Chapter Three
Luminous
Jagger
The next day, Jagger went out for a morning run, made
sure to take his time stretching, then he had shit to do at the garage at Ride,
the business Chaos ran that was half a big auto-supply store and half a garage
that built custom cars and bikes.
Jagger was a certified mechanic, both cars and bikes, and he
wasn’t skilled with design, but his Chaos brother Joker was (like,
award-winning, get-magazine-articles-written-about-you and
have-TV-producers-come-to-you-to-do-reality-shows skilled).
And they worked well together.
On the build they were doing, Joke needed Jagger that day,
and with what had to get done, Jag couldn’t cut out until mid-afternoon.
And he couldn’t go straight to Archie after six hours at the
garage without going home and having a shower first.
So he couldn’t get to S.I.L. on the Hill until late
afternoon.
He was pissed at the delay.
Now that he knew where she was, and his decision had been
made, he wanted to see Archie, talk to her, get some shit sorted, learn other
shit and make it clear he was done dicking around, and whatever it was that
connected them, they were going to explore.
But when he walked through the door to her shop, which was
right on Colfax in the Capital Hill area, he learned his timing couldn’t have
been better.
There was stuff all over the floor, the area close to the
door and in front of the cash register, was a disaster, and Archie was standing
between two kids who had their backs to Jagger, and Mal, who was on her other
side, was facing Jag.
Her arms were up like the referee holding two opponents from
each other in a ring.
Jag had a feeling he was about to meet the Harris brothers.
And with one look at the expression on Mal’s face—and the
kid was openly freaked and upset—he knew how he was gonna play it.
He didn’t delay doing that.
“What the fuck is going on here!” he barked.
Archie’s attention shot to him, Mal jumped a foot, and the
two little shits he knew were there for no reason but to cause trouble, whirled
around on him.
He took them in.
Bullies.
Twins.
Twin fucking bullies.
Jesus.
They were Mal’s age. One needed to lay off full-sugar Coke
and the other was skinny and weaselly.
But even if their bodies couldn’t be more different, they
were the same height, had the same face, and the same beady eyes.
That said, only one pair of those eyes was mean.
However, the belligerence shifted when they got a load of a
pissed-off biker standing between them and the door.
“You two do this?” he asked them, stabbing a finger at the
mess.
The skinny one’s stance adjusted like he was going to make a
break for it, so Jagger turned, walked the three strides that took him back to
the door and flipped the lock.
He retraced his steps and announced, “Not gonna ask again.”
He threw out a hand in a repeat of indicating the mess all over the floor. “You
do this?”
No one said anything.
He looked to Archie. “Babe, these two fucks do this to your
store?”
“Jagger, I’ve got this,” Archie replied.
But the Harris twins didn’t miss the “babe” part of what he
said.
They were looking at each other with identical “oh fuck”
expressions.
Jag crossed his arms on his chest, glanced between them and
stated, “Yeah, motherfuckers, I’m in this mix, I do not like what I see, so
what I see better change right fuckin’ now. Clean this shit up.”
The boys looked at each other again, then to Jag, and the
skinny one, who Jag was tagging as the leader of their two-man crew, said, “You
can’t lock us in here.”
“Choice one,” Jag retorted, ignoring what the kid said. “You
clean this shit up. Choice two, you leave and me and my brothers will find
something you care about and we’ll mess that up so you’ll get how it feels. You
got five seconds to make that choice. One…”
The skinny one spoke up again.
“No Chaos bro is gonna mess with a twelve-year-old.”
“Two…”
“Let us out man.”
“Three…”
“Fuck you! Let us out!”
“Four…”
The heavy one nudged the skinny one and said low, “Aaron.”
“Shut up,” Aaron hissed back.
“Five.” Jag shook his head. “Wrong choice, boys,” he
finished, turned on his boot, went back to the door and unlocked it.
But since he stood in front of it with his arms crossed,
when both boys raced to him, they had to stop and skim by him to get out.
“I hear any word my boy Mal here has trouble with you two
fucks, the shit you just bought escalates, do you get me?” he said as they slid
by.
The heavy one looked away.
Aaron held his gaze before he took off.
Yeah, Aaron was trouble.
Shit.
Jag turned his head to watch them race down the sidewalk.
When he turned it back, Archie was in his space.
“Let me guess, the Harris brothers?” he asked.
Making a noise he liked a lot, because it was frustrated,
but it was cute, she dug into the crook of his elbow to grab his hand, forced
him to uncross his arms and then started dragging him.
