37. Main Street
Main Street
Vedder
I couldn’t go back to the barn. I couldn’t go back anywhere, really. I couldn’t face Mamma Mack’s disappointment, or Taz and Daria’s meddling. And if I had Kai Griffith’s scorn today, I’d slam my head through a fucking wall.
So I walked up and down Main Street at sunset, craving pizza and a girl with phoenix eyes and far too much weighing on her soul.
I passed women with their dogs, families with ice cream, and I didn’t see any of it.
Giving the pizza place a wide berth, I found myself in front of a jewelry store. The only one in town. Timeless.
Melody had stared at this place after she was run over. She’d looked at it like Little Orphan Oliver staring into a candy store.
The window featured rings, necklaces, and sets in every possible color. I hovered around the rings because I was an idiot masochist.
I’d been close to having it all. Having what others on my team had—Top and Mamma Mack, Taz and Griff. Even Taz’s parents got back together after almost thirty years apart. They all got their happy ending.
But that kind of stuff wasn’t for the likes of me.
“You look fucking pathetic.”
Kai “son of a bitch” Griffith.
“Why aren’t you at home pampering your injured woman?”
Fuck it. I had no one else to talk to. Beggars, choosers, and assholes…
“She kicked me out.” I bit my lower lip so hard, I tasted blood as my eyes fell on a big diamond at the corner of the display. Oval, shiny, and bright with light dancing inside it, on a simple gold band. Just a big-ass rock with the biggest price tag.
An ice rink.
Melody deserved something that big.
“What’d you do?” Griff said, crossing his arms as he looked at the jewels along with me. Searching for a push present, probably.
“I yelled at her brother for being a dick to her.”
Griff snorted “He’s a teenage dickhead.”
“Hey! He’s a good kid. You don’t know him.”
“I don’t. But is he a teenager?”
“Yeah.”
“Does he have a dick?”
I chortled. “I’ve never checked, you fucking pervert.”
He punched me in the arm.
“He’s a teenage dickhead. They’re all dickheads. All guys are. All men who haven’t figured out their shit.” Was Griff implying he or I had figured ourselves out? If so, that was pretty optimistic.
“Including you?” I finally turned to the man I’d once called a best friend. The person who’d known all my secrets. The only person I’d confessed to about how I couldn’t read, and had come from a cult, and had a mother who was so God damn selfish, she made Narcissus seem selfless.
We both turned back to the jewelry case. He looked at earrings and necklaces, but I knew he was watching me hover over the engagement rings.
“Yeah, including me.” He chuckled, eyes growing distant. “Remember we talked about the seven sins?”
“Yeah. I was a fucking moron. What’d I say…?” I thought back, but I already knew the answer.
“Lust. Your sin was lust. You were proud of that, too.”
“I was a teenage dickhead.”
“We both were.”
It was the first time in five years that Griff admitted we had anything in common.
I felt the moment for the olive branch that it was, hovering between us.
“Mine’s pride. Always was. Still is.” He stuffed his hands into his leather jacket. “I don’t forgive people who have done me wrong much, even if it wasn’t their fault.”
I froze, not wanting to move and spoil the moment by saying the wrong thing His words were a confession, and possibly the start of peace between us. Forgiveness, even.
“You see, V, your sin was lust. Gluttony, too. You drank like a fish, ate like shit, and fucked your way through all of Fayetteville.”
“Alright,” I grumbled. “If we’re gonna have the same conversation for the hundredth time, I’d rather just put it off until tomorrow. Can you do that for me? You can come into the barn and berate me in the morning, but for now—”
“Your sin now is wrath.”
“Bullshit.” I snorted.
But maybe he had a point. I rarely lost my temper.
I hadn’t been in a bar fight for years until Turner tried to confront me about framing Melody.
I was about as fucking zen as a man in my situation could have been.
But this past week, I was a rage-filled prick, snapping like a twig right and left, and reaping the consequences of it.
“I don’t mean wrath towards others. You’re mad at yourself. You’re so fucking mad at yourself all the time, it’s like you’ve got a vendetta against your own soul. You sabotage yourself from getting the things you want, because you hate yourself too much to think you deserve it.”
I gawped.
Was that a fucking almost-compliment? Was he almost saying something nice about me?
He didn’t meet my eyes. Instead, he nodded at an earring and necklace set.
