Chapter Thirty-Four
The last venue I expected Lauren and Sanaa to hold my twenty-first birthday party was at a strip club. Well, no… Sanaa, I expected this kind of shit from. But Lauren? I would’ve lost money if I bet on this.
It was a little strange that Silas would want to head to Memphis as if he were making a last ditch farewell to freedom. If I didn’t know any better myself, I would say that he had no confidence in his ability to beat this case. It made me curious enough to wonder, but not curious enough to ask.
“Seriously?”
Lauren nodded. “You only turn twenty-one once! Come on, you might actually have fun!”
I doubted it. As a Montgomery, when it came to places like this, I’d seen just about all there was to see, but I didn’t say so.
The club was closed off to its regular patrons, affixed with two bouncers at the door with clipboards in their hands.
I didn’t know who was on the guest list, but I could already guess it’d be the usual suspects—friends from upstate that I made at FSU, Jay and Marlon definitely, and likely a set of people I would have to pretend I remembered the names of.
Without checking the list, the bouncers nodded us in.
It’s not that I hated parties, I just had to be in the mood for them.
Not too long before this night, Lauren had taken the liberty of diagnosing me with depression. I neither agreed nor disagreed, but it was in moments like this, when the energy all around me was on ten, and I could barely muster a five, that I figured that Lauren might’ve been on to something.
Walking by my side, the time we’d spent together had definitely been better for Lauren’s health. The weight she’d lost from the shit I’d put her through appeared to have come back with a little extra, a view I could appreciate from the way she filled out the tight white dress she had on.
“Lauren!”
The sound of a shrill voice calling out Lauren’s name above the music was the first thing to catch my attention.
Absently, I could see that the club had been cleaned up quite a bit for the purpose of the party.
The usual smell of cheap perfume and lit cigarettes was nowhere to be found.
The furniture looked new, which I knew had to have been something Sanaa arranged.
Only she was a big enough control freak to think to switch out the lounge seating.
This might be a strip club, but it doesn’t need to smell like one, I could almost hear her saying in my mind.
“Lux!” Lauren called out just as enthusiastically, letting go of my hand.
Ahh, I’d heard that name before. It didn’t take much investigating to figure that Lauren didn’t have that many girlfriends.
When she did talk about her friends, however, the name that constantly came up was that of her best friend Lux.
Until (today, I guess) recently, Lux had been out of the country for the summer.
Seeing how today was the first time in days that Lauren was out and about in public, I could sense an emotional reunion coming.
I was five seconds away from excusing myself for a drink when Lauren’s hand stopped at my wrist, her eyes shifting ahead as she said to me, “I want to introduce you to my best friend.”
So I stayed, doing my best to not look as unenthused as I felt.
Lauren’s friend had distrustful eyes. As someone who spent the better half of twenty years under the suspicious gaze of outsiders, I knew that look as soon as I saw it.
“Lux,” she introduced herself in one swift syllable, extending a hand for me to shake.
Her speech was tight, as was her grip on my hand.
It wasn’t my style to firmly shake a woman’s hand the way I would a man, so her tight clutch was completely one-sided.
Still, she didn’t weaken her grip, an almost silent threat in the gesture.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or to feel annoyed.
This girl doesn’t like me.
“Kain.” I matched her energy. For some reason, Lauren only seemed to pick up on my tone, her eyes bouncing between her friend and I.
“Happy birthday, Mr. Montgomery,” Lux offered in the exact same fashion I would expect my accountant to wish me a happy birthday. It was formal, cold. Tense.
“Mr. Montgomery,” I repeated, something I only did when I felt like people couldn’t hear themselves. I’d made my decision, choosing to laugh instead of getting annoyed. With a nod of my head, I let her win whatever standoff she thought we were having. “Thanks.”
Just before the awkwardness could settle, I wasted no time seizing my chance to bow out for a moment.
“Baby, I’m gonna go get a drink. Can I get you something while I’m over there?”
Something about my question made Lauren both cringe and then smile. “Remember when you taught me how to take shots?”
I chuckled, remembering that evening of course. It was the night we first met. Lauren was the lightest of lightweights.
She shook her head, laughing a little as she declined, “I’m good, thanks. No alcohol for me.”
