Chapter 22
CONNOR
Other than a city maintenance truck, Tripp’s bike is the only vehicle in our lot when I pull in; which would be fine, if I wasn’t all but certain that he wants to tear off my head and use it as shark bait.
My keys spin around my index finger as I approach the door, blowing out a breath before I pull it open and walk inside.
The shop’s playlist is on and he’s sitting at his station like he always is. I’m not sure if that bodes well for me or not. I watch him while I drop my helmet and jacket at my station. He’s got both of his earbuds in; a wordless message, but loud all the same. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone.
Clearly, I’m not one for making the best of decisions, so I step closer to him against every instinct telling me otherwise, tapping him on the shoulder. When he glances in my direction, his face melting into a hardened glare, I tap my left ear.
“What the fuck do you want,” he demands as he pulls one of his earbuds from its place.
“Listen, Tripp—”
“Don’t talk to me,” he says, moving his eyes back to the sketched piece in front of him – some sort of snake.
Its body is almost skeletal, its jaw overextended into a gaping maw with fangs which look like they might be able to not only pierce human flesh, but tear through it.
A spider’s web is stitched into the open space, some sort of widow dangling from it.
I cringe as he harshly tosses his pen into the holder in front of him before standing to reach into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes, which he then tosses onto the top of his desk.
He drops back into his chair with a hard clink of the metal joints and he adjusts the sketchbook in front of him in a single forceful motion.
“T-Mo—”
“I’m serious,” he snaps, rounding on me. His eyes narrow at me and muscle rolls against his jaw. “If you talk to me right now, I’ll break your jaw.”
Why hasn’t he already?
An uncertain hand inches toward his shoulder and his body jerks away from my touch, just by an inch or two, his hand raising to stop me from coming any closer to him.
“Touching me is talking to me,” he snarls.
Holding up my hands in mock surrender, I take a step away from him.
“Alright, I’ll just go screw myself, then.”
I heave a sigh, moving instead to my station, where I sit and I watch. For hours; through clients, through lunch, through phone calls and silence, I watch.
I watch and I wait for whatever it is that Tripp’s next move will be. For the moment that he finally decides that I’ve done enough breathing or sharing space with him on this planet, and he stalks over here to kill me.
But that moment never comes.
Even as everyone’s stations are cleared, as the doors are closed, and as the blinds are drawn, he doesn’t do…anything.
There’s no screaming. He doesn’t hit me or look for something in the shop to use to stab or otherwise maim me. He hardly even acknowledges my existence until he’s pulling his helmet over his head on his way out of the back door.
“Pull the shutter out front when you leave,” he tells me.
“I…what?”
“Close. The. Shutter. So I don’t have to deal with broken glass in the morning,” he says, shaking his head in annoyance as the door slams closed behind him.
In all of the years that I’ve known him, I’ve seen Tripp arrested at least six times.
I’ve seen him in more fights than I can count on one hand, particularly over the past couple of years.
I’ve seen what happens to people on the receiving end of his rage, especially when his wife is in any way involved; and it’s never been pretty.
This isn’t like any of those times. Now, it’s like he’s made of stone. An impenetrable wall I can’t break through, and I’m not entirely sure that I want to try.
This isn’t Riptide; it certainly isn’t T-Mo. This is some new, third guy that I’ve never met before, and I have absolutely zero interest in getting to know him.
The Tripp I know would kick my ass for what I did to him, but whoever this guy is, he might pull out my intestines and drape them along the curtains like a stylish new bunting.
“Finish him!”
Mashing a few buttons on the controller in my hand sends out a frenzied attack, and Johnny Cage tears open the abdomen of his animated opponent, using her chest cavity as a window to smile at me through the TV screen.
Satisfied with my victory against my computer-generated opponent, I turn off the console and toss the controller onto my bed.
I should be making an inventory list and getting my stuff ready for Jacksonville next weekend. This is my favorite weekend of every year, without fail. Since we started going, there hasn’t been a single time that I haven’t been excited to go.
This year, that looks a little bit different.
The drive that I normally make out there with Tripp, I’ll be taking with another guy from the shop. After the way that he acted all day today, I’m not sure if he’ll even acknowledge my existence while we’re there. I’m not sure if he’ll acknowledge it when we come back, either.
“Koda,” I call out while I pull the leash from the knob on my door, “let’s take a walk.”
It takes only a few seconds for the dog’s bumbling body to come galloping through the doorway, slipping on the tile in a similar fashion to that of a baby deer who hasn’t yet gained his bearings.
So, we know what ‘walk’ means now, I guess.
After getting him geared up and offering a quick farewell to my roommates, we’re trekking down the sidewalk and away from the house.
I never really wanted a big house – not that the one I’m living in is some kind of mansion or anything. It’s just bigger than my last place. After the last time, I didn’t want to have roommates, either. Since adopting Koda, though, both of those things have wound up working in my favor.
I’m sure it helps that I’ve made sure not to screw any of my roommates this time, too.
Koda’s feet slap against the concrete while we walk, and every now again, he’ll snap at a passing insect in an attempt to eat it.
“Some of those are toxic, dingdong.”
My hand drops to his rear end to give him a few pats, and his head turns toward me, his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth as his tail whacks against my leg.
Our speed picks up as we make our way down the sidewalk, until we’re jogging alongside each other. We run until my calves ache and Koda starts to slow before we finally begin a much more leisurely trek back toward the house.
As I make it back into my bedroom and I pull up my supplier’s website, I find myself clicking out of the browser to pull up my text messages, and I quickly type one out to send to Tripp.
The messages show as read almost immediately, though no response ever comes through.
He knows how much I hate being left on read; he never leaves me on read.
With a groan, I toss the phone onto my bed, letting my body flop onto it afterward.
This is where my sister would tell me to cut my losses, to move on, reach out to another friend and try to ‘nurture that relationship.’
But I can’t.
I don’t want to let this one go.