching her son, Drew, grow up. Since she came back, it’s been nothing but family dinners, running away from stalker exes, and an explosion. Literally.
She opens my door and yanks me out into a bear hug. “We’re here for you.”
“Thanks.” Her embrace mends some of those breaks which have been exposed for way too long.
“I’m not trying to brag, but I give excellent breakup support. I’ve got all the streaming services, we can binge anything. Want a horror comedy? Shawn of the Dead or Tucker and Dale versus Evil are always excellent go-tos. . Maybe a comedy? Again I recommend Tucker and Dale. You can never go wrong with Alan Tudyk.”
Alana walks around from the driver’s side of the car. “A truersentence has never been spoken.”
She gives me an assessing glance. Alana King strikes fear into everyone in the Four Families, except me. No one knows her history, except maybe Lance. She never smiles or laughs. It’s all a hard exterior she uses to keep herself alive. She’s tall like a model with sleek blonde hair that must take her forever to get straight in the morning.Under her coat’s sleeve, there’s a black arm brace. She broke her arm and lost the Mastodon Security headquarters all in one minute. And here she is, because I called like a sad little puppy.
“Rough day?” she asks, linking her elbow around mine, and her perpetual frozen glare warms to a balmy thirty-five degrees. This is the nicest she’s ever been to me.
“Started out at a graveyard, then a breakup, followed by almost getting hit by a car, which culminated in learning I’ve been wrong for five years. Yeah, it's been rough.” I add, “Oh, and I had a sugar-free, vegan cookie of sadness—easily the third worst thing that happened today.”
Izzy holds me closer. “I’m so sorry sweetie. Let’s go inside and talk about it.” She mumbles under her breath, “Fucking dirt cookies.”
Alana puts her hands in her pockets as she leads us to my home. I’m not sure what I expect to find. Maybe everything will be trashed. Maybe he’s stolen all my stuff. All my valuable stuff is at Dad’s house. I guess the fact I didn’t trust Adam to be around my jewelry should’ve been a red flag a while ago. I don’t know why I’m afraid, other than confrontation makes my tummy all twisty and turny.
Alana opens the door first and steps inside.
Adam comes running down the stairs, fully dressed. The Michael Kors purse isn’t on the kitchen table.
“Baby! You’re back!” he basically sings. But he stops short on the stairs. “Who are you?”
Alana doesn’t answer. Instead, she holds her spot between Adam and me. His eyebrows twitch in the way they do when he doesn’t get what he wants. My stomach sinks.
Adam pulls his glare from Alana to give me a pleading gesture of remorse, complete with a quivering lower lip. “Look, baby, I don’t know what you think happened, but you’re wrong.”
“Oh, you weren’t fucking a woman who drank my La Croix?” I cross my arms in a power pose I’ve seen Alana and Dad do a million times.
“No, you’ve got it all wrong.”
“Hey, dipshit, there are cameras everywhere. You wanna try again?”Each word from Alana’s lips freezes the air around her.
Adam points to Alana with his thumb. “Who the fuck is this bitch?”
The tummy tingles explode into fireworks. Behind me, Izzy whispers, “Oh shit,” and pulls out her phone. “Daddy, hi. I’m at Waverly’s place. Poor choices are being made… And Alana’s here.”
Over the speaker, Izzy’s dad says, “I’ll have some guys over in ten minutes. How many bags will we need?”
“One,” Izzy says without hesitation. She covers the phone with her hand and leans toward me. “You might not be able to play in the reindeer games with the boys, but you get all the prizes anyway.”
Adam jumps the last two steps and I lean into my friends as they shift their weight in front of me again. I’m the cheese in an Izzy and Alana protective sandwich.
His voice cracks as he goes into full begging mode. “Waverly, we can work this out.” It’s such a rare side of him.
For an instant, I consider I might be overreacting. When Izzy squeezes my arm, I realize I’m not alone. More importantly, I’m not wrong.
“I don’t want to.”
He implores me, “You’re going to throw away three years because I fucked up once.”
Izzy growls, “You’re the one who threw away three years for one fuck.” God, I missed her.
His pleading and apologetic behavior turns to anger. “This doesn’t have anything to do with you.” He reaches for me, but Alana grabs his wrist and twists it behind his back, slamming him against the wall. He unleashes a slew of hateful words, and with every second of his tirade, whatever remained of any good opinion I had of him diminishes.
“I can’t believe I ever cried over you.” My growing disgust swells at his whimpering sob.
“Ow! You’re hurting me!” he cries like a little bitch.
Alana’s voice darkens in a way I’ve never heard before. “You hurt the nicest and sweetest person in my life. It’s not a matter of if, or when, I hurt you, but how and to what extent. You have until the count of fifteen to get your shit and leave. One. Two…” She releases him from the wall.
Adam stammers, “Waverly gave me 24 hours.”
“I’m giving you, four, five…”
He throws his hands in the air. “Crazy bitch.”
“Ten. Eleven…”
“Wait, what happened to the other numbers?”
“Grab your wallet and phone and go,” Izzy warns.
He starts to pat himself down. “Um, I need my keys.”
“Call an Uber.”
“Thirteen, Fourteen…” Alana says as she reaches behind her and unholsters her gun. “Fifteen.” She brandishes the Glock to his skull. “Go. Now.”
“Shit, alright.” He scurries out and slams the door. Izzy flips the lock. It isn’t until everything’s quiet for a moment, Alana lowers her gun.