Headed for the bar, just as I walked out of earshot, I could hear Lauren check her friend over the sound of the music. “Lux, what the hell was that all about?”
***
“Youngblood!”
After getting birthday wishes from about a dozen people I honestly didn’t fuck with like that, the sound of my uncle Vance’s voice was actually a welcomed one for a change.
I was behind the bar, making my own drink.
The bartender on duty was a glittery-eyed blonde who looked entirely way too happy to be working this party.
Something about her not-so-discrete selfie taking just didn’t inspire confidence in her ability to make my order right.
So I was making it myself.
“Woo, you just turned twenty-one and you already mixin’ your own drinks? You either a fast learner or you been breakin’ the law all this time.”
“Funny.” I shook the cocktail shaker six times before pouring the mixture into two glasses. They were both supposed to be for me, but now that Vance was here…
Out of necessity, I looked over to where I’d seen Lauren last, making sure she was still sitting with her friend. Sanaa was the type of person to leave her doors open at night, so even though she swore she hired security, I could never be too careful.
Vance followed my gaze and upon getting a look at what I saw, he sighed. There was disappointment in there somewhere.
“You have got it so bad for that one.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, taking a drink, eyes still on Lauren as she talked with the biggest smile on her face to her friend. Briefly, she glanced my way, eyes catching mine at the bar for a moment, and her smile somehow got even bigger. “I really do.”
“You ever think about this long term?”
“I think about a lot of things.”
“Seriously, Kain.” Vance shook his head, and waited for me to look his way.
“Girls like that… They want normal lives. They have dreams of raisin’ families behind white picket fences.
Thanksgiving dinners with parents, cousins, the whole nine.
Regular shit. The things they want the most are essentially the things you will never be able to give. ”
I took another drink, slamming the empty glass down on the counter. “I know, Vance.”
“I don’t think you do.”
“But I do.”
“Then you know that someday, this girl is gonna make you choose.”
“I know.”
“You say that like someone who has already made a decision.” This conversation was giving me déjà vu.
Somehow I got the sense that if Amir was still alive, he would be the one saying these things to me right now.
I cringed at the memory of him. Seven weeks later and the wounds were still fresh.
Noting that Vance hadn’t touched his drink, I reached for it.
It disturbed me just a little, seeing the way tossing the drink down in one go helped me cope.
This is how drinking problems start. “You already chose. You’ve already made up your mind. ,” Vance concluded in my silence.
I set the glass down, nodding a confirmation. “Yeah, a while ago actually.”
Almost five months ago, after Silas learned of the failed hit on Joshua Caplan, one of his lackeys proposed an easier target.
“We’re just now learning that Joshua Caplan has a daughter,” Silas was told in the living room the morning that Lauren had decided to stop by her father’s office.
I was lounging around in the living room, half watching something on TV, phone in my hand.
It wasn’t long before Silas was sold on the idea of kidnapping and killing her in an effort to fuck with Caplan’s ability to focus on his investigation.
I had a decision to make then. I could’ve turned the other way and let niggas do what they do.
Lauren was a short lived person in my life, and if Silas killed her, it would’ve sucked, but it wouldn’t have crushed me.
I’d get over it. For all intents and purposes, it should have been an easy decision to make.
It was Lauren or me. Because I just knew choosing Lauren was going to seriously complicate my life.
And even still… Even knowing what I’d be up against if I decided to protect her…
I still chose her.
And knowing what I knew now—knowing what I would lose, knowing who I would lose—if I could go back and change my mind…
I poured another drink because of the thoughts in my head. I felt like shit because of the thoughts in my head. The thoughts in my head had me feeling like shit for weeks. Because if I was being completely honest with myself—Amir was dead because I chose her.
And given the opportunity to go back, I knew exactly what I would do.
As guilty as it made me feel, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that I knew.
I often revisited that day in March, when Silas decided that Lauren was his target, when just before calling Lauren to tell her, I called Marlon, Jay, and Amir.
I understood that my actions that day would go on to set the trajectory for the events that would ultimately get Amir killed. I understood the consequences of my actions.
Understanding all of this, if given the chance to go back and change that one decision, I still wouldn’t change a thing.
And with that, I took another shot.