14. Chapter 14
Tuck’s Tennessee Barbecue closed more than twenty years ago.
A woman walking her dog, who watched the wooden wagon drive up and down the same stretch of road three times, was kind enough to explain.
She took their picture in front of the weathered remains of the dilapidated barbecue shack, Jase flashing his pearly whites between the warring couple staring in opposite directions waiting for the moment to end.
The kind of route Jase would’ve avoided under more enjoyable circumstances.
Across the Alabama border, they pulled over at a roadside motel, where the rooms were as lousy as they were cheap and came with a ten-dollar voucher for the bar next door.
The kind of place Jase called home.
He flexed the kinks from his legs on the walk to the watering hole without waiting for his companions to join him. He needed space. The coy smile for Whitlock in the picture was purely to irritate Graham, who was somehow already one drink deep at the bar.
“You didn’t waste any time,” Jase said.
Keeping one stool between them, he slapped his voucher on the bar top.
“You either,” Graham said without looking up from the peanut he was shelling.
“Bottle of Bud, please,” Jase told the bartender. He didn’t think it was an accident that the eyes of a skull tattoo on her left tit peeked out the top of her red lace bra when she reached into the cooler.
“Y’all together?” she asked.
“No, no, we’re brothers,” Jase said, which was true on paper, if nowhere else.
“I mean, are you traveling together?” The bartender smirked.
Slight Southern drawl. Tongue ring. Jase bet there was more than one tattoo beneath her tank top.
“How do you know we’re traveling?”
She held up the voucher with the motel’s name on it.
“Ah,” he said. Jase didn’t realize how parched he was until the beer hit his lips and half the bottle sloshed down his throat. “Long day.”
“Where’re you from?”
“Ohio.”
“Northern boys. Nice.” She waved at someone on the far end of the bar calling for a refill, and said to Jase, “Give me a minute, sweetheart.”
“Sweetheart.” The Southern nicety sounded less sexy in Graham’s voice. “Can it, asshole. She doesn’t want your life story.”
“Hey, she asked. It’s called being polite,” Jase said. “You should try it.”
“And it has nothing to do with her tits?”
“I didn’t say that.” Graham was in a mood, and Jase was in the mood to poke a bear, so he asked, “Speaking of tits, your girlfriend ditch you already?”
“She’s in the room. Sleeping, or reading, or whatever.”
“Mm-hm,” Jase hummed into his beer. “I bet when you get back, she’s gone. If I were her, I’d get the hell away from us.”
“You don’t care if she stays or goes,” Graham said.
“Actually, I do. She’s much better company than you. And she has a soul, unlike your last one.”
Graham folded his straw over the side of his glass and put the rim to his mouth, sucking down the rest of his drink. The bartender came back, introduced herself as Audrey, and set up another round.
“You don’t look like brothers,” she said.
“Thank God,” Graham said. He slid off his stool and shuffled on stiff legs to the bathroom.
The bartender—Audrey?—was just the sort of woman to take the edge off the day’s pains. Jase asked in a low voice, “What’s a guy gotta do to see the rest of the tattoo playing peekaboo with me?”
She traced the lace edge of her bra with the tip of a bright pink fingernail, pulling it down to reveal a rose the same color as her nails in the skull’s mouth.
Jase exhaled. “Good God.”
She leaned over, squishing her breasts together on the bar. It wasn’t always this easy. It surprised him when it was.
“What’re you doing later?” she asked, her voice practically dripping with the promise of a blowjob.
“You, last time I checked,” Jase said with a wink. It would either get him slapped or laid, and he wasn’t in the mood to flirt without a finish line.
“Good. I close at two, sometimes earlier. Will you be around? I’ll give you the tour.”
“Tour? Of the bar?”
“Of my tattoos.”
There was a wicked gleam in her eyes as she slunk down to grab a tray of drinks for a table at the back of the bar.
“Son of a bitch,” Jase said. It was never this easy.
He didn’t even have to mention the bike.
Half the time his ride sealed the deal. Women, in his experience, could resist a man but not a motorcycle.
Didn’t matter anyway. His bike was hundreds of miles away, and he’d never met a woman who would get on her knees for a drive in a station wagon.
Except for this one.
See? He wished Sundress was there to rub it in her face. I am a successful flirt.
A heavy hand on his shoulder interrupted Jase adjusting his pants to accommodate his recent growth. A young man with a weathered face and greasy blond hair poking like corn husks from beneath a baseball cap grimaced at him.
“I wouldn’t,” he said earnestly. “Unless you’re paying.”
It took a beat for Jase to understand. His eyes widened.
“And if you do, double-bag. I scratched my crotch from here to Pacoima.”
The man squeezed his shoulder, taking the wind out of Jase’s sails as he sauntered out the door. A tryst in a bathroom in Illinois once cost Jase his last hundred after he woke up pissing razor blades and had to pony up for antibiotics.
Sundress would be laughing her ass off if she knew.
Audrey slid back over with beverage—and other—services behind her smile. Jase adjusted his pants again, this time for an itch he couldn’t scratch. “What are the chances of getting a six-pack to go?”
“It depends. Will you be back later? Or I could always come to you. What’s your room number?”
He thought he was smart enough to sniff out if he was being played—which he’d already proven he was lousy at today—but sometimes it really was that easy.
And then your piss burns and your crotch itches all the way to Pacoima.
“Naw, babe,” he said, keeping his cool until he got his hands on that six-pack. “I’ll be back. I just want to put my feet up for a while.”
Jase shelled up cash for the beer and turned to Graham, who was climbing back on his stool.
“See you later, asshole,” he said. With a glance at Audrey, he added, “And do yourself a favor: don’t be an idiot.”