“I know Daria and Taz called dibs on taking you engagement ring shopping, but considering you’ve been staring hard as hell at that five-carat, Tiffany-style solitaire for the past five minutes—and I’m pretty sure I’m about to buy that set right there to celebrate the news of our soon-to-be baby—what do you say we go in and do some shopping? ” He nodded at the door.
“I did not think you, of all people, would be the person I shop with for this”
“Yeah, well…also seems kinda fitting, don’t it?” He held the door open for me, the bell above it chiming our entrance. As he gestured for me to enter first, despite thinking this could still be a trap, I walked in.
“We were looking at your front displays,” Griff said to the man behind the counter.
“Oh!” The jeweler wore a bow tie and a lavender blazer, his white-gloved hands coming together in front of him. “Are you, perhaps, shopping for each other?”
He eyes us back and forth, and we both cringed. I didn’t care that he thought I was gay, but I did care that of all the guys to pair me up with, he’d pick Griff of all people. “He’s not my type.”
“He’s looking for something for his wife-to-be, and I am looking for a push present for my pregnant wife.” Griff clarified, then flicked a thumb at me. ““Unwashed squatters aren’t my type. We’re just friends.”
“Oh.” The jeweler almost looked disappointed. “The best ones are. Anyway…”
I had shit for brains and shit for taste.
I asked for his biggest engagement ring, and it was exactly the oval at the window.
So that was what I bought. I had to call my bank when the transaction got flagged, because it had been a long time since I’d spent so much as a few hundred in one go.
I appreciated the security but did not appreciate the embarrassment of having to call and confirm my identity to the nice old lady on the phone who was asking about my purchase.
Griff, on the other hand, had no problem with his purchase. Smug bastard.
We walked out several thousand dollars poorer, and he surprised me by offering a cigarette.
“I thought you quit,” I mumbled.
“I did.” He pulled out Taz’s Zippo—the one with the Lucky 13 four-leaf clover on it. The logo of our old ODA team.
He lit his own cigarette and took a drag, then handed me the lighter.
“I thought Taz quit, too.”
“Yup.”
We smoked at the corner, emerald-green jewelry bags dangling off our arms.
“Don’t tell Taz.”
“You’re cheating on her with a Camel, you know that, right?” I teased.
Smoke came out of his nostrils as he scoffed. “Yeah, well…I’m thinking about quitting my job and setting myself up behind a desk.”
“Holy shit.” That was big news. Surprising, too.
Griff had always said he’d never give up being an operator.
“Maybe…” He sighed. “Get into politics. Nothing like my dad, don’t get me wrong. Local, school board kind of shit. Something on the town level, maybe.”
“Running for mayor of Mourningkill?” Was this an alien in a Griff suit? Because this was not what I expected him to say. Especially to me.
“Shit, I dunno. I’m just missing home a lot these days.”
“You talk to Taz about it?” Seemed like the logical person to have this discussion with.
“Not yet. I’m worried she’ll think she pressured me into coming home, and she’ll beat herself up about it. She’s going through enough as it is, you know?”
I knew.
Taz was anxious and wild in the best of times. With a baby in her? Yeah…
“She likes it out here. Doesn’t like DC much. I don’t either, I don’t think.” He gestured to the street. “This is the kind of place you wanna raise your kids. Mostly. There are some problems, though. Leadership type things that need to be figured out, ya know?”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Look at how they treated Melody.
The land was good. Most people were well intended and just trying to live their lives. But when they failed someone, they failed hard. And that shit started from the top in a shit-rolls-downhill way.
“Maybe the Griffiths need to displace the Grays as the big shots of the town.” I chuckled. “Hell, I hate you, but I’d vote for you.”
“Yeah?” He looked at me and smiled. Then he went to a trash can and crushed the cigarette until it stopped smoking before tossing it in. “Don’t tell Taz.”
He started to walk away, then he stopped.
“Don’t tell Daria, either. She can’t keep secrets from my wife worth a shit.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. His wife and his best friend were as thick as thieves, and he was third wheeling in his own marriage sometimes.
Good for him.
“Now whatever bullshit you’ve got going on”—he gestured to me and the bag in my hand—“knock it off. I’m willing to bet my mom’s entire fortune the only reason you’re standing here alone and not in her house right now is because you hate yourself too much to walk through the door she’s holding wide open for you. ”