Izzy narrows her eyes. “Waverly’s the nicest person you know? I’m deeply offended.”
“What superlative would you like?” Alana slides her gun back into the holster. “Most likely to run into a burning building to save the man you slept with a few times?”
Izzy taps her chin and looks to the ceiling. “Most badass…nice.”
Alana huffs, and it’s the closest thing I’ve heard to a laugh. “You’re not even in the top ten for my badass list, but I’ll give you Best Mom.”
Izzy frows. “I guess I’ll take it.” Then she turns to me, but pauses when her phone chimes “Oh, Dad’s sending Uri and a bunch of guys over to pack your douchebag ex’s shit. Why don’t we watch a movie while they work.”
A half an hour later, we’re eating popcorn and laughing our asses off while ten Russian low level lackies box up my ex’s stuff. Uri sits on the arm of the couch, his attention floating between the movie and his men. None of us talk about the breakup or revenge, or even about the billions of things circling around my head. No. We all distract ourselves from reality for as long as we can.
Alana scrolls on her phone and the ever-present frown on her face deepens. I glance at her screen. “You don’t strike me as a flower sort of person.” She has a zoomed in picture of small purple flowers with blue, teardrop shaped petals. “Those are pretty. Maybe Angie should’ve gotten those in her centerpieces.”
Alana huffs through her nose. “Those centerpieces would be worth more than a car.”
“Oh, they’re rare?”
“Valuable, but not rare.” She flips the phone over in her lap, a neon sign she doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.
How could something be valuable but not rare? Rarity increases value. It’s a fundamental aspect of supply and demand.
There’s stomping upstairs followed by one of the guys yelling down to Uri in Russian. I only know Russian curse words, but whatever’s said causes Uri and Alana to leave the room.
I’m fully absorbed in the movie, laughing every few minutes. Izzy leans her head on my shoulder and whispers, “We should do this more often.”
“Well I could do without the whole finding my boyfriend cheating on me, but I do miss hanging out with you.”
“I never liked him, even back when we were kids,” Izzy admits. “I get why you were friends with Angie, and I totally understood why you hung out a lot more during the summers when Lukas was around, but Adam was born a douche.”
He was a safe option. I knew him, and figured since he was Angie’s brother, I knew exactly what I was getting. He was like a pink scrunchie I found on a discount rack. A quick impulse purchase I used to pull my hair up because it was windy on the walk to my car and somehow never took off. Suddenly, without me noticing, it became my whole personality. I was Waverly, the girl with a pink scrunchie.
Alana returns, grabs the remote, and hits pause. “We need to talk.”
Nothing ever good comes from ‘we need to talk.’ It’s never, ‘we need to talk, how do you feel about glitter-pooping, rainbow puppies?’ Because I would definitely say, ‘Glitter shit sounds awful, what if it gets into the carpet?’ But even I can tell this isn’t that kind of conversation.
Alana always looks serious, but when Uri’s upset, I know it’s bad. He drops a baggie of purple powder on the coffee table. There’s not a lot of it, maybe half a teaspoon. The knot in my gut twists and tightens. A sense of dread washes over me.
“Do you know what this is?”Uri says.
I shake my head. “No, I’ve never seen it before.”
Alana and Uri exchange glances like they’re reading each other’s minds “Does Adam have any tattoos?” Alana asks.
“No.” He wants to be as opposite from his brother as possible.
Alana exhales and her shoulders relax. “This is Majesty.”
Izzy gasps. This stuff almost killed Lance a few months ago when he gave CPR to a client who OD'd on the stuff. The family’s been whispering about it for years. Apparently, there’s this guy The Deviant, or some equally stupid, scary name—who's been attempting to get this stuff on the streets. The Four Families won’t sell it. Their decision pissed off The Deviant and he’s been trying to hurt us ever since. Until now he’s been a vague boogeyman, like lots of things about today, I’m wrong, and there’s evidence to prove it.
I recoil. Dad has rules about powder drugs… all the Uncles do. Pot and edibles were a little different, yet if we were found with powder-based drugs, we wouldn’t be able to walk for weeks. It happened to a few of my dad’s guys. Step 1: beat the shit out of them, step 2: treatment, step 3: if there’s a relapse, no more sympathy.
Again, mob life has a terrible mental health plan.
“Where did you find it?” It seems alien sitting next to my phone and remote.
Uri clears his throat. “It was in one of Adam’s drawers.” He walks around the side of the couch and stops in front of me, picking up the packet before he sits. “You’re sure he doesn’t have a tattoo, maybe of the letter M somewhere?”
Well this is insulting. “I’ve seen him naked every night for three years, he doesn’t have a tattoo.”
Uri nods and relaxes a little. “Then he’s not a dealer, but he is a user. Have you noticed any changes in him recently?”
“You mean besides sticking his dick into someone else? No.”
Alana shakes her head. “I’ve been so focused on everything else, I never even considered looking at Adam.” She squeezes my shoulder. “He might become dangerous, especially if he knows we found this. Pack your stuff and you’ll stay with me for a little while. At least until we can get this all sorted.”
Twenty-four hours ago, I had a home, a boyfriend (a shitty one but still), five years of justified anger toward Lukas, and a full can of La Croix. Now I have an ex, confused feelings about Lukas, and I’m homeless… and no La Croix.
Plus, we didn’t even finish the end of the movie. I wonder if Tucker and Dale survive to the end.