“Dude, that was bad…ass,” Mal said as Archie pulled
him abreast of Mal.
It was then, Jag saw others accumulating, all of them around
the same age as Mal, boys and girls, different races, maybe a half dozen of
them, all staring at him like an explosion happened in S.I.L. on the Hill and
he’d formed like a god from the force of the blast.
“Help her out, bud, start pickin’
this shit up, yeah?” Jagger asked.
“Yeah!” Mal cried, like that was his most fervent wish, then
he jumped to it.
“You know him?” one of the other boys asked Mal.
“Sure,” Mal replied casually.
Archie had no comment on any of this, mostly because she was
fully involved in continuing to drag him.
Jagger let himself be dragged and he took the place in while
he did.
It was not what he expected.
He expected a record store vibe with some kitschy shit
thrown in, bargain basement-type décor that was cool because of some album
cover posters tacked haphazardly to the walls with some vintage shit
intermingled just to shake things up.
But mostly cool because Archie was cool, and it was hers.
It wasn’t that.
Oh, it was cool.
But it was a lot more.
First, it was big. Way bigger than he expected.
Second, the floors were covered in large, overlapping rugs
and the overall feel was of a massive living room that was filled with a ton of
dope stuff.
Helping this feel was the fact that there was some lounge
lizard jazz playing not discreetly over the sound system, and if someone walked
up to him and handed him a chilled martini he wouldn’t have been surprised.
There was a vinyl section with a sign over it that just had
musical notes on it that hung cockeyed. Against the wall of that section was
tailored shelving filled with old CDs.
Across from this, there was a section of freestanding
shelves that had its own sign over it that was an opened book, and the section
itself looked like a library with places to sit and read.
There were racks of clothes that surrounded a setup of a
bedroom area (but was really a bed and a bunch of stuff for sale), one side
with a big picture of Amelia Earhart over what had to be the women’s section,
the Dos Equis guy over the men’s on the other side.
The rest of the place was filled with more stuff for sale,
from furniture, glassware and lamps to gifts, candles, jewelry, kitchen stuff,
and more.
Some of it was new.
Most of it was used.
Apparently, there was a lot of shit that Archie liked.
The way it was laid out was unique, appealing, and
comfortable.
This was a store you hung out at and not only because there
seemed to be a working, vintage soda fountain that had been either restored or
resurrected against the side wall opposite to where they were going.
The place reminded him of Fortnum’s Used Books, which
obviously had a shit ton of books, not to mention sold vinyl. But it had a
coffee counter at the front. And you didn’t go to Fortnum’s unless it was to
hit the coffee counter and grab the best coffee in the city…or to hang around
because it was the kind of place where you wanted to hang.
And Jag wanted to hang at S.I.L., walk around, check shit
out, and maybe get a cherry Coke.
Archie wasn’t gonna let that happen.
She was pulling him to a door that had no window, but there
was a big square one in the wall beside it.
He was guessing it was her office.
He was pleased to see she didn’t leave it open, she had to
dig in her pants to get the key (no mini-skirt, movie T-shirt and Doc Martens
today (fuck him running)).
Nope.
She had on bright yellow oversize pants that hung sexy on
her hips and were rolled up in wide cuffs at the hems, a tiny, white, ribbed
tank that fit her like a second skin, and a pair of vivid green, spike-heeled
pumps that he just noticed and the sight of them he felt in his dick.
Which was what he was concentrating on when she unlocked her
office, tugged him in, shut the door, then pushed him up against it and got
close.
Okay.
Yeah.
He needed her to back off.
More accurately, his cock needed her to back off.
Pronto.
He didn’t get the chance to say that.
She got there before he did.
“First, we have a rule here at S.I.L. We don’t call the
young ’uns ‘fucks’ or ‘motherfuckers’.”
She left that a beat, and when he didn’t respond, she
continued.
“And tied for that top spot on the don’t side of our do’s
and don’ts list, we don’t threaten them.”
Even if all he could see was her, he could still feel the
glimpse of her sexy shoes in his crotch, and he could smell her and she smelled
like pepper and moonlight and flowers (the only way he could describe her scent
was “luminous,” and Jag was not a poetic person, but there it was).
He still started laughing.
“Jagger, I’m not being funny,” she said into his laughter.
“Babe, you could have a neon sign coming from the ceiling
pointing to them that said ‘bullies’ and those two would still scream that shit
louder than neon. And the only way to handle a bully is to be a bigger bully.”
“Yeah? Do you have years of juvenile counseling and study of